Pierrette fingered the wedding dress that lay across the bed like the rich coverlet of an emperor. It was not new. Gilles could not make enough silver in a lifetime to buy its like. Soon Marie would wear it, as had Gilles's mother, and Elen. Soon thereafter Bertrand, the smith's son, would remove the yellow silk sash and the gilt clasp set with garnets. Pierrette tried to imagine herself as Marie, her husband's hands lifting the linen dress over her head, but no image came. She shook her head in annoyance.
At twelve, Pierrette's courses had not yet flowed and, if Elen of the beech trees were to be believed, they would not, for a long time. Her breasts were rose-tipped, and cast a slight shadow when the sun was full overhead. Marie promised to fill out the dress more than their mother had. Marie took after Gilles's family, Pierrette after her mother.
Carefully, so she would not tear the old fabric, Pierrette put on the dress. She grimaced when she discovered how long it was, how she had to tug it up and tie the sash so it would not drag. An old bronze fibula sufficed to tighten the fabric across her chest.
The two-room house had no windows, only a door that Pierrette had closed so no one could see. Now she opened it enough so she could look down at herself in the fine clothing. There was no mirror. Ah, how beautiful! The silk sash shined like gold in the sunbeam, and the linen, for all its age, was white as a cloud. Pierrette twirled on bare toes. The skirt billowed, then wrapped fetchingly about her ankles.
She giggledbut her laugh turned to a cry of dismay as the door was flung wide, blinding her. Gilles shut it again, and looped the thong over its peg to secure it.
"Pierrette! Remove the dress immediately. It's for Marie."
"I haven't soiled it, Papa," she protested, hanging her head. She had no mother to teach her womanly things, only Anselm's books, written by men. She could not chatter with girls, or imitate their gestures, for she was Piers, not Pierrette. Even her father accepted the deception as real, and frowned when she pouted like a girl.
"What if someone saw you?"
"The door was mostly closed. Besides, it can't matter much longer."
Gilles could not stay angry. She was like her mother, and he had fond memories of Elen in that very dress, tucked and pinned in the same mannerElen had been no larger than Pierrette, and the dress was too valuable to alter.
"People would know you're a woman, not a boy. And what won't matter long?"
They would know she was a woman? Pierrette's eyes glowed with the unintended compliment. "Papa," she said gently, "you must decide. Girls no older than me have suitors already."
Gilles shook his head. "They are all . . . fuller . . . than you. In a year we'll speak of it, but not now. Take off the dress."
"Father! Look at me."
Gilles turned. The dress hung about Pierrette's waist. How long since she had played bare-chested with the boys? How long since she had become shy and covered herself in his presence?
"You see?" she said, blushing hotly. "How long before everyone knows?"
Gilles sighed. "At least wait until after the wedding," he said. "Bertrand will work with me at harvest time. The castellan will not press me to purchase my grove."
"Promise we'll speak of it before the harvest."
"I promise," her father agreed, not unkindly, but with a sadness Pierrette could not fathom. He stepped outside. It took only moments to slip into her boy's tunic and trousers, but Gilles was nowhere in sight.
He had not wanted his daughter to see. Instead of turning right toward the town, he had taken the path up into the hills. It was not the loss of the grove he contemplated. With Marie wed, he and Pierrette could live by his fishing. The sight of her young breasts had forced him to acknowledge a stronger motive for keeping her a boy and at home; she was so like Elen, and he was so alone.
Ah, wife! Why? Why had Elen continued to practice sorcery once it was sure she would bear him no son? Why did she not call down a demon upon her pursuers? Why did she give him a daughter so much like herself?
He had never asked if Elen loved him. Enough, that she was his. She had not come virgin to his bed, and he had heard the gossip when Otho's father sent him away, but Elen bore his children, and never spoke of what had been.
Gilles walked far. At the spring-fed pool he drank from cupped hand without praying. Elen's Goddess had not heard her pleas. Why would she do more for him, who had planned to cut her trees?
In the marketplace, Marie sold oil from the last pressing. Pierrette hid under Granna's awning, behind her baskets of wool. Marie was talking with the castellan, Jerome. A gold chain trickled like liquid sunlight between his splayed fingers. Marie turned her head away as if shamed. Pierrette strained to hear.
