Lasher (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 2)

ishment even would have its shape, its purpose, some conviction of meaning. I cannot imagine eternal flames. But I can imagine eternal meaning.

We left Italy immediately as the daemon had asked us to do. We journeyed north, stopping again in Paris for only two days before we made the crossing, and drove north to Edinburgh.

The daemon seemed quiet. When I tried to engage it in conversation, it would say only, "I remember Suzanne," and there was something utterly without hope in its manner.

Now in Edinburgh a remarkable thing happened. Mary Beth, in my presence, begged that the daemon come with her and protect her. She, who had gone out with me disguised, would now wander on her own, with only her familiar to protect her. In sum, she lured Lasher away, whistling to herself as she went out, walking in a man's tweed coat and breeches, her hair swept up beneath a small shapeless cap, her steps big and easy as any boy's steps might be.

And I, alone, went at once to the University of Edinburgh, on the trail of the finest professor of history in those parts, and soon cornered the man, and, plying him with drink and money, was soon closeted away with him in his study.

His was a charming house in the Old Town, which many of the rich had long deserted but which he still preferred, for he knew the whole history of the building. The rooms were filled with books, even to the narrow hallways, and the stairway landing.

He was an ingratiating, volatile little creature--with a shiny bald head, silver spectacles and rather showy flaring white whiskers, which were then the style--who spoke with a thick Scots accent to his English, and he was passionately in love with the folklore of his country. His rooms were crammed with dreary pictures of Robert Burns, and Mary Queen of Scots, and Robert the Bruce, and even Bonnie Prince Charlie.

I thought it all rather amusing, but I was too excited to keep still when he admitted that indeed he was, as his students had told me, an expert on the ancient folklore of the Highlands.

"Donnelaith," says I. "I may have the spelling wrong. Here. But this is the word."

"No, you've got it right," he said. "But wherever did you hear of it? The only folks who go up there now are the students interested in the old stones, and the fishermen and the hunters. That glen is a haunted place, very beautiful of course, and well worth the trek, but only if you have some purpose. There are terrible legends in those parts, as terrible as the legends of Loch Ness, or Glamis Castle."

"I have a purpose. Tell me about it, everything that you know," said I, frightened that any moment I would feel the spirit's presence. I wondered if Mary Beth had gone into some dangerous pub where women are in the main not allowed, just to keep Lasher on his toes.

"Well, it all goes back to the Romans," said the professor. "Pagan worship in those parts, but the name Donnelaith refers to an ancient clan stronghold. The Clan Donnelaith were Irish and Scots, descendants of the missionaries who went up there from Ireland to spread the word of God in the time of St. Brendan. And of course the Picts were up there, before the Romans. Rumor was they built their castle in Donnelaith because it was a place blessed by the pagan spirits. We are talking now of the Picts when we speak of pagans. That was their part of Scotland up there, and the Donnelaith clan probably descended from them as well. You know how it went, pagans and Catholics."

"Catholics built upon pagan shrines to appease and include the local superstitions."

"Exactly," said he. "And even the Roman documents mention terrible things about that glen and the things that lurked in it. They mention a sinister childlike breed, which could overrun the world if ever allowed to stray from the valley. And a particularly vicious species of the 'little people.' Of course you are familiar with the little people. Don't laugh at them, I warn you." Yet he smiled as he said this. "But you can't find the original material on any of that anymore. Whatever, even before the Venerable Bede those tribes up there had become the Clan of Donnelaith, and Bede even mentions a cult center, a Christian church there."

"What was its name?" I asked.

"Don't know," says he. "The Venerable Bede never said, at least not that I remember, but it had to do with a great saint who was, as you can probably guess, a converted pagan. You know, one of those legendary kings of great potency who suddenly fell upon his knees and allowed himself to be baptized, and then worked a score of miracles. Just the sort of things the Celts and the Picts of those times required of their God if they were going to go over to him.

"The Romans never really tamed the Highlands, you know. And neither really did the Irish missionaries. The Romans actually forbade their soldiers from going into the glen, or to the nearby islands. Something to do with the licentiousness of the women. The Highlanders were Catholic later on, yes, fiercely so, ready to fight to the death, but they were Catholic in their own strange way. And that was their downfall."

"Explain," said I, pouring him another glass of port, and peering over the parchment map which he spread out before us. This was a facsimile, he explained, that he'd made himself from the real thing under glass in the British Museum.

"The town reached its height in the fourteen hundreds. There is some evidence it was a market town. The loch was a true port in those times. Rumor was, the Cathedral was magnificent. Not the church Bede mentions, you understand, but a Cathedral which had taken centuries to build, and all the time under the wing of the Clan of Donnelaith, who were devoted to this saint, and regarded him as the guardian of all Scots, and the one someday to save the nation.

