Scrivener's Tale

by Fiona McIntosh

  Today was his birthday. He would devour a chocolate- and a coffee-flavoured macaron to kick off his mild and relatively private celebration. He showered quickly, slicked back his hair, which he’d only just noticed was threatening to reach his shoulders now that it was untied, dressed warmly and headed out into the streets of Saint-Germain. There were times when he knew he should probably feel at least vaguely self-conscious about living in this bourgeois area of Paris but then the voice of rationality would demand one reason why he should suffer any embarrassment. None came to mind. Famous for its creative residents and thinkers, the Left Bank appealed to his sense of learning, his joy of reading and, perhaps mostly, his sense of dislocation. Or maybe he just fell in love with this neighbourhood because his favourite chocolate salon was located so close to his studio … but then, so was Catherine de Medici’s magnificent Jardin du Luxembourg, where he could exercise, and rather conveniently, his place of work was just a stroll away.

  He was the first customer into Pierre Hermé at ten as it opened. Chocolate was beloved in Britain but the Europeans, and he believed particularly the French, knew how to make buying chocolate an experience akin to choosing a good wine, a great cigar or a piece of expensive jewellery. Perhaps the latter was taking the comparison too far, but he knew his small cakes would be carefully picked up by a freshly gloved hand, placed reverently into a box of tissue, wrapped meticulously in cellophane and tied with ribbon, then placed into another beautiful bag.

  The expense for a single chocolate macaron — or indeed any macaron — was always outrageous, but each bite was worth every euro.

  ‘Bonjour, monsieur … how can I help you?’ the woman behind the counter asked with a perfect smile and an invitation in her voice.

  He wouldn’t be rushed. The vivid colours of the sweet treats were mesmerising and he planned to revel in a slow and studied selection of at least a dozen small individual cakes. He inhaled the perfume of chocolate that scented the air and smiled back at the immaculately uniformed lady serving him. Today was a good day; one of those when he could believe the most painful sorrows were behind him. He knew it was time to let go of Lauren and Henry — perhaps as today was his birthday it was the right moment to cut himself free of the melancholy bonds he clung to and let his wife and two dead children drift into memory, perhaps give himself a chance to meet someone new to have an intimate relationship with. ‘No time like the present’, he overheard someone say behind him to her companion. All right then. Starting from today, he promised himself, life was going to be different.

  Cassien was doing a handstand in the clearing outside his hut, balancing his weight with great care, bending slowly closer to the ground before gradually shifting his weight to lower his legs, as one, until he looked to be suspended horizontally in a move known simply as ‘floating’. He was concentrating hard, working up to being able to maintain the ‘float’ using the strength of one locked arm rather than both.

  Few others would risk the dangers and loneliness of living in this densely forested dark place which smelled of damp earth, although its solemnity was brightened by birds flittering in and around its canopy of leafy branches. His casual visitors were a family of wolves that had learned over years to trust his smell and his quiet observations. He didn’t interact often with them, other than with one. A plucky female cub had once lurched over to him on unsteady legs and licked his hand, let him stroke her. They had become soul mates since that day. He had known her mother and her mother’s mother but she was the first to touch him, or permit being touched.

  Cassien knew how to find the sun or wider open spaces if he needed them. But he rarely did. This isolated part of the Great Forest had been his home for ten summers; he hardly ever had to use his voice and so he read aloud from his few books — which were exchanged every three moons — for an hour each day. They were sent from the Brotherhood’s small library and he knew each book’s contents by heart now, but it didn’t matter. It also didn’t matter to him whether he was reading Asher’s Compendium about medicinal therapies or Ellery’s Ephemeris, with its daily calendar of the movement of heavenly bodies. He was content to read anything that improved his knowledge and allowed him to lose his thoughts to learning. He was, however, the first to admit to his favourite tome being The Tales of Empire, written a century previously by one of the Brothers with a vivid imagination, which told stories of heroism, love and sorcery.

