Back | Next
Contents


Part Five - Maga (Sorceress)

This is Provence, a Christian Land. Christendom is comprised of many folk, and the Faith that binds them in One's name is not the same in every heart; priests and bishops are comfortable with Faith, and treat doubt with grave suspicion, denying unbelievers our miraculous feast. Still and all, were I to choose one person, from all those I have known, to share my own bread and wine, it would not be a priest, but . . . a sorceress.
Otho, Bishop of Nemausus
The Sorceress's Tale

Chapter 27 - Unlikely
Companions

Back at camp, the others were astir. A visitor had arrived early, awakening them. "Yan Oors!" Pierrette crowed happily. "But . . . you're different." He was bare from the waist up despite the morning chill, and clad only in the skimpiest of leather kilts. His hair was tangled with twigs and burrs. "What have you been up to?"

"Ah, little lady. I've been playing with the wild Camargue horses."

"Playing?" Guihen grinned—lewdly, Pierrette thought. Yan Oors skin darkened—a blush?

"Have you brought horses for us to ride?" asked Guihen.

"Indeed," Yan replied. "When I told them you wished their aid, I could have had all the herd. I don't know why they like you, elf; you're nothing special, as far as I can see."

"Perhaps it's the succulence of my leaves," Guihen muttered acerbically. "Where are they?"

"I'll call them." Yan Oors whinnied like a stallion. Pierrette's eyes swept the brush and the shadows, but heard no pounding hooves.

"Whoof!"

She squealed, and jerked away from the sudden gust of breath on her neck. Turning, she saw a great, white head with lovely brown eyes that laughed at her. "Where did you come from?"

The horse pushed aside tall reeds screening the shallow water beyond. Several more heads pushed through, all white, with long, silky manes and tails that—unlike Yan's hair—looked freshly brushed.

"You're beautiful." The horse was unlike the scrawny, undersized cart-pullers she was used to, or the tall, ungainly beasts soldiers prized. They were broad, legs and bodies covered in short white hair. "Epona," she quietly named the lovely mare. Epona, a goddess, and a white horse.

"And who do you belong to?" she asked a spindly colt anxiously looking around itself. It was dark, as if a different breed entirely. The mare whuffed again, and with a happy whinny, the colt reached up between her flank and her haunch, and nursed noisily.

"They are born black or gray," said Yan. "Only in their fifth year do they become white." He stroked the mare's soft nose.

"Is there a stallion?" she asked. "I see only mares."

"Didn't you hear me call them? I am their stallion."

Despite herself, Pierrette's eyes strayed to his short garment, unable to imagine a man performing that service for mares. "Then indeed there is magic in this place," she said, embarrassed.

"As long as a single mare runs free, and a stallion to serve her, magic will endure," he replied softly. Pierrette suspected that he had indeed told her something of great significance—not merely a hope or an observation, but an essential postulate of Camargue.

The colt let go of its mother's teat with a loud, wet pop and, glancing sideways at Yan, approached Pierrette, short muzzle level with her chest. He nuzzled her abruptly with an upward jerk of his head.

"I'm not your mother!" She covered her breasts with an arm, and stroked his soft mane. Thinking how the colt had looked at Yan, she whispered, "Is he your father? You're as dark—but surely, he's more than five years old."

The gaunt man chuckled. "I won't test your credulity by claiming to have sired him."

"If you did, I would believe you." It was true. Could she—who remembered flying as a green and glittering magpie, deny that this man might remember running with horses? If so, would those memories be . . . real?

Could she say with conviction that her own cloud voyage and magpie flights had not been? She could, with little mental effort, feel the high air flowing over her freshly preened feathers; could Yan with no more difficulty feel himself a stallion, with broad hooves and a great prong?

The moment passed. "We have to go," he said loudly, addressing the others, "if you wish to sleep dry tonight."

Getting Sister Agathe mounted even on the smallest mare was no easy task; she had never ridden. Yet once astraddle, clinging white-knuckled to its mane, Pierrette thought it would take as much work to pull her loose.

Yan and Guihen lifted listless Marie to a mare's back. With no more skill than Sister Agathe, and without the will to hold on, would she fall beneath the horse's hooves? It did not prove so; Marie slumped low, as if part of her mount—an ungainly but well-attached hump. That was well, because Pierrette had become daily more worried about her deterioration. She had lost weight, and her cheekbones were sharp as knives, her eyes unnaturally bright and sunken.

Yan had not attempted to direct the horses, who had presented themselves to their riders of their own accords. No mention was made of reins or halters. Pierrette was pleased that the nursing mare had chosen to carry her.

She was surprised to see Guihen vault over a stocky mare's hindquarters with a shrill whoop, like a barbarian warrior. What other surprises were in store?

* * *

Much could be observed while riding above the tops of even the tallest reeds. Wending westward, the last remnants of forest were soon left behind except along low dunes, where stone pines' roots held the loose, dry soil.

Kestrels hovered over dry expanses as if suspended from invisible threads, alert for mice to bring home to their young. Pierrette allowed herself to savor a small raptor's singular concentration, its excitement when it spotted a vole exposed on clear ground. She shared its accelerating plunge earthward and aloft again, limp prey in its claws. She landed on the abandoned magpie nest where her hatchlings waited, and watched the clumsy, white-downed infants rend their meal. Their wide-eyed, reptilian stares never changed while they ate.

