by Anne Rice
“He has no answer for your question, Brother,” cried Emaleth.
“Sister,” I said quietly. “What would you have me do?”
“Leave the valley,” she said, “as you came. Flee for your life and for our sakes before the witches know you are here, before the little people learn! Flee so that they do not bring the Protestants down upon us! You, Brother, are the living proof of their claim. You are the witch’s child, deformed, monstrous! If you stir up the old rites, the Protestants will have us with the blood on our hands. You can fool the eyes of the humans around you. But you cannot prevail in a battle for God. You are doomed.”
“Why not!” I cried. “Why not prevail!”
“These are lies,” said my father. “The oldest lies in this part of the world. St. Ashlar prevailed. St. Ashlar was a Taltos, and for God he built the Cathedral! At the very spot where his wife, the pagan Queen, was burnt for the old faith, a blessed spring bubbled up from the ground with which he baptized all those who lived between the loch and the pass. St. Ashlar slew the other Taltos! He slew them all so that man made in the image of Christ would rule the earth. Christ’s church is built on the Taltos! If that is witchery, then Christ’s church is witchery. They are one and the same.”
“Aye, he slew them,” cried Emaleth. “In the name of one God instead of another! He led the massacre of his own, to save himself from it. He joined in the fear and hatred and the disgust. He slew his clan to save himself! Even his wife he sacrificed. This is your great saint. A monster who deceived those around him so that he might lead and glut himself with glory and not die with his own breed.”
“For the love of God, child,” said my father to me. “This is our miracle now. It comes once in so many hundred years.”
My sister turned to glare at me, even as he pulled her back.
And I saw them together, looking at me, and I saw them as humans, and how alike they were.
“Wait,” I said softly, so softly that it might as well have been a wild cry. “I see clearly,” I said. “All of us are born with a chance before God. The word Taltos means nothing in itself. I am flesh and blood. I am baptized. I have received Holy Orders. I have a soul. Physical monstrosity, that does not keep me out of heaven. It is what I do! We are not predestined as the Lutherans and the Calvinists would have us believe.”
“No one here argues with this, Brother,” said Emaleth.
“Then let me lead the people, Emaleth,” I said. “Let me prove by good works that I do indeed have the grace of God in me. I am not an evil thing because I will not be an evil thing. When I have done wrong to others it was in error! If I was born as you say, and I know now it is true, then perhaps there was a purpose, that the power of my wretched mother should be broken, and that I should overturn my sister, and put Mary Stuart on the throne.”
“Born knowing. You are born the dupe of those who hold you prisoner. That is what the Taltos has always been. ‘Find the Taltos, make the Taltos,’ ” she cried mockingly. “ ‘Breed it for the fire of the gods! that the rain shall fall and the crops grow!’ ”
“That is old now and does not matter,” said my father. “Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Jack of the Green. He is our God, and the Taltos is not our sacrifice but our saint. The Blessed Mother is our Holda. When the drunken men of the village don the skins and horns of animals, it is to walk in the Procession to the manger, not to cavort as of old.
“We are one with old spirits and the One True God. We are at peace with all of nature, because we have made the Taltos into St. Ashlar! And in this valley we have known safety and prosperity for a thousand years. Think on it, Daughter, a thousand years! The little people fear us! They do not trouble us. We leave out the milk at night in offering, and they dare not take more than what we leave.”
“It’s coming to an end,” she said. “Get out, Ashlar, lest you give the Protestants exactly what they need. The witches of this valley will know you. They will know your scent. Go while there is time and live out your life in Italy where no one knows what you are.”
“I have a soul within me, Sister,” I said. I raised my voice as much as I dared. “Sister, trust in me. I can rally the people. I can at least keep us safe.”
She shook her head. She turned her back.
