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Chapter 6 - The Gaunt Man

Marie flowered at eleven, not uncommon in warm Provence. Even light-haired northerners bloomed early, often at the end of a mild winter.
For almost the first time since their mother's disappearance—Pierrette would not say her death—Marie laughed. She laughed often, until the sound no longer startled Gilles, Pierrette, or the women in the marketplace. Though no breasts stretched the fabric of her chemise, her walk became less the motion of a young goat, all knees and elbows, more the sway of a tall pine in an offshore breeze, the dip of sails on a ship far out on great ocean swells.
Marie, returning from the market, regaled her sister with talk of babies, and of boys who stopped to ask the price of a jar of olives or a bottle of oil. The family purse was now fat with coins—Frankish pennies, worn silver obols from which the faces of forgotten emperors were almost effaced. "Someday I will exchange them all for a shiny silver denarius, and later my denarii for a gold solidus from Byzantium. . . ." Marie's enthusiasm grew with her imaginary fortune, and after years of silence, neither Gilles nor Pierrette thought to quiet her.
Bertrand, the smith's son, brought her wildflowers. Neither parent nor sister saw fit to reflect aloud that Bertrand was fat (though strong) or that he was not very smart (though a hard worker). Marie's happiness was a fragile bubble that could be punctured by a sharp word or a returning memory.
For Pierrette, Marie's rosy projections of Bertrand, domestic and carnal bliss, and children at her breast, were like thorns pricking her own tiny bubbles. No boys noticed her. How long could Gilles's deception continue? With the grove so happy, was it necessary? Yet Gilles refused to discuss it, and she remained Piers in the eyes of all. Others knew of the charade, but few villagers associated with our Burgundian overlord, so the secret was safe from the only person who mattered.
Pierrette's loneliness, her motherless state, and her self-enforced isolation drove her to long walks eastward up the valley past the ruins of the Roman fountain . . .
Otho, Bishop of Nemausus,
The Sorceress's Tale 

* * *

Again, Pierrette lay amid the folds of her mother's leafy skirt—for what was "ma" but "mother," her mother Elen? She drifted into sleep. . . .

"Anselm!" murmured the soft, motherly voice, the rustle of beech and maple leaves. "Anselm! Within his magical walls, where the sun always stands at high noon, you will find what you seek."

"Guihen warned me away." Pierrette's voice was like the dry passage of a preening magpie's beak along its feathers.

"Guihen!" Beech twigs rattled their annoyance. "What does Guihen know? You cannot remain a child. You must grow, and feel pain. Did Guihen explain that?"

Guihen had not. Guihen had given her a choice between two futures so alike as to make no difference at all—between being childless, husbandless, and alone in the village, or equally childless and alone somewhere else. The spangle of sunlight descending through high branches became Marie's smile as she contemplated Bertrand, as she planned the fine two-room stone house he would build for her. Pierrette's hands formed tight, jealous fists.

"I will go to the cape," she murmured. "I will learn magic from the mage. I'll wear a long skirt, and a ribbon in my hair."

Pierrette arose from slumber, brushing dry leaves from her sleeves. "I'll do as you say, Mother." The gray trunk seemed thicker than before; the silvery branches reached outward in silent benediction.

* * *

Gilles was angry. "In a month, the bishop will arrive to bless the harvest. Must an old man do everything, while you frolic afield?" Gilles treated Pierrette as if she were indeed Piers, a strong boy, and berated her when she failed to measure up.

There was another facet to Gilles's anger. Pierrette was free to visit the pool Ma, yet Gilles was not—or so he told himself, citing work always uncompleted. There was an element of self-inflicted punishment to Gilles's denial: when he slept in the moss and leaves, in the shade of the great, sheltering trees, the pains of age, labor, and guilt were wiped away. Yet Gilles had used his wife's fairy-magic for his own ends, to her destruction, and now used his daughter similarly, for the rich harvest of his grove. He didn't deserve solace, so he denied himself.

For a week, Pierrette also denied herself, carrying baskets of fat olives from the grove to the great press, shared by several growers. The press bed was a basalt slab with a groove around its edge for oil. Atop it rested a loose-staved cask with a lid that fit loosely inside, forced downward by a weighted beam that magnified the force of the rock's weight.

The oil that dribbled into the waiting pots was thick and rich. Before the harvest was pressed, they would run out of vessels to contain it.

Gilles would never allow Pierrette to wander off until the last of the crop was pressed, and they would be lucky to be done before the festival, her father's imposed deadline. There was no time to hike to the cape during daylight hours. She sighed, and made up her mind to leave as soon as her father and sister were asleep. If the mage would take her in, her father's threat would be moot. If not, she would lose only a night's sleep.

