Merlin's Booke

by Jane Yolen

  “You may trust me, Brother Blaise.”

  “He may—but I do not,” said the abbot. “Bring the desk closer to the bed. You will hear better—and have better light as well—and Blaise will not have to strain.”

  Geoffrey pushed the oak desk into the center of the room where he might closer attend the sick man’s words.

  When Geoffrey was ready, Blaise began again.

  “She was his favorite, little Ellyne, with a slow smile and a mild disposition. Mild disposition? Yes, that was her outer face to the world. But she was also infernally stubborn about those things she held dear.

  “She had been promised before birth to the Convent of St. Peter by her mother who had longed for a daughter after bearing the king an heir. All his by-blows had been boys, which made the queen’s desire for a daughter even greater.

  “When Ellyne was born, the queen repented of her promise at once, for the child was bright and fair. Rings and silver candlesticks and seven cups of beaten gold were sent to the church in her stead. The good sisters were well pleased and did not press for the child.

  “But when Ellyne was old enough to speak her own mind, she determined that she would honor her mother’s promise. Despite the entreaties of her mother and father and the assurances of the abbess that she need not come, she would not be turned aside from her decision.

  “I was, at that time, her confessor as well as the king’s. At his request I added my pleas to theirs. I loved her as I loved no other, for she was a beautiful little thing, with a quick mind I feared would be dulled behind the convent walls. It was thought that she would listen to me, her ‘Bobba’ as she called me, sooner than to another. But the child shamed me, saying, ‘Can you, who has turned his life entirely toward God, ask me not to do the same?’ It was that question that convinced me that she was right for, you see, I was a priest by convenience and not conviction. Yet when she said it, she set me on the path by her side.

  “She entered the convent the very next day.”

  Blaise paused, and the abbot moistened his mouth with a cloth dipped in a bowl of scented water that stood on the table. The scratch, scratch, scratch of Geoffrey’s pen continued into the silence.

  “She was eight when she entered and eighteen when the thing came to pass that led me to Osney—and eventually to this room.”

  Abbot Walter moved closer to the bed.

  “I was in my study when the mother superior herself came bursting into the room. Ordinarily she would have sent a messenger for me, but such was her agitation, she came herself, sailing into my study like a great prowed ship under full sail.

  “‘Father Blaise,’ she said, ‘you must come to my parlor at once, and alone. Without asking a single question of me yet.’

  “I rose, picked up a breviary, and followed her. We used the back stair that was behind a door hidden by an arras. It was not so much secret as unused. But Mother Agnes knew of it and insisted we go that way. As we raced down the steps, dodging skeins of cobwebs, I tried to puzzle out the need for such secrecy and her agitation and fear. Was there a plague amongst the sisters? Had two been found in the occasion of sin? Or had something happened to little Ellyne, now called Sister Martha? Somehow the last was my greatest fear.

  “When we arrived in her spare, sweet-scented parlor, there was a sister kneeling in front of the hearth, her back to us, her face uplifted to the crucifix above.

  “‘Stand, sister,’ commanded Mother Agnes.

  “The nun stood and turned to face us and my greatest fear was realized. It was Sister Martha, her face shining with tears. There was a flush on her cheeks that could not be explained by the hearth for it was summer and there was no fire in the grate.”

  Blaise’s voice was becoming ragged again, and the abbot offered him a sip of barley water, holding the cup to his mouth. Geoffrey’s pen finished the last line and he looked up expectantly.

  “When she saw me, Sister Martha began to cry again and ran to me, flinging her arms around me the way she had done as a child.

  “‘Oh, Bobba,’ she cried out, ‘I swear I have done nothing, unless sleeping is more than nothing.’

  “Mother Agnes raised her head and thrust her chin forward. ‘Tell Father Blaise what you told me, child.’

  “‘On my faith, father, I was asleep in a room several months ago, surrounded by my sisters. Sisters Agatha and Armory were on my right, Sisters Adolfa and Marie on my left. Marie snores. And the door was locked.’

  “‘From the outside!’ said Mother Agnes, nodding her head sharply, like a sword in its downward thrust. ‘All the sisters sleep under lock, and I and my prioress hold the only keys.’”

