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Part Three - Tiro (Apprentice)

The student struggles to learn his chosen craft, and the teacher to guide his learning in profitable directions. Yet when all is said, much must still be done; some learning can only be accomplished with tools in hand, not books, and proficiency earned with bruises and calluses, when student becomes apprentice. This now becomes an apprentice's tale.
Otho, Bishop of Nemausus
The Sorceress's Tale

Chapter 15 - A Christian City

Again, Gustave decided that the tortuous path close to the sea would be safer from human dangers than the relatively easy road through the valley. The outcrops turned more gray than white, more gray than brown, and even bright sunlight failed to remove their gloomy stain. The heights were a rock-strewn plain, unsheltered from the dry, dust-laden winds. Still, glimpses of deep sun-dappled inlets refreshed them: bright aquamarine in the shallows, and dark, rich blue in their depths.

The treeless, soilless plain had once been blanketed with tall pines, but a thousand years of grazing had stripped it until no single seedling was left to fight its way through bedrock. Was this a foretaste of the Dark Time? Would the last surviving men who looked upon it blame not consuming gods, but their fathers and grandfathers, who had stripped the world?

Pierrette performed a quiet experiment, unseen by Gustave or Gilles (who walked on ahead), and unremarked by Marie, whose eyes remained fixed upon the floor of the cart, and hardly moved.

She murmured the small spell—but even when she shadowed her hand under a blanket, saw neither glow nor spark. That was the sixth time she had uttered the words since leaving their low camp. The first time, the blue glow had been like the night before. She saw no difference the second time, but as the travellers approached that indistinct line where trees gave way to scrub, lush undergrowth to low, stiff-leaved plants, the glow weakened, and the last three times there had been no visible result. She decided to wait until just before they started down toward Massalia before she tried again.

* * *

"Below is the last you'll see of the Middle Sea," said Gustave, pointing. The long embayment was broader than the narrow, water-filled fissures Pierrette knew. "When we cross to the far side"—he pointed northwestward—"we'll descend to the city. But tonight we'll camp here."

That night Pierrette awakened to the sound of many voices singing. She sat up and peered into the darkness, but the sound had stopped. She heard Gilles's snores and Gustave's rough breathing, and Marie also slept on undisturbed. Clearly, Pierrette had been dreaming.

A breeze stirred her hair, and she caught a whiff of wood smoke. Getting up, she walked away from the camp, until she could see the broad fjord. She was too far away to see the light of a fire along the rocky shore, but she stared until her eyes began playing tricks on her.

The way the starlit cliffs reflected on the bay, it looked almost as if the water was much lower, and the calanque narrower. In the illusory depths of that fissure, as if it were on an imaginary shoreline deep in the sea, she saw a flickering orange point like a distant fire. Again, she heard the rhythmic "hunh, hunh, hunh" of male voices and the higher, gracile notes of women, a wordless song that made her feel sad and alone—because she was not nestled by the warm, friendly blaze with the singers.

She snorted derisively. There were no voices, and the firelike glow in the water's depths was phosphorescence, as some sea creature roiled the mud at the bottom of the deep bay. Had it been otherwise—a reflection of a real fire—she would have seen the source.

She returned to her hard bed, and lay listening. The voices welled up again. "Come to us," they sang, "come back to when this land was new." For no reason she could define, tears sprang to her eyes, and when she awakened again, to Gustave and Gilles's busy clatter, she was stuffed up, as though she had been weeping.

As long as the northeast side of the calanque was visible from the road, she stared as if she could see those who had called her, but she was too far away, even had the strange firelike light not come from far beneath the waters—or from the depths of her own imagination.

* * *

Pierrette repeated her experiment as they descended toward Massalia. They were halfway down a road that wound down one narrow gorge after another. There was no spark, only a diffuse ball-shaped glow—yet not exactly as before; it was not blue, but clear and colorless. It became brighter each time she tried the spell. Fearing it would be noticed, she did not try it again.

