Since crossing the divide, Pierrette no longer felt the staring eyes of trees and stones, of a nature in which every entity had a soul, and thoughts. She rested often on her way down the brushy slope to the valley, aching in every limb, scratched, and exhausted. A sun-warmed shelf of rock beckoned. In this lovely vale no clouds masked the sun. A colorful patchwork of cultivated fields spread before her, gold of wheat, emerald green rows of legumes, russet and tan, and the dark shades of fresh-tilled soil yet undried by the sun. The far slopes, leading to a towering gray scarp, were covered with forest, the green of late spring, of Ma's glade.
The warm rock was a balm, soothing her aches. She might take a short nap. Then she would have to decide what to do. Was the change she had witnessed only a patch of another reality not yet spread afar? She hoped so.
It seemed unreal now. Perhaps she had gone mad, and dreamed everything that had happened on the other side of the pass. All thought of visiting Aquae Sextiae was gone. She would not willingly brave the terrifying world of Celtic domination and ancient faceless ghosts again, in dream or reality. Here and now, she felt safe, as if she had indeed passed into another magical realm where her enemies could not enter. She let heavy eyelids close. . . .
"Well, boy! You'll never get a job dozing in the sun." Pierrette sat up, startled. The sun was low. She had slept most of the day.
The speaker was between her and the sun, his booming voice jovial and unthreateningand he was speaking not Gaulish, but Oc, good Provençal Latin. She rubbed sleep from her eyes. "A job? Where? What job?"
"Why, I suppose that depends on your trade. You're small for a mason or a carpenter. A woodcarver? A glazier, making those brilliant baubles of Celtic glass and lead? How did you get those cuts and scratches?"
Pierrette's confusion multiplied. What did the one have to do with the other? The big man sat. His lumpy leather sack clanked. His close-cropped hair was red-brown, as was several days' unshaved beard. His tunic and trousers, and the leather apron over them, were well-worn.
"I'm not looking for a job."
"No? Have you run away from the monks?" He chuckled. "I wouldn't blame you. Saint Cassien's brothers aren't strict, but I myself wouldn't like such a pious life. I'll build their fine hostelbut when I'm paid, I'll be off again."
Then Pierrette understood. The Saint Cassien monks and their hostel were well knownin her history. The establishment lay near the base of the escarpment where Saint Marie Madeleine had spent her last years.
Once, the goddess of the sacred pool had promised Pierrette she would speak with the saint. Only a child then, she had believed it literally, and had asked everyone where Mary Magdalene could be found. Her father and the priest Otho had chuckled indulgently. Otho told her of the shrine and the monks who tended it.
"You're a mason?" His heavy sack was full of tools.
"I'm Cerdos of Tarascon, a master mason. Perhaps you've heard of me? No? Then you're definitely not a tradesman. I've built bridges and churches from Tolosa to Nicaea. I helped build the Frankish king's new palace."
"I'm sure the monks will welcome you. Are they expanding their hostel?"
"Expanding it? They're building it anew. A careless pilgrim's candle set it afire. They're housing travellers in the barns." He stood up. "There's no time to waste. Every hewer and breaker of stone in all Provence is converging on the place, and if they begin without me, there's no telling what mistakes will be made. A good foundation is the key. I won't build a chicken coop on another man's weak courses. Are you coming? Or are you hiding out? You never said."
"I'll go with you. It isn't monks I fear."
A half-hour's walk brought them near a cluster of barns and sheds. "Good," Cerdos said. "They've dug trenches, but have laid no stone."
He pointed to a nearby field. "There are my children," he said. Pierrette had thought the white objects were grazing sheep. They were blocks of quarried stone. Children, indeed, in need of their father's shaping.
"I wonder who's here?" said Cerdos, eagerly looking around. Monks in dark robes scurried among lay brothers in workaday clothes and tradesmen dressed as colorfully as Gypsies.
"Cerdos!" one fellow shouted. "Are you come to carry my tools? I need a husky apprentice." Cerdos, far from insulted, flung a burly arm around the smaller man, then slapped the back of his head.
"Ow! Release me, you ox."
"This is Ferdiad," Cerdos told Pierrette. "He's an Irish sparrow who plays at joinery. He'd be happier as a monk in a choir, or as a grammarian."
"Don't believe the big liar," said Ferdiad in clear, scholarly Latin, not the patois of Provence. "Just because I speak properly, and sing a bit . . . But who are you?"
"My name is Piers," Pierette said.
Cerdos guffawed. "The boy has no trade, and doesn't know where he's going, so the two of you should get on famously." He looked around himself. "Who's in charge?"
