Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 3)

To be born again in spirit was the essence of the religion. To become simple, humble, meek, loving, that was the gist of it.

Now step back a moment and see the whole picture. Not only was this god amazing and this story amazing; the whole question of the relationship of the tale to writing was amazing.

As you can tell from this narrative, the one thing we had once shared with our barbarian neighbors was that we distrusted writing. Memory was sacred to us, and we thought that writing was not good for it. We knew how to read and write. But we still distrusted it. And here was this humble god who quoted from the sacred book of the Hebrews, connected himself with its innumerable prophecies concerning a messiah, and then charged his followers to write about him.

But long before I'd finished the last gospel, pacing, reading aloud, holding the big altar book in two arms, with fingers curled over the tops of the pages, I came to love this Jesus for the strange things that he said, the way he contradicted himself, and his patience with those who killed him. As for his resurrection, my first conclusion was that he was as long-lived as were we--the Taltos. And that he had put one over on his followers because they were mere humans.

We had to do such tricks all the time, to assume different identities when speaking to human neighbors, so that they would become confused and fail to realize that we were living for centuries.

But I soon realized through Ninian's zealous instructions--and he was a joyful and ecstatic monk--that Christ had in fact risen from the dead. And truly ascended into heaven.

I saw in something of a mystical flash the whole picture--this god of love, martyred for love, and the radical nature of his message. In a mad way, the thing gripped me because it was so utterly unbelievable. Indeed, the entire combination of elements was cumbersome and preposterous.

And another fact--all Christians believed the world would end soon. And apparently--this emerged slowly from my conversations with Ninian--they always had! But preparing for this end of the world was also the essence of the religion. And the fact that the world hadn't ended yet discouraged nobody.

Ninian spoke feverishly of the growth of the church since Christ's time, some five hundred years before, of how Joseph of Arimathea, his dear friend, and Mary Magdalene, who had bathed his feet and dried them with her own hair, had come to England in the southern part, and founded a church on a sacred hill in Somerset. The chalice from Christ's last supper had been brought to that spot, and indeed a great spring flowed bloodred year-round from the magic presence of Christ's blood having been poured into it. And the staff of Joseph, having been put into the ground of Wearyall Hill, had grown into a hawthorn which had never ceased to flower.

I wanted to go there at once, to see the sacred place where Our Lord's own disciples had set foot on our own island.

"Oh, but please," cried Ninian, "my good-hearted Ashlar, you've promised to take me home to my monastery on Iona."

There the abbot, Father Columba, was expecting him. Many books such as this were being made in monasteries all over the world, and this copy was most important for study at Iona.

I had to meet this Columba. He sounded as strange as Jesus Christ! Perhaps you know the story. Michael, probably you know it.

This is how Ninian described Columba. Columba was born of a rich family, and might have in the scheme of things become King of Tara. Instead he became a priest and founded many Christian monasteries. But then he got into a battle with Finnian, another holy man, over whether or not he, Columba, had had a right to make a copy of the Psalter of St. Jerome, another holy book, which Finnian had brought to Ireland. A quarrel over the possession of the book? The right to copy?

It had led to blows. Three thousand men had died as a result of this dispute, and Columba had been blamed for it. He had accepted this judgment, and off he had gone to Iona, very near our coast, in order to convert us, the Picts, to Christianity. It was his plan to save three thousand pagan souls to exactly make up for the three thousand men who had died as the result of his quarrel.

I forget who got the copy of the Psalter.

But Columba was now at Iona and, from there, was sending missionaries everywhere. Beautiful books such as this were being made in these Christian compounds, and all were invited into this new faith. Indeed, Christ's church was for the salvation of everyone!

And it soon became clear that though Columba and many missionary priests and monks like him had been kings or persons of royal blood, the rule of the monasteries was extraordinarily severe, demanding constant mortification of the flesh and self-sacrifice.

For example, if a monk spilled milk while helping to serve at community meals, he must go into the chapel during the singing of Psalms and lie on his face, prostrate, until twelve of them had been completely finished. Monks were beaten when they broke their vows of silence. Yet nothing could restrain the rich and powerful of the earth from flocking into these monasteries.

I was dumbfounded. How could a priest who believed in Christ get into a war in which three thousand died! Why would the sons of kings submit to being lashed for common offenses? But, ah, it had a simple potency to it, a captivating logic.

I set out with Ninian and two of my recent sons to go to Iona. Of course we kept up our masquerade as human beings. Ninian thought we were human beings.

But as soon as I arrived at Iona, I became further spellbound by the monastery itself and the personality of Columba.

It was a magnificent island, forested and green, with splendid views from its cliffs, where the openness and cleanness of the sea brought peace to the soul immediately.

In fact, a wondrous calm descended upon me. It was as if I had found again the lost land, only now the dominant themes were penance and austerity. But the harmony was there, the faith in the sheer goodness of existence.

Now the monastery was Celtic, and not at all like the Benedictine monasteries which later covered Europe. It was made of a great circular enclosure--the vallum, as it was called--which suggested a fort, and the monks lived in small, simple huts, some no more than ten feet wide inside. The church itself was not grand, but a humble wooden structure.

But never was a complex of buildings more in keeping with its natural setting. It was a place to listen quietly to the birds, to walk, to think, to pray, to talk with the enchanting and friendly and truly gracious Columba. This man had royal blood; I had long been a king. Ours was the north country of Ireland and Scotland; we knew each other; and something in me touched the saint as well--the sincerity of the Taltos, the foolish way of coming directly to the point, an easy outpouring of enthusiasm.

Columba soon convinced me that the harsh monastic life and the mortification of the flesh were the keys to the love which Christianity demanded of a man. This love was not a sensual thing. This love was spiritually elevated beyond expression through the body.

He longed to convert my entire tribe, or my clan. He longed to see me an ordained priest among my people.

"But you don't know what you're saying," I said. And then, binding him under the seal of the confessional--that is, to eternal confidentiality--I told him the tale of my long life, of our secret and miraculous way of giving birth, of how it seemed that many of us seemed capable of living an endless life of eternal youth, unless accident or disaster or some specific pestilence destroyed us.

Some things I did not tell. I did not tell that I had once been the leader of the great circle dances at Stonehenge.

But all the rest I told, even of the lost land, and how we had lived in our glen for so many hundreds of years, passing from secrecy to a masquerade as human beings.

All this he listened to with great fascination. Then he said an amazing thing. "Can you prove these things to me?"

I realized that I could not. The only way any Taltos can prove he is a Taltos is by coupling with another and producing the offspring.

"No," I said, "but look well at us. Look at our height."

This he dismissed; there were tall men in the world. "People

have for years known of your clan; you are King Ashlar of Donnelaith, and they know you are a good ruler. If you believe these things about yourself, it is because the devil has put them into your imagination. Forget them. Proceed to do what God wants you to do."

"Ask Ninian, the whole tribe is of this height."

But he'd heard of that, very tall Picts in the Highlands. It seems my own ruse was working!

"Ashlar," he said, "I've no doubt of your goodness. Once again, I counsel you to disregard these illusions as coming from the devil."

Finally I agreed, for one reason. I felt that it made no difference whether he believed me or not about my past. What mattered was that he had recognized a soul in me.

Michael, you know that this was a great point in Lasher's tale--that, alive in the time of Henry, he wanted to believe that he had a soul, that he would not accept that he could not be a priest of God the same as a human.

I know this awful dilemma. All who are outsiders in their own way know it. Whether we talk of legitimacy, of a soul, of citizenship, or of brotherhood or sisterhood, it is all the same, we long to be seen as true individuals, as inherently valuable inside as any other.