"There's the abbey," Gustave remarked shortly later. He pointed past a rocky dome and a notch in the coast. Lying low on the south shore was a large church and a sprawl of buildings surrounded by a wall. "They call the Abbey of Saint Victor `the key to the harbor.' Saracens failed to capture it many times. Some say Lazarus is buried there."

"Where is the nunnery?" Pierrette asked.

"Outside the abbey walls—just east of the church."

The harbor was a calanque, a natural inlet, only in the broadest sense. Its shores were lined with stonework in various states of disrepair. On the north side—it ran eastward from its ocean mouth—were more buildings than she had ever seen. They reached up three, four, even five stories; brown, buff, and white blocks topped with red, above which thrust columns, ruins of ancient age. At the head of the bay was a broad marsh of high, tasseled reeds.

"Stick close," Gustave cautioned Gilles. "There are thieves."

"Where is the house of the scholar Muhammad ibn Saul?" Pierrette asked.

Gustave eyed her askance. "In the old city, above the ruins of the Roman place."

"The Roman place?"

"A huge half-round of stone seats, where pagans cavorted. It lies on t' harbor side."

Pierrette was uncomfortable. In Citharista, Christian folk lived amidst a welter of older beliefs, and anyone might secretly cling to family traditions, trusted rituals handed down from Ligurian, Roman, Greek, or Celtic ancestors. Here in the shadow of the abbey and the scattering of churches, Pierrette sensed that such beliefs were buried deeply, perhaps entirely abandoned.

At the abbey Gilles, bearing Otho's letter, was invited inside. He emerged shortly later. "The nunnery lies back down this street the way we came." The street reminded Pierrette of the eastern end of Citharista—run down, with rubble-humped vacancies between surviving buildings. The main town, across the harbor, was less deteriorated. There was a causeway across the bleak cane-marsh at the head of the harbor, and a gate with crenelated towers,

Pierrette imagined the city as it had once been: from a Phoaecean salt-traders' settlement, it had grown to a major port under the Greeks, who built pillared temples on the three northern hills. The northern hub of Greek trade with the Gauls, Massalia later allied with the Romans against fierce Celtic tribes. Along with its rival Arelate, farther west, it had remained prosperous through the long, sunny centuries of the Pax Romana, the Roman Peace, and had throbbed with the steady pulse of Mediterranean trade.

Centuries after the fall of Rome, Arelate and Avennio allied with the Saracens, caring less for Christian Franks than for trade with Africa and the Levant. That Christian hammer, Charles Martel, sacked both cities. Massalia played one power against the other, and remained undevastated—though the town shrank until the Roman gate lay well outside its rough new walls.

The nunnery was no fortress. In times of danger its women fled within Saint Victor's walls. "Wait here," commanded a hawk-faced woman in coarse homespun. She motioned to Pierrette to enter. "We don't allow men inside," she explained, "but as you are still unshaven . . ."

Slim, paired columns supported a shading overhang around the court. Vines twined, and red flowers as big as her hand gave off heady perfumes. Neat rows of thorny roses lay interspersed with fragrant herbs. "These are our medicines," the nun explained. "Rose hips, for the wasting disease and sailor's complaints, Frankish `worts' that only grow in the shade . . ."

"And heart's balm!" Pierrette exclaimed incautiously. "I had seeds, but I couldn't make them grow."

"You know herbs, boy? A strange preoccupation—but I must fetch our Mother. Your sister's condition is new to me, but Mother has seen stranger things."

Left alone—for Marie, in her mute state, was no more company than a stone pillar—Pierrette pinched leaves to release telltale fragrances, and studied the shapes of each bush, leaf, and blossom. She knew many herbs by scent, from her mother's lost collection and Anselm's storeroom, but most she had only seen as dry, brown stuff in little pots. She wanted to recognize the plants if she saw them again.

"A curious child indeed!" crackled an old woman's voice. Pierrette spun about, and half rose to her feet. She knew that voice. She stared, wide-eyed. There in the shadow of the delicate colonnade stood . . . Ma, the old woman of the pool. There was no mistaking those furrowed cheeks, the high cheekbones, the knife-blade nose—and above all, the eyes, as dark and clear as the spring itself. Pierrette gasped.

