Lasher

Thirty-four

LET ME TAKE you to the first moments, as I recall them-no matter what others said to me after, either in one life or another, no matter what I came to see in my dreams.

I remember lying in bed beside my mother; it was a coffered bed, heavily carven, with bulbous posts and hung with ocher velvet, and the walls were the same color though the ceiling of the room, like the ceiling of the bed, was all of dark wood. My mother was crying. She was terrified-a wan dark-eyed creature, drawn and trembling. I was nursing from her, and had her in my power, in that I was taller than she was, and stronger, and was holding her as I drank the milk from her breast.

I knew who she was, that I had been in her, and I knew that her life was in danger, that when my monstrosity was revealed she would undoubtedly be called a witch and put to death. She was a Queen. Queens cannot bear monsters. That the King had not set eyes on me, that the women were keeping him out of the chamber, this I also knew. The women were as frightened of me as my mother.

I wanted love from my mother. I wanted the milk. The men in the castle were beating on the doors. They were threatening to enter the Queen’s chamber if they were not told immediately why they were being kept out.

My mother was crying continuously and did not want to touch me. She spoke in English, saying that God had cursed her for what she had done, God had cursed her and the King, and now her dreams were ruined; I was the retribution from heaven-my deformity, my size, the obvious fact that I was a monster. That I could not be a human being.

What did I know at that moment? That I was flesh again. That I had returned. That I had succeeded in some seemingly endless journey, and had once more found port, safe and sound. I felt happy.

That was all I knew-and that I must take command.

It was I who calmed the women, revealing that I could speak. I said that I had drunk enough milk. I could go out now and find milk and cheese and such on my own. I would have my mother out of danger. I said that for my mother’s sake, I must be taken out of the castle, unseen by the rest of the court.

There was of course a shocked silence that I could speak, that I could reason, that I was not merely a giant newborn but possessed a cunning mind. My mother rose up and stared at me through her tears. She held up her left hand. I saw there the mark of the witch, the sixth finger. I knew that I had returned through her because she was a powerful witch, yet she was innocent as all mothers. I knew also that I must leave this place and seek the glen.

My vision of the glen was without contour, color, contrast. This was a concept analogous to an echo. I did not stop to demand of myself, “What glen?” There was too much danger here in this castle. If there was something more to the vision, it was a circle of stones, and within it a circle of persons, and beyond another circle of persons, and beyond that another, and another, all turning, the circles within circles, and there rose a chanting sound.

This was fleeting.

I said to my mother that I had come from the glen and must go back to it, and she, rising up on her arms, uttered in a whisper the name of my father, Douglas of Donnelaith. She told the women that they must find Douglas, who was, at this very moment, at court, that they must somehow bring him to her at once. She uttered something I could not grasp-something to do with a witch coupling with a witch, and that Douglas had been her terrible error, and that in trying to give the King an heir, she had made a witch’s tragic mistake.

She fell back near to unconsciousness.

A message was given through a small window in the doorway to a secret passage. It was the midwife now who calmed the other women and told the men through the door, at last, the tragic news: the Queen’s child had been stillborn.

Stillborn! I began to laugh, a soft laughter which seemed a great comfort to me; as wondrous as breathing or milk tasting. But the women only became alarmed. I should have been born in love and in joy and I knew it. This was all wrong.

The voices through the door said the King would see his infant son.

“Please get clothes for me,” I said. “Hurry. I cannot remain naked and undefended in this place.”

At once they were glad to have this direction. And by the same secret window in the door to the secret passage the message was given for that.

I was uncertain how to dress myself. These weren’t clothes I knew. Indeed, the more I looked at these ladies-in-waiting, the midwife, my mother, the more I realized things had greatly changed.

Don’t ask, “Changed from what?” I didn’t know. I was dressed quickly in fine green velvet, clothes which in fact were the property of the tallest and most lean attendant of the King. The sleeves were rich and embroidered. There was a trimming of fur to the small sleeveless cape. And a belt for the waist, and a rather long cut to the tunic, and then the leggings were the worst for me, for my legs were so long. I had to bind them where they did not fit. The tunic covered it.

Discovering myself in the mirror, I thought: Yes! And I knew that I was beautiful, otherwise the women would have been even more afraid.

My hair was not yet down to my shoulders, but would be soon. It was brown. My eyes were brown, as were my mother’s. I put on the fur-trimmed hat which they gave me.

The midwife then fell on her knees. “This is the Prince,” she cried. “This is the heir sought by the King.”

The other women shook their heads in horror, trying to quiet her, telling her it was not possible, such a thing. And my mother turned her head into the pillow, crying for her own mother, for her sister, for those who loved her, averring that no one would stand with her. That were it not a mortal sin in the eyes of God, she would take her own life.

Now how do I escape, I thought. I felt fear for my mother. Yet I hated her that she didn’t love me, that she thought me monstrous. I knew what I was. I knew there was a place for me, that I had a destiny. I knew this. I knew that her attitude was irreverent and cruel, but I could not put this into words or defend such a position. I wanted only to protect her.

We stood in this candlelighted chamber, I and these women, beneath this dark wooden ceiling, and the midwife gained possession of herself and forswore her former joy. This monster must be taken out, destroyed.

Destroyed? The same old song. Not this time, I thought. I did not intend to be destroyed so easily. No. We must learn more each time, I thought. I will not be destroyed.

Finally to the secret door came my father, Douglas of Donnelaith, a big shaggy man, more crudely dressed but nevertheless noble and decked in fur.

