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Chapter 6 - The Avatar

Dawn arrived slate-gray and somber, like a premonition of despair. Pierrette and her companions lay long abed—they were not eager to begin their long hike to the cave in such wet weather. Pierrette wanted them to leave the room first, so she could use the chamberpot.

Breakfast was soggy bread and a bit of cheese passed out by monks beneath a canvas tent. By the time they were ready to depart, a long, straggling line of pilgrims wound up the mountainside on the switchbacked trail.

"What are those cairns?" asked Pierrette, a half hour into their journey.

"Women add stones to them," replied Cerdos. "They place one for every child they wish to bear." He shrugged. "Perhaps the Magdalen counts them."

"Perhaps . . . the goddess does."

"Indeed. It's said the longer they carry them before they place them on a cairn, the higher on the trail, the more likely the begetting. The women who built these first cairns must not have cared much."

"Perhaps their husbands made them come here," said Ferdiad. "Not all women want children." He looked toward Pierrette. "You haven't picked up any stones."

"I won't. I made that decision long ago," she said. Her eyes moistened despite her plain words. . . .

* * ** * *

Years before, Guihen had warned her. She had been only a child, trudging toward the Eagle's Beak to take service with the mage Anselm—the first of many times she tried, but Guihen had blocked her path. "If you knock on that gate, you won't return to Citharista unchanged," the sprite had said. "Would you deny yourself an ordinary life: husband, children, a place to call home?"

Pierrette had hesitated.

"Go back, or be doomed to make your bed in strange places. Go back, lest time itself bend about you. You won't find what you seek for a hundred hundreds of years! Go home," he commanded. "Enjoy what little you have, for it is sweeter by far than what awaits you here."

On another attempt to reach the cape, someone else had stood in her path. "Go back, child," said dark Yan Oors. From the brush and stones his two ghostly companions' ursine eyes glowed. "Seek happiness, for there is no joy in wisdom." She had heeded those admonitions—for a while.

* * *

Pierrette had decided. Now Ferdiad saw her tears. "I'm sorry," he said.

"Don't be. If I—and the world I love—survive this onslaught, I'll come back here someday."

"Lord, take pity on us," cried out the monk leading a group of pilgrims.

"O Christ, take pity on us," responded the pilgrims.

"Lord, take pity on us," repeated the monk, as the furthest pilgrims disappeared in the foggy drizzle.

Stone monuments were set in the ground at intervals. Pierrette had paid no attention to the first ones. Now she saw that the clusters of pilgrims stopped at each one, and the monk who guided them led them in an incantation.

"Holy Trinity which is one God, take pity on us."

"Saint Mary, Mother of God, pray for us," responded the laiety.

"Saint Mary Magdalene, carrying the alabaster vase, full of perfume . . ."

When Pierrette approached the stone, she saw that it had been carved, depicting a woman carrying a vessel. "The walk—the pilgrimage itself—is worship, isn't it?"

"How could it be otherwise?" Ferdiad asked. "Isn't every act a celebration, every meal a mass? If not—if this life is only a prelude to what really counts—then why not seek an early grave, and get to the meat of it right away?"

"You don't sound very Christian."

"My countrymen kept the holy books when the Roman Church lost them," he said. "Our Bishop Morgan taught that good and evil alike are men's and women's creations, and that we must not simply endure life, but use it to become like Christ ourselves."

"That sounds like Pelagius."

" `Morgan' and `Pelagius' both mean `from the sea.' "

"Then if Bishop Morgan is right, never to know a hearth of my own isn't really a curse, is it?"

"Your words, not mine," said Ferdiad with a smile.

Water trickled between mossy stones, tiny rills with a source high above, in the rocks. Like the vale of Ma, beech trees grew there, shaded in summer by the high scarp, their roots deep in moist soil sweetened with decayed limestone. They grew thicker in girth between one monument and the next. But unlike Ma's pagan sanctuary, there was something threatening about their dark shadows.

"Anointing the feet of Jesus with your tears," chanted the pilgrims.