"It's too fine," said Marie. "I can't wear it."
"I'm not giving it to you, girl. Wear it now, then return it to mebefore you seek your husband's bed." He grinned broadly.
"It's not a proper image," she protested. "The priest would not allow it at mass."
"You speak of proper images? This is the face of the horned god your mother worshipped."
Pierrette understood the Burgundian's misunderstanding. The horned god, the old Celts' deity, who ruled for a year at the Mother's side, and then was slain for his presumption, had no place in Elen's rituals, where reigned Ma, the land alone. "They rape with the plow, then think the Goddess is soothed by the rapist's blood. We take only what Ma offers. There is too much blood, and fear of blood, in that warrior religion, and in the Christians' too." Elen's words? Ma's?
The land was an onion with many layers. The oldest folk feared neither a woman's courses nor shedding virgin blood, but warrior peoples saw a curse and a wounding, and thus evil. Only the strongest dared take on a curse of bloodand thus to chieftain and priest fell the initiation of women. The castellan was long removed from such chieftainship, but the custom endured as a right and a pleasure.
The lust in the big foreigner's eyes sickened Pierrette. She strode forth looking as if she had rushed there, out of breath. "Marie! Did you forget you must speak with the priest? Come with me." The Burgundian gave the impetuous boy an annoyed glance.
"I remember now," Marie said. "He wants to counsel me about my vows." She looked around. Only a few jars still had oil. "Help me carry these," she asked briskly.
As Marie and Pierrette straightened up with their arms full, the Burgundian draped the chain and its medallion around Marie's neck. "Don't forget," he admonished her. "This was my grandfather's. I will have it back on your wedding night."
"We'll ask Father Otho about it," said Pierrette
-
The Sorceress's Tale
The low wall held sunlight even after darkness fell, warming my buttocks. I was growing old, to need such comforts. Yet when I saw the young woman and the boy, I forgot my age. I say "boy," for even knowing what Pierrette was, my mind shifted from thinking about her sex, because I would inevitably think about Elen, and would curse the day I took vows. She might have been my own child.
Marie's hair caught the evening sun and turned red-gold, like a halo. She was a womanthe years had flowed swiftly.
The second child held my eye longer. Even had I not known she was not the boy she seemedwith her ebon hair cut short and her rude trousers baggingI would have known she was Elen's child. Her face had nothing of Gilles in it.
Otho, Bishop of Nemausus
-
Marie dipped one knee as she approached the priest. Pierrettethe boy Piersdid not. "Father Otho," Piers said, holding out something that glittered. "The castellan gave this to Marie."
Otho's expression hardened. "You know what this is?" They nodded. "What do you wish of me?"
"Tell him to leave Marie alone!" Piers blurted. "Marie is no fat Burgundian cow for him to mount." She thought of the horned god, and her anger swelled.
Otho sighed. "What he contemplates is a sin, because he is a baptized Christian," he said without heat. "I remonstrate with him about his affections for the old ways, but he's stubborn."
The irony of it: had Marie been less pious, she would already be swelling with Bertrand's child, and the problem of the randy Burgundian would never have arisen.
"It's rape," Pierrette spat angrily.
The priest winced. There was nothing he could do. Did Jerome no longer straddle the fence between his Christian baptism and the call of his tribal gods? Otho realized the irony of what he was about to suggest. "Have Bertrand carry your basket to where wild rosemary grows. If you come back without a certain thing of value . . ."
"Then the horseman will have no pretext," said Piers, delighted with the priest's cleverness. "Yes, Marie. We must find Bertrand immediately."
"But Father," Marie protested. "Isn't that a sin too?"
Otho sighed. "Do you have two jars there, one empty and one full?" Marie nodded. The priest took them and decanted half the contents of the full one into the other.
