“‘Well, she carries the other marks she spoke of,’ said Mother Agnes. ‘The burns on her cheeks you can see for yourself. I will vouch for the rest.’ She draped the cloak again over the girl’s shoulders almost tenderly, then turned to glare at me. ‘An incubus—not a human—you are sure?’
“‘I am sure,’ I said, though I was not sure at all. Ellyne had been headstrong about certain things, though how a young man might have trysted with her with Mother Agnes her abbess, I could not imagine. ‘But in her condition she cannot remain in the convent. Leave her here in your parlor, and I will go at once and speak to the king.’”
Blaise’s last word faded and he closed his eyes. The abbot leaned over and, dipping his finger into the oil, made the sign of the cross on Blaise’s forehead. “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus sancti, exstinguatur in te omnis virtus diaboli per . . .”
Opening his eyes, Blaise cried out, “I am not done. I swear to you I will not die before I have told it all.”
“Then be done with it,” said the abbot. He said it quickly but gently.
“Speaking to the king was easy. Speaking to his shrewish wife was not. She screamed and blamed me for letting the girl go into the convent, and her husband for permitting Ellyne to stay. She ranted against men and devils indiscriminately. But when I suggested it would be best for Ellyne to return to the palace, the queen refused, declaring her dead.
“And so it was that I fostered her to a couple in Carmarthen who were known to me as a closemouthed, devoted, and childless pair. They were of yeoman stock, but as Ellyne had spent the last ten years of her life on the bread, cheese, and prayers of a convent, she would not find their simple farm life a burden. And the farm ran on its own canonical hours: cock’s crow, feed time, milking.
“So for the last months of her strange pregnancy, she was—if not exactly happy—at least content. Whether she still dreamed of the devil clothed in sunlight, she did not say. She worked alongside the couple and they loved her as their own.”
Blaise straggled to sit upright in bed.
“Do not fuss,” the abbot said. “Geoffrey and I will help you.” He signaled to the infirmarer, who stood, quickly blotting the smudges on his hands along the edges of his robe. Together they helped settle Blaise into a more comfortable position.
“I am fine now,” he said. Then, when Geoffrey was once more standing at the desk, Blaise began again. “In the ninth month, for the first time, Ellyne became afraid.
“‘Father,’ she questioned me day after day, ‘will the child be human? Will it have a heart? Will it bear a soul?’
“And to keep her from sorrow before time, I answered as deviously as I could without actually telling a lie. ‘What else should it be but human?’ I would say. ‘You are God’s own; should not your child be the same?’ But the truth was that I did not know. What I read was not reassuring. The child might be a demon or a barbary ape or anything in between.
“Then on the night before All Hallow’s, unpropitious eve, Ellyne’s labor began. The water flooded down her legs and the child’s passage rippled across her belly. The farmer came to my door and said simply, ‘It is her time.’
“I took my stole, the oil, a Testament, candles, a crucifix, and an extra rosary. I vowed I would be prepared for any eventuality.
“She was well into labor when I arrived. The farmwife was firm with her but gentle as well, having survived the birth of every calf and kitten on the place. She allowed Ellyne to yell but not to scream, to call out but not to cry. She kept her busy panting like a beast so that the pains of the birth would pass by. It seemed to work, and I learned that there was a rhythm to this, God’s greatest mystery: pain, not-pain, over and over and over again.
“Before long the farmwife said, ‘Father Blaise, the child, whatever it be, comes.’ She pointed—and I looked.
“From between Ellyne’s legs, as if climbing out of a blood-filled cave, crawled a child, part human and part imp. It had the most beautiful face, like an ivory carving of an angel, and eyes the blue of Our Lady’s robe. The body was perfectly formed. Up over one shoulder lay a strange cord, the tip nestling into the little hollow at its neck. At first I thought the cord was the umbilicus, but when the farmwife went to touch it, the cord uncoiled from the child’s neck and slashed at her hand. Then I knew it was a tail.