It was springtime, a time of change in a land of changes. The kestrel had only recently arrived to breed. Rough-crested Egyptian vultures high overhead, harriers, ospreys flying low over the water— all came north from Africa to breed and savor the rich meals the delta provided lavishly.

In the fall they would depart, and golden eagles would fly in from the Alps, white-tailed ones from unknown arctic lands.

Mallards and red-crested ducks, with trains of fluffy, flightless offspring, scurried into willows, reeds, and tamarisk as the mounted party passed.

Constant transitions kept the land alive. As ducks, hawks, brilliant-winged flamants, songbirds, terns, swans, and storks arrived from the north in the fall, summer fliers departed for lands now greened by seasonal rains.

The Camargue's invisible influence spread widely, to the ice where summer knew no night and winter no day, to unknown deserts, jungles, and bleak, rocky islands no man would tread until the Black Time was upon the world. It was a heartland from which all life, all magic, sprung, a single pulsing organ upon which all depended.

Creeks and channels trended southward, mere traces among clumped reeds, carrying fresh waters from the mountains, becoming ever saltier as they neared the sea. Salt governed all, and life adapted to it. Purslane grew on rises of ground where rains washed away salt, and sea lavender in lower places, exuding droplets of concentrated brine from the undersides of its leaves.

The channels were home to eels which, when grown, departed to Ocean, to breed within the vast tangle of Sargasso seaweed that marked the edge of the world. Gray mullets entered Camargue, but did not linger in fresh water. Sweet-fleshed bass and trout pressed seaward from clear streams and lakes, but shunned the saltiest marshes. Carp coveted brackish waters. The pulse of life's heartbeat began here.

The first night they camped near a trickle of almost-fresh water. The horses drank with gusto, even though Pierrette thought it warm and salty as blood.

Agathe was distant and silent. Marie remained dazed. Her face and arms broke into red rashes from the moist heat.

No one slept well. If Guihen slept, it was elsewhere, in a place of his choosing. Yan disappeared into the reeds with his mares. Pierrette could not help imagining him prancing and snorting among them, a stallion in form as well as thought.

Near the end of the second day, the glitter of sunlight hinted at a large body of water on their left. "The lagoon of the bulls," said Yan.

"Bulls?" asked Pierrette. "And cows also?"

"Of course. But not milk cows that suffer man to pull their teats or decide who mounts them. Such cows are lucky to be undesirable, because they remain free. The bulls . . . that's a different story, for men desire them." He shrugged. "But many bulls are born, and only one is needed to quicken a herd."

Pierrette pressed him to explain.

"Herakles passed through Camargue, driving Geryon's red cattle. He allowed his cows to breed with fierce black Camargue bulls. The fame of Camargue bloodlines spread." Romans sought bulls for their arenas, for though small, they were quick and intelligent, and many a lion and man were skewered on their lyre-shaped horns, even in Rome itself.

"I hope we'll see them," said Pierrette.

* * *

Elsewhere, over the high, forested country of the central massif, a great bird flew southward on black-and-white wings. Reaching the confluence of the Rhodanus and the Druentia it turned eastward. Such a course, had anyone noted it, would have seemed unusual, for storks migrated south in September, not May. They mated and nested in the Camargue. Why would a stork fly toward Massalia? And why would it carry in its long bill a vellum scroll tied with a red silk ribbon?

Its route took it over the long, white scarp where Marius defeated the Teutons, then over the valley of the Holy Balm, Magdalen's resting place, and at last came in view of the red scarps of the Eagle's Beak.

Had Minho of the Isles not possessed a stork's bill instead of lips, he would have smiled: Ansulim had been homesick indeed; his home's portico was not unlike the colonnade of Minho's palace, or his brother's, in Crete—that long-abandoned edifice called the Labyrinth.

He circled on broad, outstretched wings, and landed atop a parapet, amused that while it had been sunset a few moments before, now—here—it was high noon. The boy had learned a trick or two, he reflected. He himself could scarcely bind time more effectively than his student had done—though the Fortunate Isles were of greater extent than this small keep.

The king sent tendrils of thought seeking his erstwhile pupil. He was surprised to spot him miles to the west.

As soon as Minho found him, Anselm knew. He abandoned his half-built cairn, and hurried homeward. Minho waited patiently—if a bit sadly, for lost youth was nothing if not sad—and at last heard the clatter of the aged boy's sandals upon the steep stone stairs.

"Master!" Anselm cried. Then: "Master?" The tall shape was still a stork. While an unseasonal stork was unusual, the presence of the King of the Isles within the flowing river of time, was . . . impossible. There was no saying what havoc it might have wrought with the world.

"Master, is it truly you?"

Minho did not like reunions with boys no longer young. He did not enjoy the guilt. He could only free poor Ansulim from the geas that had held him—but then there was the fresh guilt of commanding him to one final task. As a stork, he could not speak aloud, but Anselm heard him . . .

* * *

"You must not fail this time," said the king, when he had given his instructions.

Anselm looked up from his perusal of the scroll. When he had first unrolled it, he had found another rolled inside. "That one is not for you," said the king. "You must give it to the scholar ibn Saul." Anselm stuck the scrolls in his sash.