  “A barbaric custom,” muttered Abbot Walter. “It shows a lack of trust. And, should there be a fire, disastrous.”

  Blaise coughed violently but after a few more sips of barley water, he was able to go on.

  “Ellyne folded her hands before her and continued. ‘In my deepest sleep,’ she said, looking down as if embarrassed by the memory, ‘I dreamed that a young man, clothed in light and as beautiful as the sun, came to my bed and embraced me. His cheeks were rough on mine and he kissed my breasts hard enough to leave marks. Then he pierced me and filled me until I cried out with fear. And delight. But it was only a dream.’

  “‘Such dreams are disgusting and violate your vows,’ spat out Mother Agnes.

  “‘Now, now, mother,’ I interrupted, ‘all girls have such dreams, even when they are nuns. Just as the novice monks, before they are purged of the old Adam, often have similar dreams. But surely you did not call me here to confront Ellyne … ah, Sister Martha … about a bad dream which is, at worst, a minor venial sin.’

  “‘A bad dream?’ Mother Agnes was trembling. ‘Then, Father Blaise, what call you this?’

  “She stripped away the girl’s black robe, and Sister Martha stood there in a white shift in which the mark of her pregnancy was unmistakable.”

  Geoffrey’s quill punctuated the sentence with such vehemence that the ink splattered across the page. It took him several minutes to blot the vellum, and the abbot bathed Blaise’s brow with water and smoothed down the brychan around his legs until Geoffrey was ready again.

  “‘I do not understand, Ellsie,’ I said to her, in my anger returning to her childhood name.

  “‘I do not understand either, Father Blaise,’ she answered, her voice not quite breaking. ‘When I awoke I was in the room still surrounded by my sisters, all of whom slept as soundly as before. And that was how I knew it had been but a dream. On my faith in God, more than this there was never between a man and myself.’ She stopped and then added as if the admission proved her innocence, ‘I have dreamed of him every night since but he has not again touched me. He just stands at my bed foot and watches.’

  “I put my hands behind me and clasped them to keep them from shaking. ‘This sort of thing I have heard of, mother. The girl is blameless. She has been set upon by an incubus, the devil who comes in dreams to seduce the innocent.’

  “‘Well, she carries the other marks she spoke of,’ said Mother Agnes. ‘The burns on her cheeks you can see for yourself. I will vouch for the rest.’ She draped the cloak again over the girl’s shoulders almost tenderly, then turned to glare at me. ‘An incubus—not a human—you are sure?’

  “‘I am sure,’ I said, though I was not sure at all. Ellyne had been headstrong about certain things, though how a young man might have trysted with her with Mother Agnes as her abbess, I could not imagine. ‘But in her condition she cannot remain in the convent. Leave her here in your parlor, and I will go at once and speak to the king.’”

  Blaise’s last word faded and he closed his eyes. The abbot leaned over and, dipping his finger into the oil, made the sign of the cross on Blaise’s forehead. “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus sancti, exstinguatur in te omnis virtus diaboli per…”

  Opening his eyes, Blaise cried out, “I am not done. I swear to you I will not the before I have told it all.”


  “Then be done with it,” said the abbot. He said it quickly but gently.

  “Speaking to the king was easy. Speaking to his shrewish wife was not. She screamed and blamed me for letting the girl go into the convent, and her husband for permitting Ellyne to stay. She ranted against men and devils indiscriminately. But when I suggested it would be best for Ellyne to return to the palace, the queen refused, declaring her dead.

  “And so it was that I fostered her to a couple in Carmarthen who were known to me as a closemouthed, devoted, and childless pair. They were of yeoman stock, but as Ellyne had spent the last ten years of her life on the bread, cheese, and prayers of a convent, she would not find their simple farm life a burden. And the farm ran on its own canonical hours: cock’s crow, feed time, milking.

  “So for the last months of her strange pregnancy, she was—if not exactly happy—at least content. Whether she still dreamed of the devil clothed in sunlight, she did not say. She worked alongside the couple and they loved her as their own.”

  Blaise struggled to sit upright in bed.