“The farmwife screamed. The farmer also. I grabbed the babe firmly with my left hand and, dipping my right finger into the holy oil, made the sign of the cross on its forehead, on its belly, on its genitals, and on its feet. Then I turned it over and pinned it with my left forearm, and with my right hand anointed the tail where it joined the buttocks.
“The imp screamed as if in terrible pain and its tail burst into flames, turning in an instant to ash. All that was left was a scar at the top of the buttocks, above the crack.
“I lifted up my left arm and the child rolled over, reaching up with its hands. It was then I saw that it had claws instead of fingers, and it scratched me on the top of both my hands, from the mid finger straight down to the line of the wrist. I shouted God’s name and almost dropped the holy oil, but miraculously held on. And though I was now bleeding profusely from the wounds, I managed somehow to capture both those sharp claws in my left hand and with my right anoint the imp’s hands. The child screamed again and, as I watched, the imp aspect disappeared completely, the claws fell off to reveal two perfectly formed hands, and the child was suddenly and wholly human.”
Blaise had become so agitated during this recitation that the bed itself began to shake. Geoffrey had to leave off writing and come over to help the abbot calm him. They soothed his head and the abbot whispered, “Where is the sin in all this, Blaise?”
The monk’s eyes blinked and with an effort Blaise calmed himself. “The sin?” His voice cracked. Tears began to course down his cheeks. “The sin was not in baptizing the babe. That was godly work. But what came after—was it a sin or not? I do not know, for the child spoke to me. Spoke.”
“A newborn cannot speak,” said Geoffrey.
“Jesu! Do you think I do not know that? But this one did. He said, ‘Holy, holy, holy,’ and the words shot from his mouth in gouts of flame. ‘You shall write this down, my uncle,’ he said, ‘Write down that my mother, your half sister, was sinless. That her son shall save a small part of the world. That I shall be prophet and mage, lawgiver and lawbreaker, king of the unseen worlds and counselor to those seen. I shall die and I shall live, in the past and in the future also. Many of those who shall read what you write or who shall hear it read will be the better for it and will be on their guard against sin.’ And then the flames died down and the babe put its finger in its mouth to suck on it like any newborn and did not speak again. But the sin of it is that I did not write it down, nor even speak of it save to you now in this last hour, for I thought it the Devil tempting me.”
Abbot Walter was silent for a moment. It was so much easier, he thought, for a man to believe in the Devil than in God. Then he reached over and smoothed the covers across Brother Blaise’s chest. “Did the farmer or his wife hear the child speak?”
“No,” whispered Blaise hoarsely, “for when the tail struck the woman’s hand, they both bolted from the room in fear.”
“And Ellyne?”
“She was near to death from blood loss and heard nothing.” Blaise closed his eyes.
Abbot Walter cleared his throat. “You have done only what you believed right, Blaise. I shall think more on this. But as for you, you may let go of your earthly life knowing that you shall have absolution, that you have done nothing sinful to keep you from God’s Heaven.” He anointed the paper-thin eyelids. “Per sitam sanctan Unctionem, et suam piissimam misericordiam, indulgeat tibi Dominus quid quid per visum deliquisti. Amen.”
“Amen,” echoed Geoffrey.
The abbot added the signs over the nose and mouth, and Blaise murmured in Latin along with him. Then, as the abbot dipped his fingers once more into the jar of oil, Geoffrey took Blaise’s hand
s in his and lay them with great gentleness side by side on top of the covers, and gasped.
“Look, Father.”
Abbot Walter followed Geoffrey’s pointing finger. On the back of each of Blaise’s hands was a single, long, ridged scar starting at the middle finger and running down to the wrist. The abbot crossed himself hastily, getting oil on the front of his habit. “Jesu!” he breathed out. Until that moment he had not quite believed Blaise’s story. Over the years he had discovered that old men and dying men sometimes make merry with the truth.
Geoffrey backed away to the safety of his desk and crossed himself twice, just to be sure.