"Drying them with your hair,

"Of whom many sins have been forgiven . . ."

As the pilgrims were swallowed in the mist, Pierrette and her companions approached a stone depicting a rude Magdalene kneeling before a sketchy, big-headed Christ.

"I don't hate your religion," Pierrette said. "If my mother's folk had not had Ma . . ."

"There's no reason not to have both."

"Jesus might have agreed with you," she mused, "but Christianity isn't immune to scholars' revisions. His old aunties didn't care much for what Paul made of their nephew's simpler creed." Ferdiad reflected that she sounded as if she knew that for certain. The early church had not, he knew, been without disputes like Peter and Paul's. Had Jesus really intended to create a new religion? Paul surely had.

"Obtaining the resurrection of your brother Lazarus,

"Ministering faithfully to Jesus on the cross,

"Staying by him when the disciples fled . . ." They passed the next two stones without examining them. The pilgrims seemed fewer and further between.

"First among the disciples to be worthy of seeing the risen Christ,

"Marked on your forehead by his glorious hand,

"Apostle of Apostles,

"Apostle of Provence . . ." The voices faded. By the time they reached a stone depicting Magdalene preaching to the Roman legions in Lugdunum, no one else was in sight. No others came up from behind, either. But the mist was dissipating. Could they have fallen so far behind? Something was definitely wrong.

"Oh, no . . ."

"What is it?" asked Cerdos.

"They're fading away! The pilgrims have disappeared."

"We must have lagged behind."

"No, you don't understand. This is the same dank rain that fell near Aquae Sextiae. They have become . . . nothing. As if they never were—there are no Christian shrines in the Gauls' world."

Cerdos shrugged, fingering his ornate bronze torque, that curled like blunted cow's horns around his neck. "Why are you looking at me like that?" he demanded—in the Gaulish tongue. At the foot of the mountain, Cerdos had worn a cross, not a Celtic torque.

"Never mind. I have to hurry," Pierrette said, stumbling uphill, slipping on mossy pebbles. It was impossible to run.

"Why rush?" Ferdiad called after her. "Lugh will be there forever." His plaid Gaulish sagos gleamed with raindrops. He had started the climb with a brown woolen cape.

"But will Magdalene?" she called back, over her shoulder.

"Who?" he asked, turning to Cerdos, who shrugged eloquently.

"I don't know. Perhaps she meant the goddess, Lugh Long-Arm's wife."

Pierrette half-ran, half-scrambled upward. She was cold. There was no escape, was there? Like a wind out of the north, the change had swept over the hills and wiped away everything. There would be no hostel in the valley now, no monks. There was no warm sunshine, only the gray sky of . . . of the Black Time. Would it engulf her, too? Would she forget who she was? Who she . . . had been?

No! There was a way out. The nightmare world of headless fantômes was now. It had only begun to unfold after Calvinus failed to take Entremont, and after Marius lost his battle with the Teutons. Her escape was through the past . . . before Entremont. Years before . . . Breathlessly, she uttered a phrase in a tongue almost as old as the hills themselves.

"Mondradd in Mon," she whispered. "Borabd orá perdó." The ancient spell was dangerous. If she did not clearly know where . . . when . . . she wanted it to take her, if she had no image to guide her, she would be thrown all the way back to the beginning, to the ashy devastation of the Black Time, which was also the end. . . . Ahead, against the gloom of the gray rock face, was a darker shadow, the mouth of the cave. This time, no lamp shed welcoming light to guide the desperate pilgrim's feet.

"Merdrabd or vern," she gasped, "Arfaht ará camdó. No thistles nodded in front of the cave. The rain had finally abated, though, and the great slabs of rock she climbed over were dry.

She looked fearfully back the way she had come. Sunlight on fields across the valley to the north caught her eye. As she watched, it lanced over the scarp behind her, sweeping gloom away, lighting fields and forest. She could not see the hostel below, but perhaps it was hidden by the lip of the cave. Had the spell worked? Was she safe from the encroaching change? Safe, in some remote past time?