He had been in the castle and in great haste answered the Queen’s secret summons. When he was admitted to the birthing room, and beheld me, his face was a puzzle. I did not see in him the pure horror of the women. I saw something else, something vital and partial to me, something almost reverent. And he whispered, “Ashlar, who comes again and again.”

I saw that his hair and eyes were brown; from him as from the poor sad Queen I had these endowments. But I was Ashlar! I felt this news-and it was news-come into me as if my father had thrown his arms around me and showered me with kisses. I was happy. And when I looked at my mother, in her sadness, I wept.

I said, “Yes, Father, but this is no place for me. This is a place hostile to me. We must leave here.”

And I realized I knew no more of what I was or what he was than what had been said. It was the strangest kind of knowing, knowing without a tale to it, a knowing that was stable but out of time.

He needed no direction from me. He too was in terror. He knew that we must escape. “There is no hope now for the Queen,” he said softly, crossing himself and then making the Sign of the Cross on my forehead. We were already following the winding stairs.

We were out of the castle within moments, going down directly to a covered boat which waited for us in the dark waters of the River Thames. It was when we reached the Thames that I realized I had said no farewell to my mother and I was overwhelmed with sorrow, with a sense of horror suddenly that I had been born in this particular dreary and treacherous place and into this inexplicable time. My struggles were to begin all over again. I remember I would have died then if I could; I would have retreated. I stared down at the water, which stank of the filth of London, the filth of thousands, and I wanted to die in this darkness. Indeed, I saw in the mind’s mist a dark tunnel down which I had come, and I wanted to go back into it. I began to cry.

My father put his arm around me. “Don’t weep, Ashlar,” he said. “It is the work of God.”

“How so the work of God? My mother could be burnt at the stake.” I was already thirsting for milk. I wanted hers, and it embittered me that I had not taken more before I left. And the thought that anyone could commit this flesh of my flesh, my mother, to the flames, seemed impious and worth dying to prevent.

This is my birth I’m describing to you. This is a succession of hours, lived by the light of candles and never forgotten as long as I was in the flesh. This is what I now remember vividly, because I am flesh again. But the name Ashlar I didn’t know, I do not know now and never will know who Ashlar really was-as you shall see.

Mark me on this. Understand. Understand fully. I know nothing of the original saint.

Later I would see things; I would be told tales. I would see St. Ashlar in the stained-glass window in the great Highlands Cathedral of Donnelaith. I would be told that I was he, and I had “come again.”

But what I am telling you now is what I remember. What I knew!

It took us many days and nights to reach Scotland.

It was the dead of winter, it was in fact the first days after Christmas, when the worst fears grip the peasants, and it is thought that spirits walk and witches do their evil work. It was the time when the peasants forsook the teachings of Christ and, dressing in animals’ skins, went prowling door to door, demanding tribute of the superstitious inhabitants. Old custom.

We slept only fitfully in small village inns when we came upon them, usually amid the hay and with others, and often sickened and annoyed by the vermin. We stopped again and again so that I might have milk. I drank milk warm from the cow. It was good, but not as sweet as the milk of my mother. I ate the cheese in handfuls. It was pure.

We traveled by horseback, wrapped in heavy woolens and skins, and through most of this journey, I was gazing in quiet astonishment at the falling snow, at the fields through which we rode, the small villages where we sought shelter, with their half-timbered inns and scattered thatched huts. There were revels in the woodland, fires burning, men in the skins of beasts dancing. A fear gripped those who remained indoors.

“Look,” said my father. “The ruins of the great monastery. See there, on the hill. An abbey built in the time of St. Augustine. Burned by the King. These are days of horror for all Christian men. Everything looted. The nuns driven out. The priests driven out. The statues burned, the windows broken, the cloisters now the shelter of the field rats and the poor. It is all gone, broken. And to think it is the will of one man. One man could destroy so much of the work of others. Ashlar, this is why you have come.”

I was very doubting of this. In fact, it frightened me that my father would think this, that he would express his faith in such simple terms. It was as though I knew something different, and this sense of knowing something different was merely what you call incredulity. I felt an innate doubt, an innate sense that my father was misguided, and dreaming. Yet why I couldn’t know.

I saw the vision of the circles again, the many widening circles of figures dancing. I tried to see the stones which were almost at the center, surrounding the first circle of figures inside.

I searched my mind consciously and rigorously for the full extent of the knowledge with which I was endowed. That I had lived before, yes, this was certain, but not that this man knew my purpose or who or what I really was. I trusted that the truth would come to me. But then again, how did I know?

We rode through the ruins of the monastery, our horses’ hooves clattering on the stone floors of the roofless cloister. I began to weep. I felt an uncontainable sorrow. The desolation of the place, the loss-it filled me with a crushing sense of hopelessness. I shrank from the pain of being flesh. My father reached out to comfort me. “Be still, Ashlar, we are going home. This has not happened in our home.”

We entered the dark forest, barely able to see our way. It seemed wolves ran in the darkness; I could smell them near us, smell their fur and their hunger. When we came upon small huts, those within would give no answer, though smoke came from a small hole in the roof.

The deep high forest crept up into the mountains. The roads grew steeper and steeper, and the vantage points more splendid of coast and of sea. At last we had to sleep in the woods without shelter; and we huddled together, my father and I, beneath heavy blankets, with our horses tethered at our feet. I felt defenseless in the darkness, and all the more so for I thought I heard whispers and strange sounds.

It must have been midnight when my father woke and uttered curses, and rose to his feet and swung his sword. He seemed in a fury; but the darkness gave no answer back to him.

