From the crypt beneath the church, the Gypsies took Saint Sarah's statue, dressed it in bright clothing like their own, and adorned it with gold. From the bay next to the pagan altar they took the old wooden boat, and carried boat and statue through the streets, singing.
As every May, they reenacted that long-past meeting of the Tsigane queen Sara with the holy folk who had come in just such a boat.
The priests could not have helped but notice that the Gitane ritual did not tell the conventional story of Sarah's arrival with the saints. When the Gypsies carried the boat into the waves, they swam with it, then floated it back to the saint's effigy, which remained on the strand, awaiting its arrival. It was not Christian Sarah they celebrated, but Tsigane Sara, who had thrown her cloak upon the waters.
The priests did not protest, because when the Gitanes had feasted, made betrothals among members of their different tribes, and settled matters of law that required their queen's judgment, they would depart, and things would return to normal until fall.
Pierrette stood on the beach by black ashes already half-buried in sand. She knew that the boat the Gitanes carried was not the one the saints had arrived in, but that troubled her no more than it did the Gypsies, who may or may not have known the truth, but did not care.
When boat and saint were returned to their proper places within the church, the Gypsies feasted.
Otho sat long with Bishop Albertus and a cluster of priests and monks, a teacher before his students. He spoke of what they had seen, and its meaning, reassuring them that what had transpired was no abomination, but the righting of balance, an evening of scales.
"Poor Marie wasn't a Judas goat," he told them, "to bear all our sins. As holy Augustine said, evil cannot be confined so, because it belongs to all of us. God didn't create it, nor did Satan, who creates nothing. Evil stems from the sins of men and women, and as we are men, we must bear our fair portion, or abandon all claim to free will."
Otho plucked black hairs from the right side of his head, and braided them into thin bracelets. He gave one to Albertus, and then, as often as he completed another, to each of his listeners. "Wear this," he told each man. "Remember: when you are tempted to say `That is evil' of this small godlet or that, of one pagan relic or another, or of a woman who gathers herbs by moonlight. Remember that you are not pure, and draw no lines of distinction between a prayer to virgin Diana and a plea for Maria's intercession with her Son, for you cannot say for sure where the pagan's honest plea may be heard, or who hears it."
Pierrette, listening, may not have agreed with his interpretations, but just as she had not told the Gypsies their boat was not the original, she did not remonstrate with Otho. No human's understanding was complete, hers least of all.
If one priest among Otho's pupils departed while nursing grave doubts, Otho might yet be called to account before the archbishops in Lugdunum or even Roma, and be chastised. The part of the Wheel that Pierrette could look upon led backward, not forward, and she could not tell if her forebodings were true sight or merely the pessimism of a girl who had seen too much.
She did not see Guihen again. Her last memory of him was as he capered from the church. Yet she did not doubt that she would hear of him, as he scattered the bits and pieces he had carried from the churchthe blains and poisons that caused suffering, even death, and those, like hellebore and nightshade, that could kill or cure. Such evils should not be separated from the world. Only the separation was Evil.
Neither did she see John of the Bears. He and the Camargue mares had faded into the reeds and morning mists unnoticed. If in future days she pined for him and Guihen, whom she had known almost from the beginning, she knew a place, on the way from Citharista to the dragon's bones, where she could light a campfire and call them for an evening's recounting of adventures.
Someday she would ask Yan Oors how it was to grow up among bears, and ask him how he slew the dragon whose bones lay on the heightsif indeed that were not just a folktale told to explain the strangely shaped white rocks; reality was shifting smoke, and no two pairs of eyes saw the same thing.
Marie had little recollection of anything that had transpired since her wedding night. She sometimes looked puzzled when she remembered Bertrand, as if wondering why she was not wed to him.
"The marriage was annulled," Otho told her. She accepted that without curiosity, regret, or relief.
Marie spent much time with Gilles, having taken an interest in her father and his boat. At her insistence he, with the aid of strong-backed fishermen, raised it on blocks for the first proper recaulking it had received in years.
"When it's repainted sky blue, with a red stern and gunwales, we'll sail into Massalia in style," Marie announced with girlish eagerness.
Pierrette had not considered how they would get homeor indeed if she would return to Citharista at all. But such a trip sounded wonderfulwith her sister restored, her father strong and unafraid, in a shiny blue-and-scarlet craft that cut through the water with the grace of a porpoise. She would accompany them as far as Massaliaand then, who knew?
JeromeReikhard, as Pierrette learned to address himplanned to stop at every town along the Roman viae, to confer with castellans, magistrates, and fellow knights about policing them, making them safe for traders and pilgrims. He took his responsibilities more seriously than before, not from fear of his distant Frankish lord, but as a part of his newfound manhood.
