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Chapter 31 - Small Evils

Pierrette thereafter divided her time among the Eagle's Beak, Citharista, and the woods and trails of the high country that cupped the town like toy blocks in a giant child's hands.

Sometimes she was alone in the mage Anselm's keep, because the old man had developed a taste for the company of men, and spent the sunset hour in Germain's tavern.

"She's doing things again," the mage would grumble softly to Gilles. "Sometimes the whole scarp shakes with the force of her `experiments.' If my poor residence tumbles into the sea, I don't want to be in it."

The men of the town became used to the old mage who, in his cups, exhibited no great air of mystery. Perhaps that was all to the good, because the town's drinkers could not deny that the wine was smoother in their throats when Anselm drank with them, and the mornings thereafter always the kind a man enjoyed getting up to. There was magic in that.

When Reikhard returned with a pretty young wife, he too found the tavern congenial, and Gilles and Anselm pleasant company. Pierrette thought them three frightened little boys. Together, they spoke bravely and ebulliently of their adventures. She wondered how different their thoughts were at night, when sleep would not come.

"What town is she from?" asked villagers about the slender, doe-eyed girl the castellan had married.

"I met her in the forest west of Arelate," Reikhard told anyone who asked. "She's not from any town."

"What were you doing there, off the Roman road or the beaten tracks?" people asked.

"Looking for her," the knight told them—and would say no more. Those who followed the pair of them into the hills when the good fires of autumn burned, and danced the flames around, did not have to be told how Reikhard had found his wife, or who her father was. There was magic in that, too. Though Pierrette knew what it was, she did not mention Saint Gilles and his doe to anyone, but when the young bride's eyes caught hers, it was as if they shared a secret, and there was magic in that.

Pierrette could not tell how the evil the knight had carried away from Saintes Maries now manifested itself. Unlike the others, he had not been seen to consume his portion of the demon. Was there, somewhere in his large house, a secret room smelling of sharp cedar oil, where a Celt warrior's sightless eyes stared down from the rafter? Pierrette did not want to know, or to speculate about what magic it held.

Otho returned to Citharista with the Mistral wind that shook the leaves from the platanes and the oliviers. He led the wise and cynical Gustave whose skepticism, the priest said, had been an excellent foil for his own gullible nature.

"I have met monks and priests who spoke much and said little," the priest volunteered over his wine-cup, "and a bishop who spoke all the time and said nothing at all. The donkey, who has never spoken a word, is wiser than any of them."

Perhaps Otho's reasoning left a thread or two untied, but having met Bishop Albertus, and having travelled with Gustave, Pierrette was not inclined to reject his conclusion. His sermons were well-attended, and no one slept through them even when Otho lost track of time and the sun's rays illuminated the oculus over the chapel's west-facing door. As any preacher would have been first to admit, there was surely magic in that.

Perhaps only Guihen and John of the Bears stalked the forests where men came to cut wood. Perhaps they alone haunted rocky places, and frightened lonely shepherds. Perhaps no other sprites lurked in rock piles beside fields of grain and under broad melon leaves, or threw lemons on the heads of passersby, or quickened barren housewives, but if that were so, the two of them were surely busier than even magic could account for. Besides, the apparitions men told of in their cups were more often female than male. Not all were combined of a glimpse of a village girl and a lonely man's wishful thinking, because not all men were fools and liars, even when drunk.

Everyone, drunk or sober, agreed that there was magic in the air's whispering, the murmur of brooks, and the grumbling voices under bridges. Every Sunday the little chapel was so crowded that a collection had to be taken to add a new bay, and to move the rood-beam twenty feet, to make room for everyone. If not magical, that was no less a blessing, as the archbishop admitted when he came to say mass at All Saints, and it rained. Everyone who had come fitted inside the church.

There was magic on the winds, said Gilles, who sailed often to Massalia to sell his catch, to visit the novice Marie, and to sip a few cups with Muhammad abd' Ullah ibn Saul. They drank in the tavern, because the scholar was too tight with his own wine to invite Gilles into his cool courtyard.

Though Gilles had not grown new teeth to replace those he had lost, his wife Granna did not mind. There was magic in that, and in her calm acceptance of the evil side of his nature, that manifested itself when he cursed the treacherous currents that tangled his nets, or the bad weather that diminished his olive crop. There was—and Gilles was first to admit it—something magical about Granna's love, because though he was no longer despicable in his own eyes, he did not consider himself a loveable man.

Pierrette sometimes sailed with him, and found it true that the winds were mostly fair. She had no magical hand in that.

At first unsure that Marie's decision was the right one, she was convinced when they shared a pallet in the nunnery, giggling like magpies until Marie rose to begin the hours of prayer that would occupy her until dawn.

Even sleepless, Marie maintained her serene good cheer all day, and through a second night of magpie-talk. Though Pierrette slept while her sister knelt in prayer in the morning, she was first to fall asleep at night, and often wondered what magic her sister had called upon.