“They are helpless, and stupid and eternal,” he muttered.

“But who, Father?”

“The little people. They will not get what they want. Come, we can’t sleep here any longer, and we aren’t far from home.”

We rode cautiously through the darkness, and then through a forlorn winter day that scarcely gave us any light.

At last we entered the narrow rocky path of the secret pass to the Glen of Donnelaith.

My father told me the story. There were two other known entrances to our precious valley-the main road over which the wagons traveled incessantly, bringing produce to market, and the loch where the ships docked which took the goods to sea. By both routes came the incessant parade of pilgrims to lay gold at the altar of St. Ashlar, to seek his healing miracles, to lay hands upon the sarcophagus of the saint.

This story struck terror. What would these people want of me! And I was hungry already for milk, and for cream, and for things that were thick, and white, and pure.

There had been much war in the Highlands, said my father. There had been pitched battles; and our kind, the Clan of Donnelaith, he said, had resisted the King’s men and would not burn the monasteries nor sack the churches nor take a vow against the pope in Rome. Only under heavy guard did Scotsmen come into this valley, did the traders come into the small port.

“We are of the Highlands; we are the Christians of St. Columba and St. Patrick, we are of the old Irish church, and we will not yield to this pompous King in Windsor Castle who shakes his fist in the face of God, or to the Archbishop of Canterbury, his lackey, let both of them be damned. Let all Englishmen be damned. They are burning the priests. So they make martyrs. You will understand all in time.”

These words brought a peace to me, but I could not claim that I knew the name Columba or Patrick, and when I tried again to recollect all I knew it seemed that my inborn knowledge had become smaller even as we had traveled north. Had I known things in my mother’s arms which I had forgotten? Had I known things in her womb? I could not chase these receding phantoms with any success. They were gone from me, leaving only a shimmer.

I am born. I am flesh! I was living and breathing again. The darkness is dispelled and even this soft snow surrounding me is part of the living world, and look! The sky above, a blue no painter could capture, and then the deep glen spreading out before us, as we came out of the mountains-look, the great church.

The snow fell in small soft flakes around us. I was so used to being cold I had forgotten to dislike it. I was charmed by what I saw.

“Wrap the wool around you,” said my father. “We are going into the castle, that is our home.”

I didn’t want to follow the path up to the castle. Rather I wanted to go down into the town. It was a great town then, you cannot imagine. It had nothing to do with the small pathetic village that grew up on its ruins later on. It had its walls, its battlements, and within were its citizens and its merchants, its bankers, and its great Cathedral! And all around lived the farmers, said my father, on rich land which, though it was now covered with snow, gave good harvests, and provided for fat and healthy sheep.

Beyond in the hills, here and there, and there, where he pointed, were other strongholds, in which lesser chieftains loyal to Donnelaith lived under our protection and in peace.

Smoke rose from a hundred chimneys pressed within the battlements and from the towers scattered and barely visible in the high woods. The air was thick with delicious smells of food cooking.

And there rising out of the center of the town stood the massive Cathedral, quite visible beyond the houses and the walls, the snow sliding from its steep Gothic steeples and peaked roof, and light blazing inside it so that its great windows were filled with myriad colors and enchanting designs. I could see, even at this late hour, hundreds moving in and out of the Cathedral doors.

“Father, please let me go there!” I begged. I was drawn to this place as if I knew it, yet I did not. I hungered for the discovery of it.

“No, my son, you come with me.”

We had to go to the castle, high above the loch, which was our home.

Down below, the water was covered with ice, but in the spring, said my father, the merchants would come by the hundreds, and so would the salmon fishermen, and the banks would be full of traders, and men would come to trade linen for the wool and skins and fish which we had to sell.

This castle was a series of round towers, no more beautiful than the ominous heap of stone in which I’d been born. Once inside, I perceived it was less luxurious, but nevertheless filled with a bustling life.

The great hall itself might have been a mountain cave, so crude were its adornments-its few grand arches, its staircase-but it was all decorated for a great banquet, and the fairies of the wood could not have created a scene of greater warmth or charm.

The floor itself was entirely covered in green. And great garlands trimmed the sides of the stairway, and were placed above those arches deep enough to hold them, and placed all about the huge hearth. Indeed green branches of the Scots pine were everywhere laid, fragrant and beautiful, and mistletoe and ivy were likewise used in decorations, and I knew these lovely evergreens. I knew their names.

I saw the splendor with which the woods had been brought indoors. Candles by the dozens blazed along the walls, and down the length of the banquet table, and benches were being brought up for those who would dine.

“Sit down at the table,” said Father, “and keep quiet, whatever you do.”

It seemed that we had arrived at the very moment of the banquet, which was only one of the twelve banquets of Christmas, and the entire kindred was gathering for the feast. No sooner were we seated at a bench at the far end, than in came the ladies and men in gorgeous attire.

This attire did not match the clothes given me at the London court, but it was nevertheless very fine, and many of the men wore Highland dress of belted plaid. The ladies had the same fine headdresses as those worn in the King’s castle, though their sleeves and skirts were simpler, but nevertheless brightly colored, and there were many who wore jewels.

I was dazzled by the jewels. It seemed to me that in the jewels, all the color and light I beheld around me was concentrated, as if it had been drawn into the bits of glass by magnetism. In sum, were I to drop a ruby in a glass of water, I thought it would sparkle and glow, and that the water would turn bright and red.