“Can you do it?” cried my father to her, accusing her. “Can you, with your magic spells and evil books and sickening incantations? Can you make anything happen in the world at large! Our world is about to perish. What can you do? Ashlar, listen to me, we are a small valley, a small glen, only one tiny part of the north country. But we have endured and we would live on. And that is all the world is, finally, small valleys, groups of people who pray and work and love together as we do. Save us, Son. I implore you. Call upon the God you believe in to help you. And what you were-and what your father and mother did-these things do not matter one whit.”
“No Protestant or Catholic can prove anything against me,” I said softly. “Sister, would you tell them what you know?”
“They will know.”
I walked out of the hall. I was the priest now, not the humble Franciscan but the missionary, and I knew what I had to do.
I went through the castle yard and over the bridge and down the snowy path towards the church. From far around came the people carrying torches, looking at me leerily and then excitedly, and whispering the name “Ashlar,” to which I nodded and gave a great open sign with both hands.
Again I spied one of those tiny twisted creatures, garbed and hooded in black, and running very fast through the field towards me and then away. It seemed the others saw him, and drew together, whispering, but then followed me on down the road.
Out in the fields, I saw men dancing. By the light of torches, and dark against the sky, I saw them with the horns and the skins! They had begun their old pagan Yuletide revelry. I must make the Procession, and take them to the Baby Jesus. There was no doubt.
By the time I reached the gates of the town there was a multitude. I went to the Cathedral and bade them wait. I went into the sacristy, where two elderly priests stood together, looking at me fearfully.
“Give me robes, give me vestments,” said I. “I would bring the valley together. I must at least have my cassock to begin and a white surplice. Do as I say.”
At once they hurried to help me dress. Several young acolytes appeared, and put on their surplices and their gowns.
“Come on, Fathers,” I said to the frightened priests. “See, the boys are braver than you are. What is the hour? We must make the Procession. The Mass must be said at the stroke of twelve! Protestant, Catholic, pagan. I cannot save them all, nor bring them together. But I can bring Christ down upon the altar in the Transubstantiation. And Christ will be born tonight in this valley as He has always been!”
I stepped out of the sacristy and to the crowd, I raised my voice.
“Prepare for the Christmas Procession,” I declared. “Who would be Joseph and who would be our Blessed Mother, and what child have we in this village that I may place in the manger before I step to the Altar of God to say the Mass? Let the Holy Family be flesh and blood tonight, let them be of the valley. And all of you who would take the shape and skins of animals, walk in the Procession to the manger and kneel there as did the ox and the lamb and donkey before the little Christ. Come forward, my faithful ones. It is almost time.”
Everywhere I saw rapt faces; I saw the grace of God in every expression. And only a glimpse of a small deformed woman, peering at me from beneath a heavy wrap of coarse cloth. I saw her bright eye, I saw her toothless smile, and then she had vanished, and the crowd closed around her as if, among the press of the tall ones, she had gone unseen. Only a common thing, I thought. And if there be little people, then they are of the Devil, and the Light of Christ must come and drive them out.
I closed my eyes, folded my hands together so that they would make a small church of their own, very narrow and high, and I began in a soft voice to sing the plaintive beautiful Advent h
ymn:
Oh come, Oh come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear…
Voices joined me, voices and the melancholy sound of flutes, and the tapping of tambourines, and even of soft drums:
Rejoice
Rejoice
Emmanuel
Shall come to thee
O Israel!
High in the tower, the bell began its ringing, too rapid for the Devil’s Knell, but more the clarion to call all the faithful from mountain and valley and shore.
There were a few cries of “The Protestants will hear the bell! They will destroy us.” But more and lustier cries of “Ashlar, St. Ashlar, Father Ashlar. It is our saint returned.”
“Let the Devil’s Knell be sounded!” I declared. “Drive the witches and the evil ones from the valley! Drive out the Protestants, for surely they will hear the Devil’s Knell too.”
There were cheers of approbation.