That did not mean he was without fear. He had fought his demon, had won a skirmish and a head now steeping in cedar oil to preserve it, but would he ever truly believe the demon was gone, and relax from his self-imposed penance of good works? Pierrette did not think so.
"I may find some villager's lovely daughter along the way," he told Pierrette shortly before he departed, "a girl who would not object to my donning the god's antlers on our wedding night. . . ."
Pierrette did not think he would have much trouble finding a wife. His keep might be more pleasant with a woman in it. Still, she did not think she would be among Reikhard's visitors, despite his changed naturethe sight of him raised terrible memories. She doubted that even the longest lifetime would enure her to him.
At last, all was ready.
"Have no fear," Gilles told Marie as they clambered into his freshly outfitted boat. "We were five before, when this craft was low in the water and soggy with rotted planks. See how high it rides, even with six aboard?"
Gilles had learned that the open sea was not the worst he had to fear. He had partaken of the demon's substance, diminishing it, but could he truly believe it had been vanquished?
Anselm, Sister Agathe, and Muhammad ibn Saul made up the rest of the company. "I'll be along in good time," P'er Otho said. "There are things I have yet to convey to the fathers and brothersbut when that is finished, I plan to spend more time in your library, Magister Anselm." He said "magister," meaning "teacher." Having the same root as "magus," perhaps it reflected Christian Otho's compromise between his growing affection for the old man and his uneasy feeling about the arts Anselm practiced.
"My discussions with Bishop Alfredus have revealed vast imperfections in my understanding. You have the works of Augustine, and the writings of Irenaeus, bishop of Lugdunum. I must study those, and more, before I'll be able to argue what I have learned, perhaps even in Rome."
Pierrette thought Otho's ambition, far from being as simple as her own piecemeal dismemberment of one demon, was akin to marching straight to Hell to confront its master in person. Of course Rome was not Hell, but she thought Otho mad to consider flaunting his heresy so. She shrugged; it was no more foolish than what any of them had done, confronting their worst fears head on. She would not try to dissuade him.
The voyage was swift and smooth, though not uneventful. The wind mostly paralleled the coast, and the lateen sail performed well on running or broadly reaching courses. When the wind died, Anselm tested his hypothesis that magics of the sea were little changed by scholars' piddlings upon the land. Two dolphins and several large seals came when he called to the sea god Poisedonos; the dolphins pressed alongside and the seals grasped the thrown painter in their teeth, and pulled the craft eastward for most of the night.
When the wind freshened toward morning, the creatures swam off, not waiting to hear the humans' shouts of appreciation. Was there some unexpressed quid pro quo at sea, and would Anselmor any of thembe required to do service at some future time?
"I won't jump into the sea, then hold my breath waiting for the god to importune me," said Anselm. "In fact, if he's so ungracious as to resent me if I never again take ship, but only watch the waves from my high aerie, let him strike us now with a great wave, and get it over with!"
That did not set well with the others, who were unwilling to endure the wrath of a god because of Anselm's ebullient bravado. A demon had been quite enough. They understood that his speech had been figurative, and that the mage only meant that he did not intend to make a habit of sea voyages, but . . .
The great wave, when it came, did not crush their frail craft; it lifted them above the chop as if atop a hill from which they could see not only the headlands of the Estaque, but the massif south of Massalia, twenty miles further on. And because a full morning separated Anselm's improvident utterance and the great standing wave, there was no absolute causal connection between the two events.
When the wave subsided, ibn Saul held forth at length, explaining the entirely ordinary nature of such a "rogue wave," which was no more than the additive result of ripples driven from this direction and that by winds out of Africa, Iberia, and down Rhodanus's valley.
Everyone heard his rational explanation, but no onepossibly not even ibn Saul himselfbelieved a word of it. The scholar's blathering was snatched from his mouth by the sea breeze, and dissipated. If all the magics of the land were to die, and the Black Time drew near, the seas would be last to succumb. That thought cheered Pierrette greatly.
They reached Massalia before darkness, and sailed smoothly into the wharf-lined calanque. Ibn Saul directed them to the mooring closest to his house.
Sister Agathe returned to the nunnery with Marie. Agathe was full of tales, and wanted Marie there in the flesh to prove that she herself had not gone mad and imagined it all. Much of what she had witnessed was beyond her ability to understand. Was the demon truly gone? Was not one demon only a single source of evil in a world teeming with others? Had their efforts made any difference? She could only hope so.