My mind was delighting in this sort of mad perceptual error. I beheld that in the fireplace there lay a log so big it seemed an entire tree. Indeed, one could see its various branches still, burnt off at the ends like limbs from which the hands had been cut. It was blazing away furiously and my father gave me to know in a whisper that that was the Yule log, and that his brothers had dragged it out of the woods and into the great hall.

It would burn the full twelve days of Christmas.

And now as dozens of people took their places on either side of the long table, there came the Laird himself down the stairs, my father’s father, Douglas the Great Earl of Donnelaith.

He was a white-haired man with close-set very red cheeks, and a full white beard, and he wore his tartan or plaid with a great flourish, and had with him three beautiful women who were his daughters, my aunts.

My father cautioned me again to be quiet. I was attracting some notice. People were wondering, “Who is the tall young man?” By this time my beard and mustache had grown out full and dark brown, and I could not, on account of my skin, be taken for a tall child. My hair had grown long as well.

I watched with wonder as all the guests were finally seated, and as the great choir of monks took their position upon the stone stairs-all tonsured men, which meant they had only a ring of hair left to them, above the ears, and in white robes. They began their singing, gleeful yet mournful and beautiful. And I would say this music struck me with such force that I was truly intoxicated, that is, shot by the arrow of it, and unable for a long moment to breathe.

I knew what was happening around me. The great roasted boar’s head had been brought in, surrounded by greenery and gold and silver decorations and candles, and wooden apples painted to look real.

And the boars for eating were borne in by boys who carried them on the very spits on which they’d been cooked, and now set them down upon side tables and began to cut the steaming meat.

I saw all this, I heard it. But my mind was swept with the mournful music of the monks. A lovely Gaelic carol rising softly from some twenty or thirty gentle mouths:

What child is this who laid to rest In Mary’s arms is sleeping…

You know the air, it is as old as Christmas in Ireland or Scotland itself. And if you remember its melody, then you can perhaps grasp a little of what this was to me, this moment, when my heart sang with the monks on the stairs, and the room became subordinated to the song.

It seemed I remembered then the bliss I had known inside my mother. Or was it from some other time? I do not know, except that the feeling was so fully and deeply felt that it could not have been new. It was not frenzied excitement. It was a pure joy. I recalled dancing, my hands outstretched in memory to clasp the hands of others. And yet this moment seemed precious and expensive, as though it had cost me much once long ago.

The music stopped as it had begun. Wine was given to the monks. They left as they had come. The hubbub rose all around me; gay voices.

But now the Laird had risen, raised the toast. The wine was being poured. And all commenced to eat. From the great wheels of cheese, my father chose pieces for me and cautioned me to eat them as if I were a man. He sent for milk for me, and no one among the busy company took notice and there was much talking and laughing, and even some wild wrestling among the younger men.

But I could see that as the time passed, more and more of them took notice of me, enough to glance my way and whisper to the next person, or even to point, or to lean forward and ask my father, “But who is this you’ve brought with you to dine with us?”

It seemed that some eruption of chatter or merry laughter always prevented him from having to answer. He ate his meat without enthusiasm. He looked about anxiously, and then suddenly my father sprang to his feet. He raised his cup. I could scarce make out his profile or his eyes, for all his long straggled brown hair and beard, but I heard his voice declare, loud, and ringing, and overriding everything:

“To my beloved father, to my mother, to my elders and to my kindred, I present this boy-Ashlar, my son!”

It seemed a cheer rose from the company, a great awful roar, only to be strangled suddenly into rigid silence beneath a volley of whispers and gasps. All the company went still, eyes fixed upon my father and upon me. He reached down, groping as it were with his right hand, and I rose as he obviously wished me to do, standing taller than he, though he was as tall as the other men.

Again, gasps and whispers came from the company. One of the women gave a scream. The Laird himself peered up from beneath his thick gray eyebrows with sparkling blue eyes that held me in a deadly glance. I looked around me in fear.

Now it seemed the monks, who had only been in the vestibule, once again appeared. One or two came forward to stare at me. They looked remarkable to me, these shining bald creatures all in long dresses like women, but as more and more of them came forward, the entire gathering became ever more alarmed.

“He is my son!” declared my father. “My son, I tell you! He is Ashlar, come again!”

And this time many women screamed, and some of them fell back as if fainting; the men rose from their benches, and the old Laird rose, bringing down both fists upon the boards so that cups and knives were shaken to the right and to the left. Wine splashed. Plates clattered.

Then, in spite of his age, the old Laird leapt upward onto the bench.

“Taltos!” he said in a low and vicious whisper, leering at me with lowered head.

Taltos. I knew this word. This was the word for me.

I would have run then, instinctively, if my father hadn’t held tight to my hand, forcing me to stand firm with him. Others were leaving the hall. A number of the women were ushered out by their anxious attendants, including some of the very old, who were quite confused.

“No!” my father declared. “St. Ashlar. Come again! Speak to them, my son. Tell them it is a sign from heaven.”

“But what shall I say, Father?” I asked. And at the clear sound of my voice, which seemed to me in no way remarkable, the whole company went mad. People were rushing through the various doorways. The Laird now stood on the trestle table, fists clenched, kicking out of his way the laden plates. The servants had surely all taken cover. All the women were gone.

Finally only two of the monks remained. One stood before me, tall but not as tall as I, and red-haired and with soft green eyes. He smiled upon me in that moment, and his smile was like the sound of the music, utterly quieting, and I felt a sinking in my soul.

I knew the others loathed the sight of me! I knew they had run from me. I knew the panic was the same as I had seen among the women of my mother, and in my mother herself.