"This is a formidable task, Master," he said, wrinkling his forehead, "but at least it's not—like the last one you gave me—absolutely foredoomed. This requires only the active cooperation of an ignorant fisherman, a Christian priest, and an atheistic scholar . . ."

Ah! The poor aged boy. Guilt lay leaden in his stork's gut. How could he fly without ridding himself of it? He sighed (silently, of course, for storks did not express themselves so) and said "Ahribad ne poharta, merati haralmer akkarimad."

Anselm looked confused. What tongue was that? It sounded only vaguely Minoan.

"It's a spell from my remote ancestor," said the king. "Once our people lived in bands like seals. They could no more build cities than can wolves. Selfishness, diverse interests, and conflicting behaviors prevented them from sharing tasks like building walls and bastions, or digging canals to irrigate fields. This spell freed men to join in cooperative effort."

"It's an ancient spell, Master," reflected Anselm. "If my apprentice Pierrette is correct, the beliefs that supported old spells have changed, and the incantation may have unforeseen results."

Minho puffed up his long, stiff feathers. "Look around, boy," he said, raising a wing. "Are there walls, cities, bastions, palaces? Are there aqueducts? Of course there are. Thus this spell functions. Quod . . ."

". . . Erat demonstrandum," Anselm finished the sentence. "I believe it will work, then, for surely the men who created such things were no more cooperative than the ones I must deal with—a priest, a cowardly fisherman, an atheist . . . and myself, a crazy old sorcerer," he added, "whom none have reason to trust."

"The task, boy! The task makes the spell work. The common goal allows enemies to smile while they pull at a common oar, or stand side by side at a capstan bar. It is the vision of what lies ahead—and you must give them that."

Minho sleeked his feathers with his great bill. "Now hear the rest of the spell. You must not misplace a single syllable."

Anselm listened. He did not wish to see aqueducts and city walls crumble for want of the cooperation to have built them in the first place.

When the king was satisfied with the mage's mastery of the spell, he did not bother to say farewell. His weight of guilt was gone. He leaped from the parapet into the air, and was soon winging northward and out of sight.

* * *

Anselm accepted the task. Though Minho might profit, it was not for the king that the old mage undertook it, nor for Marie. It was for Pierrette. He strode across the causeway that separated him from the world. . . .

His step was light. The youngster who lived within every man had assumed control of his skinny legs. He wanted to do things he had never done, to experience everything he had missed in studious youth and isolated manhood.

He felt no libidinous arousal, and accepted that he would likely refrain from chasing tavern girls . . . but taverns? Ah yes! To drink wine shoulder to shoulder with shepherds, masons, soldiers . . . to laugh and make jokes, and sing maudlin songs . . . but that must wait. He had an important meeting.

The mage had last trod the streets of Citharista when it was a thriving Roman seaport, in the time of his nemesis, Saul of Tarsus. He was saddened to see it shrunken and crumbled, and was unimpressed with Otho's chapel, plainer than the humblest Roman shrine.

"Ahribad ne poharto . . ." He murmured the unfamiliar words of the spell. Though the chapel door was ajar, he knocked, as if it were not a public place. To him it was indeed a stranger's house.

Otho knew immediately who he was, sensed his discomfort, and led him to his little house. He lit a lamp, because dusk was falling and there were no windows.

Over a cup of wine at Otho's scarred table, the mage recounted what Pierrette's letter required.

"Saintes Maries? To exorcise a demon from Marie? Of course I'll go with you—but how can we get there in a fortnight?"

Anselm had no answer. Weren't there boats? Were not the Via Tiberia's bridges intact? Otho was not sure.

Of one thing he was sure—one thing that disconcerted Anselm no end: the castellan Jerome (whom Otho now called Reikhard) must accompany them.

"Pierrette asked for her father," Anselm protested. "She said nothing about the castellan."

"I told you how I freed him from the demon. He should have a part in releasing Marie—he's not without guilt. The demon could not have invested him had he truly resisted it." He sighed. "In any case, it feels right—and this letter requires that you heed me. Listen: `My father and P'er Otho will know what they must do,' she says."

"I've heard nothing good about this Reikhard," the mage mused. "How will Gilles feel about voyaging with his daughter's defiler?"

"Gilles conscience is far from clean," Otho replied. "The knight could have done nothing to Marie without his consent—bought with a bag of coins. If forced to admit which is most despicable, Gilles would name not Reikhard, but himself."

"I hope he'll do some good," the mage mumbled dubiously. "I can't imagine what it could be." He hoped Minho's spell was powerful. A surly German knight would test the limits of magic.

"Don't concern yourself," the priest said. "Pierrette says this will work." He shrugged. "I don't know what good I can do, for that matter. I'm not an archbishop or a theologian, and I've never seen an exorcism, let alone participated in one. . . ." That was not strictly true. There was Reikhard. But the point stood: a village priest might get by being empathetic, knowing his parishioners' strengths and foibles, and with a bit of jargon or gibberish . . . but what Pierrette wanted . . .

Anselm smiled. "Perhaps you can read up on things, before we go."

"Read what? Do you see shelves packed with scholarly books?"

"Come." The mage took the priest's arm. "We have a little time." Otho reached to snuff the lamp. "Leave it," said Anselm. "We'll be back before the oil is half gone."