  “Do not fuss,” the abbot said. “Geoffrey and I will help you.” He signaled to the infirmarer who stood, quickly blotting the smudges on his hands along the edges of his robe. Together they helped settle Blaise into a more comfortable position.

  “I am fine now,” he said. Then, when Geoffrey was once more standing at the desk, Blaise began again. “In the ninth month, for the first time, Ellyne became afraid.

  “‘Father,’ she questioned me day after day, ‘will the child be human? Will it have a heart? Will it bear a soul?’

  “And to keep her from sorrow before time, I answered as deviously as I could without actually telling a lie. ‘What else should it be but human?’ I would say. ‘You are God’s own; should not your child be the same?’ But the truth was that I did not know. What I read was not reassuring. The child might be a demon or a barbary ape or anything in-between.

  “Then on the night before All Hallow’s, unpropitious eve, Ellyne’s labor began. The water flooded down her legs and the child’s passage rippled across her belly. The farmer came to my door and said simply, ‘It is her time.’

  “I took my stole, the oil, a Testament, candles, a crucifix, and an extra rosary. I vowed I would be prepared for any eventuality.

  “She was well into labor when I arrived. The farm wife was firm with her but gentle as well, having survived the birth of every calf and kitten on the place. She allowed Ellyne to yell but not to scream, to call out but not to cry. She kept her busy panting like a beast so that the pains of the birth would pass by. It seemed to work, and I learned that there was a rhythm to this, God’s greatest mystery: pain, not-pain, over and over and over again.

  “Before long the farm wife said, ‘Father Blaise, the child, whatever it be, comes.’ She pointed—and I looked.

  “From between Ellyne’s legs, as if climbing out of a blood-filled cave, crawled a child, part human and part imp. It had the most beautiful face, like an ivory carving of an angel, and eyes the blue of Our Lady’s robe. The body was perfectly formed. Up over one shoulder lay a strange cord, the tip nestling into the little hollow at its neck. At first I thought the cord was the umbilicus, but when the farm wife went to touch it, the cord uncoiled from the child’s neck and slashed at her hand. Then I knew it was a tail.

  “The farm wife screamed. The farmer also. I grabbed the babe firmly with my left hand and, dipping my right finger into the holy oil, made the sign of the cross on its forehead, on its belly, on its genitals, and on its feet. Then I turned it over and pinned it with my left forearm, and with my right hand anointed the tail where it joined the buttocks.

  “The imp screamed as if in terrible pain and its tail burst into flames, turning in an instant to ash. All that was left was a scar at the top of the buttocks, above the crack.

  “I lifted up my left arm and the child rolled over, reaching up with its hands. It was then I saw that it had claws instead of fingers and it scratched me on the top of both my hands, from the mid finger straight down to the line of the wrist. I shouted God’s name and almost dropped the holy oil, but miraculously held on. And though I was now bleeding profusely from the wounds, I managed somehow to capture both those sharp claws in my left hand and with my right anoint the imp’s hands. The child screamed again and, as I watched, the imp aspect disappeared completely, the claws fell off to reveal two perfectly formed hands, and the child was suddenly and wholly human.”

  Blaise had become so agitated during this recitation that the bed itself began to shake. Geoffrey had to leave off writing and come over to help the abbot calm him. They soothed his head and the abbot whispered, “Where is the sin in all this, Blaise?”

  The monk’s eyes blinked and with an effort Blaise calmed himself. “The sin?” His voice cracked. Tears began to course down his cheeks. “The sin was not in baptizing the babe. That was godly work. But what came after—was it a sin or not? I do not know, for the child spoke to me. Spoke.”

  “A newborn cannot speak,” said Geoffrey.

  “Jesu! Do you think I do not know that? But this one did. He said, ‘Holy, holy, holy,’ and the words shot from his mouth in gouts of flame. ‘You shall write this down, my uncle,’ he said, ‘Write down that my mother, your half sister, was sinless. That her son shall save a small part of the world. That I shall be prophet and mage, lawgiver and lawbreaker, king of the unseen worlds and counselor to those seen. I shall the and I shall live, in the past and in the future also. Many of those who shall read what you write or who shall hear it read will be the better for it and will be on their guard against sin.’ And then the flames died down and the babe put its finger in its mouth to suck on it like any newborn and did not speak again. But the sin of it is that I did not write it down, nor even speak of it save to you now in this last hour, for I thought it the devil tempting me.”

