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Chapter 17 - The Mage
Reconsiders

"No! I'm no Ligure fairy, no Celtic wraith. You can't command me. In fact, as your sworn master, I command you to cease these importunements." He glared at her woeful face. "Yes—that too. No more sad eyes. Become cheery, and get about your studies. I'll hear no more of your `experiment.' "

"I'll obey, Master," Pierrette said humbly, "but may I beg one simple thing?"

"What?" Anselm snapped.

"If my `experiments' with elf and specter succeed, will you listen? Then—if so moved—will you consider my plea?"

"I'll listen," the mage agreed. "I'll promise that much, to buy silence now."

And so it was.

* * *

Pierrette returned to Citharista. The knight Jerome did not trouble her; in fact, he was not seen much, and rumor had it his illness kept him to his bed. Pierrette was not sure she could have looked at him without running away.

She took up Marie's duties in the marketplace.

She insisted that after a day's work with trees or nets, Gilles take his evening wine in the tavern. "When you're sleepy, I'll come help you home to bed." That was well by Gilles. Didn't he deserve to drink in company, where the conversations of other men would distract him from thoughts of poor Marie?

Being a simple man, he thought nothing of his daughter's prattle as they walked from house, marketplace, or grove to the tavern. "Are there bears in the hills, Papa?" she might ask, or "Has anyone ever seen a wood-sprite?"

Gilles had seen neither bears nor sprites, and he laughed at such innocence—but when the subject of bears came up at the tavern one night, he remembered enough to recount it to Pierrette. . . .

"It was a bear!" Marius protested. No longer a child, he was a stolid young man with a reputation for veracity. He pointed at the smudge on his tunic. "It stepped on me." Gilles and several others laughed. The smudge, paw-shaped, was where Marius had wiped his dirty hands.

One somber fellow, Parvinus, did not laugh. "Something set my dogs to howling, two nights ago," he mused. "When I took my stick and went to look, I found my oldest cow fighting to pass her calf. The calf was wrongly placed, and was killing her. If the dogs hadn't barked, I wouldn't have found her in time to turn the calf."

"You think they were barking at a bear?" Gilles guffawed.

"There were tracks in the dust. Big ones."

"Bear tracks?"

"I couldn't tell, but I know anyway. It was not a bear. It was . . . Yan Oors."

That old name had not been spoken often, in Citharista, but even old men had once been children, and remembered their grannies' stories. Yan Oors broke the heads of malefactors with his iron staff, and chased malingering children back to their tasks. Some claimed he had slain the dragon whose bones littered the bleak heights.

"Yan Oors, eh?" mused another man, grinning mischievously. "And what evil thoughts were you thinking as you lay dozing?"

Marius reddened. Indeed, he had been thinking of Sarah, whom he was to wed—carnal thoughts, indeed.

"I hear," said Germain—for so everyone called the tavernkeeper, Germanicus, "that other spirits have returned to these hills. Last week a man brought a two-headed white hen. I didn't buy it, of course. I told him to kill it with a copper blade, and to hang it in a willow tree."

"And?" prompted Parvinus.

"The next morning the hen was gone from the tree, and he found a silver Frankish mark among its roots. I saw the coin myself."

A genial argument had ensued. Someone—Gilles did not remember who—speculated that the man had the coin all along, and made up the tale to cajole a free cup of wine from Germain.

"Still," Gilles told Pierrette, "such birds were once properly sacrificed to the sprite Guihen, as Germain prescribed, and most of us agreed that he had left the silver."

Pierrette agreed it was probably so. "If there are more stories, Papa, I hope you remember to tell me."

In the months that followed, he did. A man's ox yoke swung as if someone had brushed it while walking by. The stable door closed behind him, though there was no wind. "He found a white feather," Gilles said, "though his chickens are all brown and red."

Pierrette heard tales in the marketplace. Granna, who sold wool, was a font of gossip and events unexplainable in the light of day. Pierrette inched her jars of oil closer to Granna's stall each day, until she could converse without raising her voice.

