The Veil Of Years - Isle Beyond Time Part 3

South of the harbor sprawled the red tile roofs of Saint Victor's Abbey, where lay the bones of Lazarus, first Christian bishop of the Roman city, who had not proved immortal though he had been raised from the grave by the Christ's own hand.

Great chains linked fortresses north and south of the harbor mouth, and kept raiding Moorish galleys at bay. Ma.s.salian s.h.i.+ps traded with the Moslem world, in Sicilia, Iberia, and Africa, but the focus of prosperity in what was coming to be called "Francia" was northward now, around Parisia on the Sequana River, and in the cities of Germania. Thus the cloak Ma.s.salia spread across the land was frayed at the edges, and moth-eaten with vacant lots. Shoddy edifices built of stones thrice-used were shabby patches on the ancient, faded fabric.

Ibn Saul had a house north of theforum , the great market square. Though during an ordinary visit to the town the market was a much-antic.i.p.ated destination, that afternoon Pierrette intended to visit the convent overseen by the Mother Sophia Maria, within whose walls her sister Maria lived, and prayed, and sang . . .

The three travellers parted outside the Roman gate, agreeing to meet at dawn by the wharves. Pierrette's route was south along a causeway, over a weedy creek and canebrake, past the rope-makers long, cobbled workplace. Oily sc.u.m floated on patches of open water, reeking of feces, bad meat, and moldy rope fibers. Spoiled food floated amid broken pots and household trash. The causeway was like a bridge over a very minor h.e.l.l, and she hurried along it.

On Saint Victor's side of the harbor, the streets were unpaved, thankfully dry in this season, and she picked her way between fresh-thrown deposits of night soil and garbage. Those odors contrasted in a confusing manner with the delicious aroma of roasting lamb from one doorway, of rising bread from another, of fresh, crushed rosemary and hot olive oil . . .

Gustave snorted, and she whirled around. The young thief howled, and clutched his bitten hand. Pierrette grabbed the cord that held up his ragged kilt. "I didn't take anything. Let me go!" he shrilled, his voice girlish, manhood years away.

"Thanks to Gustave, you didn't," she replied. His choice was to run-and lose his only article of clothing, or to wait and perhaps be beaten. She could see the options as they pa.s.sed over his dirty, mobile face.

"What do you think I have in that pannier?" she asked. "Gold? Silk from the East?"

"Cheese! I smelled it." His boyish skinniness took on new meaning: his black hair was tinged with the red brown not of sun bleaching, but of malnutrition. His belly was swollen and round not with excess, but with bloat. "There is bread and oil, too, and salted mullet, red as sunset. But I have nothing to drink with it. Is there a fountain nearby?" The old city across the harbor was still supplied by a decrepit Roman aqueduct, but its lead pipes and channels did not extend here.

His eyes went wide with distrust. Had this older boy implied he might actually share his bounty? Again, expressive eyes signaled his warring impulses-but he could not be much hungrier that he was, and he did not wish to lose his ragged kilt. . . . "There's a well. It's not too salty to drink," he said.

"Then let's go there," Pierrette said. "I have a cup we can use." Wisely, she did not let go of the tag end of his makes.h.i.+ft belt.

Seated on the stone rim of the well, they ate. A half dozen skinny children crept near-and with a sigh, Pierrette motioned them to sit, and divided fully half her provisions with them. Now she herself would go hungry sooner, unless she could replace them from the market. When it was evident that no more food was forthcoming, the urchins slipped away without thanks.

Pierrette remained, remembering: long ago-had she been seven or nine?-she and her sister had approached the priest Otho with a moral dilemma. The town's Burgundian castellan, nominally Christian, but also a wearer of the horns of his own tribe's ancient forest G.o.d, was attracted to Marie. He offered to save her betrothed, Bertrand, from the burden of shedding virgin blood on Marie's wedding night. The custom-warrior-shamans were proof against the dire evils of blood-was common among Burgundian and Gaulish folk, though among Christians the blood of Christ had rendered such fears moot, at best. But the Burgundian had been sincere, if overanxious, and Marie had been-secretly-attracted to him as well. Pierrette had almost dragged her sister to the priest-who was no help at all. He took two jars of oil, each half-empty, half-full, and named one good, and one evil. He poured oil from one into the other and then back, and shuffled the jars until neither girl knew which one was which, or how much oil was in either. "Where is the good?" he asked. "Where the evil?" What had he meant? At that time, Pierrette blamed him for caring more for his own security-the castellan could insist upon a new priest, and might get one. Later she decided that good intents, evil means, and conflicting religions (neither of them like her own simple Ligure faith in the Mother) were inextricably entwined.