"Are the ladder snakes in the herb garden still deadly?" Pierrette asked between giggles. "Is Mother Sophia still afraid to stick her nose in the rosebushes?"

"No one's been bitten," Marie replied, "but I'm not about to test your hypothesis. I keep my feet up on the stone bench."

"Are you less good than you used to be?" asked Pierrette, wondering what had become of the black crust Marie had eaten.

Her sister giggled, and lifted her skirt to display grimy knees. "I allowed Sister Roxana, a novice, to become lost in the old theater precinct. I haven't finished my penance yet—I was lucky Mother Sophia let me see you, this trip." She chuckled, and Pierrette was reassured by the mischievous gleam in her eye. There was no risk that Marie would allow her portion of malice to escape—it was far too much fun, and no penance was too much to pay. There was magic in that.

After one trip to Massalia when Pierrette had stayed behind, Gilles came tramping up the path to the mage's keep with a bundle from ibn Saul. While Anselm entertained her father on the high terrace beneath the ever-warm midday sun, Pierrette read the lengthy document the scholar had written—the very scroll that she had commissioned of him in a letter that had been delivered to Anselm in the beak of a stork.

There is no need to repeat ibn Saul's dry words, for he went on at great length about what he had seen—which was not much, and was quite uninteresting. Suffice it that he did not see smoke arise from Marie's blankets, there in the Church of the Holy Marys, but only steam rising from a breathy crowd

He saw no black demon with eyes of fire, and did not see Yan Oors confront a sanglier, though he heard sounds of grunting, perhaps made by a man with a painful stomach cramp.

Ibn Saul did not see Gilles sail between rocks, trusting to his God's providence for his life. When Gilles pushed his way out of the church, the scholar saw no bailing bucket in his hand.

He saw only rusty Reikhard in his funny old helmet, not Cernunnos, and heard Reikhard's voice alone, not the dialogue others remembered. He heard no clashing blades, only the swoosh of Reikhard's sword through empty air.

Ibn Saul watched Anselm run around with his arms outstretched like a crazy bird, but he did not see an osprey or a gray-headed eagle, or a shiny mullet.

He admitted that he had not noticed the dark lock of hair on the right side of the priest's head before he entered the church, but he saw no devil at all.

"Ibn Saul overlooked Guihen," said Anselm later. "He saw only Marah, not Sara the Tsigane, not Maria, only Agathe, not even the loaf of black bread, only char on the old stone, from some ancient fire. What good is this? A blind scribe could have done better."

"Oh, no, Master," Pierrette said cheerily, "He did everything satisfactorily. He didn't believe anything, whether he saw it or not, and provides `rational' explanations for everything that transpired. The dismembered demon whose evil we share is locked within the coils of his disbelief, within the words of this scroll. His skepticism is the most powerful spell of all, against which no magic—and no supernatural beings—can prevail."

She rerolled the document, tied it with a red silk string, and placed it among the others. "Now try to find it, Master," she challenged the mage.

He reached for the scroll, and opened it. "This is the wrong one," he exclaimed. He had not taken his eyes from it when Pierrette put it away. He tried again and again, but could not find ibn Saul's scroll. Neither could Pierrette. She was satisfied. It was a very old spell, not long, but powerful: from the beginning of time people had lost things, and refused to believe that no malicious spirit had hidden them.

Somewhere within the clutter of Anselm's keep, the small leather sack the child Pierrette had brought lay forgotten, bound by a similar spell. Anselm knew what was in it, once, but he had now forgotten that too. Perhaps someday, if it became important, he would remember what it was, and where.

Pierrette, reflecting upon her life, was content that she had lost nothing of importance, and had gained much. Even her mother was there to commune with her beside the sacred pool. That did not mean she had no further desires, or that she would be content to remain where she was. Her victory was substantial, and satisfying, but it was only one victory, in one small place within a world unimaginably vast. Sometimes, on gray days, she saw shadows of great iron towers against the backdrop of Citharista's leaden sky.

The Black Time. Perhaps the battle in Saintes-Maries had been truly won—one demon, created in the conflicts of human hearts and minds, had been vanquished. But there were many hearts and minds, many beings like Yan Oors and Guihen yet to be freed of the Christian, Muslim, or scholarly spells that held them. There were surely other demons, greater ones, to be negated by pouring the evil concentrated in them into other vessels, a little here, a little there. That would demand greater magics than she had mastered, sorceries built upon axioms yet undiscovered.

On the sunless days that generated such pondering, happily rare in sunny Provence, she yearned for a man's arms around her—Minho or Aam or someone not yet met—if only to comfort her. But she had just begun to learn her trade, and could not give it up now. There would be no man for a long time. In such melancholy moments, she returned to her books and scrolls, and there by magical light caught in a blue Roman glass bottle, pored over maps of all the places she had not yet been.

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