* * *

How long had it been? Otho wondered much later. Surely a fortnight had passed while he sat at Anselm's library table, or slept in the bed that had belonged to Pierrette. That memory caused him guilty chills. The scent of that bed reminded him of Elen, so long gone, except from his poignant memories.

Surely, he reflected, a month had elapsed while he read the Gospels, the Old Testament, and whole scrolls of apocrypha that Anselm insisted should have been included in that collection called the Bible. Surely a year had gone by while he read Justin, Augustine, and a dozen other saintly scholars.

He could not guess how long he was in the mage's keep, because the sun on the terrace was always at high noon. "Shouldn't we be going? What about Pierrette and Marie?"

"Time is the least of our concerns," Anselm assured him. "When you have learned what you must, we'll depart in a most unseemly hurry." Drugged by his understanding of all that there was to know—and all that he did not—Otho returned to his table, his books, and his scrolls.

* * *

When the two men at last crossed the causeway and returned to Citharista, the moon was rising, and the last roseate wisps of day glimmered atop the ridge. Those disappeared as the men descended behind it.

"Who's there?" Otho called out as they approached his house. He could see warm light inside. No one answered. The lamp burned unattended, just where he had set it long ago . . . and the oil was only half gone.

"And now," said Anselm, when Otho had packed a few things, "we must hurry—we have only a fortnight until we must be in Saintes-Maries-by-the-Sea."

Otho's head felt stuffed with wet cloths. A fortnight? Then had he fallen asleep at his table, and only dreamed the months and years of study? Was everything he thought he had learned only nonsense created by his sleeping mind? But the knowledge was coherent, and made sense.

Between his new learning and the strangeness of finding his lamp still lit, with no time having passed, it was perhaps forgivable that the priest choose to accept the sense and to avoid thinking about the logic of it.

* * *

The castellan's dwelling was nearer than Gilles's house. The soldier at the door stared goggle-eyed. He saw the priest every Sabbath. The old magician he had seen only once, when he had been cured of a piercing whine in his ears that had almost driven him to suicide.

"Ahribad ne poharta," muttered Anselm as they waited for the Burgundian.

Reikhard was not yet abed. When Anselm put his request to him, the knight accepted immediately. "But there are no ships in the harbor," Jerome stated. "Shall I call my men? Without them we won't dare travel overland by road."

Anselm shook his head. "Gilles may know a way."

The knight bade them wait. When he reappeared, they were amazed. Jerome was clad from shoulder to thigh in fine old mail whose like had not been seen since Roman fought Teuton and Gaul. He carried a long sword over his shoulder.

How strange, the knight reflected as he trudged through Citharista's streets. His horned god was not one to listen to crying virgins, old women, or a crucified weakling who begged an end to his suffering. Otho had freed the knight of the demon, but not of the memory of his captivity. No longer a slave, he was not free of the stink of slavery. Only that evening he had knelt at the foot of his bed and begged his god to free him of guilt he could not shed.

Who had heard that prayer? Had Cernunnos sent these men with the means of his expiation, or had the god only passed his plea along to the mage's unknown deity or even P'er Otho's Christ? But who was he, unlettered as he was, to speculate about where a prayer went, once it was uttered?

* * *

"Marie sickens more every day," Pierrette told Sister Agathe. "I fear there is no time to get her to the shrine; the demon consumes her. It won't give her up until she is dead, and of no further use. I have to drive it out."

The sister shook her head. "You aren't a priest, child."

"Here, a priest might be less advantaged than I am. If you disapprove . . ."

"Not enough to leave you, girl," Agathe grated. "Marie needs me. I've come this far, and I won't walk away now."

"Thank you," Pierrette said softly, putting her hand over the nun's. "Your faith and prayers will be a comfort to Marie—the Marie I knew—and to me also." If that admission surprised the sister, she did not let it show. For Pierrette, it was true, as far as it went: after all, it was still a Christian demon. Had it been a pagan spirit, she might have been able to reason with it.

* * *

They found Gilles at the wharf. He eyed his unlikely visitors—the armed knight, the priest, and the white-bearded elderly mage (who was mumbling words that sounded Arabic). They, in turn, had eyes only for the battered fishing boat, hardly a craft to evoke confidence.

Gilles was pale, as if seasick—unlikely for a man who divided his time between land and sea. The cause of his discomfort was soon evident.

"Well, get in," he said. Gilles, though very much afraid, would not be "cautious." He would take them in his boat. "You didn't come looking for a better boat, because any fool could see there are none." Gilles, despite his greenish hue, did not act the least afraid . . . the least "cautious."

This was not the Gilles Jerome had persecuted, the man Otho had confessed. This was not cautious Gilles, who refused to sail to Massalia with a fresh catch. True to Otho's prediction, Gilles made no objection about Reikhard.

"We must catch the morning's wind, or the three of you will have to row." The thought of rattling knight, clumsy priest, or frail old man rowing—and the tangle of oars that would result—made Gilles feel superior.

He was immediately ashamed; he was hardly better than the worst of them. That was the old Gilles. He was no longer "cautious," but neither was he superior to anyone. He was free of such things, because he no longer cared if he lived or died. He would be surprised to survive this journey. What mattered was that the others did, the ones who could help Marie and Pierrette. He did not understand the terrible trouble his daughters were in, but it was important that they have succor.