And now this: the evil of hunger in this rich, tawdry city, and of her own hunger, somewhere on the road ahead. The needs of one, the needs of many. Adult practicalities versus the rumbling bellies of children.

The city might have a thousand urchins, and many would be indelibly blighted by starvation, their minds dulled and their bodies withered. But at least they had suns.h.i.+ne, and water not too salty to drink. If the terrible Black Time thatMa saw in her roiled waters came, and there was nothing living on the land, only souls enslaved in humming metal boxes, without eyes to see or hearts to ache, or bellies to feel the pangs of hunger . . . then where was the real evil? And if Minho's magical kingdom, where all were good and everything was beautiful, was destroyed-then was its destruction not evil? Which jar held goodness, and which evil-and how much was in each jar?

Pierrette removed her hat and shook out her hair before approaching the convent gate, where taciturn Sister Agathe answered her ringing. The air was redolent with the scents of exotic herbs whose neat, tiny patches quilted the colonnaded cloister. It was one of Pierrette's favorite places, a placid island in the bustling, stinking sea of the city. She settled onto a stone bench to wait Mother Sophia's convenience.

"Welcome, child," the abbess said when she swept into the courtyard, her arms outstretched. Once again, Pierrette was a small, motherless child, starved for such warm, feminine affection. They embraced, then Mother Sophia stood back, hands on Pierrette's shoulders. "You've grown again!" she exclaimed.

"You'll soon be as tall as Marie." "Will I be able to see her, Mother?"

"You mean, 'Is she in trouble again?' don't you?" Marie had a mischievous streak, and thus often incurred penances that kept her occupied when Pierrette visited. "She is not-and that worries me."

Pierrette laughed. "That worries me too! In this world, a surfeit of goodness is more suspect than the evils we have come to expect."

Mother Sophia gave her a queer glance. "Philosophy, child? What strange paths do your thoughts tread?"

Pierrette sighed. She recounted her sharing with the urchins. "And here," said the abbess, "where we pray and wors.h.i.+p G.o.d, we are well fed. Some women come here to fill their bellies, and consider roughened knees and tedious routine a small price to pay. Their first year, we don't even question their true conviction." She shook her head. "And then there's Marie-here not for the food, but for the prayer, her life itself a penance-who still plays pranks on naive newcomers, and winks at the bishop during ma.s.s." She shrugged. "Share her pallet tonight," the abbess said, "and if she has no mischief to recount to you, her sister, I will really begin to worry. . . ."

Pierrette dined with the abbess, and when dusk crept up the walls, Mother Sophia suggested they have light. Pierrette glanced at the bell-cord that would summon someone with a lamp, but: "Would you once again allow me to see by . . . a different light?"

Pierrette could not refuse her. So quietly that none but she herself could hear it, she voiced ancient words . . . and this time, no flame perched atop her finger. Instead, from a shadowy object on the far wall issued a pure, white light, that suffused the room and left no shadow undispelled.

"Saint Mary's light," gasped the abbess, her face a theater-mask of rapture as she gazed upon the rude old crucifix that was its source. "Thank you, child, for this blessing."

Pierrette was not so sure of that. For her, the different effect of her firemaking spell, in this Christian place, demonstrated how mutable-and ultimately how vulnerable-was all magic. Here, in Christian Ma.s.salia, in the shadow of Saint Victor's great abbey, the premises underpinning the spell's words were Christian ones, and allowed not fire, but this pure, holy light. Elsewhere, where neither the innocent pagan relicts of Citharista nor Christian purity prevailed, the spell produced a red and oily glow, funereal flames as of flesh burning atop a pyre.

But here it was white and Christian, and the dear woman's smile was all the payment Pierrette could make for the hospitality she was receiving.

Moonlight cast a distorted image of Marie's barred window across the patchy gray blanket they shared that night. Neither sister was as p.r.o.ne to giggling as she had been as a child, and they gave the nuns in neighboring cells nothing to curl their pious lips about. Marie seemed as jolly as usual, especially when she recounted her personal mission-only recently allowed by Mother Sophia's superiors-among the wh.o.r.es in the old amphitheater, where the dramas were all small, each one with a cast of two.

"You should have seen the poor girl's face," said Marie, grinning, her teeth aglitter with moonlight. "She made sixteen coppers that night-and she slept with seven men. And the little s.l.u.t was proud of herself!Sixteen coppers! So I showed her . . . this." Cool moonlight seemed almost magically to warm, to turn as golden as noonday and as green as springtime, transformed when it reflected from the ruddy precious metal and the luscious emeralds of the dangling necklace.

"Marie! Where did you get that?"

