by Anne Rice
Looking at the crucifix, I shuddered all over to think of such a horrible death. It seemed monstrous to me that anyone could have created a beaming child to suffer such a death. And then I realized that all humans were created for death. They were all born as little struggling innocents, learning to live before they knew what it was about. I knelt down and I kissed this hard stone baby all painted to look soft and real. I looked at the stone face of the woman and the man. I looked back at the priest.
The music had died away, leaving only roaring whispers and coughs echoing beneath the arches.
“Come now, Ashlar,” said the priest, and he took me hurriedly through the crowd, obviously not wanting to attract notice, and we entered a chapel off the main nave. There was a steady stream of the faithful coming into this chapel, admitted two by two. Other monks in robes stood guard, and the priest bade them now to close it off and have the others please patiently wait.
The Laird would say his nightly prayer to St. Ashlar. It aroused no resentment but seemed a natural thing. Those who must wait fell on their knees and said their beads.
We stood alone in the stone chapel with walls half as high as the nave. Yet how grand it seemed; a narrow holy place. Banks of candles burned beneath its windows. A great sarcophagus with an effigy upon it lay in the middle of the floor. Indeed, it had been around this long rectangular stone box that so many were gathered, praying and kissing their hands and putting kisses to the carved man in the stone.
“Look there, my boy,” said the priest, and pointed not at this stone characterization but up at the window which faced the west. The glass was all black with the night. But I could see easily the figure made into it by the lead seams with which all the pieces of glass were formed. My eye could see a tall man in long robes, with a crown on his head. I could also see that this figure towered over the figures beside him, and that his hair like mine was long and full, and his beard and mustache of similar shape.
Latin words were written into the glass, in three stanzas, which at first I could not understand.
But the priest went to the far wall and, reaching up to point to them-they were well over his head-read them out to me from the Latin into English so their meaning went into me complete and entire:
St. Ashlar Beloved of Christ
And the Holy Virgin Mary
Who will come again.
Heal the sick
Comfort the afflicted
Ease the pangs
Of those who must die
Save us
From everlasting darkness
Drive out the demons from the glen.
Be our guide
Into the Light.
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!”
I wanted to run. I wondered if I could do it. If I could run free and outside where the dawn was coming, where the birds of winter had begun to sing. His words confused me and tormented me, and yet when I thought of the surrounding woods, the valley itself, I was too frightened to move. Some hideous dread rose out of me, causing my heart to beat and my palms to become wet.
“A Taltos is nothing!” he said, leaning close to me. “Go into the forests if you would be a Taltos. The little people will find you. They will take you prisoner and seek to make by you a legion of giants. It will not happen. It cannot happen. Your progeny will be monstrous or nothing. But a saint! Dear God, you can be a saint!”
Ah, the little people, yes. I gazed at him, trying to understand him.
“You can be a saint!”
Several men had come into the Cathedral, heavily armed and covered in furred capes, and to these he gave his instructions in Latin, which at that point I barely understood. I knew I would be taken “by sea” to Italy. And that I was a prisoner, and in terror I stood there, and then in my desperation I turned to face the window of St. Ashlar as if he could save me from all this.
I looked up at the stained-glass window and at this moment a simple miracle occurred. The sun had risen, and though it did not strike this window with its rays, the great swelling light filled it and brought it into vivid and beauteous color. The saint was filled with quiet fire. The saint smiled down upon me, his dark eyes burning in the glass, his lips pink, his robes red. I knew it was the trick of the sunrise, yet I could not take my eyes from it.
An immense peace filled me.
I thought of my mother’s horror-stricken face, her screaming, echoing in the little chamber. I saw the great kindred of the Clan of Donnelaith scurrying away from me like so many black rats!
“Be the saint!” said the priest to me in a whisper.
And there in that moment the vow made itself clear to me, though I did not have the courage to speak the words.
I gazed at the window. I took the details of the saint to my heart. I saw that he stood barefoot upon the prone bodies of the little people…the Ganfers, the Sluagh, the Demons of Hell. And behold, in his hand he held a staff, and the foot of the staff pierced the body of the Devil. I studied the well-drawn bodies of the dwarf people. I heard my heart.
The light had now swelled against the window so that the brighter colors had begun to glow. The saint was made of jewels! A shimmering vision of sparkling gold, and deepest blue and ruby red, and shining white.
“St. Ashlar!” I whispered.
The armed men took hold of me.
“Go with God, Ashlar. Give your soul to God and when death comes again you will know peace.”
That was my birth, gentlemen. That was my homecoming. Now I shall tell you of what followed, of how high I was to reach.
I was then taken away-I was never to see the old Laird again. For all I knew, I was never to see the glen, the Cathedral, or this priest. A small boat was waiting for me, which had to fight its way through the icy harbor and then south along the coast until I was put aboard a large ship. My chamber was cramped. I was a virtual prisoner. I drank only milk because all other food disgusted me and the boisterous sea made me constantly sick.
No one thought to tell me why I was locked up, or to give me comfort. On the contrary, I had nothing to study, to read, no beads with which to pray. The bearded men who tended me seemed frightened of me, unwilling to answer any question. And at last I fell in a stupor, singing songs, making them up from the words I knew.
Sometimes it seemed to me that I was making songs from words as people might make garlands from flowers, with only a thought as to how pretty was this word or that. I sang for hours. My voice was deep and I liked the sound of it. I lay back in contentment, eyes shut, singing variations of the hymns I’d heard in Donnelaith. I would not stop until awakened, until pulled from this trance, or until I fell asleep.
I do not remember when I realized that the wi
nter had ended, or that we had traveled out of it, that we were along the coast of Italy, and that when I looked out the little barred window I saw the sunlight falling down gracefully on green hills and cliffs of indescribable beauty. At last we docked at a thriving city, the like of which I’d never seen.
Then the most remarkable thing befell me. I was taken by these two men, who still would answer no question from me, and left at the gate of a monastery, after the bell had been rung.
A small parcel was thrust into my hands.
I stood there dazzled by the sun, and then turned to see the monk, who had opened the gate for me, looking me up and down. I wore still the fine clothes from London, but they were very soiled now from the long journey, and my beard and hair had grown very long. I had nothing with me but this parcel, and in confusion I gave it to the monk.
At once he unwrapped it, removing the ragged linen and leather from it, and then he held it and I saw that it was a large parchment letter which had been folded over in quarto.
“Come in, please,” said this monk in a kindly manner to me. He glanced at the unfolded parchment. Then he rushed away, leaving me in a still and beautiful courtyard filled with golden flowers, and warmed by the midday sun. I could hear singing in the distance, the melancholy mournful sound of men’s voices like those of the monks of Donnelaith. I loved the singing. I closed my eyes and breathed the singing, and the perfume of the flowers.
Then several monks came into the courtyard. Those in Scotland had worn white but these men were in coarse brown and had sandals on their feet. They surrounded me and kissed me on both cheeks and embraced me.
“Brother Ashlar!” They all addressed me, more or less in one voice. And their smiles were so warm, so filled with love that I began to cry.
“This is to be your life now. Don’t be frightened anymore. You will live and thrive in the love of God.”
I saw then the unfolded quarto which one held in his hand.