All three settled in the boat, and Gilles pushed off. Rounding the rocks that defined the harbor, the sail snapped full of a following breeze, and Gilles pointed the unpainted stem just enough offshore that the looming mass of the Beak would not steal wind from the patched sail. It was not a cautious course. There was a risk of being driven against the rocks at the foot of the wave-washed cliffs.

* * *

"It wasn't your fault," said Sister Agathe, throwing an arm around Pierrette. "The demon's claws are wrapped around her heart. Wait until we reach the shrine. We'll find help there. Marie won't die before we get her there." It sounded like wishful thinking. Pierrette's mood was too black for words, and her voice worn out from incantations.

"I had to try," Pierrette cried. "I had to know if I could do it."

"I know you did," the nun replied.

It had seemed to make sense. Marie had been empty after her wedding night. Her soul fled to some inner recess where it felt safe, but not so far that her body, untenanted, began to die. The fiendish spirit had come later, discovering the empty rooms of Marie's being, and inhabiting them. One night Marie had been docile and uncaring, and then she had run away, to return from the house of women much changed.

Pierrette had been sure that when they crossed the Rhodanus and entered the Camargue, the Christian demon would have weakened. She had been right. Marie's parasite's reaction, when it realized it had been tricked, supported the hypothesis. Only John and Guihen's quick action, stuffing Marie into the ferryboat, had prevented her escape.

So she had tried. She called the fiend forth, tempting it with her soul and body for Marie's. It had blackened the air, shed feathers, fur, and scales, and squalled with the voices of crows, ill winds, and banshees—rejected creatures turned loose when the Church had made saints or demons of old gods.

She called it forth—but she could not destroy it, because it was of the earth and the universe, and could not be dissolved. The hideous thing screamed when she suffused it with baleful fire. It gobbled and thrashed in desperation when dark, ephemeral waters rose up around it. It coughed as the smoke of herbs and powders suffocated it—but only Marie's poor body burned, became sodden, and coughed wracking coughs. Agathe had been right to stop her, for Marie might have died. The demon was unharmed.

There were no burnt crusts or weeping sores where Marie had been burned, and the dampness of her shift was only sweat, and the magical waters of Ma's source, carried all the way from the beech grove in a green glass bottle. Her breath was soft and easy, as if no harsh smoke had entered her lungs.

The damage was not physical, and left no trace—but Marie had suffered, and within her the fiend still gloated, unharmed and undiscouraged. Pierrette wanted to save Marie on her own, but she had failed. There was no choice but to continue to the shrine—and to place her in Christian hands again.

Pierrette's concern went beyond her sister's welfare. A Christian exorcism would not stay the Black Time's coming. World-spanning faiths destroyed the variety, the sparkling unpredictability, of the world. A victory of pagan magic over Christian would have set back that final, unvarying, predictable doom. She would have been happy if it had been delayed by a year, a week, even a minute. But now, the opportunity was lost. She had failed, and the Black Time awaited. . . .

* * *

Pierrette awakened after sunrise, to the hooves of horses, the creak of harness, and the sounds of unfamiliar voices. "The Gitanes have come," said Yan, shaking her shoulder.

The camp was encircled by four-wheeled wagons. Their spoked wheels were red and vermilion sunbursts, yellow daisies and blue tare flowers. Folk rushed about clearing hearths. Breakfast fires were fanned into bright, smokeless blazes. The clatter of iron pots, staccato laughter, and the rattle of an unknown tongue drove off the last vestiges of sleepiness.

"The Gypsy queen wishes to speak with you," said Yan Oors.

"With me? Why? Why are they here?"

"They're on their way to the shrine where their ancestor lies buried. They do this every May. All the bands come, if they can, or send a few if all cannot. And the matriarch would hardly deal with me—a man."

Pierrette shook off the last vestiges of exhausted, disconsolate sleep. She observed wagons loaded with crates, bundles, and rolls of bright cloth. One was stacked with dried reeds and hung with finished baskets.

Since the queen of the Gitanes expected a woman, should she take the time to unpack a dress? She laughed quietly and uttered old words, creating a small glamour that made her feel quite feminine, and brushed her hair, bunching it at one side and tying it in a casual but un-boyish way.

Guihen sat cross-legged at the nomads' fire; evidently, sprites were exempt from male or female roles. Sister Agathe sat at the queen's left. Guihen motioned Pierrette to sit. The matriarch was fat, and glittered with gold—ear-spools with tiny bells, chains, bracelets around her wrists, and rings on each plump finger. Pierrette felt plain.

"I am Marah." The Latinesque patois was not her native speech. Her dark skin was naturally the color of old leaves.

"I'm called Pierrette," the girl replied, suddenly aware that her name, "little stone" or "pebble," sounded trivial—though she was unsure why that should matter.

"It's good to be humble," the Gitane queen observed, "but I felt the rumble of great stones beneath my feet, and I knew to come here."

"I felt nothing." Pierrette thought of the landslide that had devastated Anselm's wall, and the roar heard even in town. But there were no rocky cliffs here.

"Does the horse feel pain when he kicks the smith who is shoeing him?" Marah said, with the ghost of a smile. "I felt your magics from afar. It was no `pebble' rolling about."