"Claudia leaves a loaf of bread on her doorstep each night," Granna recounted. "I tell you, boy, the old ways don't just fade, no matter who goes to mass and who doesn't. P'er Otho saw the loaf, but he's smart enough to turn a blind eye."

"What of the bread?" asked Pierrette.

"Every morning, it's gone."

"Couldn't some passerby be taking it?"

"Could be, could be," Granna said, not believing it for a minute. "Yet have you bought Claudia's loaves lately?" Pierrette nodded. "Then you know how light and fair they've become. It's the sour—the yeast. She says she came down the stairs one morning, smelling something wonderful, and her sour pot had overflowed—bubbled up and pushed aside the wet cloth she covers it with. That feisty sour gives her bread the flavor and lightness."

"Perhaps it was a wild strain brought in on her clothing. That happens."

"Ah," Granna said knowingly, "that could be. Indeed it could. But one day, Claudia sold all her boules, and had none to leave for the spirit, and . . . can you guess what happened?

"The morning after," Granna continued, "her yeast pot was dry as old bones. Ha! She made no bread that day. Now she leaves a cup of milk with the loaf, and it's always empty in the morning."

Pierrette asked about the missing part of the story—how Claudia had rejuvenated the dead yeast, in order to make bread, so that she had a fresh loaf to leave on her doorstep again. Granna grinned, and raised an eyebrow. "She must have done something to make him happy, eh?"

"Who is `he'?" Pierrette asked.

"You know! You don't want me to speak his name, do you? But I'll tell you this—when Claudia did right by him, there was a fluff of white chicken down in her proof-loaf that day."

Marius's tale, and Claudia's, were not isolated. Pierrette's strange acquaintances were following her instructions.

At first, she wished she had told them to exercise restraint, to do only good deeds, but the more she heard of their activities, the more right they seemed. Neither Guihen nor Starved John were "good," nor were they "evil." Like Saint Augustine's fire, they were what they were; fire burned, or it warmed and comforted, and could not be said to belong solely to God or devil on that account. A little mischief, after all, distanced the two from the watery Christian myths mothers told.

That was what Pierrette intended: for their acts to erase the flawed Christian postulates that caused them to weaken. Besides, she thought gleefully, it was satisfying to watch the smug, staid gens walk about on tiptoe, for once aware that magical entities wandered about, whom they could not kill with their clubs and their torches. . . .

Pierrette still wore her boy's clothing, and had come no closer to making the change. Each day she promised herself this was the day—but each afternoon she came home without having done anything about it. Each day she promised herself to discuss it with Gilles, then decided to wait until he had eaten, then after he had a glass of wine beneath his belt. It was always too late. Either he got drunk, or he left for the tavern, and her chance was lost.

P'er Otho knew what she was, and would advise her. Yet that was easy to postpone, and not until one morning in early spring did she set out to do it.

* * *

She found him writing to his bishop. He told of just such events as gave Pierrette great joy—yet his interpretation terrified her. "Satan?" she exclaimed. "Why do you say that such things are the devil's work?"

"God does not perform like a wandering singer for loaves of bread or cups of milk," Otho said. "Who else can be responsible?"

"You told me that it didn't matter how I prayed, because whether I prayed to a saint or a tree, my prayer would be heard by God. Is a loaf of bread on the doorstep so different from a candle on the altar? Is a lively yeast the devil's brew?"

Otho was used to her mysterious erudition, but that surprised him. "You mustn't hold me to that," he said. "I was speaking to a child. My words were meant only to comfort. The bishop wouldn't understand."

"Would you be in trouble?" Let Otho feel a threat in her question, and he would not send the letter.

She departed, having accomplished a postponement of that day when her experimental subjects would have to face the power of the Church—but without saying anything about her personal dilemma.

* * *

Pierrette found time to visit Anselm occasionally. He complained about her long absences—one more proof that neither he nor she understood the nature of fluid time, which could neither be dammed like a stream of water nor caught in a wooden bowl, and which could not be observed from any stable shore, but only from within the stream.

Time was not treating her master well. His white hair, once lush, looked sparse, and through the hazy mass atop his head she saw pink skin. His beard and mustaches bore yellow stains as if he neglected his treatments with warm oil. Wine stains blotched his once-white garment.