"Don't be afraid, girl . . . you are a girl, aren't you, in spite of your clothing? We won't miss a few pinched leaves."

"I merely wished to smell them, Lady." The woman was Ma—yet she was not. She did not recognize Pierrette. How could that be?

"Keep your nose a safe distance away," the woman admonished her. "Only yesterday we killed a snake—a vicious thing with a ladder pattern on its back. It struck sister Julia, and we don't know if she'll recover."

"A ladder pattern?" Pierrette was about to remark that ladder snakes were not poisonous, but cautiously modified her words. "I didn't know ladder snakes were dangerous."

"They are serpents, stricken by God to crawl on their bellies, for having tempted Adam and his wife. Snakes are deadly abominations."

Pierrette was taken aback by such hatred of Ma's creatures—from the lips of one who looked like the goddess herself. "I won't smell the herbs again."

"Just be careful," the woman grumbled. "Why are you so interested in them, anyway?"

"If I see them again, I want to know them by sight."

"A girl herbalist, dressed as a boy . . . Perhaps later you will explain—but now, let me examine your sister. . . ." She guided Marie to a stone bench, and put a hand to her chin, turning her head from side to side.

Lifting an eyelid with a dry old thumb, she peered as if looking within the girl's head. "I need a brighter light," she murmured.

That familiar, trusted voice . . . Pierrette did something risky and foolish. "Here, Lady," she said, stretching out her hand. From her fingertips emanated clear, pure light, a sourceless glow bright as a handful of candles, yet without smoke.

The woman methodically studied Marie's pupils, as if she had not noticed the light's source, but when she finished, her eyes widened. "Saint Mary's Light! Are you an angel come to visit?"

"I don't know what you mean, Lady," Pierrette replied, just now fully realizing her error. The glow disappeared.

"I didn't imagine it—it was the pure light of the Virgin, and it hovered by your hand. Tonight, when we've settled your sister, and have sent your men to an inn, you and I will talk." She stood. "Sister Agathe!"

The hawk-faced woman reappeared so quickly that Pierrette suspected she had been peeking around the door frame. "Yes, Mother?" she asked. The woman who resembled Ma was the abbess, herself.

"Help this . . . this boy," she commanded. "Take his sister to the south chamber on the third floor. See that both have baths—and don't gossip about them. In fact, say nothing at all, until I give you leave. Oh, yes—send the men to the Red Fish Inn, and have Sister Marthe prepare soft food for our patient. The other child will dine with me, later."

Sister Agathe, obedient to the letter of the abbess's command, said nothing. She guided Marie up narrow stone stairs to the third floor. Low afternoon sunlight angled across the chamber there, tinting the unglazed floor tiles rich, warm vermilion. Gesturing wordlessly, she indicated that Pierrette should undress Marie. She departed.

"What have I done?" Pierrette murmured. "The abbess is not Ma, though she looks and sounds like her. She is Christian, and has seen me perform a pagan spell." Yet the abbess had mistaken it for a mystical Christian phenomenon. "I have to make sure she continues to think that," Pierrette told the unresponsive Marie, "until I am safely away from here." She had no illusions. The old woman would not be put off.

Sister Agathe brought warm water and cloths. They bathed Marie and dressed her in a white shift. Marie looked more like an angel than Pierrette ever could. The nun spooned rich soup into her mouth, tilting her head and stroking her throat to make her swallow.

With Sister Agathe thus occupied, Pierrette washed herself, removing one garment at a time, putting her tunic back on before removing her trousers. Watching Sister Agathe, she felt reassured that, whether or not the nuns could cure Marie, she would be well cared for.

Pierrette was glad when the nun left. She had something to think about: snakes. Had Sister Julia truly been bitten by a ladder snake? If so, how could she be genuinely ill?

She considered the abbess's vilification of legless beasts. Stricken by God? Perhaps, here, ladder snakes were indeed deadly. Perhaps the abbess had stated not an ignorant city person's opinion, but a . . . a postulate. Uncomfortably, she thought of the terrible spell that she had used against Jerome. Snakes and sex. Snakes and temptation. Could snakes change their natures as did a certain magical light, from one domain to the next? How could she know, without risking being bitten if she guessed wrongly?

