Lasher

  "Ashlar!" he said in a whisper. "Ashlar, we have come for you. We need you. Our father is the Laird now, and would have you come home."

  And then he dropped to his knees and he kissed my hand.

  "Don't do this," I said gently. "I am only an instrument of the Lord. Please embrace me, man to man, if you will and tell me what you want."

  "I am your brother," he said, obeying me and caressing me. "Ashlar, our Cathedral still stands. Our valley still exists by the grace of God. But it may not for long. The heretics have threatened to come down upon us before Christmas; they would destroy our rites; they call us pagans and witches and liars, and it is they who lie. You must help us fight for the true faith. England and Scotland are soaked in blood."

  For a very long moment I looked at him. I looked at the eager excited expression of the Guardian, our Father Superior. I looked at the attendant, who seemed himself carried away by all this as if I were a saint. Of course the heretics did these things--denounced us in those terms which more properly applied to them.

  I thought of the Dutchman outside, waiting, watching. Perhaps this was a trick from him. But I knew better. This was my father's son! I saw the resemblance. All the rest was true.

  "Come with me," said my brother. "Our father is waiting. You have answered our prayers. You are the saint sent by God to lead us. We can't delay any longer. We must go."

  My mind played a strange trick on me. It said, Some of this is true and some is not. But if you take the horror, you must take the illusion. The veracity of one depends upon the other. Yes, the birth happened. And you know that a witch was your mother! And you even suspect who that witch might be. You know. And therefore you are the saint, and your hour has come.

  In sum, I knew full well that what lay before me was a likely mixture of fancy and truth--a mixture of legend and puzzling fact--and in my desperation, horrified by what I could not deny, I accepted all in one fell swoop. You might say, I bought the fantasy. I could not be stopped now from going home.

  "I will come with you, brother," I said. And before I could form any thoughts in my mind to the contrary, I submerged myself in the sense of my mission. I let it seduce me and overtake me.

  All night, I prayed only for courage, that if there was persecution in England, I would be brave enough to die for the true faith.

  That my death would have meaning, I never doubted, and by dawn I think I had convinced myself I was meant to be a martyr, but much adventure and excitement lay ahead before the final flames.

  But at early morning, I went to the Guardian of our congregation, and I asked him, to help me in my courage, would he do two things? First, take me into the church, into the baptistry, and there baptize me Ashlar in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, as if it had never been done before. And then would he lay his hands on me and give me Holy Orders, as if that too were happening for the first time? Would he give the power to me as a priest had given it to him, a priest who had been given it by one before him, who had got it direct from one before that, all the way back to Christ putting His hands on Peter, and saying, "Upon this Rock, I shall build my church."

  "Yes, my son," he said, "my beloved Ashlar. Come, if you want these ceremonies, if they will give you strength, in Francis's name, we shall do them. You have in all these years asked for nothing. Come, we shall do as you wish."

  Then if it is true, I thought, if it is, I am nevertheless a Child of Christ, now born of water and the spirit, and I am an anointed priest of God.

  "St. Francis, be with me," I prayed.

  It was determined we would travel overland mostly through Catholic France and then over water to England. I was dispensed from my vow not to ride a horse. Expediency demanded it.

  And so our long journey began. We were five men, all of us Highlanders, and we traveled as fast and as rough as we could, sometimes making camp in the forest. All the men except for me were heavily armed.

  It was in Paris that again I saw the Dutchman! We were in the crowds before Notre Dame on a Sunday morning, going to Mass with thousands of others, in this a Catholic city, and the Dutchman came near to me.

  "Ashlar!" he said. "You are a fool if you go back to the glen."

  "You get away from me!" I cried.

  But something in the man's face held me--a coolness, a resignation, almost a sneer. It was as if I were behaving predictably and wildly, and he was prepared for this, and he walked along with me. My brother and his men glared at the Dutchman and were ready at any instant to sink a dagger into him.