And then a thousand voices were raised in the Advent hymn and I retired into the sacristy to put on my full raiment, my Christmas chasuble and vestments of bright green-gold, for the town had them, yes, the town had them as beautiful and embroidered and rich as any I had ever seen in wealthy Florence, and I was soon dressed as a priest should be in the finest linen and gold-threaded robes. The other priests dressed hastily. The acolytes ran to distribute the blessed candles for the Procession, and from all the country round, I was told, the faithful were coming, and the faithful, who had been afraid to do it before, were bringing the Christmas greens.
“Father,” I said my prayer, “if I die this night, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”
It was nearly midnight, but still too soon to go out, and as I stood there, deep in prayer, seeking to fortify myself, calling on Francis to give me courage, I looked up and saw that my sister had come to the door of the sacristy, in a dark green hood and cloak, and was motioning for me with one thin white hand, to come into the adjacent room.
This was a dark-paneled chamber, with heavy oak furnishings, and shelves of books built into the walls. A place for a priest to hold conferences in quiet, perhaps, or a study. Not a room I had seen before. I saw Latin texts which I knew; I saw the statue of our founder, St. Francis, and my heart was filled with happiness, though no plaster or marble Francis had ever been the radiant being I saw in my mind’s eye.
My soul was quiet. I didn’t want to talk to my sister. I wanted only to pray. The scent made me restless.
She led me inside. Several candles burnt along the wall. Nothing was visible through the tiny diamond-paned windows except the snow falling, and I was stunned to see the Dutchman from Amsterdam seated at the table and motioning for me to sit down. He had taken off his clumsy Dutch hat, and looked at me eagerly as I took the opposite chair.
The strange enticing scent came strongly from my sister, and once again it made me hunger for something, but I did not know for what. If it was an erotic hunger, I did not intend to find out.
I was fully dressed for High Mass. I seated myself carefully and folded my hands on the table.
“What is it you want?” I looked from my sister to the Dutchman. “Do you come to go to confession so that you can receive the Body and Blood of Christ tonight?”
“Save yourself,” said my sister. “Leave now.”
“And forsake these good people and this cause? You are mad.”
“Listen to me, Ashlar,” said the man from Amsterdam. “I’m offering you my protection again. I can take you from the valley tonight, secretly. Let the cowardly priests here gather their courage on their own.”
“Into a Protestant country? For what?”
It was my sister who answered: “Ashlar, in the dim days of legends before the Romans and the Picts came to this land, your breed lived on an island, naked and mad as apes of the wild-born knowing, yes, but knowing at birth all that they would ever know!
“At first the Romans sought to breed with them, as had others. For if they could father sons who grew to manhood within hours, what a powerful people they would become. But they could not breed the Taltos, save once in a thousand times. And as the women died from the seed of the Taltos males, and the Taltos females led the men to endless and fruitless licentiousness, it was decided that they must wipe the Taltos from the earth.
“But in the islands and in the Highlands, the breed survived, for it could multiply like rats. And finally when the Christian faith was brought to this country, when the Irish monks came in the name of St. Patrick, it was Ashlar the leader of the Taltos who knelt to the image of the Crucified Christ and declared that all his kind should be murdered, for they had no souls! There was a reason behind it, Ashlar! For he knew that if the Taltos really learnt the ways of civilization, in their childishness, and idiocy, and penchant to breed, they could never be stopped.
“Ashlar was no longer of his people. He was of the Christians. He had been to Rome. He had spoken to Gregory the Great.
“So he condemned his fellow Taltos! He turned on them. The people made it a ritual, an offering, as cruel a pagan slaughter as ever was known.
“But down through the years, in the blood, the seed travels, to throw up these slender giants, born knowing, these strange creatures whom God has given the cleverness of mimicry, and singing, but no true capacity to be serious or firm.”
“Oh, but that is not so,” I said. “Before God, I am the living proof.”
