"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.