"Then . . . you know magics also?" Pierrette was eager to learn anything, from anyone. Only knowledge routed the fear that she was inadequate to her tasks. She was like a boy gathering sling stones to protect his sheep against wolves: the small stones could only sting, but the more he had, the more secure he felt.

"Yours is strong magic. Ours is a fortune told, a flock hexed or unhexed, a pot or two healed . . ."

"Fortunes? The future, you mean?" Could this Gypsy look forward on the broken wheel?

"One man's—or one woman's—future, Mistress," she replied. "I doubt that such a trick would impress you."

"Knowledge impresses me. Magics and `tricks' stem from one source. I've learned much from folk less wise than you." She was thinking of ibn Saul and the Wendish woman-magic.

"Will you ride with me?" the queen asked. "Talk makes long roads short."

"Are we going the same way? I was told you would visit an ancestor's tomb."

"Not an ancestor, my dear. The ancestor—Sara, who pulled the Christian saints from the sea."

"Saint Sarah?" Agathe gasped. "Your ancestress? How can that be?"

The Gitane smiled wryly. "It wasn't me called her a saint. Perhaps in all the centuries, memories have become confused. At any rate, I won't argue religion. Such talk has spoiled many a journey." Her round face lost all expression, and she stared straight ahead, as if no one but she herself sat by the fire.

* * *

"The road," as Queen Marah called it, was a rutted track through the morass. Pierrette sat on comfortable pillows. A young Gitane drove the wagon's stout brown mares. Yan and Guihen rode well behind, because the Camargue horses—or perhaps Yan himself—seemed to upset the gypsies' horses. Agathe rode in the wagon ahead, trailed by the sullenly plodding Gustave.

"You know the Christians' tale of the three Maries, don't you?" Marah asked. Pierrette affirmed that she did. "We tell it differently. That's why I shut up like that, when Sister Agathe was around. Do you want to know the true tale? You have to promise not to tell it to any Christians."

"Aren't you Christians? Agathe said you were going to worship in the church at Saints Maries—to pay homage to Saint Sarah, the servant who was buried with the two Marys."

"There are Christians . . . and then there are Christians," said Marah, "and one woman's saint is another's ancestor."

"Tell me!" Pierrette urged.

* * *

The Tsiganes were a fierce tribe, Marah told Pierrette throughout the long, sunny afternoon. Their chief, who decided where the nomads would travel, where camp, and when depart, was called Sara. She was loved and respected, for she had always led her people well. She knew stars and seasons, wild horses and black bulls, migrations of flamants, hawks, and songbirds, and where sweet water was to be found.

One night in a dream, Sara saw a ship adrift off the farthest sandbar of the Camargue, bereft of mast, sails, and oars. She saw men and women whose faces were suffused with a kind of interior beauty, though worn by suffering and starvation.

"It was only a dream," said her councilors, seated around the dying fire. "No ships come near the beaches, or they become stuck on the offshore bars. Go back to sleep."

Despite those words, Sara did not sleep, and first light found her peering out through spray and spindrift. The terrible sea battered the wrecked ship, threatening to break it apart. Murmuring ancient words passed from chief to chief, she flung her wool nightcloak over the waves, where it became a raft to carry the unfortunates to the safe shore.

They were Mary Salomé, half-sister to the Virgin, and Mary Jacoba, mother of James and John, Mary Madeleine, Martha, Lazarus, Cedonius, and Maximinus.

* * *

"I suppose," said Queen Marah, "that the Tsiganes mistrusted them because they spoke a foreign tongue—Greek, perhaps, or Latin. Chiefs learn such tongues, to negotiate and trade." She continued her tale. Sara calmed her folk: the strangers were not herdsmen come to drive them from the land or farmers to cut and slash it. "Can't you see what I see?" Sara demanded, thinking of the internal light that seemed to emanate from certain of the strangers. The Tsiganes did not.

But pressed by their chief, they offered the refugees food and drink, and listened to the tale of their long and arduous voyage from the Holy Land to bring word of death, resurrection, and a new message of hope to Gaul.

The younger saints chafed to be about their missions, but the two elderly Marys could not go on.

"Leave them here," Sara commanded the holy ones.

"We can't abandon them!" protested Magdalene.

"I'll stay with them, as long as they and I live," Sara said. Magdalene was reassured. After tearful embraces, she and the others went on their way.

The tribe packed their wagons. They came to Sara to ask her where they would be going, for it was her task to choose route and destination.

"We are staying here," she said, astounding her councilors. Never before had any Tsigane chief said that. Always Tsiganes moved on. Always, when the grass was trodden and brown, it was time to depart, as if an invisible sign drew them toward the far horizon, an unheard song called them to new, unexplored trails. . . . But no one protested. They remade the camp, and there they remained.

"Years passed," recounted Marah. "The old women and Sara died within three days of each other. The Tsiganes took them to the far dune where the holy ones had landed, and buried them in the sand. They marked the spot with an ancient altar stone.

"Some Tsiganes stayed to watch over Sara's tomb, and built houses near an ancient well. As time passed, a town grew up. The Tsiganes returned from time to time to visit Sara's grave, and to make offerings upon the altar stone.