Another nun came for Pierrette. Sister Agathe's eyes never left Marie. Pierrette was hungry. Even her fear of the abbess's questions could not quiet her grumbling stomach.

Pierrette thought the abbess's chamber too grand for the simple wooden bed, the rough deal table and three-legged stools. A single candlestick and two wooden bowls, with brass spoons, were all the table bore. Yet within moments a young woman brought a lidded clay pot, carried between thick rags. Escaping steam filled the room with the aroma of seafood, onions, and familiar spices. Pierrette's mouth watered, and her stomach moaned.

The abbess laughed. "Sit down. We'll feed the lion inside you before we talk." The stew that she ladled from the pot contained whole mouthsful of redfish, chewy langouste, and mullet. "Haven't you eaten boiled fish before, child?" she joked—seeing how Pierrette hurried each bite from bowl to mouth. Pierrette paused long enough to acknowledge that she had—but never so deliciously spiced, and of such delicate flavor.

"This is Sister Marthe's recipe," said the abbess. "She is Massaliote, of the twentieth generation, and claims her secret is as old. She doesn't know I've discovered her trick." She paused. Pierrette, whose mouth was again full, raised a dutifully curious eyebrow. "When the broth has simmered well, she throws pine knots on the fire, and it boils over. The others mock her `forgetfulness.' The spilling soup quenches the flames, and only then does she remove the pot from the fire. Can you figure it out?"

Pierrette, swallowing, pondered. Was the question more than it seemed? She did not hasten to answer it. She envisioned the cooking process, the look of the simmering broth, and . . . "Of course!" she exclaimed. "When it boils over, the floating fat washes away, leaving the broth clear, not heavy with oils."

"I wasn't mistaken," the abbess said softly. "You don't accept the first explanation to come to mind, thus scratching an itch without ridding yourself of the flea. Let's sit on those pillows. It's time for other questions."

All too soon they were settled. When her questioner asked how Marie's condition had come about, Pierrette said only that the Burgundian knight had claimed the first night with her, and it had driven her mad.

Yet the tale lacked meat, like a weak soup. As the abbess tasted it, she was aware that something was missing. "Rape is not a treasured memory," she said reflectively. "Yet it seldom drives us mad." She spoke with confident authority.

This place, Pierrette realized, was more—and less—than a religious institution. The sisters were not all drawn here by abounding Faith alone. Some were novices whose eyes shone with holy zeal, but children's voices echoed in the courtyard. Their mothers were refugees, driven to holy vows less by conviction than necessity. But were they less sincere, for that?

The abbess was still speaking. . . . "Rape destroys innocence and trust, and sometimes drives us to seek God, but doesn't drive us so far from the world that we can't return. No, child. There is much you haven't said. If we are to guide your sister back to this world, you must risk telling me."

"I'm afraid, Lady," Pierrette murmured, eyes downcast. "I'm afraid of the clubs the gens of this city wield." She then told of her mother's death—and of the small witcheries that led to it.

Gently, the woman with the trusted face and voice of Ma pulled apart the tangled skein of Pierrette's memory, until almost all was told. Yet Pierrette had not once mentioned Anselm, her studies—or the fire spell that now gave cool, colorless light.

"Much remains unsaid," the abbess concluded, when Pierrette had told what she saw during the All-Saints mass, and described the visions beside the pool of Ma. Recounting the transformation of Jerome, she trembled, and the abbess gathered her close. Now she huddled in the woman's skirts, as coarse and brown as the beech leaves that rustled dryly beneath her beside the quiet pool.

"Some say `Marie' derives from `Marius,' " the abbess said. "I am called `Sophia Maria.' Yet there's more to my name—and your sister's—than remembrance of a Roman general who fought a battle a day's march from here. Tell me what you know of words and names, child. No angry gens will hear."

Pierrette spoke. The names Maria, Marie, Mary, and Marius all sprang from one name: Ma. She hesitated to claim that Christian prayers to Mary were heard by the spirit who listened by the sacred pool . . . but Ma was also virginal, a mother, and her offspring died and were reborn.