I was trying to understand it, to know what it meant. I said, “Taltos,” as if this would trigger some revelation stored within me, but no more came.

“Taltos,” said the priest-for that is what he was, though I did not then know it, a priest and a Franciscan-and again he gave me this great and gentle smile.

All had fled the hall now but my father, myself, the priest and the Laird, who stood upon the table, and three men crouched by the fireplace, as if in waiting, though for what I couldn’t guess.

It frightened me to see them, and the anxious way in which they looked to the Laird and the Laird looked down on me.

“It is Ashlar!” cried my father. “Do you not see with your own eyes! What must God do to claim your attention? Destroy the tower with lightning? Father, it is he!”

I realized that I had begun to tremble, a most amazing sensation, which I had never felt before. I had not even shivered in the cold of the winter. But I could not control this trembling. Indeed, it must have looked as though I were standing upon a piece of earth that was shaking, so violent was it, though I managed to remain on my feet.

The priest drew close to me; his green eyes very much reminded me of jewels, except that they were obviously made of something soft. He reached out and stroked my hair gently, almost tenderly, and then my cheek and my beard.

“It is Ashlar!” he whispered.

“It is the Taltos, it is the Devil!” declared the Laird. “Heave him into the fire.”

The three at the hearth came forward, but my father stood in front of me, and so did the priest. Ah, yes, you can imagine it, you can well picture it, can’t you? One screaming for my destruction as if he were Michael the Archangel, and the gentler ones not letting such a thing happen.

And I-gazing at the fire in terror, barely aware that it could consume me, that I would suffer unspeakable pain if I were thrown into it, that I would be alive no more. It seemed in my ears I heard the cries of thousands suffering, dying. But as my fear crested, the memory became nothing but the violent quavering of my body, the tensing of my hands.

The priest enfolded me in his arms and went to lead me from the hall. “You will not destroy what God has done.”

I almost wept at his touch, his warm arms guiding me.

I was then led out of the castle by the priest and by my father, and the Laird, who came with us, eyeing me with great suspicion, and over to the Cathedral we went. The snow still fell lightly, people everywhere passed us, mounded with wool and furs. It was almost impossible to make out who was a man, who was a woman, so covered up were they, and so hunkered over against the cold. Some of them were smallish, rather like children, but I could see their faces were old and gnarled.

The Cathedral was open and filled with lights, and the people were singing, and as we drew close I saw that the same greenery had been strewn all about the great arched doors. The singing was swelling and beautiful beyond belief. The smell of the green pine woods filled the air. Delicious smoke wafted on the wind.

And the noisy song inside was jubilant and merry, something much more festive and discordant and triumphant than the song of the monks had been. There was not a steady rhythm to it which caught me, but rather a general elation. It made the tears come to my eyes.

We fell into line with those entering the church and proceeded slowly, thank God, for I could not keep my balance on account of the song. The Laird, who had thrown his wool cape up over his face, my father, who had never shed his fur garments, and the priest, who had raised his cowl against the cold-these three supported me, astonished by my weakness, yet easily helping me a step at a time.

The informal stream of pilgrims moved sluggishly into the giant nave, and even with the music distracting me I was overcome with wonder at the sheer size and depth of the church. For nothing I had seen so far could equal this structure in grace and in height. Its windows seemed impossibly tall and narrow and its branching arches above to have been made by gods. At the far end, high above the altar, was a window shaped like a flower. It really did occur to my newborn mind that people could not have done it. And then I became overawed and confused.

At last, as we drew closer to the altar, I saw what lay ahead. A great stable full of hay, and there a cow lowing, and an ox, and a sheep. These animals were restless on their tethers and the warm steaming smell of their excrement rose from the floor of hay. Before them stood a man and a woman made entirely from lifeless stone. Indeed, they were symbols only. Their eyes were painted and so was their hair. And between them, in a tiny bed, lay an infant human child, of marble, same as the man and the woman, only the child was chubby and more shiny, with smiling lips and eyes made of shining glass.

This was a marvel to me, for I have already told you how the priest’s eyes made me think of jewels, and now I beheld the artificial eyes of this baby, and the connection confused me and held me in thrall.

The music infused these thoughts; indeed it made all thought seem dreamlike and slow, and uncertain, but then in a deep sad moment I knew the truth:

I knew completely that I had never been such a newborn infant as this; that all of these people had been infants; that it was my size and my articulation which had terrified my mother. I was a monster. I felt this completely, perhaps remembering the things the panic-stricken women had cried at my birth. I knew. I knew I was not one of the human race.

The priest told me to go down on my knees and kiss the child, that this was the Christ who had died for our sins. And then he pointed to the bloody crucifix hanging from the high column to the right. I saw the man there, saw the blood streaming from His hands and feet. The crucifix Christ. The God of the Wood. Jack of the Green. These words went through my mind. And I knew the infant and the Christ on the Cross were one. Again, I heard those distant cries in my memory, as if of a massacre.

The music brought it all together. I did truly feel that I would soon faint. Perhaps then the veil came close to falling, and I might have reached through and known the past. Ah, but other, more painful moments would follow, with greater cooperation from me, and nothing much was ever revealed.

Looking at the crucifix, I shuddered all over to think of such a horrible death. It seemed monstrous to me that anyone could have created a beaming child to suffer such a death. And then I realized that all humans were created for death. They were all born as little struggling innocents, learning to live before they knew what it was about. I knelt down and I kissed this hard stone baby all painted to look soft and real. I looked at the stone face of the woman and the man. I looked back at the priest.

