Lasher

“But what is the Taltos, Father!” I demanded. “Is this an old and common monster, this Taltos? Whence comes this thing?”

He bowed his head, and gestured that I should listen:

“Against the Romans we protected this valley, when we were warriors of old and gathered the big stones! We protected it against the Danes, the Norsemen and the English as well.”

“Aye,” cried my sister, “and once we protected it from the Taltos when they fled their island and sought to hide from the armies of the Romans in this glen!”

My father turned his back on her and took me by the shoulders. He shut her out.

“Now we protect Donnelaith from our own Scots people,” he said, “and in the name of our Catholic Queen, our sovereign, of our faith. Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, is our only hope. You must put aside these tales of magic and witchcraft. There is a purpose to what you are and why you have come. You will put Mary, Queen of Scots, on the throne of England! You will destroy John Knox and all his ilk. Scotland will never be under the boot of the Puritans or the English again!”

“He has no answer for your question, Brother,” cried Emaleth.

“Sister,” I said quietly. “What would you have me do?”

“Leave the valley,” she said, “as you came. Flee for your life and for our sakes before the witches know you are here, before the little people learn! Flee so that they do not bring the Protestants down upon us! You, Brother, are the living proof of their claim. You are the witch’s child, deformed, monstrous! If you stir up the old rites, the Protestants will have us with the blood on our hands. You can fool the eyes of the humans around you. But you cannot prevail in a battle for God. You are doomed.”

“Why not!” I cried. “Why not prevail!”

“These are lies,” said my father. “The oldest lies in this part of the world. St. Ashlar prevailed. St. Ashlar was a Taltos, and for God he built the Cathedral! At the very spot where his wife, the pagan Queen, was burnt for the old faith, a blessed spring bubbled up from the ground with which he baptized all those who lived between the loch and the pass. St. Ashlar slew the other Taltos! He slew them all so that man made in the image of Christ would rule the earth. Christ’s church is built on the Taltos! If that is witchery, then Christ’s church is witchery. They are one and the same.”

“Aye, he slew them,” cried Emaleth. “In the name of one God instead of another! He led the massacre of his own, to save himself from it. He joined in the fear and hatred and the disgust. He slew his clan to save himself! Even his wife he sacrificed. This is your great saint. A monster who deceived those around him so that he might lead and glut himself with glory and not die with his own breed.”

“For the love of God, child,” said my father to me. “This is our miracle now. It comes once in so many hundred years.”

My sister turned to glare at me, even as he pulled her back.

And I saw them together, looking at me, and I saw them as humans, and how alike they were.

“Wait,” I said softly, so softly that it might as well have been a wild cry. “I see clearly,” I said. “All of us are born with a chance before God. The word Taltos means nothing in itself. I am flesh and blood. I am baptized. I have received Holy Orders. I have a soul. Physical monstrosity, that does not keep me out of heaven. It is what I do! We are not predestined as the Lutherans and the Calvinists would have us believe.”

“No one here argues with this, Brother,” said Emaleth.

“Then let me lead the people, Emaleth,” I said. “Let me prove by good works that I do indeed have the grace of God in me. I am not an evil thing because I will not be an evil thing. When I have done wrong to others it was in error! If I was born as you say, and I know now it is true, then perhaps there was a purpose, that the power of my wretched mother should be broken, and that I should overturn my sister, and put Mary Stuart on the throne.”

“Born knowing. You are born the dupe of those who hold you prisoner. That is what the Taltos has always been. ‘Find the Taltos, make the Taltos,’?” she cried mockingly. “?‘Breed it for the fire of the gods! that the rain shall fall and the crops grow!’?”

“That is old now and does not matter,” said my father. “Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Jack of the Green. He is our God, and the Taltos is not our sacrifice but our saint. The Blessed Mother is our Holda. When the drunken men of the village don the skins and horns of animals, it is to walk in the Procession to the manger, not to cavort as of old.

“We are one with old spirits and the One True God. We are at peace with all of nature, because we have made the Taltos into St. Ashlar! And in this valley we have known safety and prosperity for a thousand years. Think on it, Daughter, a thousand years! The little people fear us! They do not trouble us. We leave out the milk at night in offering, and they dare not take more than what we leave.”

“It’s coming to an end,” she said. “Get out, Ashlar, lest you give the Protestants exactly what they need. The witches of this valley will know you. They will know your scent. Go while there is time and live out your life in Italy where no one knows what you are.”

“I have a soul within me, Sister,” I said. I raised my voice as much as I dared. “Sister, trust in me. I can rally the people. I can at least keep us safe.”

She shook her head. She turned her back.

“Can you do it?” cried my father to her, accusing her. “Can you, with your magic spells and evil books and sickening incantations? Can you make anything happen in the world at large! Our world is about to perish. What can you do? Ashlar, listen to me, we are a small valley, a small glen, only one tiny part of the north country. But we have endured and we would live on. And that is all the world is, finally, small valleys, groups of people who pray and work and love together as we do. Save us, Son. I implore you. Call upon the God you believe in to help you. And what you were-and what your father and mother did-these things do not matter one whit.”

“No Protestant or Catholic can prove anything against me,” I said softly. “Sister, would you tell them what you know?”

“They will know.”

I walked out of the hall. I was the priest now, not the humble Franciscan but the missionary, and I knew what I had to do.

I went through the castle yard and over the bridge and down the snowy path towards the church. From far around came the people carrying torches, looking at me leerily and then excitedly, and whispering the name “Ashlar,” to which I nodded and gave a great open sign with both hands.

Again I spied one of those tiny twisted creatures, garbed and hooded in black, and running very fast through the field towards me and then away. It seemed the others saw him, and drew together, whispering, but then followed me on down the road.

Out in the fields, I saw men dancing. By the light of torches, and dark against the sky, I saw them with the horns and the skins! They had begun their old pagan Yuletide revelry. I must make the Procession, and take them to the Baby Jesus. There was no doubt.

By the time I reached the gates of the town there was a multitude. I went to the Cathedral and bade them wait. I went into the sacristy, where two elderly priests stood together, looking at me fearfully.

“Give me robes, give me vestments,” said I. “I would bring the valley together. I must at least have my cassock to begin and a white surplice. Do as I say.”

At once they hurried to help me dress. Several young acolytes appeared, and put on their surplices and their gowns.

“Come on, Fathers,” I said to the frightened priests. “See, the boys are braver than you are. What is the hour? We must make the Procession. The Mass must be said at the stroke of twelve! Protestant, Catholic, pagan. I cannot save them all, nor bring them together. But I can bring Christ down upon the altar in the Transubstantiation. And Christ will be born tonight in this valley as He has always been!”

I stepped out of the sacristy and to the crowd, I raised my voice.

“Prepare for the Christmas Procession,” I declared. “Who would be Joseph and who would be our Blessed Mother, and what child have we in this village that I may place in the manger before I step to the Altar of God to say the Mass? Let the Holy Family be flesh and blood tonight, let them be of the valley. And all of you who would take the shape and skins of animals, walk in the Procession to the manger and kneel there as did the ox and the lamb and donkey before the little Christ. Come forward, my faithful ones. It is almost time.”