With deliberate slowness, the abbot put his fingers back into the oil and with great care anointed Blaise’s hands along the line of the scars, then slashed across, careful to enunciate every syllable of the prayer. When he reached the end, “. . . quid quid per tactum deliquisiti. Amen,” the oil on Blaise’s skin burst into flames, bright orange with a blue arrow at the heart. As quickly, the flames were gone and a brilliant red wound the shape of a cross opened on each hand. Then, as the abbot and Geoffrey watched, each wound healed to a scab, the scab to a scar, and the scar faded until the skin was clean and whole. With a sigh that seemed a combination of joy and relief, Blaise died.
“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus sancti . . .” intoned the abbot. He removed the covers from the corpse and completed the anointing. He felt better than he had all winter, than he had in years, filled with a kind of spiritual buoyancy, like a child’s kite that had been suddenly set free into the wind. If there was a Devil, there was also a God. Blaise had died to show him that. He finished the prayers for absolution, but they were only for the form of it. He knew in his inmost heart that the absolution had taken place already and that Blaise’s sinless spirit was fast winging its way to Heaven. Now it was time to forgive himself his own sins. He turned to Geoffrey, who was standing at the desk.
“Geoffrey, my dear son, you shall write this down in your own way. Then we will all be the better for it. The babe, imp or angel, magician or king, was right about that. Only, perhaps. you should not say just when all this happened, for the sake of the Princess Ellyne. Set it in the past, at such a time when miracles happened with surprising regularity. It is much easier to accept a miracle that has been approved by time. But you and I shall know when it took place. You and I—and God—will remember.”
Surprised, Geoffrey nodded. He wondered what it was that had so changed the abbot, for he was actually smiling. And it was said at Osney that Abbot Walter never smiled. That such a thing had happened would be miracle enough for the brothers in the monastery. The other miracle, the one he would write about, that one was for the rest of the world.
Wonder Land
Allison ran down the forest path between her house and Marcie’s, ready to tell her the very latest about Billy Jamieson. As she passed by the little clearing, there was a very large yellow butterfly with black spots like microchips on its wings, flying toward her: It had a scrunched-up, old man’s brown face, with wrinkles, sort of pruney, she thought. A halo of some kind, cloudy or like smoke, ringed its brown head. Allison ducked, and ran on.
At the path’s turning a rabbit hopped in front of her, in a terrible hurry. It was black and white, the black part where pants would be, if rabbits wore pants. Allison thought that kind of funny. Maybe she’d tell Marcie. After she told her where Billy Jamieson had tried to put his hand this time.
When she went by the reedy pond, there was a red fox. Just sitting. Only not sitting exactly. It was sort of lying on its back showing its private parts. Which were, Allison had to admit, sort of public parts now, the way it was acting. She had a dog, though, and she knew all about that kind of thing, only seeing it right out in the open air like, that seemed—well—awfully unnatural. The fox grinned as she passed, displaying very white teeth, all terribly close together. Allison turned her head and kept running. Something else to tell Marcie.
By the double tree—the oak that had a second tree growing right out of its center, its crotch, her father always said, though her mother usually made a funny face when he said that and gestured at Allison as if she’d never heard the word in school—there were two crows. And they were doing it right there, in the fork place, the crotch of the tree. And the crow on top—it must have been the male because that’s how birds did it, she knew from biology class (the kids called it “Birds and Bees, Nuts and Sluts”). And he was squawking away. Allison shook her head because it sounded remarkably as if he were saying “Oooh, baby, ooooh . . .” though of course it couldn’t have been, except she remembered that crows can be taught to talk. Maybe he had been tame once. The two crows didn’t even stop when she got up close, so she actually stood still and watched them for a minute. Maybe longer. She wondered what Marcie would say. Probably “Oh, gross . . .” Maybe not.