The music had died away, leaving only roaring whispers and coughs echoing beneath the arches.

“Come now, Ashlar,” said the priest, and he took me hurriedly through the crowd, obviously not wanting to attract notice, and we entered a chapel off the main nave. There was a steady stream of the faithful coming into this chapel, admitted two by two. Other monks in robes stood guard, and the priest bade them now to close it off and have the others please patiently wait.

The Laird would say his nightly prayer to St. Ashlar. It aroused no resentment but seemed a natural thing. Those who must wait fell on their knees and said their beads.

We stood alone in the stone chapel with walls half as high as the nave. Yet how grand it seemed; a narrow holy place. Banks of candles burned beneath its windows. A great sarcophagus with an effigy upon it lay in the middle of the floor. Indeed, it had been around this long rectangular stone box that so many were gathered, praying and kissing their hands and putting kisses to the carved man in the stone.

“Look there, my boy,” said the priest, and pointed not at this stone characterization but up at the window which faced the west. The glass was all black with the night. But I could see easily the figure made into it by the lead seams with which all the pieces of glass were formed. My eye could see a tall man in long robes, with a crown on his head. I could also see that this figure towered over the figures beside him, and that his hair like mine was long and full, and his beard and mustache of similar shape.

Latin words were written into the glass, in three stanzas, which at first I could not understand.

But the priest went to the far wall and, reaching up to point to them-they were well over his head-read them out to me from the Latin into English so their meaning went into me complete and entire:

St. Ashlar Beloved of Christ

And the Holy Virgin Mary

Who will come again.

Heal the sick

Comfort the afflicted

Ease the pangs

Of those who must die

Save us

From everlasting darkness

Drive out the demons from the glen.

Be our guide

Into the Light.

My soul was filled with reverence. The music began again, distantly, and jubilantly as before. I resisted it, trying not to let it overtake me, but I couldn’t prevent it, and the spell of the Latin words was dissipated, and then I was led away.

We were soon gathered in the priest’s quarters in the Cathedral sacristy, and he sat with us at the table. The room was small and warm, quite unlike any chamber I had seen so far, except in a country inn perhaps, and very pleasant it seemed to me.

I put my hands to the fire, then remembered that the Laird had wanted to burn me, and drew them back inside my velvet cloak.

“What is this thing, Taltos,” I said, suddenly turning to face the three of them, who were staring at me in silence. “What is it you called me? And who is Ashlar, the saint who comes again?”

At this last question, my father closed his eyes in grave disappointment and bowed his head. His father looked ferocious with righteous anger, but the priest only continued to gaze at me as though I had come from heaven. He was the one who spoke.

“You are he, my son,” he said. “You are Ashlar, for it was God’s gift to Ashlar that he should be flesh more than once, indeed that he should come again and again into the world for the honor and the glory of his Creator, granted this dispensation from the laws of nature, as was the Virgin when she was assumed into heaven, and as the prophet Elijah who was borne off to heaven, body and soul. God has seen to if that you would find your way into the world more than once through the loins of a woman, and perhaps even through a woman’s sin.”

“Aye, that’s certain!” said the Laird darkly. “If it wasn’t out of the little ones, by the sin of a witch and a child of our clan it had to be.”

My father was both frightened and ashamed. I looked at the priest. I wanted to tell of my mother, of the extra finger on her left hand, and how she had held it up to me and that she had said it was a witch’s finger, but I didn’t dare to do this. I knew the old Laird wanted to destroy me. I felt his hatred, and it was worse than the most dreadful bitter cold.

“The mark of God was on the birth, I tell you,” said the great Laird. “My damned son has done what not all the little people in the hills have been able to do for hundreds of years.”

“Did you see the acorn fall from the oak?” asked the priest. “How do you know but that this is a changeling and not our spawn? How!”

“She had the sixth finger,” my father said in a whisper.

“And you lay with her!” demanded the Laird.

And my father nodded, yes, that he had; and he whispered that she was a great lady, and he could not name her, but that she was great enough to have made him afraid.

“No one must hear of this,” said the priest. “No one must know what has taken place. I will take this blessed child in hand and see that he is consecrated to the Virgin, that he never touches the flesh of a woman.”

He then put me into a warm chamber where I might pass the night. He bolted the door on me. There was only a tiny window. The cold air crept in, but I could see a tiny bit of heaven, a few very small and bright stars.

What did all these words mean? I didn’t know. When I stood on the bed and peeped out the window, when I saw the dark forest and the jagged cut of the mountains, I felt fear. And I thought I could see the little people coming. I thought I could hear them. I could hear their drums. They would use their drums to freeze the Taltos, to render him helpless, and then they would surround him. Make a giant for us, make a giantess; make a race that shall punish the people; wipe them from the earth. One of them would climb the wall, and pry loose the bars, and in they would come-!

I fell back. But when I looked up again, I saw the bars were secure. This had been a fancy. In truth I had spent nights in rustic inns with farting drunkards and belching whores, and in the very woods where even the wolves ran from the little people.

Now I was safe.

It must have been an hour before daylight that the priest called me. For all I knew it was the witching hour, for a bell was tolling, ominously and endlessly, and as I woke, I knew I had heard this bell, like a hammer dropping again and again upon an anvil-in my sleep.

The priest shook me by the shoulder. “Come with me, Ashlar,” he said.

I saw the battlements of the town. I saw the torches of the watch. I saw the black sky above and the stars. The snow lay still upon the ground. Again and again, the bell rang, and the sound clattered through me, shook me, so that the priest reached out to make me steady and see that I walked at his side.