  "Come to Amsterdam with me," the Dutchman said. "Come and hear my story. You go back to the glen and you will die! They are killing priests in England and that is what they think you are. But in the glen you will be an animal of sacrifice to those people! Do not be their fool."

  I drew up close to him. "Tell me now, here in Paris. Sit down with me and tell me the story now."

  But before I could finish, my brother had drawn the Dutchman back and struck him a blow that sent him backwards into the crowd, creating screams and panic, as he tumbled over others and fell to the ground. "You've been told before," he declared to the Dutchman. "Stay away from our ilk, and from our valley." He spat in the Dutchman's face.

  The Dutchman stared up at me and it seemed I saw hatred in him; pure hatred; or was it merely the thwarted will?

  My brother and his men pulled me into the church.

  Animal of sacrifice! Death to any ordinary woman...

  My peace of mind was destroyed. The wonder of the journey was destroyed. I could have sworn that various persons in the Cathedral had seen this little drama and understood it, and that they were staring at me in a wary and cunning way. That they were almost amused. I went to receive Communion.

  "Dear God, come into me, find me innocent and pure."

  The crowds of Paris are filled with bizarre figures. It was my imagination, surely, that those on the fringes stared at me, that the gypsies looked, and the deformed ones, those with humps and stunted legs. I closed my eyes and sang my songs in my head.

  The next night, we put on plain clothes, and we sailed for England. The mist was thick over the sea. It was now very cold. I was entering the land of winter again, of low skies and dim sunshine, of eternal chill and mystery, the land of secrets, the land of terrible truths.

  We made landfall four nights later, in Scotland, surreptitiously, for priests were being hunted by Elizabeth and burnt. We proceeded inland and up into the Highlands, and the winter came down around me like a spider's web which had waited. It was as if the craggy mountains said to me, "Ah, we have you. You had your chance and now it's gone."

  I could not stop thinking of the man from Amsterdam. But I had one purpose. I would reach Donnelaith and demand the truth from my father, not the legends and the prayers, but the reason for the fear I had seen in my mother and in others--the whole tale.

  Thirty-six

  LASHER'S STORY CONTINUES

  THE VALLEY WAS under siege. The main pass was closed. We came through the secret tunnel, which seemed to have grown smaller and more treacherous in this score of years. There were times when I thought it too steep, too dark, too overgrown, and that we would surely have to go back.

  But very suddenly, we had come to the end--and there was the splendor of Donnelaith under its cover of Christmas snow beneath a stalwart and dying winter sun.

  Thousands of the faithful had sought shelter in the valley. They had come in to flee the religious wars in the surrounding towns. It was not a multitude such as one would see in Rome or Paris. But for this lonely and beautiful country it was a great population. Haphazard shelters had been built against the walls of the little town, and against the buttresses of the Cathedral, and hovels covered the valley floor. The main pass was barricaded. A thousand fires sent their smoke into the snowy sky. Ornamented tents rose here and there as if for princely war.

  The sky was darkening, the sun a flaming orange in the mountainous clouds. Lights in the Cathedral
were already burning. The air was wintry, but not freezing, and the splendid windows shone through the early dark in a fierce and beautiful blaze. The waters of the loch held the last of the light jealously and we could see armed Highlanders patrolling the dimming shores.

  "I would pray first," I told my brother.

  "No," he said. "We must go up to the castle now. Ashlar, that we are not burnt out already is a miracle. This is Christmas Eve. The very night on which they have sworn to attack. There are factions within us who would be Protestant, who think that Calvin and Knox speak for the conscience. There are the old ones, the superstitious ones. Our people could break into their own war on this spot."

  "Very well," I said, but I ached to see the Cathedral, ached to remember that first Christmas when I had gone to the crib, when I had seen the babe in the manger with the real ox and the real cow and the real donkey tethered there, amid the delicious smell of the hay and the winter greens. Ah, Christmas Eve. That meant that the Child Himself had not yet been laid in the manger. I had come in time to see it, perhaps even to lay the Infant Jesus there with my own hands. And in spite of myself, in spite of the bitter cold and the harsh darkness, I thought, This is my home.