  At present he was immersed in the Enchiridion of Laslow and the philosophical discourses arising from the author’s lifetime of learning alongside the scholar Solvan Jenshan, one of the initiators of the Brotherhood and advisor to Emperor Cailech. Cassien loved the presence of these treasures in his life, imagining the animal whose skin formed the vellum to cover the books, the trees that gave their bark to form the rough paper that the ink made from the resin of oak galls would be scratched into. Imagining each part of the process of forming the book and the various men involved in them, from slaughtering the lamb to sharpening the quill, felt somehow intrinsic to keeping him connected with mankind. Someone had inked these pages. Another had bound this book. Others had read from it. Dozens had touched it. People were out there beyond the forest living their lives. But only two knew of his existence here and he had to wonder if Brother Josse ever worried about him.

  Cassien lifted his legs to be in the classic handstand position before he bounced easily and fluidly regained his feet. He was naked, had worked hard, as usual, so a light sheen of perspiration clung to every highly defined muscle … it was as though Cassien’s tall frame had been sculpted. His lengthy, intensive twice-daily exercises had made him supple and strong enough to lift several times his own body weight.

  He’d never understood why he’d been sent away to live alone. He’d known no other family than the Brotherhood — fifteen or so men at any one time — and no other life but the near enough monastic one they followed, during which he’d learned to read, write and, above all, to listen. Women were not forbidden but women as lifelong partners were. And they were encouraged to indulge their needs for women only when they were on tasks that took them from the Brotherhood’s premises; no women were ever entertained within. Cassien had developed a keen interest in women from age fifteen, when one of the older Brothers had taken him on a regular errand over two moons and, in that time, had not had to encourage Cassien too hard to partake in the equally regular excursions to the local brothel in the town where their business was conducted. During those visits his appetite for the gentler sex was developed into a healthy one and he’d learned plenty in a short time about how to take his pleasure and also how to pleasure a woman.

  He’d begun his physical training from eight years and by sixteen summers presented a formidable strength and build that belied how lithe and fast he was. He’d overheard Brother Josse remark that no other Brother had taken to the regimen faster or with more skill.

  Cassien washed in the bucket of cold water he’d dragged from the stream and then shook out his black hair. He’d never known his parents and Josse couldn’t be drawn to speak of them other than to say that Cassien resembled his mother and that she had been a rare beauty. That’s all Cassien knew about her. He knew even less about his father; not even the man’s name.

  ‘Make Serephyna, whom we honour, your mother. Your father must be Shar, our god. The Brothers are your family, this priory your home.’

  Brother Josse never wearied of deflecting his queries and finally Cassien gave up asking.

  He looked into the small glass he’d hung on the mud wall. Cassien combed his hair quickly and slicked it back into a neat tail and secured it. He leaned in closer to study his face, hoping to make a connection with his real family through the mirror; his reflection was all he had from which to create a face for his mother. His features appeared even and symmetrical — he allowed that he could be considered handsome. His complexion showed no blemishes while near black stubble shadowed his chin and hollowed cheeks. Cassien regarded the eyes of the man staring back
at him from the mirror and compared them to the rock pools near the spring that cascaded down from the Razor Mountains. Centuries of glacial powder had hardened at the bottom of the pools, reflecting a deep yet translucent blue. He wondered about the man who owned them … and his purpose. Why hadn’t he been given missions on behalf of the Crown like the other men in the Brotherhood? He had been superior in fighting skills even as a lad and now his talent was as developed as it could possibly be.

  Each new moon the same person would come from the priory; Loup was mute, fiercely strong, unnervingly fast and gave no quarter. Cassien had tried to engage the man, but Loup’s expression rarely changed from blank.

  His task was to test Cassien and no doubt report back to Brother Josse. Why didn’t Josse simply pay a visit and judge for himself? Once in a decade was surely not too much to ask? Why send a mute to a solitary man? Josse would have his reasons, Cassien had long ago decided. And so Loup would arrive silently, remaining for however long it took to satisfy himself that Cassien was keeping sharp and healthy, that he was constantly improving his skills with a range of weapons, such as the throwing arrows, sword, or the short whip and club.