“That’s the Devil’s Knell,” said the priest. “It is ringing to drive the devils and spirits out of the valley, to scatter the Sluagh, and the Ganfers, and whatever evil lurks in the glen. To rout the little people if they have dared to come out. They may know already that you have come. The bell will protect us. The bell will drive them away with all the unseelie court and into the forest, where they can do no harm save to their own kind.”

“But who are such beings?” I whispered. “I’m afraid of the sound of the bell.”

“No, child, no!” he said. “It is not to frighten you. This is the voice of God. Take one step after another and follow me into the church.” His arm was warm and strong around me, nudging me forward, and once again he kissed me in a soft, tingling manner on the cheek.

“Yes, Father,” I said. This was like the milk to me, as I have said, this affection.

The Cathedral was deserted; and I could hear the bell more distantly now, for it was high in the tower and made to echo off the mountains and not inside the church.

He kissed my face warmly again and pulled me into the chapel of the saint. It was cold, for there were not thousands of warm bodies within the Cathedral, and the dark winter was right against the glass.

“You are Ashlar, my son. There is no doubt of it. Now tell me what you remember of your birth.”

I didn’t want to answer. A horrid shame came over me when I thought of my mother crying in fear, when I thought of her hands pushing at me trying to make me go away from her, and my lips closing on the nipple and drinking the milk.

I didn’t answer him.

“Father, tell me who is Ashlar, tell me what I am meant to do.”

“Very well, my son, I will tell you. You are to be sent to Italy, you are to be sent to the house of our Order in the town of Assisi, and there to study to be a priest.”

I considered this but in truth it meant nothing to me.

“Now in this land good priests are persecuted,” he said. “Outside this valley are rebellious followers of the King and others, the rabid Lutherians and countless other rabble that would destroy us and destroy our great cathedral if they could. You have been sent to save us, but you must be educated and you must be ordained. And above all, you must consecrate yourself to the Virgin. You must never touch the flesh of a woman; you must forgo that pleasure for the glory of God. And mark my word, and never forget it, the sin with women is not for you. Do what you would with other friars. As long as God is served, so what? But never touch the flesh of a woman.

“Now this night, there are men ready to take you away by sea. They will see that you reach Italy. And then-when God gives us a sign that the time is right; or when God reveals His purpose to you directly-then you will come home.”

“And what then shall I do?”

“Lead the people, lead them in prayer, say the Mass for them, lay hands upon them and heal as you did before. Reclaim the people from the Lutherian devils! Be the saint!”

It seemed a lie, an utter lie. Or rather an impossible task. What was Italy? Why should I go?

“Can I do this?” I asked.

“Yes, my son, you can do it.” And then under his breath he said, with a wicked little smile: “You are the Taltos. The Taltos is a miracle. The Taltos can do miraculous things!”

“Then both tales are true!” I said. “I am the saint; I am the monster with the strange name.”

“When you are in Italy,” said the priest, “when you stand in the Basilica of St. Francis, the saint will give you his blessings and all will be in God’s hands. The people fear the Taltos-they tell the old tales-but the Taltos comes only once in several centuries, and it is always a good omen! St. Ashlar was a Taltos, and that is why we, who know, say that he comes again.”

“Then I am some being other than mortal man,” I said. “And you are wanting me to declare that I will imitate this saint.”

“Ah, you are very clever for a Taltos,” he said. “Yet you have the divine simplicity, the goodness. But let me put it this way to your heart which is so pure. It’s your choice, don’t you see? You can be the evil Taltos or you can be the saint! Would that I had such a choice! Would that I were not this feeble priest in an age when priests are burnt alive by the King of England, or drawn and quartered, or worse. In Germany this very day Luther receives his revelations from God while seated upon a privy and hurls excrement in the Devil’s face! Yes, that is religion. That is what it is now. Would you seek the glen and the darkness and a life of beggary and terror? Or would you be our saint?”

Without waiting for me to answer, he said in a low and mournful voice, “Did you know that Sir Thomas More himself has been executed in London, his head struck off and stuck upon a pike of London Bridge! That was the wish of the King’s whore!” said he. “That is how things stand!”

I wanted to run. I wondered if I could do it. If I could run free and outside where the dawn was coming, where the birds of winter had begun to sing. His words confused me and tormented me, and yet when I thought of the surrounding woods, the valley itself, I was too frightened to move. Some hideous dread rose out of me, causing my heart to beat and my palms to become wet.

“A Taltos is nothing!” he said, leaning close to me. “Go into the forests if you would be a Taltos. The little people will find you. They will take you prisoner and seek to make by you a legion of giants. It will not happen. It cannot happen. Your progeny will be monstrous or nothing. But a saint! Dear God, you can be a saint!”

Ah, the little people, yes. I gazed at him, trying to understand him.

“You can be a saint!”

Several men had come into the Cathedral, heavily armed and covered in furred capes, and to these he gave his instructions in Latin, which at that point I barely understood. I knew I would be taken “by sea” to Italy. And that I was a prisoner, and in terror I stood there, and then in my desperation I turned to face the window of St. Ashlar as if he could save me from all this.

I looked up at the stained-glass window and at this moment a simple miracle occurred. The sun had risen, and though it did not strike this window with its rays, the great swelling light filled it and brought it into vivid and beauteous color. The saint was filled with quiet fire. The saint smiled down upon me, his dark eyes burning in the glass, his lips pink, his robes red. I knew it was the trick of the sunrise, yet I could not take my eyes from it.

