Lasher (90 page)

“Father,” I said my prayer, “if I die this night, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”

It was nearly midnight, but still too soon to go out, and as I stood there, deep in prayer, seeking to fortify myself, calling on Francis to give me courage, I looked up and saw that my
sister had come to the door of the sacristy, in a dark green hood and cloak, and was motioning for me with one thin white hand, to come into the adjacent room.

This was a dark-paneled chamber, with heavy oak furnishings, and shelves of books built into the walls. A place for a priest to hold conferences in quiet, perhaps, or a study. Not a room I had seen before. I saw Latin texts which I knew; I saw the statue of our founder, St. Francis, and my heart was filled with happiness, though no plaster or marble Francis had ever been the radiant being I saw in my mind’s eye.

My soul was quiet. I didn’t want to talk to my sister. I wanted only to pray. The scent made me restless.

She led me inside. Several candles burnt along the wall. Nothing was visible through the tiny diamond-paned windows except the snow falling, and I was stunned to see the Dutchman from Amsterdam seated at the table and motioning for me to sit down. He had taken off his clumsy Dutch hat, and looked at me eagerly as I took the opposite chair.

The strange enticing scent came strongly from my sister, and once again it made me hunger for something, but I did not know for what. If it was an erotic hunger, I did not intend to find out.

I was fully dressed for High Mass. I seated myself carefully and folded my hands on the table.

“What is it you want?” I looked from my sister to the Dutchman. “Do you come to go to confession so that you can receive the Body and Blood of Christ tonight?”

“Save yourself,” said my sister. “Leave now.”

“And forsake these good people and this cause? You are mad.”

“Listen to me, Ashlar,” said the man from Amsterdam. “I’m offering you my protection again. I can take you from the valley tonight, secretly. Let the cowardly priests here gather their courage on their own.”

“Into a Protestant country? For what?”

It was my sister who answered: “Ashlar, in the dim days of legends before the Romans and the Picts came to this land, your breed lived on an island, naked and mad as apes of the wild—born knowing, yes, but knowing at birth all that they would
ever
know!

“At first the Romans sought to breed with them, as had others. For if they could father sons who grew to manhood within hours, what a powerful people they would become. But they
could not breed the Taltos, save once in a thousand times. And as the women died from the seed of the Taltos males, and the Taltos females led the men to endless and fruitless licentiousness, it was decided that they must wipe the Taltos from the earth.

“But in the islands and in the Highlands, the breed survived, for it could multiply like rats. And finally when the Christian faith was brought to this country, when the Irish monks came in the name of St. Patrick, it was Ashlar the leader of the Taltos who knelt to the image of the Crucified Christ and declared that all his kind should be murdered, for they had no souls! There was a reason behind it, Ashlar! For he knew that if the Taltos really learnt the ways of civilization, in their childishness, and idiocy, and penchant to breed, they could never be stopped.

“Ashlar was no longer of his people. He was of the Christians. He had been to Rome. He had spoken to Gregory the Great.

“So he condemned his fellow Taltos! He turned on them. The people made it a ritual, an offering, as cruel a pagan slaughter as ever was known.

“But down through the years, in the blood, the seed travels, to throw up these slender giants, born knowing, these strange creatures whom God has given the cleverness of mimicry, and singing, but no true capacity to be serious or firm.”

“Oh, but that is not so,” I said. “Before God, I am the living proof.”

“No,” said my sister, “you are a good follower of St. Francis, a mendicant and a saint, because you are a simpleton, a fool. That’s all St. Francis ever was—God’s idiot, walking about barefoot preaching goodness, not knowing a word of theology really, and having his followers give away all they possessed. It was the perfect place to send you—the Italy of the Franciscans. You have the addled brain of the Taltos, who would play and sing and dance the livelong day and breed others for playing and singing and dancing…”

“I am a celibate,” I said. “I am consecrated to God. I know nothing of such things.” I was cut so deep it was a miracle the words would come from me. I was wounded. “I am not such a creature. How dare you?” I whispered, but then I bowed my head in humility. “Francis, help me now,” I prayed.