Ferdiad pointed him toward a tall monk who carried a writing-board and a charred stick of vine. Cerdos strode off.
"Cerdos is a good fellow," Ferdiad told Pierrette. "What did he mean about you?"
"Just that I was going to Aquae Sextiae," she said, matching his classical accent. "I became frightened when someonesomethingchased me, and I fled here. Now I'm not sure whether to try another route, or to go home, over yonder scarp."
"I've heard tales," said the Irishman. "There may be more than brigands out there. Old ghosts are astirI know, because I've felt their like in my own land."
"You have? Where is that? I thought such apparitions were new."
"My island is a Gaelic land," Ferdiad explained, "never conquered by Latins or Germansthus our Celtic ghosts are with us always."
"Are Gauls and Gaels the same?"
"The same stock. We Irish descend from the first warriors to harness horse to chariotthe tribe of Dana, goddess of the great river of the east. Of course we're all good Christians now," he hastened to add. "In fact, we were Christians long before Clovis and his savage Franks professed the Faith."
He peered at Pierrette, who had withdrawn into deep thought. Was the Irish land the source of the fantômes, then? Was she wrong to seek their origins in the oppida of ancient Gaul?
Cerdos returned. "Befitting my position and repute, the brothers have allotted me a room with a hearth. Will you two share it with me?"
Ferdiad pretended to weigh the question. "If you can refrain from overfilling our chamber with hot air, we'll be comfortable."
Cerdos guffawed. "Hot air will drive away the icy draft of your piety, Irish midget," he replied.
Cerdos's fat purse implied his boasts of skill and fame were not empty. He bought food and wine for the three of them. Across the hubbub of beasts and men, tents and drays, arose a commotion. A man cried out in anger and pain. An ass brayed, no less upset. "That is Gustave!" exclaimed Pierrette.
"I think Gustave's donkey has bitten him," Cerdos said.
"NoGustave is my donkey. I thought him lost in the hills." She tried to push through.
"Let me." Cerdos's bulk parted workers, lookers, and sellers as a heavy boat parts reeds. Pierrette followed in his wake.
They broke into a clearing Gustave had opened with his flailing hooves. A man stood nursing a bloody forearm, holding the donkey's lead with his good hand.
"Gustave!" Pierrette shouted. "Behave yourself." The ass stopped in mid-bray and swivelled his laid-back ears in her direction. Pierrette took his lead from the unresisting man. "Thank you for finding my donkey. I'm sorry he bit you."
The wicker latch-loop on one pannier was loose. Though Gustave had himself tried to get at the grain he carried, he had not suffered a stranger to meddle with it. He had no assurance that he was to be fed, so he had bitten the snooper.
The donkey's abrupt change in manner rendered further proof of Pierrette's ownership unnecessary. She led him away.
Room and hearth were as promised. Having eaten, Ferdiad produced a small harp from a canvas sack. "Let's go to the common fire, where my appreciative audience may throw coins," he said. "I'll sing a tale dear to all tradesmen."
He settled near the fire, where all could hear him. "This is the tale of Master Jock," he said. Soft notes from the harp filled the air.
Master Jock (as Pierrette later remembered the tale) was an architect in ancient Judea. Everything he built, from cottage to palace, was perfection itself. Had he not designed Solomon's temple and the hanging gardens? Had he not selected just the right stone for the pyramids in Egypt? People said that he gave heart to stones, souls to wooden beams, wings to roofs, and spirit to windows. But his talents drew the envy of one Soubise, an architect who had the ear of the king. . . .
Unwelcome at home, Master Jock departed for Provence to start over anew. Just off the boat in Massilia, he sought a wine shop.
"What do you do?" asked a burly workman.
"It's said I give heart to stones, souls to wooden beams, and wings . . ."
"You are Master Jock!" the fellow growled. He and four others got to their feet. "We are followers of Soubise," he said. They threw the unfortunate architect out. One man picked up a cobble to crush his skull. Master Jock fled. East of the wharves was a cane marsh, where he immersed himself in murky water, and breathed through a broken reed.
At nightfall, he crept from the swamp. He walked eastward through the night, and in the days that followed put many miles between himself and his enemy's supporters.
He arrived in the valley of the Holy Balm, and because it was dusk, missed the hostel of the good brothers. Seeing a glimmer of light high in the cliff, he ascended the rocky slope, and found a lamp burning in the mouth of a cave. No one was there, but he found a soft bed, upon which he fell, exhausted.
In the morning, he saw that his mattress was woven of fine blond hair that shimmered in the early light.
"This is Mary Magdalene's cave," someone whispered.