There was no sound of footfalls from the trail. Neither monks and pilgrims nor Celts clad in plaids, glittering with gold and bronze, strode forth. There were no pilgrims in the cave, either, unless they had all gone onward into the deepest darkness.

A stiff breeze swept the narrow shelf fronting the cave, and in the valley the last cloud shadows chased swiftly eastward, and were gone. Something scratched the back of her hand. She gazed at the bobbing head of a thistle, as blue as the freshened sky. She was sure it—and all its cerulean companions—had not been there moments before. . . .

"Hello, child," said a soft voice. Pierrette spun around.

A woman stood in the cave mouth. Her pale blue dress was like reflected sky or a field of thistles. The gold fibula at the shoulder of her white woolen mantle was a wide-eyed face, with a round, laughing mouth. Her own face was broadly Celtic, her hair blond, her eyes as blue as Pierrette's.

"You're a girl, aren't you? In spite of those clothes?"

"Yes Mother," Pierrette replied. "I am Pierrette."

"A `little stone.' But I'm not your mother. I am Belisama."

Bel-isa-ma? Bel was a Gallic sun god, and the son of Ma—or her husband. Gauls weren't particular. Pierrette then realized that even goddesses did not know everything.

"So I amuse you?" asked the goddess. "You smiled."

"I was expecting someone else," Pierette replied. "I think that I have . . . have missed my assignation by a few years."

"You don't look old enough to have lost many years. Come inside. Tell me what troubles you." She reached for a stone-bowled lamp. Unthinkingly, Pierrette reached out and . . . lit it. Belisama's eyes widened.

A rude stone statue glared sightlessly at Pierrette. "A gift," the goddess said apologetically. "Not a very good likeness." The round-headed figure squatted, reaching under its own naked thighs to spread oversized labia. Its vagina was a wide, dark tunnel roughly hacked. Protruding frog's eyes and a round, astonished mouth completed the unlikely picture. Its expression, could such a rude thing have one, seemed . . . mischievous.

Pierrette began to consider how she could depart this place without offending her hostess, who was not at all what she had hoped to find. This Gaulish-speaking Celtic goddess was not Ma. Could she repeat the spell Mondradd in Mon from within the spell itself or would she only end up whence she had fled?

"Sit," said Belisama, indicating a pallet with a soft pillow. "I sense your disapproval of me, but despite your magic, you're young and impatient—and stubborn. You greeted me as `Mother,' so tell me—do you obey your own mother?"

Pierrette almost defended herself. But no, she had not obeyed Ma. Had she done, she would not be here now, caught between conflicting histories, in some past time before Magdalene had come to Sainte-Baume's cave. Tears sprung to her eyes. She wiped them with a grimy, scratched knuckle.

"Tell me," Belisama commanded gently, putting a hand on her shoulder.

Pierrette did. For the second time in as many days, she recounted everything—from her mother Elen's death to her own discovery of Ma and the sacred pool, how Yan Oors and Guihen had succored her as a lonely child, and how she had destroyed a demon in Saintes-Maries-by-the-Sea. "I didn't do it alone," she admitted. "I found others who were willing to take bits of its evilness into themselves, dissipating it until it was no more." She explained her belief that evil was not so deadly when people accepted their own shares in it. It could not then coalesce into a hideous, terrifying god.

"You speak of things beyond my understanding," Belisama said at last. "Perhaps the old goddess would have understood."

"The old goddess?" Pierrette felt suddenly hopeful. "Where is she?"

"Back there, in the cave. Buried. She died only months after I arrived here. She had only begun to teach me . . ."

"Where did you come from?" Goddesses did not "arrive." They simply were. Like Ma. This Belisama was a woman, not a goddess.

"I'm from Setomos. That's a village on the coast."

"Then you weren't always a goddess."