The old fortress itself seemed smaller, and bore signs that time did not entirely pass it by. The causeway had crumbled further, and was so narrow that one had to tiptoe, teetering anxiously, breathing a great sigh of relief when the safety of the portico was reached.

No black or vermilion paint remained on the pillars, so weather-worn that Pierrette could not have determined if they had indeed once been bold Minoan columns or plain stone cylinders.

The broken floor tiles and stained ceilings depressed her. Soon, she promised, she would have the proof to convince Anselm to save himself. But not yet. Another week, on the outside, would make no difference here—or would it?

* * *

A day or so later, she visited the priest, hoping that word had arrived from the nunnery. "The abbess won't write unless Marie's condition improves—or worsens. We must assume that nothing has changed."

She remarked the black scar on his writing table. "Ah," he said, perhaps too diffidently, "I fell asleep, and my candle burned down. The flame caught my parchment afire. Now I'll have to rewrite it."

Yet even weeks afterward, he had not replaced the charred tabletop, and there was no evidence that he had touched his inkpot or quills. If he had, he would have noticed that one feather was smaller than the rest, and too soft to make a good pen. That one had not belonged to a goose.

Anselm's capitulation, when it came, was sudden, and Pierrette did not have to call Yan Oors or Guihen for proof that her experiment indeed worked. One calm morning, a grinding roar was heard by the denizens of Citharista. They rushed outside, but saw nothing amiss. "The sound came from the sea," one claimed, and faces turned anxiously south. "No, it was a landslide in the hills," said another.

A week later, a fisherman brought news. "The Eagle has lost half its beak!" he cried, as he tied up his boat. "The old fort has lost a wall and lies open from top to bottom. The old magus must have fallen with it."

"How can you tell?" Pierrette demanded. "Did you climb up to see?"

The fisherman had not. "I'll go up myself," Pierrette said. Several women made the horned sign with their fingers. Pierrette ignored them, and departed immediately.

* * *

Anselm was not dead, but he almost wished he were, as he showed Pierrette the devastation. "The wall is gone," he wailed, "and the parapet where I sunned myself."

"This is only the beginning," she remarked coldly. "Minho's geas has trapped you in this pocket of unreality, and the machinations of Christians and scholars like ibn Saul nibble away at it."

"I'm doomed!" he wailed. "There's nothing I can do."

"That's not true!" she snapped, "Haven't you listened at all? Are you dead already?"

"I might as well be."

"The library and storerooms are intact," she observed, "and though my bedroom now has a grand view, your chambers are unaffected. When you decide you want to keep them that way, I'll help. Until then . . ."

"I have decided," he said. "Bring the women from the town. I'll see what can be done for them."

"And for yourself," Pierrette thought, though not aloud. It was enough that he had agreed to try her plan.

The next evening five people climbed in the shadow of the great rocks. Three were women, the others boys.

"I can't cross that chasm!" one woman protested, eyeing the narrow path to the gate.

"Your son is dying," Pierrette hissed. "You must cross." She went first, to show how easy it was—though indeed, the recent collapse had narrowed it so severely that at one place she had almost to leap across. Eventually all stood shakily in the entryway.

A flickering lamp halfway up the stairs revealed the whiteness of Anselm's now-clean garment, but left his face in shadow. "Enter, who seeks a boon," he intoned theatrically, then turned and ascended. The seekers followed.

His voice sounded resonant, not a querulous old man's. Had he begun to recover, though he had done nothing yet to warrant the women's faith in him? When they emerged into the sunlit court, they covered their eyes and cried out fearfully at such magic. Outside, it had been dusk.

There was no sign of devastation. All seemed as it had before the landslide. She burned with curiosity, but could not ask Anselm in the women's presence.

The mage gestured for the first woman to bring her son forward. She threw herself down, weeping. "Arise!" he commanded sharply. "I am no god, no king. Worshiping me would be a sin, and abasing yourself is foolish. I require your ears, not your soul."