All she could be sure of was that Marie was free of her demon, and that she, Agathe, intended to celebrate that with the sisters. She would never admit that her celebrations would have much the nature of whistling in a sepulcher, but of course that was so. Nun and girl set off directly from the wharf, around the long horn of the calanque.
Anselm expressed his intention to stop at the tavern, and only later to seek his bed across the street. Gilles echoed him, and ibn Saul did not try to dissuade them.
Despite his throbbing head, sure that a he-goat had grazed the night on his tongue, Gilles insisted they set off promptly in the morning. Ibn Saul sent Lovi to fetch Marie.
Gilles fretted. "What good is a fine boat if everyone in Citharista is sound asleep when I sail it up to the wharf?"
Pierrette hoped he had not ingested more than his share of the demon with his bucket of salt water. She need not have feared, for Gilles's new pride was the reasonable counterpart of his past self-humiliation, and there was only a little evil in it.
Lovi returned with Marie. "I'm not returning to Citharista," she told them. "If Mother Sophia deems me worthy, I'll say my vows."
Gilles drew breath to protest, but Pierrette stilled him. "Let me speak with her, Fatherthough I don't think I'll change her mind."
She did not, but Marie surprised her anyway. "Did you really think I had forgotten such a large chunk of my life, dear sister?" Everything I didfrom my wedding night to the demon's investment of me and thereafterhappens all over again, every waking moment, and in my dreams."
"Oh Marie! I'm so sorry!" cried Pierrette.
"I don't need pityonly peace and prayer. I regret my abdication of self, after my wedding night, because I caused you and Father, and poor P'er Otho, so much worry. I'm sorry the emptiness I left behindwhen my soul hid from mewas such an attractive home for the demon who tormented you."
Pierrette's head spun. Marie was not making sense. Had her soul hidden not from the terror of her night with Jerome, but from herself? And had the demon tormented not Marie, but Pierrette? What did she mean?
"I fled because I enjoyed Jerome's caresses, dear," Marie explained without self-condemnation. "I was as hot in his embrace as I had hoped to be with Bertrandand that's why I fled. I thought I was corrupt, that I should have wailed and been shamed. I think Mother Sophia knew all along.
"When the demon overwhelmed me, I could have jumped from a roof, but I enjoyed the lust of menuntil I became boredand I loved the sparkle of emeralds, the gleam of gold."
She put her arms around Pierrette, who stood stunned by the depth of her own misunderstanding. "Rest easy, Pierrette dear," Marie murmured. "I'll do good to make up for the evilthe suffering I caused you and Sister Agathe, the work and trouble when I fouled myself. I'll say prayers and do penance for thatand for the crust of Evil still in meas long as I live."
"But Marie! I hoped you would marry, and have children . . ."
"The ones you don't intend to have? There are many children, sister, and I'll serve by teaching them, and taking in those who have no one. Is our old blood so important that it must be passed on? Don't press me to be what you will not, and I won't question your decisions, either. Is that fair?"
"I only wanted you to have a full life," Pierrette replied.
Marie chuckled, and lifted Pierrette's chin. "I've known fleshly lust, little sister. I willingly relinquish it. I have loveyours and Father's and Sister Agathe's. I don't need more."
Feeling Pierrette soften in her arms, Marie knew she had surrendered. "Come on. I must say my good-byes."
"It's only a short sail from Citharista," her father told her. "I'll visit you whenever I have a catch to sell. And I'll bring Pierrette." Pierrette nodded. She would make sure of it.
She felt impatient to be at sea, to see the red rock of the Eagle's Beak lit by the slanting rays of the late-afternoon sun. She clambered into the boat and pushed off vigorously, and Gilles did not have to help her haul up the yard or set the sail.
The second leg of Pierrette's return went even faster than the first. Sailing out of the harbor, the sun was at their backs. Where the coast turned eastward toward Sormiouwhere she had cavorted with Aam long ago, where his large cloven hooves and her dainty ones had stirred the leaves as they dancedthe sun was high overhead, because it was only weeks to the solstice.
The solstice . . . there was magic to be done then, Pierrette knew, and she would have much reading and studying to do before she was ready for that. She gripped the boat's rail as if she could urge it ahead with bodily force. The whole of the seventeen-mile southeasterly run to Citharista seemed to go by in hours compressed to minutes, so perhaps her urgings helped in some small way. Perhaps Anselm too, eager to be home again, by choice this time, not coerced by Minho's geas, gave some small magical impetus to their vessel.
Perhaps, Pierrette thought, laughing quietly, he was eager to be out of the sea's grip before some resentful god called him on the carpet for his impudence.