The moon was half full. Pierrette's steps were light. She imagined herself dressed in white Egyptian cotton, a red leather belt, and shoes to match. She pictured a room with ten lamps, a long shelf of scrolls and books.

Stumbling over a fallen branch, her fantasy shattered. She had come almost all the way up the crevice between the northernmost scarps. Ahead, something moved. She became as still as a startled hare. No concealing brush or trees grew on the rough rock. Nothing could hide there.

No moving shadow occluded the stars, yet the prickly sensation didn't abate. Two stars seemed to swell as she focused on them, to blur and become fat and green-hued, like staring, unblinking eyes. Across the starry cleft, high on her left, were two others.

Those star-specks, exaggerated by her narrow perspective into great, glowing eyes, turned her to stone. Ahead was a dark presence unseen. Behind, she heard her mother's voice, soft as rustling leaves. "Anselm will give you what you need. . . ."

"Go back!" said the hollow wind blowing over the cleft. "Go back, or wander forever."

". . . Only where the sun always stands at high noon. . . ." promised the voice from behind.

Unable to push forward or to flee, Pierrette's helpless terror changed to the anger of a cornered beast—and with rage came clarity of thought. Behind, her mother's voice urged her forward. Ahead . . . Guihen! The wood-sprite played tricks to frighten her away. With forced bravado she stood with hands on skinny hips. "You can't make me go, Mother." The sound echoed hollowly from the rocks.

"And you!" she spat, facing about, "you can't scare me away, either. Both of you stop it. I'll do exactly as I please."

The sense of presence behind evaporated, as if her mother's spirit had withdrawn. She thrust herself upward. Another step, then another . . . Her head and shoulders were above the enclosing cleft. Limned against the moonlit sea were the black walls of the mage's keep—but between her and that destination was a darker mass, not part of the rock. "Guihen, let me pass."

The blackness shifted, stretched upward in the shape of a man. A man . . . but not Guihen. Pierrette shrank back, her heart thumping. He was dark, and no feathery willow leaves glimmered on his rough clothing. He towered over her. A crudely woven kilt ended short of knees gnarled and twisted as old olive trunks, calves thick with coarse black hair, and knotty feet with long, yellow toenails.

This was not Guihen. She forced her eyes upward, fearing what she would see. . . . P'er Otho's Satan, with his bronze helmet and deer's horns, passed before her eyes, wavered, and faded. It was an ugly face—but not a demon's. She met his eyes—blue like her own, beneath bushy eyebrows. His nose twisted like an old root, and his cheekbones flared. Deep crevices delimited the corners of his narrow-lipped mouth, then lost themselves in a tangled black beard.

A frightening face, but not Satan's, for there was no evil in it, only pain long denied, and unrelieved fatigue. "Go back, child," the man said. "Seek happiness, for there is no joy in wisdom."

No joy in wisdom? Was there joy in foolishness and ignorance? Then she envisioned Marie and her sweetheart Bertrand, gazing into each other's eyes like placid sheep. "I don't care about happiness," she said. "I wish to learn mathematics, and magical words in strange tongues, and how to mix charcoal, brimstone flowers, and bitter salt without them going poof! in my face."

The gaunt man nodded. "Anselm's magics do that, sometimes. Spells don't work the way they used to. The nature of magic has become twisted—that's why he's trapped in that stone-heap, and can't visit your village any more." He sighed. "But yes, Anselm can teach you," he admitted reluctantly, "if that's what you really want."

"It is," she stated—but his words were hardly reassuring. "Will I lose my soul, as P'er Otho says?"

The gaunt one grinned, displaying large, yellow teeth with gaps between. "That frightens you? Good. Fearlessness and foolishness are one. Listen to your fear. Go home. I'm not going to let you pass." He spread his arms, and splayed his fingers, which were long and gnarly, with huge knuckles, covered with a mat of black hair.

Pierrette's eyes darted. On the left, she saw something massive that humped up as big as a cow. Great yellow-green eyes glowed unnaturally. On the right eyes also glowed, a sickly hue, a dull phosphorescence. There was no way she could get past the man and those . . . things . . . too.

"I'll come back," she said. "I'll come back in daytime, when you're not here."

"What makes you so sure I'm a creature of the night?" he rejoined. "When you have answered your own questions—about your soul, and all that—then I won't stop you."

"I will," she said. "Good-bye." He didn't answer. It was as if once she turned from him, he just faded away.

* * *

Pierrette did think about it. She thought about P'er Otho's Christian heaven, which appealed to people whose lives were pointless repetition and grueling work. There should be more to eternity than refuge from the unendurable. Did she really care if she was denied entrance to a tedious Heaven?

Yet if the mage's spells were no more successful than her sooty experiments, what was the use? Can't I just go on as I have? she asked herself. That, she decided, was what she would do, at least for now.

 

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