"I'm not ignorant of the old ways, girl," said the abbess. "I sprang from the same rocky soil, the same clear sunlight, as you. Is it any wonder the three Marys who brought Jesus' words to this land were welcomed? Who were they but messengers of a deity we already knew—yet with a new message, indeed."

Pierrette had not heard how those Christian Marys had come to Provence—the Roman Province of Gaul. "They came on a boat without sails," said the abbess, "set adrift off the shore of the Holy Land, conveyed here by storm and current." She smiled wryly. "Or having decided upon their apostolic missions, they hired a fast galley.

"Perhaps," she continued, "they were blown ashore near a tiny village at the mouth of the Rhodanus; yet being aware of the political climate after Christ's crucifixion, they chose not to disembark in this busy port, whose officials might arrest them.

"Whatever the case, seven saints put ashore where the town named for them—Saintes-Maries-by-the-Sea—now stands. Mary of Magdala went north to preach in Lugdunum, a stronghold of Lugh, an older god.

"Martha, her sister, also named for Ma, went elsewhere to preach, and two Marys—one the mother of the disciple James, the other of James the Elder and his brother John—remained beside the sea, because both were old. Their servant Sara, an Egyptian, remained with them. Even today Gypsies, folk of her blood, make pilgrimage to her grave.

"Lazarus, brother to Martha and the Magdalene, is buried not a mile from here, beneath Saint Victor's church. Cedonius, born blind yet healed by our Lord, and Maximinus, went their separate ways."

The abbess sighed. "Now, child, we've come full circle, for the cave where Mary Magdalene spent her last years had long been home to another, to Ma, who made women fertile. So you see? Your worship, your mother's before you, is no sin. She who recites the litany of Saint Marie Madeleine prays also to Ma, who is hidden twice in the saint's own name.

"Child? Have you fallen asleep?" Indeed, Pierrette had. "Oh my." The abbess picked the girl up as if she had been a small child, and laid her in her own bed.

* * *

Pierrette awakened to the yeasty aroma of baking bread. The abbess raised her head from a pillow on the floor. "Ah, you are awake. I must have dozed, myself. I'm grateful that God left me my nose. Others younger than I can no longer rejoice in the scent of fresh-baked bread." She rose stiffly to her feet. "Come, girl—or shall I call you `boy' outside this room? If God and Sister Sarah's cow have been kind, there may be warm, sweet milk to dip our bread in."

There was milk, and a compote of sweet figs. The abbess left Pierrette in the small refectory after a perfunctory sip of milk and a single chunk of bread torn from the center of a crusty loaf.

She returned shortly later. "Marie's condition is unchanged," she said. "Rest, care, and new surroundings may work with our prayers to heal her, but I promise nothing. If she weren't so weak, I'd suggest you take her to the shrine of the Marys by the sea, but that's an arduous voyage. We shall do what we can."

Pierrette thanked her. "Is my father here? I don't know the way to the inn."

"He'll be along. And Sister Clara's boy Jules will show you to the scholar ibn Saul's. But first, join me in the chapel, and we'll pray for Marie—and for you."

Pierrette hesitated. "I'm not baptized, Lady."

The abbess snorted. "I'm not a priest. We are two virgins, one old, one young, who will beg that another take pity on her namesake, Marie."

Wearing her paganism like a dirty sack, Pierrette entered the Christian shrine.

The first thing she saw was the light. Rays of morning sun reached through glazed windows, and lay lightly across the carved and painted image of Mary, whose dress was white beneath a sea blue cape. Her sculpted face was sweet, her smile benign, with perhaps the tiniest lines of mirth about the corners of her mouth, as if the woodcarver had known something that books, scholars, and priests did not.

The abbess recited the litany. Pierrette nodded politely at every pause, because she did not know the words. Then the abbess turned to her. "Will you grant an old woman's wish?"

"I'm not a witch, Lady," Pierrette said, misunderstanding. "I have no power to grant wishes."

The abbess laughed. "Oh, you have power to grant mine. I wish to look upon the holy light one last time before you depart."