When they finished, she took off running again, only more like jogging, thinking about the butterfly and the rabbit and the fox and the crows, and a little, it had to be admitted, about where Billy Jamieson had tried to put his hand. And where she had actually let him. Not the same place of course, but close, only she decided she wouldn’t tell Marcie that. She could hear the woods now; it seemed as if the entire forest was—well—breathing actually, breathing as hard as Billy did in her ear. And she wished she could sometimes tell him what she was thinking about that, or about anything, but when he was close to her, all she could do was control her own breathing, really. She never actually knew what to say to him. Of course some of the forest’s breathing might really be her own breathing, having run so far and so fast. But it was closer now, and in her ear, like Billy’s breath.
She stopped dead still and turned and that was when she saw the wolf. It was leaning against a tree, up on its hind legs. She hadn’t known they could do that and she guessed she should have been scared, only it wasn’t really scary. Only sort of puzzling, even exciting, making her breath, which had been so hard to catch moments before, suddenly seem hot and heavy in her chest.
The wolf stared at her. Its eyes were blue, bluer even than Billy’s. Its nose—muzzle she supposed she should call it but didn’t want to—was covered with the finest, grayest fur, almost like silk. She knew how it would feel under her hand without even knowing how she knew. The wolf licked its mouth—its chops, but that might be insulting so she stopped thinking about it that way—and its tongue was pink and soft looking, like her velveteen dress, only wet. She licked her own mouth in automatic response, then wondered if that might also be insulting or whether it was an acknowledgment, to make them friends now. Or something.
The wolf grinned at her, like the fox, only broader. Then it went down on all fours. And just when she was sure it was going to leap on her, it turned and strolled off into the forest, its hips moving back and forth, back and forth away from her. For a moment—just a moment—she felt something like disappointment. She wondered if she should follow, but the wolf was off the path and into the scraggly underbrush and she had on her good Chinese shoes.
She walked the rest of the way to Marcie’s slowly, suddenly and stubbornly determined not to tell her anything at all. There weren’t any more strange animals, but she had a feeling she might run into Billy Jamieson on the way home. If she did, she knew exactly what to say to him. “Why, Billy Jamieson,” she would whisper, trying it aloud, “what big hands you have.”
Somewhere in the forest, the leaves tittered.
Evian Steel
And as they rode, Arthur said, “I have no sword.”
“No force,” said Merlin, “hereby is a sword that shall be yours, an I may.”
So they rode till they came to a lake, the which was a fair water and broad, and in the midst of the lake Arthur was ware of an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in that hand.
“Lo!” said Merlin, “yonder is that sword that I spake of.”
With that they saw a damosel going upon the lake.
“What damosel is th
at?” said Arthur.
“That is the Lady of the Lake,” said Merlin, “and within that lake is a rock, and therein is as fair a place as any on earth, and richly beseen; and this damosel will come to you anon, and then speak ye fair to her that she will give you that sword.”
—Le Morte D’ Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory
Ynis Evelonia, the Isle of Women, lies within the marshy tidal river Tamor that is itself but a ribbon stretched between the Mendip and the Quantock hills. The isle is scarcely remarked from the shore. It is as if Manannan MacLir himself had shaken his cloak between.
On most days there is an unsettling mist obscuring the irregular coast of the isle; and only in the full sun, when the light just rising illuminates a channel, can any passage across the glass-colored waters be seen. And so it is that women alone, who have been schooled in the hidden causeways across the fen, mother to daughter down through the years, can traverse the river in coracles that slip easily through the brackish flood.
By ones and twos they come and go in their light skin boats to commerce with the Daughters of Eve who stay in holy sistership on the isle, living out their chaste lives and making with their magicks the finest blades mankind has ever known.
The isle is dotted with trees, not the great Druidic oaks that line the roadways into Godney and Meare and tower over the mazed pathways up to the high tor, but small womanish trees: alder and apple, willow and ash, leafy havens for the migratory birds. And the little isle fair rings with birdsong and the clanging of hammer on anvil and steel.
But men who come to buy swords at Ynis Evelonia are never allowed farther inland than the wattle guesthouse with its oratory of wicker wands winded and twisted together under a rush roof. Only one man has ever slept there and is—in fact—sleeping there still. But that is the end of this story—which shall not be told—and the beginning of yet another.