"And that," Marah said, "is the true tale of the founding of Saintes-Maries-by-the-Sea."

Pierrette nodded, thinking deeply, remembering. She reviewed her magpie-flight and her vision of the Christian saints' parting. Had "Saint Sarah" in her vision looked like these Gypsies? The woman she remembered had been aquiline, and shaded her eyes with kohl. She remembered a village and fixed dwellings, not a nomad encampment. But such details did not invalidate Marah's tale—or Pierrette's vision.

"Several things puzzle me," she mused. "Does the nature of your magic change as you travel from place to place?"

Marah glanced sidelong at her. "Change? How could it? Magic is magic. As I said, ours is simple—it's hard to make mistakes. Does yours change?"

Pierrette explained what she had deduced about regions of magic, beliefs, and the boundary natures of rivers and watersheds.

Marah laughed. "I know what the difference is. `Place' doesn't mean the same thing to Gypsies. All places are home, when our tents and wagons are there. Since it's our magic and nobody else's, it goes with us. It doesn't hang around here, or there."

"How about mountains?" Pierrette pressed.

"I don't know that any of us ever climbed one," Marah said thoughtfully. "We stay on the tracks our wagons can manage. I never paid attention to watersheds."

Was Gitane magic free of restraints, restrictions, and changing postulates? That did not seem right. If the universe were a rational place, rules must apply universally.

Pierrette sighed. "Have you gone anywhere where people never heard of you—of Gitane magic—and did not believe it?"

"Ha! If they don't believe our magics, it doesn't take much to convince them. The trick is to convince them to be afraid enough to leave us alone—and not so afraid that they stay away entirely, and their money with them."

The answer was not entirely satisfactory, but Pierrette had explanation enough: where people believed in such magic, Gitane "tricks" worked. And because nomad bands travelled widely, belief in their skills was widespread. Should they enter a land where folk were not convinced, deceptions and sleights of hand created a climate of conviction. They kept expectations small—minor hexes and cures. Fortunes told were vague enough that the tellers would not be caught out by events.

"Are you Christians or not?" Pierrette asked, not expecting a straight answer.

"We are, I suppose," said Marah. "Sara accepted what the holy women taught her. But the priests' religion is not the same as theirs was. They didn't care for chants and ceremony, only for the words and deeds of the Son of God." She laughed—half a chuckle, half a scornful snort. "See? Priests call him that. The old women called him `My sister's son, the carpenter.' The rest came later.

"So, are we Christians? We pay homage to Sara at the old pagan altar stone, and we honor the old saints she loved, but what the priests say goes in one ear and out the other."

Pierrette felt a sudden chill—and an accompanying excitement. So: the monolithic Church was not immune to the effects of scribblers and codifiers. The same forces that eroded old gods and spirits, that had—almost—turned Yan Oors into a shadow and Guihen into a Christian boy, had turned a Jewish carpenter and rabbi into—the Son of God? The forces of belief and conviction, of scholarly parsing and reasoning, had molded infant Christianity, a Babel of beliefs, magics, miracles, and speculations, into a monolithic army, marching across the face of the earth . . .

I believe in God the Father, Creator of Heaven and Earth . . . in Jesus Christ . . . he descended into Hell . . . on the third day he rose . . . A spell. A tremendous, powerful, all-encompassing, incontrovertible, rigid . . . spell. The first time those words had been uttered, the world changed—and that unity of belief and purpose would bring the terrible sameness, the end of all.

But . . . there were cracks in the monolith: heresies, schisms, new ideas at odds with old. There were secret rites hidden in outward ones: Gitane rites buried in Christian worship; Sara the Tsigane ancestress, hidden within Sarah the Egyptian Christian saint; ancient pagan altar stones now part of the church building itself.

Had those Christian Marys viewed the pomp and rituals with jaundiced eyes like Marah's, holding to their own simpler faith, unsure, exactly, of what the Nazarene carpenter-turned-prophet was, or had been? Was the Church that Saul of Tarsus had built foreign to those old women—or had they bowed to the pressure of belief and written creeds, and become what the priests expected of them?

"Don't ever forget!" Pierrette blurted, grasping Marah's wrist. "Never let Sara become entirely a Christian saint, or you'll lose everything that makes you special."

"We won't forget," the Gitane queen replied softly. "At the end of time itself, there'll be a Tsigane of Sara's lineage, looking for the road out."

Would there be a road out? "Help me," Pierrette asked. "Don't let me stray from that road." Marah squeezed her arm.

* * *

-

* * *

Pierrette's Journal

After a week of freedom from Camargue's voracious insects, they returned to teach me a lesson about the nature of the Black Time. I call it "The Law of Locks," because those mechanisms illustrate the principle—but had I named it then, I might have called it "The Law of Salt Mills." Old Ars thought stinging bugs were attracted to salt mills. The truth is more significant.
The mill was not much to look at: wooden hoppers above and below a pair of rough-hewn millstones. Slabs of raw salt were broken with a maul, then tossed in the upper hopper. Ground salt was taken out below, and pressed into molds. Oxen harnessed to long poles drove the upper stone.
Stinging mosquitoes descended in clouds, as if determined to take all at once the volume of blood my spell had heretofore denied them. Gitanes lit smudges—pottery jars stuffed with oily rags and fragrant herbs. Marah held one for me to ignite, but nothing happened—no spark, no burst of flame, no wan glow. For all the spell's effect, we might have been atop the highest mountain or in the middle of the broadest river. Our driver scurried to the next wagon and brought our pot back lit, which helped keep the bugs at bay.
Having been severely bitten, I collected drops of blood on a finger, and marked a spot on the wagon wheel's rim . . .