Belisama laughed. "Of course not. Not until I was chosen." She recounted how, when the old goddess felt age and impending death, she had summoned the village dhru-vedo to select her replacement. Each village's wise man chose a candidate from among the prettiest girls, the most intelligent and the most pious. All were taken to a drunemeton, a holy grove many weeks' journey beyond the Alps. They were questioned and taught, until at last the goddess of that far place decided. She, once Doreta, daughter of Melis, then became . . . Belisama.

Then Pierrette understood. The spell Mondradd in Mon had indeed taken her far into the past—five hundred years? A thousand? Before Caesar and then Christian priests had put a stop to it, the druidae had so chosen women to preside over Ma's grove also. In fact, Pierrette sometimes considered herself just such a priestess—though self-chosen, and though no worshippers had come to ask her intercession with the goddess. If they had come, how would she have served them?

She knew how: she would have plucked a tiny red-skirted dancer from a ring of mushrooms, and . . .

"When people come with questions for you, how do you find answers? Did the old goddess teach you that?"

Belisama flushed. "She died. She said I came too late, and she left me here, alone. What could I do? I made things up."

And that, Pierrette reflected, is how old gods die, and are replaced by new ones. She sighed. "Show me the cave. Show me where the old goddess slept. Show me everything."

Startled by her visitor's air of authority, Belisama did. She led Pierrette from the main chamber, paved with flat, fallen slabs of cave ceiling, back into the darkness. Behind a heap of fallen rock was a moldy straw pallet. "She slept here."

There. A niche in the rock held neat rows of small clay jars, cobalt blue Celtic glass bottles and duller green Roman ones. From a stout stick wedged in a crack hung a dozen small cloth sacks, kept from contact with the cave's moisture. "Those are what I need," said Pierrette.

"The old one told me not to touch them," said Belisama.

"As well she should have—until you learned what they are. Some are poisons. Others can heal. Some—like the nightshade in this sack, do both, depending on the dosage and the combination with other things. That chamomile"—she indicated a bundle of dried yellow blossoms—"gives restful sleep, and soothes an uneasy stomach. Next to it is mint, for indigestion, and boneset, which does what its name says."

"How do you know those things?"

"Some things my mother taught me as nursery-songs. I was lucky, too—the first thing I tried was a mushroom that grew in plain sight by the sacred pool, and was bright and pretty. It was . . . that." The jar held brown, shrivelled mushrooms. "They're red when fresh. They must be eaten sparingly, or they can kill." She broke one in half. "Here."

"What will it do? I'm afraid."

"Eat it."

Belisama did so, making a wry face as she chewed.

"The old one should have showed you this right away," Pierrette said. "Now take me to the spring."

Belisama led her to the west side of the cave, where a tumble of stone blocks had been piled into a rough stairway. They descended into darkness so thick the lamp hardly penetrated. Pierrette heard the plop and plink of water droplets on her left, then saw the glimmer of the lamp's flame, reflected. They edged close to the stone-rimmed pool, almost too small to take a bath in.

"Sit," said Pierrette, "and wait."

* * *

Belisama waited. The lamp flickered. The strange girl—she thought Pierrette a Ligure, from her looks—had closed her eyes. Belisama kept hers open. She did not want to miss anything. What was this all about? Despite her resolve, her eyelids began to feel quite heavy. . . .

"Awaken, Doreta." She opened her eyes, feeling someone squeezing her shoulder. But Pierrette had not spoken. The Ligure girl still sat by the pool, smiling, as if having a pleasant dream.

"Who . . ." An ancient crone smiled down at her. Long, silvery hair, soft as a cloud, swirled around her wrinkled face.

"I am Belisama," said the crone. "Or Ma, or . . . I have many names."

"No—I am Belisama. The dhru-vedos said so."

"Listen to priests, child, but don't believe everything they say. Do you feel like a goddess?"

Doreta shook her head.

"Good. You aren't one. You have much to learn before you are even a masc, a country-witch."

"How can I learn? The old goddess died."

"She was no goddess either—not then. Now, she is, in a sense, because she is one of me."

One of . . . ? That made no sense to Doreta.