“I know this whole story,” declared the Dutchman, as my sister nodded. He went on. “We are an Order called the
Talamasca. We know the Taltos. We always have. Our founder beheld with his own eyes the Taltos of his time. It was his great dream to bring the male Taltos together with the female Taltos, or with the witch whose blood was strong enough to take the male’s seed. That has been our purpose for centuries, to watch, to wait, and to rescue the Taltos!—to rescue a male and a female in one generation if such a thing does occur! Ashlar, we know where there is a female! Do you understand?”

I could see this startled my sister. She had not known it, and now she looked at the Dutchman with suspicion, but he went on, urgently, as before.

“Have you a soul, Father?” he whispered to me, changing his manner now to a more wily one, “and a wit to know what it means? A pure female Taltos? And a brood of children born knowing, able to stand and to talk on the first day! Children who can so quickly beget other children?”

“Oh, what a fool you are,” I said. “You come like the fiend to tempt Christ in the desert. You say to me, ‘I would make you the ruler of the world.’ ”

“Yes, I say that! And I am prepared to assist you, to bring back your breed in full force and power again.”

“And if you do think me this witless monster! Why would you so generously do this for me?”

“Brother, go with him,” said my sister. “I don’t know if this female exists. I have never beheld a female Taltos. But they are born, that’s true. If you don’t go, you will die tonight. You have heard tell of the little people. Do you know what they are?”

I didn’t answer. I wanted to say, I do not care.

“They are the spawn of the witch that fails to grow into the Taltos. They carry the souls of the damned.”

“The damned are in hell,” I replied.

“You know this isn’t so. The damned return in many forms. The dead can be restless, greedy, filled with vengeance. The little people dance and couple, drawing out the Christian men and women who would be witches, who would dance and fornicate, hoping for the blood to come together, for like to find like, and that the Taltos will be born.

“That is witchcraft, Brother. That is what it has always been—bring together the drunken women, so that they will risk death to make the Taltos. That is the old story of the revels
in these dark glens. It is to make a race of giants who will, by sheer numbers, drive other mortals from the earth.”

“God would not let such a thing happen,” I said calmly.

“Neither will the people of the valley!” said the Dutchman. “Don’t you understand? Throughout the centuries they have waited and watched and used the Taltos. It is good luck to them to bring together male and female, but only for their own cruel rituals!”

“I don’t know what you are saying. I am not this thing.”

“In my house in Amsterdam there are a thousand books which will tell you of your kind and other miraculous beings; there is all the knowledge we have gathered as we have waited. If you are not the simpleton, then come.”

“And what are you?” I demanded. “The alchemist who would make a great homunculus?”

My sister put down her head on the table and wept.

“In my childhood I heard the legends,” she said bitterly, wiping at her tears with her long fingers. “I prayed the Taltos would never come. No man shall ever touch me lest such a creature would be born to me! And if such were to happen, God forbid, I should strangle it before it ever drank the witch’s milk from my breasts. But you, Brother, you were allowed to live, you drank your fill of the witch’s milk and grew tall. Yet you were sent away to be saved. And now you have come home to fulfill the worst prophecies. Don’t you see? The witches may be spreading the word now. The vengeful little people will learn that you are here. The Protestants surround this valley. They are waiting for the chance to come down upon us, waiting for the spark to light their fire.”

“These are lies. Lies to put out the Light of Christ which would come into the world on this night. You hear the bells. I go now to say the Mass. Sister, don’t come to the altar with your pagan superstition. I will not put the Body of Christ on your tongue.”

As I rose to go, the Dutchman laid hold of me, and with all my strength I forced him back.

“I am a priest of God,” I said, “a follower of St. Francis of Assisi, I have come to say the Christmas Mass in this valley. I am Ashlar, and I stand on the right hand of God.”

Without stopping I went to the Cathedral doors. Great cheers sounded from the multitude as I opened the church. My head was swimming with their disconnected phrases, threats, suspicions—that it was all demonology, of that, I was sure.