  Loup would put Cassien through a series of contortions to test his strength, control and suppleness. They would run for hours to prove Cassien’s stamina, but Loup would do his miles on horseback. He would check Cassien’s teeth, that his eyes were clear and vision accurate, his hearing perfect. He would even check his stools to ensure that his diet was balanced. Finally he would check for clues — ingredients or implements — that Cassien might be smoking, chewing or distilling. Cassien always told Loup not to waste his time. He had no need of any drug. But Loup never took his word for it.

  He tested that a blindfolded Cassien — from a distance — was able to gauge various temperatures, smells, Loup’s position changes, even times of the day, despite being deprived of the usual clues.

  Loup also assessed pain tolerance, the most difficult of sessions for both of them: stony faced, the man of the Brotherhood went about his ugly business diligently. Cassien had wept before his tormentor many times. But no longer. He had taught himself through deep mind control techniques to welcome the sessions, to see how far he could go, and now no cold, no heat, no exhaustion, no surface wound nor sprained limb could stop Cassien completing his test. A few moons previously the older man had taken his trial to a new level of near hanging and near drowning in the space of two days. Cassien knew his companion would not kill him and so it was a matter of trusting this fact, not struggling, and living long enough for Loup to lose his nerve first. Hanging until almost choked, near drowning, Cassien had briefly lost consciousness on both tests but he’d hauled himself to his feet finally and spat defiantly into the bushes. Loup had only nodded but Cassien had seen the spark of respect in the man’s expression.

  The list of trials over the years seemed endless and ranged from subtle to savage. They were preparing him but for what? He was confident by this time that his thinking processes were lightning fast, as were his physical reactions.

  Cassien had not been able to best Loup in hand-to-hand combat in all these years until two moons previously, when it seemed that everything he had trained his body for, everything his mind had steeled itself for, everything his emotions and desires had kept themselves dampened for, came out one sun-drenched afternoon. The surprise of defeat didn’t need to be spoken; Cassien could see it written across the older man’s face and he knew a special milestone had been reached. And so on his most recent visit the trial was painless; his test was to see if Cassien could read disguised shifts in emotion or thought from Loup’s closed features.

  But there was a side to him that Loup couldn’t test. No-one knew about his magic. Cassien had never told anyone of it, for in his early years he didn’t understand and was fearful of it. By sixteen he not only wanted to conform to the monastic lifestyle, but to excel. He didn’t want Brother Josse to mark him as different, perhaps even unbalanced or dangerous, because of an odd ability.

  However, in the solitude and isolation of the forest Cassien had sparingly used the skill he thought of as ‘roaming’ — it was as though he could disengage from his body and send out his spirit. He didn’t roam far, didn’t do much more than look around the immediate vicinity, or track various animals; marvel at a hawk as he flew alongside it or see a small fire in the far distance of the south that told him other men were passing along the tried and tested tracks of the forest between Briavel and Morgravia.

  Cassien was in the north, where the forest ultimately gave way to the more hilly regions and then the mountain range known as the Razors and the former realm beyond. He’d heard tales as a child of its infamous King Cailech, the barbaric human-flesh-eating leader of the mountain tribes, who ultimately bested the monarch of Morgravia and married the new Queen of Briavel to achieve empire. As it had turned out, Cailech was not the barbarian that the southern kingdoms had once believed. Subsequent stories and songs proclaimed that Emperor Cailech was refined, with courtly manners — as though bred and raised in Morgravia — and of a calm, generous disposition. Or so the stories went.

  He’d toyed with the idea of roaming as far as the Morgravian capital, Pearlis, and finding out who sat on the imperial throne these days; monarchs could easily change in a decade. However, it would mean leaving his body to roam the distance and he feared that he couldn’t let it remain uninhabited for so long.