  Abbot Walter was silent for a moment. It was so much easier, he thought, for a man to believe in the Devil than in God. Then he reached over and smoothed the covers across Brother Blaise’s chest. “Did the farmer or his wife hear the child speak?”

  “No,” whispered Blaise hoarsely, “for when the tail struck the woman’s hand, they both bolted from the room in fear.”

  “And Ellyne?”

  “She was near to death from blood loss and heard nothing.” Blaise closed his eyes.

  Abbot Walter cleared his throat. “You have done only what you believed right, Blaise. I shall think more on this. But as for you, you may let go of your earthly life knowing that you shall have absolution, that you have done nothing sinful to keep you from God’s Heaven.” He anointed the paper-thin eyelids. “Per sitam sanctam Unctionem, et suam piissimam misericordiam, indulgeat tibi Dominus quid quid per visum deliquisti. Amen.”

  “Amen,” echoed Geoffrey.

  The abbot added the signs over the nose and mouth, and Blaise murmured in Latin along with him. Then, as the abbot dipped his fingers once more into the jar of oil, Geoffrey took Blaise’s hands in his and lay them with great gentleness side by side on top of the covers, and gasped.

  “Look, father.”

  Abbot Walter followed Geoffrey’s pointing finger. On the back of each of Blaise’s hands was a single, long, ridged scar starting at the middle finger and running down to the wrist. The abbot crossed himself hastily, getting oil on the front of his habit. “Jesu!” he breathed out. Until that moment he had not quite believed Blaise’s story. Over the years he had discovered that old men and dying men sometimes make merry with the truth.

  Geoffrey backed away to the safety of his desk and crossed himself twice, just to be sure.

  With deliberate slowness, the abbot put his fingers back into the oil and with great care anointed Blaise’s hands along the line of the scar, then slashed across, careful to enunciate every syllable of the prayer. When he reached the end, “… quid quid per tactum deliquisiti. Amen,” the oil on Blaise’s skin burst into flames, bright orange with a blue arrow at the h
eart. As quickly, the flames were gone and a brilliant red wound the shape of a cross opened on each hand. Then, as the abbot and Geoffrey watched, each wound healed to a scab, the scab to a scar, and the scar faded until the skin was clean and whole. With a sigh that seemed a combination of joy and relief, Blaise died.

  “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus sancti …” intoned the abbot. He removed the covers from the corpse and completed the anointing. He felt better than he had all winter, than he had in years, filled with a kind of spiritual buoyancy, like a child’s kite that had been suddenly set free into the wind. If there was a Devil, there was also a God. Blaise had died to show him that. He finished the prayers for absolution, but they were only for the form of it. He knew in his inmost heart that the absolution had taken place already and that Blaise’s sinless spirit was fast winging its way to Heaven. Now it was time to forgive himself his own sins. He turned to Geoffrey who was standing at the desk.

  “Geoffrey, my dear son, you shall write this down and in your own way. Then we will all be the better for it. The babe, imp or angel, magician or king, was right about that. Only, perhaps, you should not say just when all this happened, for the sake of the Princess Ellyne. Set it in the past, at such a time when miracles happened with surprising regularity. It is much easier to accept a miracle that has been approved by time. But you and I shall know when it took place. You and I—and God—will remember.”

  Surprised, Geoffrey nodded. He wondered what it was that had so changed the abbot, for he was actually smiling. And it was said at Osney that Abbot Walter never smiled. That such a thing had happened would be miracle enough for the brothers in the monastery. The other miracle, the one he would write about, that one was for the rest of the world.

  “He entered the wood and rejoiced to lie hidden under the ash trees; he marvelled at the wild beasts feeding on the grass of the glades; now he chased after them and again he flew past them; he lived on the roots of grasses and on the grass, on the fruit of the trees and on the mulberries of the thicket. He became a sylvan man just as though devoted to the woods. For a whole summer after this, hidden like a wild animal, he remained buried in the woods, found by no one and forgetful of himself and of his kindred.”