"She lived here thirty years, naked but for her long hair, from which she made her bed," said someone else. They were high, childlike voices, like fairies.
"Who are you?" demanded Master Jock, terrified. He could see no one.
"We are your apprentices," said a tiny voice.
"We searched all night for you," said another.
"What do you want of me?"
"We'll bring you food and wine. You are safe here. A fresh, cold spring gushes from the rock, in the cave."
"Why are you so kind?" Master Jock still saw no one.
"Teach us to give hearts to stones," said one voice.
"And souls to wooden beams," said another.
"Teach us to build roofs with wings, and to give spirit to windows," the rest chimed in.
And so it was. Master Jock taught them everything he knew, there in the mouth of the cave. Blue thistles nodded in the sunlight, and the lovely vale spread out before him. Soon lovely new houses sprang up in surrounding towns, pure works of art. People said the roofs had wings, and the stones souls.
When word of those houses reached Massilia, the followers of Soubise, ever jealous, set out for Sainte Baume. Following the light of a single lamp on the rocky hillside, they found Master Jock asleep. They stabbed him many times, then fled the way they had come.
In the morning Master Jock was barely alive. That day, for the first time, he saw his apprentices clearly, and thus knew he was dying, for they were small elfin folk, dark-haired men of the race that neither plowed nor sowed, but lived off the bounty of the land, and drank from the Mother's breast. "Don't seek revenge," he begged them. "Continue to build as I have taught you. Thus will I triumph." He breathed his last.
His disciples removed his bloody clothes and washed his body. They buried him naked in the depths of the cave, as was their custom.
Going through his pockets, they found an unbroken fragment of the reed that had saved his life in the cane marshthat had saved him so he could teach them. "This reed will be our emblem," they decided as one. As was customary, they divided his clothing among themselves.
"This hat is mine," said one who soldered colored glass with lead cames, making lovely windows for churches and palaces, giving them spirit indeed.
"I claim his work-apron," said a stonecutter, promising that he would faithfully follow the master's precepts, and would give heart to his stones.
A locksmith took sandals.
"I will make roofs with wings," said a carpenter, taking Master Jock's cape.
"I," said a hewer of wood, "will give souls to my children."
"And thus," sang Ferdiad, "down through all the centuries, fair weather and foul, when sun shines or wind blows, we Companions of Master Jock come to climb the rocky hill to the cave, in his memory."
Those who had coins to throw did so. The little Irishman caught them in the air. His purse jingled merrily on the way back to Cerdos's room. The mason produced a clay jug of wine and cups, and fed fresh splints to the fire's embers. "A fine tale," he admitted, ". . . at least, in the presence of the monks of Saint Cassien." He raised an eyebrow at Pierrette. "Now shall I tell the real story?"
"I know it already," said Pierrettethough it had only come to her that very moment.
"How can that be?" asked Ferdiad.
"Within every Christian tale," said Pierrette, "there is an older one. When the priests first came to this land, they chopped down holy trees and built shrines to Christian saints with the wood. They changed the old stories to Christian ones, and at length the old gods and spirits changed also. Saint Giles, who saved a doe by catching a hunter's arrow in his hand, was once Cernunnos, a god. Mary Magdalenewho indeed lived in that cave in the cliffs above us, supplanted Ma, the goddess of the spring."
Both nodded thoughtfully. "Father Jock," she said then, "is none other than Lugh the light-bringer. Lugh Long-Armwhom you Irish call Samildanach, `skilled in many arts.' The disciples unseen were Ligures, small folk, my mother's kind, who build and make, but do not plow, sow, or reap. Is it so?"
Ferdiad nodded. "The god took refuge with the Mother. That is the truth of it. But you're only a boy. How did you know?"
Pierrette then told them everything she knew about the Black Time, and myths that mutated, turning old gods into saintsthus feeding their unassimilable pagan essences, that the priests named Evil, to Satan, the Eater of Gods.
She told them about her master Anselm and his library, and how she had spent years reading his books and scrolls. "I learned about you Gaels from them," she said.
"You're not a day over twelve," Ferdiad protested. Indeed Piers, her male persona, seemed younger than Pierrette.
"Look within," she said ever so softly, and raised her eyes to his. Ferdiad's eyes widened. He drew back, as if the slight boy had become . . . something else.
"What's going on?" Cerdos asked anxiously, looking from Pierrette to Ferdiad. "What did you see?"
"He's old," Ferdiad said. "And he's a woman."
"Now I know you're mad," Cerdos scoffed. "I always thought so."
"I don't know if I'm old or not," Pierrette mused. "I'm fifteenor perhaps fiftyand yes, I'm a girl. But there's a long story behind what you saw in my eyes, Ferdiad. Do you want to hear it?"