"There," he said. "This one has all the evil in the world, and this other all the goodness. You see?" His visitors nodded. "There is never more, nor less, but only this much. Now . . ." He poured a few drops of oil from the jar in his left hand into the other. "Now is there more evil in the world? Have I transmuted something good into something bad?" He poured some back, and hefted the two jars. "Ahnow this one is heavier. Is there more good? Tell me childif I poured all the oil into goodness's jar, would all evil be banished?" He shook his head. "Of course they are only jars of oil. Would that the world were so simple."
Marie did not understand, but Pierrette was quick to comprehend, though his example was not quite to the point. "If you and Bertrand go beyond the town, and if you come back . . . as a woman, not a girl . . . then you may have sinned. But if you do not, then the Burgundian will have his way with you, in the horned god's name, and that would be a greater sin." According to the Church, it would. It was only a sin for the baptized, like Marie. The girls' mother had never accepted Christian baptism, nor had Pierrette. Was it different for them?
"You're our priest," spat Marie. "Just tell him to forget his sinful demand!"
"This is Provence. The Holy Father's hand rests lightly here. I can't command a Burgundian lord pledged to the Frankish king." He again sighed. "Go child. When you confess before the wedding mass, your penance will be light."
Pierrette stood. "Come on, Marie. Let's find Bertrand before it's too dark to go out after rosemary."
Bertrand's forge was hot, and he did not want to waste the coals. "Have Piers carry your basket," he suggested. "I have work to do."
Pierrette rolled her eyes toward the charcoal shed. Marie took the suggestion, and withdrew a distance.
"Don't you know anything about women, Bertrand?" Pierrette used her best "man-to-man" voice. Bertrand shrugged. Women's ways were the least of his interests.
This is the man my sister is marrying? It would be a long, long time before she herself married, if she couldn't find anyone better. "You want to marry her, don't you?" Bertrand's eyes lit up. "You'd better do as she asks. Today at market, she spoke with another man. I doubt they talked of forges or charcoal, either, and he bought no oil. He gave her a gift."
"Who was he?" Bertrand demanded, now quite attentive. "Was it Marius? I told him to stay away . . ."
"It wasn't Marius. Why don't you ask Marie, while you gather herbs?" Bertrand grunted, and pushed ashes over the hot coals.
Pierrette sidled over to Marie. "Don't tell him about the castellan right away," she suggested. "Have you decided where you're going?"
Marie's eyes lit with a mischievous light. Fearing that her sister's curiosity would impel her to spy, she would not say where.
"Well, where's your basket?" Bertrand demanded.
"I left it at the gate."
When they turned the corner, Pierrette peered after. Indeed she intended to spy. She would not have to guess where they would goto the soft ground and moist coolness of the pool sacred to Ma. . . . There was a quicker way than the path, if one were agile.
Pierrette hid beside the Roman fountain. Marie and Bertrand would be coming along soon. When she heard their feet on the dry pebbles, she would dash ahead, and hide among the beeches. Now she would see what men and women did, that boys speculated about.
She jerked her hand from the warm stone. A beady-eyed snake tracked her movement, but did not strike. Thick as her wrist, it had the geometric markings of a viper, but Pierrette was not concerned: like the snake that had shared her cellar hideaway, its kind seldom struck creatures it could not swallow whole. "Sorry, friend snake," she whispered. "Just let me share your hiding place." The snake only stared.
She heard footstepsbut they were coming down the path, not up. She could not run toward the Mother's breast without revealing herself, and could not go the other way without running into Marie and her betrothed.
It was her father! If he met Marie and Bertrand on the path, their opportunity would be lost. "Father!" she exclaimed. "I've been looking for you." She tugged on his sleeve, attempting to turn him toward the fountain, out of sight of the path.
"Why this way?" he demanded. "This leads to an old ruin."
"If we go the other way, we'll meet Marie and Bertrand. Come. I'll explain as we walk." Pierrette regretted she would remain uninformed about the rite they would perform by the Mother's breast, but that was the lesser loss. She explained what had transpired in the marketplace, and what Father Otho had said.
"The priest can't command Marie to sin!" Gilles protested. "I must stop this folly!"
"Father! They'll hear."
"They'll hear anywayI'll tell them. That Bertrand! I warned him!"
"No, Father! You don't understand. The castellan . . ."
"I understand all too well. What will Jerome think, if Marie allows herself to be had, just to spite him?"