An immense peace filled me.

I thought of my mother’s horror-stricken face, her screaming, echoing in the little chamber. I saw the great kindred of the Clan of Donnelaith scurrying away from me like so many black rats!

“Be the saint!” said the priest to me in a whisper.

And there in that moment the vow made itself clear to me, though I did not have the courage to speak the words.

I gazed at the window. I took the details of the saint to my heart. I saw that he stood barefoot upon the prone bodies of the little people…the Ganfers, the Sluagh, the Demons of Hell. And behold, in his hand he held a staff, and the foot of the staff pierced the body of the Devil. I studied the well-drawn bodies of the dwarf people. I heard my heart.

The light had now swelled against the window so that the brighter colors had begun to glow. The saint was made of jewels! A shimmering vision of sparkling gold, and deepest blue and ruby red, and shining white.

“St. Ashlar!” I whispered.

The armed men took hold of me.

“Go with God, Ashlar. Give your soul to God and when death comes again you will know peace.”

That was my birth, gentlemen. That was my homecoming. Now I shall tell you of what followed, of how high I was to reach.

I was then taken away-I was never to see the old Laird again. For all I knew, I was never to see the glen, the Cathedral, or this priest. A small boat was waiting for me, which had to fight its way through the icy harbor and then south along the coast until I was put aboard a large ship. My chamber was cramped. I was a virtual prisoner. I drank only milk because all other food disgusted me and the boisterous sea made me constantly sick.

No one thought to tell me why I was locked up, or to give me comfort. On the contrary, I had nothing to study, to read, no beads with which to pray. The bearded men who tended me seemed frightened of me, unwilling to answer any question. And at last I fell in a stupor, singing songs, making them up from the words I knew.

Sometimes it seemed to me that I was making songs from words as people might make garlands from flowers, with only a thought as to how pretty was this word or that. I sang for hours. My voice was deep and I liked the sound of it. I lay back in contentment, eyes shut, singing variations of the hymns I’d heard in Donnelaith. I would not stop until awakened, until pulled from this trance, or until I fell asleep.

I do not remember when I realized that the winter had ended, or that we had traveled out of it, that we were along the coast of Italy, and that when I looked out the little barred window I saw the sunlight falling down gracefully on green hills and cliffs of indescribable beauty. At last we docked at a thriving city, the like of which I’d never seen.

Then the most remarkable thing befell me. I was taken by these two men, who still would answer no question from me, and left at the gate of a monastery, after the bell had been rung.

A small parcel was thrust into my hands.

I stood there dazzled by the sun, and then turned to see the monk, who had opened the gate for me, looking me up and down. I wore still the fine clothes from London, but they were very soiled now from the long journey, and my beard and hair had grown very long. I had nothing with me but this parcel, and in confusion I gave it to the monk.

At once he unwrapped it, removing the ragged linen and leather from it, and then he held it and I saw that it was a large parchment letter which had been folded over in quarto.

“Come in, please,” said this monk in a kindly manner to me. He glanced at the unfolded parchment. Then he rushed away, leaving me in a still and beautiful courtyard filled with golden flowers, and warmed by the midday sun. I could hear singing in the distance, the melancholy mournful sound of men’s voices like those of the monks of Donnelaith. I loved the singing. I closed my eyes and breathed the singing, and the perfume of the flowers.

Then several monks came into the courtyard. Those in Scotland had worn white but these men were in coarse brown and had sandals on their feet. They surrounded me and kissed me on both cheeks and embraced me.

“Brother Ashlar!” They all addressed me, more or less in one voice. And their smiles were so warm, so filled with love that I began to cry.

“This is to be your life now. Don’t be frightened anymore. You will live and thrive in the love of God.”

I saw then the unfolded quarto which one held in his hand.

“What does it say?” I asked in English.

“That you have dedicated your life to Christ. That you would follow in the steps of our founder, St. Francis, that you would be a priest of God.”

Then came more tender words and embraces from these men, who were utterly unafraid of me, and it came to my mind: they don’t know anything about me. They don’t know how I was born. And inspecting myself-my hands, my legs, my hair-I thought, except for my height and my long locks I might as well be one of them.

This puzzled me.

Throughout the evening meal-and they fed me much better than they fed themselves-I sat silent, not certain of what I should do or say. It was quite obvious to me that I could leave this place if I wanted. I could go over the wall.

But why should I do it? I thought. I went into the chapel with them. I joined in their song. When they heard my voice, they nodded and smiled and touched me with approval, and I was soon lost in the singing, and staring at the crucifix again, the very same symbol, Christ nailed to the Cross. I don’t say it like this to sound simple. I say it to make you picture it, as I saw this, this tortured body, afflicted, beaten, crowned with thorns and shedding blood. Jack of the Green, burnt in his wicker; driven through the fields by those with sticks.

A great swimming happiness came over me. I made this bargain with myself. Stay for a while. You can always run away tomorrow. But if you run, then you have lost this place, you have lost St. Ashlar.

That night, when they put me in my cell, I said, “You do not have to lock it.”

They were surprised and confused. They had not intended to do so, they said. Indeed, they showed me-there was no lock.

I lay there, remaining of my own free will, dreaming, in the warm night of Italy, dreaming, and from time to time, I heard them at their chapel song.

In the morning, when they told me it was time to go to Assisi, I said that I was ready. We would walk, they said, for we were Franciscans, and we were of the Observant Franciscans who were true to the spirit of Brother Francis and we would not sit on the back of a horse.