Lasher (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 2)

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!"