Gilles reddened with shame when he realized what he had revealed. The castellan had approached him a month before, dangling that fat purse that jingled with silver . . . "Ah, Gilles," he had said, "it must be difficult, with no wife to keep an eye on your daughter."
"Indeed," Gilles agreed.
"Perhaps she and her sweetheart slip away. After all, you're often at sea, or working in the grove . . ."
"Marie has not been with any man!" Gilles protested indignantly.
"Good, then," said the castellan. "See that it remains so." He departed, leaving the purse. It seemed to beg to be picked up. Gilles turned away in horror at what he contemplated. Silver coins jingled, as if the purse held some malevolent life of its own.
He understood what Jerome intended, but perhaps Marie was not virgin, and would say so when the time came. Father Otho would not allow it, anyway. He would mention it to him.
Time passed. Gilles did not speak with the priest. He hid the pouch. Now, confronted by Pierrette, he was forced to look at what he had become: a whoremaster. Had he been of the same blood as the castellan, there would have been some excuse; it was, after all, a matter of ancient religion. But it had little to do with old rites, only modern lust.
Whoremongering. He could not look Pierrette in the eye. His only recourse was age-old: rage. "Bertrand! I see you. I warned you what I would do . . ."
Bertrand dropped the basket and fled, leaving Marie to face her father.
"Whore! Sneaking off with any man! Were you going to have him by the spring? Have you become a priestess like your mother? You, a baptized Christian?"
Marie was as pale as the moon that had betrayed their mother to her slayers. Treachery! Only with difficulty could Pierrette accept that she had not misheard, or that Gilles had not misunderstood. "Father," Pierrette essayed at last, "don't you understand . . ."
"You encouraged this! I'll send you to the nunnery after all. Do you want to starve, when we have no oil to sell?" He had forgotten his decision, made only that morning, that they would not really need the grove, for just the two of them. As he had no true son to inherit it, his family would be better served by another sack of the knight's silver. Two such purses would last his lifetime. Women, whose husbands took care of them, had no need of such things.
There was no reasoning with Gilles. Perhaps later Pierrette would bring him a pot of wine. Then he would listen to reason.
Marie did not speak all the way back to Citharista. The priest could not protect her. Her father would not. Her husband-to-be fled almost before Gilles had opened his mouth.
Gilles did not wait for his daughters to prepare his meal. "Piers! Fetch me winetwo pots." Marie gave Pierrette the purse she carried at market.
When she returned, Gilles gulped the first pot unwatered. She silently offered him the second. Marie moved silently, preparing bread and cheese, with a bowl of olives saved in sea-brine.
Gilles shook his head. "I'm not hungry." His eyes filled with tears. "You understand, don't you? Without the soldier's favor . . . It's such a little thing. One night with Jerome, and then you'll be with Bertrand. Isn't that what you want?"
Marie turned away.
"Damn you, then! I'll watch you like a sow watches her litter, until you're safely in the Burgundian's bed."
"And you!" he snarled at Pierrette. "Go live with your mother's sorcerer friend." He spat on the floor. He rolled onto his bed, knocking a wine pot over with his foot. His snores were the full-blown ones of heavy slumber. Pierrette would not speak with him that night.
Gilles arose early. Pierrette sat up on her pallet. "Father? Wait . . ."
Gilles shook his head. "We have nothing to talk about. What do you know of such things? Do you think your mother was virgin when she came to me? Why should Bertrand be luckier?" He slipped outside.
Marie awakened. "Pierrette? Is he going to talk to Father Otho?"
"He is not. He won't change his mind."
"The old drunk! I won't go to the castellan's bed!"
"There's one person we haven't spoken with yet. I'm going to visit the castellan myself."
Gilles sat on the worn Roman quay, staring at his boat as if watching it decay splinter by splinter. "If I were less despicable than I am," he told himself, "I would sail straight toward Africa, and seek a great storm. I would do that if I were not so . . . cautious." Yet had he not been "cautious," he might have done good where he had done nothingsurely a sin itself. He spat, but could not rid himself of a foul taste. The best wine would not wash it away.