"Look," said Ma, or Belisama. She swirled the pool's surface with long, wrinkled fingers. . . .

* * *

Pierrette opened her eyes. She smiled, watched, and waited, unable to see what Doreta saw in the pool. She did not need to know anyone else's visions. She was not aware that the girl saw a crone; she herself saw Ma as a slender woman of middle years, with honey brown hair and an arching, almost Middle-Eastern nose.

At last, the goddess arose from the pool. "Go now," she said to Doreta, pulling her to her feet. "Sleep. When you awaken, remember how to come to me. I'll continue your lessons."

She turned to Pierrette. "A sorry fix you're in, child."

"I'm sorry, Mother. I should have obeyed." She hesitated.

"Yes, child? What is it?"

"You look like . . . like Mary Magdalene. I saw you once . . . in a vision."

"Not yet," said the woman. "Not for a bit more than a hundred years."

How strange. Did this goddess know the future? All the spells Pierrette had studied, even Mondradd in Mon, pointed only to the past, as if the broken wheel of time turned only one way, and the future was on the other side of the break—of the Black Time.

"Will she come here to serve you, for thirty-three years?"

"She may come. That's not yet clear. But know that she will serve her own God, as her Master taught her. She will preach in Lugdunum, far up the Rhodanus. Then she will come here to rest." There were no tenses in any language that could fit around this sense of future in the past, of conditional events that had taken place long ago, but not yet.

"I don't understand how that can be," said Pierrette. "Why would you allow her, a Christian, to supplant you? They worship . . . will worship? . . . a male God."

"Her name will be Maria. Do you think that is a coincidence? And their God is not male alone. Many wise men and women consider her female as well."

"They deny women any place in their rite. Only male priests celebrate the mass."

"For many hundreds of years, in the Celtic lands, it will be otherwise—almost until your own time. Who can say when it will be so again?"

"But she is . . . will be . . . was . . . a Christian saint. You'll be forgotten here."

"She considers herself no saint. She is lusty, and had lascivious dreams of her Master, Jesus. She wanted to run away with him, to marry and to nurse babies. Her years here will be as much penance as refuge, atonement for her anger that he let himself die on a cross. She could run away with a man, but cannot lust after a resurrected God."

"Will he be reborn? A god?" If that were so, Pierrette feared, then she herself was only mad, a poor delusional girl lying in stupor on a foggy slope, while ever-wearier pilgrims passed her by, thinking her resting.

The goddess sighed. "Where does a prayer go, when someone utters it? Do you know?"

Pierrette shrugged. "Whose prayer? To what god or goddess?"

"You see? I don't know. When Christian pilgrims beg Mary Magdalene's intercession, who hears? I can't tell you. You see me now as Magdalene will be when she arrives in Provence, a century hence. Other times, you have seen me as crone, and as your own still-young mother. Which am I? When you speak to me, who hears?"

"Father Otho says his God does. He hears all prayers."

"Well then. There's your answer. Simple, isn't it?"

"No! It is not simple at all." Tears of frustration sprang to Pierrette's eyes.

Ma laid a consoling hand on her cheek. "You're right. When anyone says `It is simple,' beware. I myself am no wiser than you, than poor Doreta. I am a little wiser than Father Otho, because I know how deceptive `simple' is, and he is only slowly learning that."

"What must I do? I've made a terrible mess of everything, haven't I?"

"Doreta's pallet is wide enough for two. Sleep. In the morning, you will find out—and before you leave this place, Belisama will give you what you need—and take a selection of the herbs and potions for yourself. You can never tell what you might find useful."

How strange, that Ma should refer to Doreta, and Belisama, and herself, as separate individuals. Who exactly was whom?

The thought of a soft straw tick, and of sleep, was sweet. Pierrette stumbled up the rough stone stairs and found Doreta sleeping soundly. Her own blanket was far below, in a hostel that did not even exist in this time, but the warm night air from the cave mouth offset the earth's damp chill. Pierrette soon slumbered.

 

 

 

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