  The castle was more or less as I remembered, a great indifferent, cheerless pile of stone, as ugly surely as any edifice built by the Medici, or any I had seen on my progress through war-torn Europe. The mere sight of it filled me suddenly with fear. I turned round as I stood at the drawbridge, looking down into the valley, at the little town which was far smaller and poorer than Assisi. And all of this seemed crude and frightening suddenly--a land of shaggy gruff-spoken light-skinned persons without civilization, without anything that I could understand.

  Was this pure cowardice that I felt? I wanted to be in Santa Maria del Fiori in Florence listening to the canticles or the High Mass. I wanted to be in Assisi greeting the Christmas pilgrims. For the first time in over twenty years I was not there!

  As darkness fell the crowds about the little city and the church looked all the more ominous, and the woods themselves closer, as though struggling to swallow what few edifices man had made in this place.

  For one second, I thought I saw a pair of dwarfish creatures, two little beings, far too ugly and misshapen to be children, and far too quick as they scurried out of the castle yard and across the bridge and beyond.

  But so quick had it been, and so dark was it, that I was uncertain I'd seen anything at all.

  I took one last look down into the valley. Ah, the beauty of the Cathedral. In its great Gothic ambition, it was more graceful even than the churches of Florence. Its arches challenged heaven. Its windows were visions.

  This, this alone, must be saved, I thought. My eyes filled with tears.

  Then I went into the castle to learn the truth.

  The main hall had its roaring fire, and many in dark woolen garments gathered around the hearth.

  My father rose at once from a heavily carved chair. "Leave the hall," he told the others.

  I recognized him immediately. He was mightily impressive, big-shouldered still, and somewhat resembling his own father, but far more hardy and nothing as old as the old one had been when I came. His hair was streaked with gray but still a deep lustrous brown, and his deep-set eyes were filled with a loving fire.

  "Ashlar!" he said. "Thank God, you have come." He threw his arms around me. I remembered the first moment I had ever seen him, the same look of love, from one who knew me, and my heart nearly broke. "Sit down by the fire," he said, "and hear me out."

  Elizabeth, wretched daughter of the Boleyn, was on the throne of England, but she herself was not the worst threat to us. John Knox, the rabid Presbyterian, had come back from exile, and he was leading the people in an iconoclastic rebellion throughout the land.

  "What is the madness of these people?" demanded my father, "that they would destroy statues of our Blessed Mother, that they would burn our books? We are not idolaters! Thank God we have our own Ashlar, come back to save us at this time."

  I shuddered.

  "Father, we are not idolaters and I am no idol," I declared. "I am a priest of God. What can I do in the face of war? All these years in Italy I have heard stories of atrocity. I know only how to do small things!"

  "Small things! You are our destiny! We the Catholic Highlanders must have a leader to take a stand for right. At any time the Protestants and the English may build up the courage and the numbers to force the pass. They have told us if we dare to hold Midnight Mass in the Cathedral, they will storm the town. We have sheep; we have grain. If we hold through this night and the twelve days of Christmas, they may see the hand of God in it and be driven away.

  "Tonight, you must lead the Procession, Ashlar, you must lead the Latin hymns. You must place the Infant Jesus in the manger, between the Virgin Mother and good St. Joseph. Lead the animals to the manger. Lead them to bow to the Good Child Jesus. Be our priest, Ashlar, what priests were meant to be. Reach to heaven for us, and call down the Mercy of God as only a priest can!"

  Of course I knew this was the very concept which the Protestants found archaic, that we of the priesthood were mysterious and elevated, and that we had some communication with God which the ordinary folk did not.

  "Father, I can do this as any priest can do it," said I. "But what if we do hold through Christmas? Why will they back away then? Why will they not come down upon us at any moment that our sheep and our grain are gone?"