“No,” said my sister, “you are a good follower of St. Francis, a mendicant and a saint, because you are a simpleton, a fool. That’s all St. Francis ever was-God’s idiot, walking about barefoot preaching goodness, not knowing a word of theology really, and having his followers give away all they possessed. It was the perfect place to send you-the Italy of the Franciscans. You have the addled brain of the Taltos, who would play and sing and dance the livelong day and breed others for playing and singing and dancing…”
“I am a celibate,” I said. “I am consecrated to God. I know nothing of such things.” I was cut so deep it was a miracle the words would come from me. I was wounded. “I am not such a creature. How dare you?” I whispered, but then I bowed my head in humility. “Francis, help me now,” I prayed.
“I know this whole story,” declared the Dutchman, as my sister nodded. He went on. “We are an Order called the Talamasca. We know the Taltos. We always have. Our founder beheld with his own eyes the Taltos of his time. It was his great dream to bring the male Taltos together with the female Taltos, or with the witch whose blood was strong enough to take the male’s seed. That has been our purpose for centuries, to watch, to wait, and to rescue the Taltos! — to rescue a male and a female in one generation if such a thing does occur! Ashlar, we know where there is a female! Do you understand?”
I could see this startled my sister. She had not known it, and now she looked at the Dutchman with suspicion, but he went on, urgently, as before.
“Have you a soul, Father?” he whispered to me, changing his manner now to a more wily one, “and a wit to know what it means? A pure female Taltos? And a brood of children born knowing, able to stand and to talk on the first day! Children who can so quickly beget other children?”
“Oh, what a fool you are,” I said. “You come like the fiend to tempt Christ in the desert. You say to me, ‘I would make you the ruler of the world.’ ”
“Yes, I say that! And I am prepared to assist you, to bring back your breed in full force and power again.”
“And if you do think me this witless monster! Why would you so generously do this for me?”
“Brother, go with him,” said my sister. “I don’t know if this female exists. I have never beheld a female Taltos. But they are born, that’s true. If you don’t go, you will die tonight. You have heard tell of the little people. Do you know what they are?”
I didn’t answer. I wanted to say, I do not care.
“They are the spawn of the witch that fa
ils to grow into the Taltos. They carry the souls of the damned.”
“The damned are in hell,” I replied.
“You know this isn’t so. The damned return in many forms. The dead can be restless, greedy, filled with vengeance. The little people dance and couple, drawing out the Christian men and women who would be witches, who would dance and fornicate, hoping for the blood to come together, for like to find like, and that the Taltos will be born.
“That is witchcraft, Brother. That is what it has always been-bring together the drunken women, so that they will risk death to make the Taltos. That is the old story of the revels in these dark glens. It is to make a race of giants who will, by sheer numbers, drive other mortals from the earth.”
“God would not let such a thing happen,” I said calmly.
“Neither will the people of the valley!” said the Dutchman. “Don’t you understand? Throughout the centuries they have waited and watched and used the Taltos. It is good luck to them to bring together male and female, but only for their own cruel rituals!”
“I don’t know what you are saying. I am not this thing.”
“In my house in Amsterdam there are a thousand books which will tell you of your kind and other miraculous beings; there is all the knowledge we have gathered as we have waited. If you are not the simpleton, then come.”
“And what are you?” I demanded. “The alchemist who would make a great homunculus?”
My sister put down her head on the table and wept.
“In my childhood I heard the legends,” she said bitterly, wiping at her tears with her long fingers. “I prayed the Taltos would never come. No man shall ever touch me lest such a creature would be born to me! And if such were to happen, God forbid, I should strangle it before it ever drank the witch’s milk from my breasts. But you, Brother, you were allowed to live, you drank your fill of the witch’s milk and grew tall. Yet you were sent away to be saved. And now you have come home to fulfill the worst prophecies. Don’t you see? The witches may be spreading the word now. The vengeful little people will learn that you are here. The Protestants surround this valley. They are waiting for the chance to come down upon us, waiting for the spark to light their fire.”