  There were unpalatable consequences to roaming, including sapping his strength and sometimes making himself ill, and he hated his finely trained and attuned body not to be strong in every way. He had hoped that if he practised enough he would become more adapted to the rigours it demanded but the contrary was true. Frequency only intensified the debilitating effects.

  There was more though. Each time he roamed, creatures around him perished. The first time it happened he thought the birds and badgers, wolves and deer had been poisoned somehow when he found their bodies littered around the hut.

  It was Romaine, the now grown she-wolf, who had told him otherwise.

  It’s you, she’d said calmly, although he could hear the anger, her despair simmering at the edge of the voice in his mind. We are paying for your freedom, she’d added, when she’d dragged over the corpse of a young wolf to show him.

  And so he moved as a spirit only rarely now, when loneliness niggled too hard, and before doing so he would talk to Romaine and seek her permission. She would alert the creatures in a way he didn’t understand and then she would guide him to a section of the forest that he could never otherwise find, even though he had tried.

  For some reason, the location felt repellent, although it had all the same sort of trees and vegetation as elsewhere. There was nothing he could actually pin down as being specifically different other than an odd atmosphere, which he couldn’t fully explain but he felt in the tingles on the surface of his flesh and the raising of hair at the back of his neck. It felt ever so slightly warmer there, less populated by the insects and birds that should be evident and, as a result, vaguely threatening. If he was being very particular, he might have argued that it was denser at the shrub level. On the occasions he’d mentioned this, Romaine had said she’d never noticed, but he suspected that she skirted the truth.

  ‘Why here?’ he’d asked on the most recent occasion, determined to learn the secret. ‘You’ve always denied there was anything special about this place.’

  I lied, she’d pushed into his mind. You weren’t ready to know it. Now you are.

  ‘Tell me.’

  It’s a deliberately grown offshoot of natural vegetation known as the Thicket.

  ‘But what is it?’

  It possesses a magic. That’s all I know.

  ‘And if I roam from here the animals are safe?’

  As safe as we can make them. Most are allowing you a wide range right now. We can’t maintain it for very long though, so get on with what you need to do.

  And that’s how it had been. The Th
icket somehow keeping the forest animals safe, filtering his magic through itself and cleansing, or perhaps absorbing, the part of his power that killed. It couldn’t help Cassien in any way, but Romaine had admitted once that the Thicket didn’t care about his health; its concern was for the beasts.

  None, he’d observed, from hawk to badger, had ever been aware of his presence when he roamed. With Romaine’s assistance, he had roamed briefly around Loup on a couple of occasions. Cassien was now convinced that people would not be aware of his spiritual presence either.

  Only Romaine sensed him — she always knew where he was whether in physical or spiritual form. The she-wolf was grown to her full adult size now and she was imposing — beautiful and daunting in the same moment. Romaine didn’t frighten him and yet he knew she could if she chose to. She still visited from time to time, never losing her curiosity for him. He revelled in her visits. She would regard him gravely with those penetrating yellowy grey eyes of hers and he would feel her kinship in that gaze.

  He straightened from where he’d been staring into the mirror at his unshaven face and resolved to demand answers from Loup on the next full moon, which was just a few days away.

  TWO

  Gabe strolled to the bookshop carrying his box of cakes and enjoying the winter sunlight. Catherine gave a small squeal and rushed over to hug him as he entered the shop.

  ‘Happy birthday!’ And not worrying too much about what customers might think, she yelled out to the rest of the staff: ‘Gabe’s in, sing everyone!’

  It was tradition. Birthday wishes floated down from the recesses of the shop via the narrow, twisting corridor created by the tall bookshelves, and from the winding staircase that led to the creaking floorboards of the upstairs section. Even the customers joined in the singing.

  In spite of his normally reticent manner, Gabe participated in the fun, grinning and even conducting the song. He noted again that the fresh new mood of wanting to bring about change was fuelling his good humour. He put the giveaway bag with its box of treats on the crowded counter.