Chastised, she stood, and described the wasting disease that consumed the boy. "Leave him with me," Anselm said. "Wait on the crest of the Eagle's Beak. Kneel and pray if you wish—it can't do harm." Pierrette put a hand to her shoulder, and led her away.

When she returned, Anselm commanded her to take the boy, and to prepare a potion of herbs for him. Thus she was not present when he spoke with the second woman.

* * *

Pierrette had expected to give the boy a rich broth or a fortifying drink, not a black brew of seaweed and dung, laced with weeds that made sheep and cattle go mad. Yet the boy was weak and biddable, and he drank the strong purgative.

Later, she did not want to remember. She raged at her master for not warning her. After drinking the brew, the boy vomited what he had consumed—and more. His bowels became loose, and he voided on the bedclothes. He spewed not the ordinary contents of stomach and bowel, but white threads that writhed with hideous life all their own.

Pierrette bundled the bedclothes and threw them from the window, not caring where they fell, or that they were fine blue cotton from Nemausus. As soon as she spread fresh cloths, the boy fouled those, and again she tossed them away.

Thankfully, the potion had stupefied him. He was already dulled by starvation, because for months the worms had consumed everything he ingested.

Pierrette heated water to bathe her patient. The wood burned with loud, angry crackles that mirrored her mood, and the water boiled in minutes, though she uttered no spell.

After that first rejection of the demons that had tormented the child, his spasms diminished. At last he slept. The air cleared. She listening to his strong, regular breathing. Then she returned to the courtyard, where the third woman now stood before her master.

"Ah, boy! What kept you? I have heard these women's complaints. The one knows what she must do, and the other requires a powder of red fungi and crushed insects." He rattled off instructions—which red mushrooms and how many, and instructions for measuring several kinds of bugs from the storeroom's jars. Fuming, her lips compressed, Pierrette again departed.

When she returned, Anselm dismissed the women. The first woman's boy, he said, would be along shortly.

Pierrette informed him what a thoughtless curmudgeon he had been. He listened without protest, and when she ran out of breath, his head hung low. "I'm sorry," he said. "I was having so much fun pretending . . ."

"Pretending? Is that what you think? The boy had worms, and your magic drove them out."

"It was hardly magic. It will seem so to ignorant folk, of course—especially when the boy is returned rested and fed, when for them only minutes have passed."

"Don't spurn their ignorance, Master. Nothing else stands between you and dissolution. If the boy retains drugged memories of demons being driven from him, it will strengthen you. Now tell me what transpired while I was gone."

The second woman, Anselm said, had become with child soon after the birth of her last babe. If she conceived soon after birthing the one she carried, she would die.

" `Poor women don't suffer so.' I told her," said Anselm. "She would have given all her riches to be freed of her fear of untimely death—but I didn't require that." He laughed. " `When this child is born,' I told her, `send away the wet-nurse your husband brings, and suckle the child yourself—for a full year.' "

Pierrette nodded. "As long as she suckles, she won't likely conceive. But did you set her another penance as well?"

Anselm chuckled. "Her husband is a mason. I suggested he repair my crumbling causeway—so if his wife again required something of me, her path might be less treacherous than now."

"Thus building her conviction—and your reputation—into the stones leading to your keep. That was good, Master. You're catching the spirit of my experiment. Now tell me of the third woman."

"Bah! She could have asked any masc. Her cow is dry, and won't allow itself to be mounted. Without a calf, it will not give milk, yet it still eats grain, and requires care and shelter. I suggested she learn to enjoy beef, which is well-regarded in some countries."

Pierrette smiled. "I suspect she didn't take that well."

"She promised me a tithe of all the cheeses she'd make. That inspired me to propose a . . . a medicinal solution. The poor cow will have such an itch from those powdered bugs! She'll break fences to reach the bull. And the mushrooms will make a billy goat look good to her."

"You're being silly, Master. A cow can't conceive by a goat."

"Do you know that? Do your reasoned postulates forbid it? It once was not so. How else could there have been a man with the head and feet of a deer?"