  "Christmas is the time of their hate, Ashlar. It is the time of the richest Roman ceremony. It is the time of the finest vestments and incense and candles. It the time of our greatest Latin Mass. And old superstition grips Scotland, Ashlar. Christmas in the pagan years was the time of witches, the time that the restless dead walked. Outside this valley, they say we harbor witches, that indeed, we of Donnelaith have the witches' gifts in our blood. They say our valley is filled with the little people who carry within them the souls of the restless dead! Papists, witchcraft--these denunciations are mixed together by men who fight to the death for the right to say that Christ is not in the bread and wine! That to pray to the Mother of God is a sin!"

  "I understand." Inwardly, I shuddered. The little people carry within them the souls of the restless dead?

  "They call our saint an idol! They call us Devil worshipers! Our Christ is the Living Christ."

  "And I must strengthen the people..." I murmured. "This does not mean that I myself shall shed blood."

  "Only raise your voice for the Son of God," said my father. "Rally the people, and silence the malcontents! For we have them among us, Puritans who would turn the tide, and even those who claim that there are witches in our very midst who must be burnt if we are to prevail. Put a silence to this squabbling. Call the entire people in the name of St. Ashlar. Say the Midnight Mass."

  "I see," I said, "and you will tell them that I am the saint come from the window."

  "You are!" he declared. "By the love of God, you are! You know that you are. You are Ashlar who comes again. You are Ashlar who is born knowing. And you know what you are. For twenty-three years you have lived in sanctity in the arms of the Franciscans and you are a true saint. Do not be so humble, my son, that you lack courage. Cowardly priests in this valley we have already, trembling down there in the sacristy, terrified that they will be snatched from the very altar by the town's Puritans and thrown in the Yule fire."

  At these words I remembered that long-ago Christmas. I remembered when my grandfather gave the order that I was to die. The Yule log. Would they bring it in this very night and start it to burning, after the Midnight Mass, when the Light of Christ was born into the world?

  I was suddenly brought out of my thoughts. A deep sultry fragrance came to me, a thick and unnameable perfume. I smelled it so strongly that I was confused.

  "You are St. Ashlar," my father declared again as if piqued by my silence.

  "Father, I don't know," I uttered softly.

  "Ah, but you do know," cried ou
t a new voice. It was the voice of a woman, and as I turned around I saw a young female, my age, perhaps a little younger, and very fair, with silky long red tresses down her back and a thick and embroidered gown. It was from her that this fragrance emanated, causing a subtle change within my body, a longing and a slow fire.

  I was struck by her beauty, by her rippling hair and her eyes so like those of our father, deep-set and bright. My eyes were black. My mother's eyes. I remembered the Dutchman's phrase--a pure female of your own ilk. But she was not this. I knew it. She was a human woman. I could see that she more resembled my father than me. When I saw my like I would know it, just as I have always known certain things.

  This woman came towards me. The fragrance was inviting to me. I had no idea what to make of it; I seemed to feel hunger, thirst and passion all at the same time.

  "Brother, you are no St. Ashlar!" she said. "You are the Taltos! The curse of this valley since the dark times, the curse that rises without warning in our blood."

  "Silence, bitch," my father said. "I mean it! I will kill you and your followers with my own hands."

  "Aye, like the good Protestants of Rome," she said, mocking him, her voice very clear and ringing as she lifted her chin and pointed her hand. "What is it they say in Italy, Ashlar? Do you know? 'If our own father were a heretic, we would carry the faggots to burn him'? Do I quote it right?"

  "I think so, Sister," I said softly, "but for God's sake, be wise. Speak to me in patience."

  "Patience! Were you born knowing? Or is that a lie too? In the arms of a queen, was it not? And for you, she lost her head."

  "Silence, Emaleth," cried my father. "I am not afraid of you."

  "You are the only one then, Father. Brother, look at me, listen to what I say."

  "I don't know what you are saying, I don't understand this. My mother was a great queen. I never knew her name." I stuttered as I said this, for I had long ago guessed who she might have been, and this was stupid for me to pretend not to know, and this woman knew it. She was clever and she saw past my gentle Franciscan manner and the startled look of innocence on my face.