"Oh, Lady, I cannot! This is a Christian place, and the words of the spell are as old as the world. It wouldn't be proper, here."

"Let God—and Mary—judge. I think your `spell' is a prayer. I saw that light before, remember, and judged it pure. Must I plead with you?"

Pierrette nervously stretched forth her hand. She did not speak the words aloud, only mouthing their shapes. For a long moment, nothing happened, as if this place was like the high country where the spell had been powerless, but then . . . The glow that hovered at the tips of her fingers was the same shade as the daylight coming through the old, violet-tinged glass, purified of the yellow warmth of ordinary sunlight.

The old woman gazed raptly. She grasped Pierrette's wrist, lifting her hand—and the light suffusing it—toward the image. "Watch over this one, Mother, for she is one of yours, though she does not know it." Magical light and sun's rays merged as Pierrette's hand rose, and when the abbess released it, it fell to her side, only a hand—but was the sunlight on Mary's face brighter?

It was not easy to leave Marie behind, to accept that the nuns could give her care that her own sister could not, but Mother Sophia's warmth made it less hard.

Pierrette rode in the cart while her father, Gustave, and Jules strode on ahead. Pierrette was relieved to be out of there. For so long, she had considered Christians the folk who had killed her mother—who smiled at her pagan child, knowing they had themselves wielded clubs. Yet she trusted the old woman who looked like Ma. Perhaps, later, she could sort it out. Now she was too busy gawking.

Watchmen passed the party through the city's gate. The cart clattered down the broad Roman decumanus—the main east-west street. There was much to see. On a stony hill, temple columns jutted like stiff fingers into the clear sky. A church incorporated round, fluted column-segments into its patchwork, unplastered walls.

Massalia had been built, torn down, and rebuilt with the same stones. No edifice was of one era, but spanned decades and centuries. Pierrette wondered if this stone or that had been part of a Phoaecean warehouse, a Greek temple, or the great half-circular Roman theater—even now being quarried for its stone. The cart swung to the right, into the market square.

What a market! Cobbles of a dozen eras paved its sloping expanse, and merchants' wares formed aisles where folk of all descriptions jostled shoulder to shoulder, a moving, pulsing mass of white, dun, and occasional brilliant colors. Gustave was hard pressed to guide the cart through; their destination lay on the western side. She glimpsed peaches, red and gold in the morning sunlight, dark figs and olives, great pink amphorae of yellow and brown grain, bolts of cloth the colors of sunset . . .

Despite Saracen control of the sea lanes, the market's wealth came from ships—not all from Christian lands. One stall's Egyptian glass sparkled like sapphire, and another was draped with silk from beyond fabled India.

She breathed a sigh of relief—and disappointment—when they cleared the last shouting merchant. Passing beneath a lintel of megalithic proportion, they entered a quiet street just wide enough for the cart. "There's Muhammad ibn Saul's house," announced Jules, pointing past a tavern where men sat drinking from clay cups.

Pierrette would have known ibn Saul's house had the boy said nothing. A colonnade from one side to the other butted against the plain walls of its neighbors, creating a haven of shade beneath a red tile roof. At the precise center were doors framed with blue-glazed tiles. Their motif foiled the eye's attempt to follow.

The doors were thick, dark-stained wood, hung on iron hinges whose leaves spread like dividing, protecting fingers. A bell cord led through a bronze grommet set in the wall.

Gustave guided his donkey into the shade beneath the colonnade. "I don't like this place," he said, eyeing the unusual architecture.

"Why don't you and Father wait over there," Pierrette suggested, looking toward the tavern. Both men were glad to follow her suggestion. She pulled the bell cord, and heard a silvery tinkling note. One door opened a crack. A single bright blue eye peered through.

"What do you want?" said a young voice laced with thick, Frankish overtones.

"I am Piers, apprentice to the magus Anselm of Citharista," she said, deliberately pitching her voice low, the voice of the boy she appeared to be. "I have a parcel for the scholar ibn Saul."