"What are you doing?" asked Guihen, when we stopped for the night, beyond the mill's influence.
"I'm measuring the circumference of this wheel." I had counted the wheel's turns, aided by the spot of blood, and was about to calculate the radius of the mill's dampening effect upon things magical. It was about a half mile.

Locks, I determined much later, had a more limited radius of effect. I know two ways to protect a room or a box from intrusion—a warding spell, and a lock. A spell protects hasp, hinges, and leaf or lid against anyone who does not possess the counterspell, the metaphysical and metaphorical "key."
But a box under lock and key cannot be warded with magic, and no magic can open a locked box. In fact, a lock brought close to a warded box is itself a counterspell, as a salt mill is.
Lock and mill are machines, devices with parts that move, built to a purpose—and machines, I determined, nullified magic. There are exceptions: wheeled wagons do not affect spells, nor do hinges or clasps. A grinding quern has no effect, nor do deadeye rigging blocks on boats. Sheaves do, though their effect is limited. A sheave on a boat's mast will not neutralize a spell cast from the deck, but a pulley in my pocket will . . .

* * *

-

* * *

Pierrette's memory, though disciplined by years of timeless study, was not perfect. As the caravan rode away from the mill, as the swarms of mosquitos dissipated, she had made another connection between spells and machines. It began with a vision remembered: Citharista, seen through a magpie's eyes, ashen and overgrown by huge buildings.

The port's spidery towers were machines: hoists with cables thick as trees, pulleys like ponderous wagon wheels, huge enough to lift whole ships from the water. Their baleful effects surely spread for miles. Was there, in that bleak beginning or end, a single valley or spring-fed pool free of the influence of such machines?

That night, deep in a gloom she did not want to explain even to Guihen, Pierrette pondered her realization that there was more working against her, and toward that future, than she could bear to imagine.

* * *

"That's it!" Gilles explained happily, pointing at the gray headland. There had been little cause for happiness on the sea voyage. Rough seas and freakish winds had almost driven them against the rocks. They had been forced to stand well out at sea, where land was only a rough line on the horizon. They had sighted a triangular sail once, and had hidden for a whole day in the lee of an island, baking in sunlight and bright reflections off the glassy sea.

Gilles had not thought to ship extra water, because Massalia was only a day's sail. After three days and two nights, it was long gone. The bread was hard, the cheese slimy, and chewing dry, salted fish was unthinkable.

They were far from compatible shipmates. Gilles wondered how the four of them had kept from each other's throats, even when not hot, damp, tired, or thirsty.

Why had they come at all? He knew what motivated him: Marie and Pierrette were his daughters. Wouldn't any father worthy of the name go to his children's aid? He would take risks to repay the debt he had incurred by risking nothing, before. It would never be enough, of course. Elen's murder, Marie's rape, could not be undone. He eyed Reikhard with scarcely concealed loathing.

The Burgundian saw that look. He did not blame Gilles, considering what he—and the demon, of course—had done. That, however, did not make him admire the snivelling fellow. Gilles had conspired in his daughter's degradation, taken money for turning his back, and did not even have a demon to blame . . . Did he? The Burgundian looked more closely at the haunted glitter in Gilles's eyes.

"Well?" demanded Reikhard harshly, to break the tension between them. "What do you see out there? Another dolphin?"

"I see the glitter of water where the hills slope together. The land to the left is an island."

"I've seen islands before," the knight grumbled, rubbing his mail shirt with a rag from which all the oil was long gone. The mail was orange with rust.

"There's only one island that close to the coast. When we round it, Massalia will be six miles away—we'll eat dinner in port."

"I'll drink my dinner," said Anselm. The others vocally agreed.

"I know just the place," Gilles said. "It's only a few steps from ibn Saul's."

"Good!" exclaimed the mage. "I'll take on a jar or two of wine before my visit. Though an old friend, he's reputed to be stingy with his cellar—though he does not mouth Allah's proscription against drink, when he himself is thirsty."

"Good!" said Reikhard.

"What is?" the mage queried.

"That his place is only a few steps from Gilles's tavern. You won't have time to fall down, and have to crawl there." He grinned.

"I'll go with Anselm," Otho stated. "I wish to speak with the scholar also—and to hear what is written on that mysterious scroll you carry."

"Yes!" Reikhard said. "Me too. Read it to us, old man."

"I can't," Anselm demurred. "It's for ibn Saul. You'll have to wait." The mage was not blind to the tension between his shipmates. The spell must be working, he mused. If he heard them aright, they had all agreed to go to a tavern and drink together. No common goal could explain that. It had to be the spell.

True to Gilles's estimation, the sun had not yet set when they drifted up against a stone wharf on the north side of Massalia's harbor. Thirsty as they were, none had given thought to a place to sleep. If worse came to worst, Gilles thought, there was the inn, and there was room on his boat.

Back | Next
Contents
Framed