Pierrette looked for a wine jar, then decided the mage was drunk on success and high hopes—a change from his previous state that she hoped would continue for a long time.

* * *

In the months that followed, Pierrette gauged the success of her experiment by subtle changes. There was tension in the air. Not bleak fear, as when fishermen reported the shark-fin sails of Saracen war-vessels cruising the coast, nor the dull anxiety of waiting, when the leaves fell from the plane trees but the winter rains did not come.

Folk walked hesitantly, as if rounding a corner might bring them face to face with an apparition out of some primeval past. As if the pool at the foot of the aqueduct might produce not a reflection but a chimera. As if angels might appear in a meeting of dust and sunbeam.

When shepherds returned from the hills, men bought them cups of wine in the hope that they might be the first to hear of a shadow-man with an iron staff, a sprite with clothes of willow leaves, with tinkling bells shaped like tiny lilies that grew in moist places.

Anselm's rebirth into the awareness of the gentes contributed to the zest and apprehension. Sometimes Pierrette was not alone on the path—and where she had hitherto been forced to clamber over rocks, she walked past cairns heaped by passersby. Where she had once teetered on the narrow causeway, she strode on a new, arched span.

People eyed her differently, too, for though Anselm bade supplicants keep silent about what they saw within his walls, people spoke in other ways than words. They had seen the boy Piers there. When one person raised an eyebrow as she walked past, another knew what that signified, without having to speak of it.

It would have been a good time to reveal that she was a girl; everyone was already whispering about her relationship with the sorcerer. Suddenly "becoming" a girl could not have increased the intensity of their surreptitious stares.

Yet she had not spoken with P'er Otho again, nor raised the topic with Gilles. Her single concession was her hair: she had not cut it since her resolution, on the way home from Massalia. Now, it was longer than the other boys'. It was as black as crow's feathers. She often fondled luxuriant handsful, tugging as if that would make it grow faster.

Alone in the house, she brushed her hair. It became soft and glossy, and did not clump as boys' hair did. Perhaps if she said nothing, but continued to allow it to grow, Granna would remark it. Anything Granna found out was soon common knowledge; she would be saved the trouble of explaining, and could just arrive in the marketplace one day wearing a skirt.

Meanwhile, until her telltale hair forced her revelation, she would continue as she was. . . .

* * *

"Now Master," Pierrette said, one morning in the spring of her fifteenth year, "explain how the fallen wall of your keep was restored."

The mage—who appeared younger than Gilles, though his hair was still white—looked momentarily troubled. "I don't know," he said. "At first, I created an illusion, when you brought those first three women. Now . . ." He rapped the solid stone with his knuckles. "It appears genuine."

Pierrette did not question him further, but was not easy about the keep's restoration. A few days earlier, when fish proved elusive, she prevailed upon Gilles to head west of his usual fishing grounds, where she could see the steep, overhanging side of the Eagle's Beak.

Pressing Gilles to stray even that far from his "cautious" sea-routes had been easier than expected. Ordinarily, "west" was not even in Gilles's lexicon, and he never strayed farther than an invisible line drawn between the Eagle's Beak and the green island beyond it.

That short venture westward was a first, tentative step away from Gilles's despised "caution." He did not know how many such steps might be required, or if there was enough time in his waning years for him to take them, but he was determined to try—to be the kind of man who would not have abandoned his wife to Citharista's wolves, or his daughter to a castellan's lust.

The silhouette of the scarp was as the fisherman had described it before, and the west wall—perhaps even the west half—of the old fortress was indeed gone. Anselm's recuperating magic had progressed far enough that the keep appeared whole—but only from within.

There was clearly room for improvement. Though she realized what she saw from outside was false—as such things went—she had to restrain herself from urging Gilles to let her ashore so she could rush to the heights and satisfy herself that the desolate ruin was not the entire reality—and that her mentor still lived.

They had, however, sailed too far not to make an attempt with the net and—as it turned out—they pulled in a good catch, which Gilles sold at the wharf, saving a meaty redfish for himself and Pierrette. She prepared it with crushed rosemary and first-pressed oil and sprinkled it lightly with red-brown sea salt.

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