The door opened further. "My master isn't here," said the doorkeeper, a boy no older than Pierrette. But what a boy! His hair was the color of a polished brass cup. His nose was short, turned up, yet neither weak nor funny-looking. A more typical Mediterranean nose would have looked out of proportion on his pale, pink-tinged face.

"What are you staring at? Haven't you seen a Frank before?" She had not. Neither had she seen a boy with such broad shoulders, with a narrow waist drawn in by a belt bossed with shiny metal—gold? "Don't just stand there. Give me the package, or come in."

She was shocked by her reaction. It was not the boy's strangeness, but that she had—and did—look upon him as . . . as a man. She had briefly—but so intensely—imagined herself drawn close to his broad chest, his arm thrown protectively over her shoulder, her head against the soft, white fabric of his tunic. The laces of his shirt were loose, and fine, golden hairs curled in the V-shaped opening.

The door thudded shut behind her. "I'm Lovi," her host said, unaware of her stupefaction. "That's `Clovis' in my own language."

"It's a famous name," Pierrette responded vaguely. "Does the blood of kings run in your veins?"

"Has your master taught you history? Is he from a far eastern land like mine?"

Pierrette looked around herself, not answering. They stood in a tiny anteroom with an iron gate beyond, through which streamed bright daylight.

"Oh—I'm sorry," Lovi said. "Let's go within. Are you thirsty? I have wine, and ripe peaches. It's pleasantly cool in the courtyard."

The image of ripe peaches overrode caution and any thought for her father and Gustave—who would be tipsy before long, and would not care. Lovi opened the iron gate. "Find a spot in the shade. I'll fetch refreshments." Pierrette eyed him as he strode away. A small fountain trickled into a square stone trough, making wet, cool sounds.

"What's wrong with me?" she demanded of herself. "He's only a strange-looking boy." Yet she wanted him to like her. Her intensity made her desire for Anselm's approval seem weak and pale.

Had Marie been well, Pierrette would have looked forward to a whispered conversation beneath their bedclothes. Had her mother been . . . alive . . . she would have asked her. Yet in this great, tawdry city, the solace of Ma was far away, and she would have to handle these feelings with no advice at all.

"Why the sad face?" asked Lovi, returning with an amber-glazed jug and two cups, and a basket of peaches.

She told him about Marie. "The sisters will care well for her," he said, "but you'll never get her back."

"What do you mean?"

"Calloused knees and a voice hoarse from praying are better than babies, death in childbed, or a husband who knows the tavernkeeper's face better than hers." He grimaced. "I'm glad I'm not a woman. I can go adventuring with my master." He motioned her to sit on a wooden bench by the fountain. "If only he weren't so old. I hardly ever get to talk with anyone my own age, and I never meet any girls."

"I'm not so sure that women can't have adventures too." She really wanted to tell him that she was a girl. She imagined having a companion, this fine-looking young man, to share all the wonders of the world with. It was possible, wasn't it? If she really wanted to go adventuring, wouldn't Anselm write a letter to his friend ibn Saul for her? Impulsively, she rested her hand on his knee. "Not everything is as it seems. Perhaps there is a way for you—and for me—to have what we want. I have a secret I want to tell you . . ."

But Lovi brushed her hand away, and abruptly stood. "No! That's not what I want. I am not like that. Wait here. My master prepared a parcel for yours."

She had hoped he would sit with her. Why had he so suddenly cooled? If she had long hair, and wore a pretty dress, he would have, she thought bitterly. If he knew I am a girl . . . She snatched a peach from the basket, and bit into it. Juice dribbled down her chin. It was ripe and sweet, but she spat it with a loud, flapping sound. It fell into the water trough. She bit again, and spat. That seemed to dull the hurt, so she did it again.

She finished the peach, and stuck another in her shirt. She had just hidden it when Lovi returned. He went to the iron gate, and swung it open. "Here's the packet." His face was an expressionless mask. "Take it, and go. My master and I want nothing to do with boys like you." Before she was entirely out the door, he was pushing it shut.

"Boys like me? I don't understand. You don't understand." She had thought he had recognized her for what she was, but he had not.

"I understand all too well," he said, pushing the door the rest of the way shut.

She stumbled across the street, tears blurring her vision.