"I'm a singer of tales. Need you ask?"
"Two thousand years ago," Pierrette began, "on an island far to the east of here, a great sorcerer sensed changes deep in the earth. He awoke from a nightmare of fires that burned even rock, destroying his island and all who lived there.
"The sorcerer Minho hurried about his island and set everything in order. He banished warriors, tax collectors, and usurers, and invited craftsmen, philosophers, and other peaceful folk to join him there. Then he waited, while the fires and turmoil beneath his land grew.
"When the first wisps of smoke burst from the top of the mountain at the center of his realm, he uttered a spell such as the world had never heard . . . and lifted his island from the world of time and circumstance.
"When men dared brave the roiling sea and the poisonous smoke that welled from it, they found his island . . . gone."
"A volcano!" exclaimed Cerdos. "I saw just such a smoking mountain in the south, on Sicilia."
"Shut up," said Ferdiad. "What happened to the sorcerer and his island?"
"The island appeared again, centuries later, in the gulf not far from Tiryns, in Greece. Some say that Heracles, who built Tiryns's great walls, learned the architect's trade from the sorcerer-king. I'm not so sure of that, because later the islandsactually, there were several, separated by canals and narrow passagesspent many years near the mouth of the River Baetis, and the city of Tartessos grew up under their influence. Since Heracles had to go to Tartessos to steal Geryon's cattle, the city had to be there already, I think.
"Tartessos?" asked Ferdiad.
"Your Bible calls it `Tarshish.' It was once in Iberia, on the Atlantic coast." She shrugged. "The Isles' exact whereabouts don't matter. They were seen again further north, where Phoenecian Ys flourished in Armorica. By then, people were calling them the `Fortunate Isles,' because wherever they were, the lands and peoples flourished."
"I know about the Fortunate Isles!" exclaimed Ferdiad. "Brendan the Bold visited them."
"Shut up!" said Cerdos. Then to Pierrette: "Finish your tale."
"Centuries passed, and again the sorcerer began having fearful dreams"
"I knew it! The volcano . . ." Pierrette frowned at Cerdos. "Sorry. Go on."
"He dreamed of a new religion, Christianity, that would destroy all the old ways, that would consume all the magic that kept his kingdom safe, and him immortal. So he devised a plan to nip it in the bud. He sent my master, who was his best student, to subvert the promulgators of the nascent faith, to divide it into a thousand cults, like any others. But there is a certain inevitability to history, a pattern that resists being changed, like water flowing around a cobble tossed in a rivulet: there may be much splashing and foaming at that spot, but a few paces downstream, all seems much as it was before. Perhaps had Minho, the sorcerer king, attended to it himself, things would have been different, but he could not venture outside his great spell's influence, and Anselm, a lesser mage, failed completely.
"Now the Isles lie beyond mists of confusion, and can't easily be found. Anselm recreated his master's spell to bind time about his fortress home, and when I go there to learn and to read ancient works, I don't age." She shrugged again. "So I'm only fifteenbut I feel old, and I'm very well-educated."
Pierrette then explained what she had learned from Yan Oors and from the map she had madeand told them what she had experienced on the other side of the mountainous ridge to the north, from whence she had fled. "I feel like I've gone mad," she said. "Perhaps none of it was real. Perhaps you should put chains on me, and let the monks lock me in a cellar."
Ferdiad put a comforting hand on hers. "You're not mad," he said. "The veils that separate our world from . . . another . . . are sometimes thin. I know many tales of voyagers like yourself." He shuddered. "Nonetheless, when I go home, I'll go by ship, the long way around. Though related to those Gauls, I prefer to sit the fence between Christian and pagan. I don't like fantômes."
"I agree," said Cerdos. "Will the blight cross the pass in pursuit of you?"
Pierrette could not reassure him. She had thought to find out about changes in written words, and had discovered a changed world. She had wasted time, and did not know what she could, or should, do. Perhaps with her stalling, it was now too late.
"Tomorrow we will make pilgrimage to the cave," Cerdos declared. "Perhaps . . . someone . . . there will help you."
But the cave had been home to Master Jockto Lugh, a Gaulish god. Would she be jumping from the pot into the fire? She reassured herself that Ma, the goddess, had been here before men had conceived of the sky-god, out on the high plains. Would she still be there, in a shrine dedicated to Mary Magdalene?
She sought her pallet. Just before she fell asleep, she remembered what Ma had told her when she had been littlethat she would meet Magdalen someday. Reassured, she fell into sleep, hoping that the world was not entirely mad, that she was not either, and that tomorrow would be that long-foreseen day.