"You have to go to travel accounts for descriptions of the shrine, and there isn't very much there, and nobody has ever bothered to compile it."

"I'll compile it," I said.

"If you have a century to stay here, you might," said he, "but you ought to go up to the glen and see how little remains of all that. A castle, a pagan circle of stones, the foundations of the town, now totally overgrown, and then those terrible ruins of the Cathedral."

"But what did happen to it? What did you mean its Catholicism was its ruin?"

"Those Highland Catholics would yield to no one," he said. "Not to Henry the Eighth when he tried to convert them to his new church in the name of Anne Boleyn, and not to the great reformer John Knox, either. But it was John Knox--or his followers--who destroyed them."

I closed my eyes; I was seeing the Cathedral. I was seeing the flames, and the stained glass exploding in ail directions. I opened my eyes with a shudder.

"You're a strange man," he said. "You've got the Irish blood, don't you?"

I nodded. Told him my father's name. He was flabbergasted. Of course he remembered Tyrone McNamara, the great singer. But he didn't think anyone else did. "And you are his son?"

"Aye," I said. "But go on. How did the followers of Knox destroy Donnelaith? Oh, and the stained glass. There was stained glass, wasn't there, where would that have come from?"

"Made right there," said he, "all through the twelve hundreds and thirteen hundreds by the Franciscan monks from Italy."

"Franciscans from Italy. You mean the Order of St. Francis of Assisi was there."

"Most definitely so. The Order of St. Francis was popular right up to the time of Anne Boleyn," he said. "The Observant Friars were the refuge of Queen Catherine, when Henry divorced her, of course. But I don't think Observant Friars built or maintained the Cathedral at Donnelaith; it was far too elaborate, too rich, too full of ritual for simple Franciscans. No, it was probably the Conventuals; they were the Franciscans who kept the property, I believe. Whatever the case, when King Henry broke with the pope, and went to looting the monasteries all around, the Clan of Donnelaith drove out his soldiers without a moment's hesitation. Terrible, terrible bloody battles in the glen. And even the bravest British soldiers were loath to go up there."

"The name of the saint."

"I don't know. I told you. Probably some meaningless Gaelic collection of syllables and when we break it down we'll find it's descriptive like Veronica or Christopher."

I sighed. "And John Knox."

"Well, Henry

died, as you know, and his Catholic daughter, Mary, took the throne, and another bloodbath ensued and this time it was Protestants who were burnt or hanged or whatever. But next, we had Elizabeth the First! The Great Queen, and once again Great Britain was Protestant.

"The Highlands were prepared to ignore the whole thing, but then came John Knox, the great reformer, and preached his famous sermon against the idolatry of the papists, at Perth in 1559, and it was war in the glen as the Presbyterians descended upon the Cathedral. Burnt it, smashed the glass to pieces, laid ruin the Cathedral school, burnt the books, all of it gone. Horrible horrible story. Of course they claimed the people were witches in the glen, that they worshiped a devil who looked like a man; that they had it all mixed up with the saints; but it was Protestant against Catholic finally.

"The town never recovered. It hung on till the late sixteen hundreds, when the last of the clan was killed in a fire in the castle. Then there was no more Donnelaith. Just nothing."

"And no more saint."

"Oh, the saint was gone in 1559, whoever he was, God bless him. His cult disappeared with the Cathedral. You have only a little Presbyterian town after that, with the 'abominable' pagan circle of stones outside it."

"What do we know about the pagan legends in particular?" I asked.

"Only that there are those who still believe them. Now and then, someone will come from as far away as Italy. They will ask about the stones. They seek the road to Donnelaith. They even ask about the Cathedral. Yes, I'm telling you the truth; they'll come asking for the Glen of Donnelaith and they'll journey up there to look about in search of something. And then you are here, asking the very same questions, really, in your own way. The last person was a scholar from Amsterdam."

"Amsterdam."

"Yes, there is an order of scholars there. Indeed, they have a Motherhouse in London also. They are organized like religious but they have no beliefs. Over my lifetime they have come some six times to explore the glen. They have a very strange name. Luckier than the saint, I suppose. Their name is unforgettable."

"What is it?" asked I.

"Talamasca," he said. "They are really very well-educated men, with a great respect for books. Here, see this little Book of the Hours? It's a gem! They gave it to me. They always bring me something. See this? This is one of the first King James Bibles ever printed. They brought that last time they visited. They go camp in that glen, really, they do. They stay for weeks and then they go away, invariably disappointed."