She tried hard to keep all expression from her face. When she stepped outside, she did not turn around. She heard the door hinges creak. She heard the bolt thump home. All the lonelinesses she had ever felt seemed to rush in on her at once.

She climbed into the cart, and pulled a blanket over herself, covering even her head. She wept long—but quietly. When drunken Gilles stumbled out of the tavern, he found her asleep. "Never mind," he mumbled, and returned to the tavern, where he found a himself place to sleep—under a table.

* * *

If youth were not resilient, able to absorb the brunt of what the gods and other people threw its way, there would be few folk in Provence, for life is seldom without tribulation. But Pierrette was young.

The masquerade must end. She would have it out with Gilles when they got back to Citharista. Perhaps it would be embarrassing at first, but there was no longer reason for deception. Gilles was well off. The castellan could no longer press him to sell the grove.

Yes, she decided, I'll let my hair grow out, and when it is of sufficient length to braid . . . I'll become not Piers, but Pierrette. Should she step from the house wearing woman's clothing, and go to the marketplace with jars of oil to sell? Should she have P'er Otho announce it after mass, and save her explanations? There did not seem to be an easy way.

Without Marie to care for, Pierrette resumed her experiments with a will, drawing forth "Saint Mary's Light" several times on the way up to the high plain. She watched for any change in the light's quality, but it only faded as the cart ascended. Coming down to the broad calanque, that effect was reversed. The first glimmer was blue as sapphire. By nightfall, when they camped near the head of the small rocky bay, it had regained full intensity.

Pierrette again began to hear voices. She walked to the edge of the cliff, and peered outward. There, as before, was the glow of an impossible fire within the watery depths. Again, she felt indescribable yearning, a sense that somewhere below was companionship and warmth, laughter and friendship—that all she had to do was to pick her way among the jagged boulders and prickly oaks, and she would find fulfillment.

Her feet hovered on the edge of the slope, the edge of a decision, but at last she turned her back on the cove. Too much was unfinished. If she went down there, she would never return, would never know if Marie would heal, if Anselm faded, and his rocky keep fell traceless into the sea. She would never learn another spell, or read another book, for whoever or whatever was down there had no use for such things.

That night, as if her subconscious had decided to reward her wise choice, she dreamed of the Golden Man. They ate crisp venison by firelight, and he sang her a song without words, its simple rhythmic tune the one she had heard issuing from the depths of the calanque, where campfires had burned beneath the waters.

* * *

-

* * *

Pierrette's Journal

I was right not to descend that slope, at that particular time—if indeed time has meaning in such places. Time was not my concern then, for I had just discovered the first principle of magic and sorcery: the boundaries between magical realms.
Mountains and windswept heights are boundaries, immune to even the greatest spells. Inconvenient for those who depend on magic to start campfires, they have advantages as well, for on the heights one is safe from the magics of others, and can choose which magical realm to enter, which watershed slope to descend.
Is there "Christian" light or "pagan"? I do not know. But even then, having decided not to descend into the enchanted depths of that disappearing sea, I began to formulate a second principle, a concept crucial to my understanding not only of the deadly fading that threatened Anselm, Guihen, and dark John, but to my understanding of the Christians' Satan and his consumption of the older gods—and, eventually, of the Black Time itself.
Belief was the key. In Christian Massalia—with its churches, abbey, and nunnery, its streetcorner shrines and catacombs—no older magic could endure. There, one postulate of my fire spell was based in a different catechism than in Citharista or Breb's wilderness—that admitted only one light, one darkness: Christian and Satanic. There ladder snakes became vipers, for Christian snakes partake of the first serpent's guilt.
In the low valley that descended to the calanque called Sormiou, with no town or human population, an older belief held sway, and a different light obtained.
In Citharista and its valley, from the sea to the pool Ma, Christian, pagan, and a mechanistic magic owing debts to Greeks and Phoenicians endured, and the spell brought forth not sweet sunlight or the blue light of stars on a cold night, but practical, usable fire.
But my discoveries were new and fragile then, and I had much to learn before I could apply them to my life's yet unknown task . . .

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