I went out amongst the townspeople, raising my hand in blessing.
In Nomine Patris, et filii, et spiritus sancti, amen
. A beautiful young girl had come forward to be the Blessed Virgin Mary in our pageant, her hair covered by a blue veil, and a rosy-cheeked boy to be Joseph, who had only just got his beard and had to darken it with coal; and then an infant, born only a few days ago, tiny and pink and beautiful, was placed in my arms.

I saw the men in their animal skins gathering, lighted candles in their hands. Indeed the entire valley was ablaze with lighted candles. All the town was filled with lighted candles! And the great beautiful church behind us would soon receive this light.

For a split second again, I did see one of those small beings, humpbacked, heavily clothed, but it seemed no monster—only the common dwarfs one saw in the streets of Florence, or so I told myself again. And it was natural for the people to give it wide berth and to gasp as it fled, for such things frequently frighten the ignorant. They cannot be blamed.

The bell began to chime the hour of midnight. It was Christmas. Christ had come. The bagpipers came into the church, in their full tartan skirts; the little children came in their white, as angels, and all the people, rich, poor, ragged or well dressed, crowded through the doors.

Our voices rose again in the anthem: “Christ is born. Christ is born.” Once more I heard the tambourines and the pipes playing, and the beat of the drums. The rhythm caught me and made my vision blur, but I walked on, my eyes upon the radiant altar and the manger of hay which had been made to the right of it before the marble Communion rail. The infant in my arms gave strong little cries as if it too would announce the glad tidings, and kicked its sturdy beautiful little legs as I held it high.

I had never been such a child. I had never been such a miracle. I was something ancient and forgotten perhaps and worshiped in the time of darkness. But that did not matter now. Surely God saw me! Surely God knew my love for Him, my love for His people, my love for the Child Jesus born in Bethlehem, and all who would speak His name. Surely St. Francis looked down on me, his faithful follower, his child.

At last I had reached the broad sanctuary, and I went down in genuflection and laid the little infant in the bed of hay. Linen had been prepared for it. It cried very hard to be so
abandoned, poor little Christ! And my eyes filled with tears to behold its common perfection, its ordinary symmetry, the natural brilliance of its eyes and voice.

I stepped back. The Virgin Mary had knelt beside the little miracle. And to the right of the small crib knelt her young St. Joseph, and shepherds came now, our own shepherds of Donnelaith with their warm sheep over their shoulders, and the cow and ox were led to the manger. The singing grew louder and ever more beautiful and blended, with the drums beneath it, and the pipes. I stood there swaying. My eyes misted. I realized in my sadness, as I sank deep into the music, almost irretrievably into it, that I had not seen my saint. I had not thought to glance at the window when I came down the center aisle. But it did not matter. He was nothing but glass and history.

I would now make the Living Christ. My altar boys were ready. I walked to the foot of the steps, and began the ancient words in Latin.

I will go in to the Altar of God.

At the Consecration, as the tiny bells rang out to mark the sacred moment, I held up the Host. This is My Body. I grasped the chalice. This is My Blood. I ate the Body. I drank the Blood.

And finally I turned to give out the Holy Communion, to see them streaming towards me, young and old and feeble and hardy and those with babes who held down the little babies’ heads as they themselves opened their mouths to receive the sacred Host.

High above, amid the narrow soaring arches of this vast building, the shadows hovered, but the light rose, blessed and bright, seeking every corner to illuminate it, seeking every bit of cold stone to make it warm.

The Laird himself, my father, came to receive Communion, and with him my fearful sister, Emaleth, who bowed her head at the last second so none would see that I did not give her the Host. And uncles whom I knew from long ago, and kinswomen, yes, and the chieftains of the other strongholds and their clans. And then the farmers of the valley and the shepherds, and the merchants of the town—a never-ending stream.

It seemed an hour or more that we gave Communion, that back and forth we went for cup after cup, until at last all the men and women of the valley had partaken. All had received the Living Christ into their hearts.

Never in any church in Italy had I known such happiness. Never in any open field under God’s arching sky, beneath His perfectly painted stars. When I turned to say the final words: “Go, the Mass is ended!” I saw the courage and happiness and peace on every face.