save the nation.
“You have to go to travel accounts for descriptions of the shrine, and there isn’t very much there, and nobody has ever bothered to compile it.”
“I’ll compile it,” I said.
“If you have a century to stay here, you might,” said he, “but you ought to go up to the glen and see how little remains of all that. A castle, a pagan circle of stones, the foundations of the town, now totally overgrown, and then those terrible ruins of the Cathedral.”
“But what did happen to it? What did you mean its Catholicism was its ruin?”
“Those Highland Catholics would yield to no one,” he said. “Not to Henry the Eighth when he tried to convert them to his new church in the name of Anne Boleyn, and not to the great reformer John Knox, either. But it was John Knox-or his followers-who destroyed them.”
I closed my eyes; I was seeing the Cathedral. I was seeing the flames, and the stained glass exploding in ail directions. I opened my eyes with a shudder.
“You’re a strange man,” he said. “You’ve got the Irish blood, don’t you?”
I nodded. Told him my father’s name. He was flabbergasted. Of course he remembered Tyrone McNamara, the great singer. But he didn’t think anyone else did. “And you are his son?”
“Aye,” I said. “But go on. How did the followers of Knox destroy Donnelaith? Oh, and the stained glass. There was stained glass, wasn’t there, where would that have come from?”
“Made right there,” said he, “all through the twelve hundreds and thirteen hundreds by the Franciscan monks from Italy.”
“Franciscans from Italy. You mean the Order of St. Francis of Assisi was there.”
“Most definitely so. The Order of St. Francis was popular right up to the time of Anne Boleyn,” he said. “The Observant Friars were the refuge of Queen Catherine, when Henry divorced her, of course. But I don’t think Observant Friars built or maintained the Cathedral at Donnelaith; it was far too elaborate, too rich, too full of ritual for simple Franciscans. No, it was probably the Conventuals; they were the Franciscans who kept the property, I believe. Whatever the case, when King Henry broke with the pope, and went to looting the monasteries all around, the Clan of Donnelaith drove out his soldiers without a moment’s hesitation. Terrible, terrible bloody battles in the glen. And even the bravest British soldiers were loath to go up there.”
“The name of the saint.”
“I don’t know. I told you. Probably some meaningless Gaelic collection of syllables and when we break it down we’ll find it’s descriptive like Veronica or Christopher.”
I sighed. “And John Knox.”
“Well, Henry died, as you know, and his Catholic daughter, Mary, took the throne, and another bloodbath ensued and this time it was Protestants who were burnt or hanged or whatever. But next, we had Elizabeth the First! The Great Queen, and once again Great Britain was Protestant.
“The Highlands were prepared to ignore the whole thing, but then came John Knox, the great reformer, and preached his famous sermon against the idolatry of the papists, at Perth in 1559, and it was war in the glen as the Presbyterians descended upon the Cathedral. Burnt it, smashed the glass to pieces, laid ruin the Cathedral school, burnt the books, all of it gone. Horrible horrible story. Of course they claimed the people were witches in the glen, that they worshiped a devil who looked like a man; that they had it all mixed up with the saints; but it was Protestant against Catholic finally.
“The town never recovered. It hung on till the late sixteen hundreds, when the last of the clan was killed in a fire in the castle. Then there was no more Donnelaith. Just nothing.”
“And no more saint.”
“Oh, the saint was gone in 1559, whoever he was, God bless him. His cult disappeared with the Cathedral. You have only a little Presbyterian town after that, with the ‘abominable’ pagan circle of stones outside it.”
“What do we know about the pagan legends in particular?” I asked.
“Only that there are those who still believe them. Now and then, someone will come from as far away as Italy. They will ask about the stones. They seek the road to Donnelaith. They even ask about the Cathedral. Yes, I’m telling you the truth; they’ll come asking for the Glen of Donnelaith and they’ll journey up there to look about in search of something. And then you are here, asking the very same questions, really, in your own way. The last person was a scholar from Amsterdam.”
“Amsterdam.”
“Yes, there is an order of scholars there. Indeed, they have a Motherhouse in London also. They are organized like religious but they have no beliefs. Over my lifetime they have come some six times to explore the glen. They have a very strange name. Luckier than the saint, I suppose. Their name is unforgettable.”
“What is it?” asked I.
“Talamasca,” he said. “They are really very well-educated men, with a great respect for books. Here, see this little Book of the Hours? It’s a gem! They gave it to me. They always bring me something. See this? This is one of the first King James Bibles ever printed. They brought that last time they visited. They go camp in that glen, really, they do. They stay for weeks and then they go away, invariably disappointed.”
I was overcome with excitement. All I could think of for a moment was Marie Claudette’s strange tale to me when I was only three of how a scholar from Amsterdam had come to Scotland and rescued poor Deborah, daughter of Suzanne. For a moment all manner of images came back to me, from the daemon’s memories, and I almost lost consciousness. But time was too precious to indulge in any trances now. I had this kindly little doctor of history and had to get everything I could from him.
“Witchcraft,” I said. “Witchcraft up there. The burnings in the seventeenth century. What do you know of them?”
“Oh, ghastly tale. Suzanne, the Milkmaid of Donnelaith. On that I happen to have an invaluable piece of material, one of the original pamphlets circulated in those days by the witch judges.”
He went to his press and took out of it a small, crumbling quarto of pages. I could see a coarse engraving of a woman surrounded by flames that resembled more huge leaves or tongues of fire. And in thick English letters was written:
“I will buy this from you,” I said.
“Not on your life,” says he. “But I’ll have it copied in detail for you.”
“Good enough.” I took out my wallet and laid down a wad of American dollars.
“That will do, that will do. Don’t get carried away! What a passionate fellow you are. Must be the Irish blood. The French are by nature so much more reticent. It’s my granddaughter who does the copying and it won’t take her that long. She’ll give you a lovely transcript in facsimile form on parchment.”
“Good, now tell me what it says.”
“Oh, same old foolishness. These pamphlets were circulated all over Europe. This one was printed in Edinburgh in 1670. Tells how Suzanne, the cunning woman, came under the sway of Satan, and gave him her soul, and how she was tried and burnt, but her daughter the merry-begot was spared, for the child had been conceived on the first of May, and was sacred to God, and no one dared touch her.
“The daughter was at last entrusted to the care of a Calvinist minister who took her to Switzerland, I believe, for the salvation of her soul. Name Petyr van Abel.”
“Petyr van Abel, you are certain of that name? It says it there?” I could scarcely contain myself. This was the only written word I had ever beheld to confirm the tale which Marie Claudette had told me. I did not dare say this was my ancestor as well. Having Tyrone McNamara seemed gauche enough. I merely fell silent, overwhelmed, and even contemplated stealing the pamphlet.
“Yes, indeed, Petyr van Abel, right here,” said he. “All written by a minister here in Edinburgh and printed here too and sold for quite a profit. These things were popular, you know, just like the magazines of today. Imagine people sitting around the fire and looking at this horrid picture of the poor girl burning.
“You know they were burning witches, right here in Edinburgh-at the Witches’ Well, on the Esplanade, right up till the seventeen hundreds.”
I made some murmur of total sympathy. But I was too stunned by this little confirmation to think clearly.