"From a customer-my own last customer, I think-when I was earning my living in the amphitheater. I retrieved it from its hiding place, a c.h.i.n.k in the wall."

Pierrette could not suppress her shudder. She didn't want to remember that. She wanted to remember her big sister as a girl, and as a nun-and nothing between. But Marie had not forgotten.

"I told her if all she could make was a few coppers, she was in the wrong profession, and that despite my own success, I had given it up to . . . to become G.o.d's wh.o.r.e."

"Marie!" Pierrette, though herself pagan, was scandalized.

"Oh, don't be stupid! After all I've done, how could I ever call myself a 'bride of Christ,' or wear his ring? And besides, it worked. The little wench is here, on her knees, not her back."

"So which jar is half-empty," Pierrette mused quietly, "and which one half-full?"

"What?"

"What Father Otho said, when the castellan Reikhard gave you his medallion, with the horned G.o.d on it, and you . . ."

"Oh, that. I always thought he meant the Church couldn't help me get out of that, and to accept my . . . fate. And since the Church wouldn't intervene . . ."

"You rejected it. And a demon took you. We took you to Saintes-Marie-by-the-Sea, where it was exorcised, and . . ."

"Not all of it was-or I'd be a perfect little nun, and wouldn't even think of strolling around in that brothel, talking with wh.o.r.es."

"And you wouldn't impress any stupid little girls with your emeralds, either-or convince them to come here, instead."

"I suppose not. Go to sleep now. You can sleep in, but I have to be up long before dawn."

"I wouldn't worry about Marie, Mother," Pierrette told the abbess in the morning. She did not explain further.

Chapter 6 - Of Bishops and.

Priests Ibn Saul had hired a galley-a long, low vessel with twelve oars, a triangular sail, and Moorish lines. Its shallow draft would allow it to stay close to sh.o.r.e, and to navigate the siltyFossae Marianae , the Roman ca.n.a.l to Arelate, that bypa.s.sed the lagoons of Rhoda.n.u.s's delta.

Pierrette was content to sit far forward with her donkey, away from the sour, sweaty aroma of the rowers and the clack of theepiskopo 's little drum, keeping time. The long, sandy coast was low and undistinguished, and the monotony gave her mind free rein for pondering. After nine hours at sea, the long sandspit at Rhoda.n.u.s's greater mouth was off the port side, the creamy rocks of the Estaque mountains far aft; she was bored, and the sun's glare, low over the bow, made looking ahead painful.

She turned around, and settled against the rail. What was Lovi doing? Just ahead of the mast, he had slipped out of his long-sleeved Frankish s.h.i.+rt, and was lying down on the deck. How strange. As if there wasn't enough heat and sunlight, without deliberately exposing oneself to it. And his skin was so pale.

Pretty, though. Creamy, with tinges of gold and pink. Most skin was olive-toned, or dark and leathery from the fierce Mediterranean sun. Lovi's looked soft as a baby's, and the fine curls of hair on his chest were yellow-gold. Pierrette's fingers tingled, almost as if she had uttered her small fire-making spell-but the golden tendrils she imagined her fingers running through were not flames.

She shook her head to clear it of such imagery. Sorcery-soMa insisted-required she remain virgin, and those were not a virgin's thoughts. Unfortunately for her composure, she was not as innocent as virginity might imply.

Her mind ranged northward, beyond the low coast, gray with tamarisk and sand willows. There lay the Crau plain, the Plain of Stones. There, in a long-ago age, born hence by the great, dangerous spell called Mondradd in Mon , she had made love with the Greek explorer Alkides. There, she had learned that what the G.o.ds commanded and what they intended were not always the same. "Virgin" meant many things, but what it came down to, pa.r.s.ed and a.n.a.lyzed to the final degree, was one single forbidden act.

And even that was not universally true. For want of clear evidence otherwise, every girl who had not borne a child was considered a virgin.

Again, she shook her head, almost sending her leather hat flying. That would not do! Such thoughts about the lovely blond boy were dangerous. She did not intend to endure the discomforts of tight-bound hair and b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the heavy chafing of men's clothing, only to give herself away with hot-eyed glances.

Already, Lovi was looking her way, as if he had sensed her intensity.

He sat up abruptly, an arm across his chest like a girl startled while bathing. Quickly, he turned away from her gaze, and pulled his tunic over his head. His skin, she saw, had turned quite pink, not entirely from sunburn. She barely suppressed a low chuckle. Poor Lovi. What horrible things he thought about her-about Piers.

Shortly later, the galley glided up against a stone wharf, having attained theFossae Marianae in near-record time. Galleys were not subject to the vagaries of wind, and did not tack back and forth like sailing craft. The sun had not quite set, and they had been at sea less than twelve hours. That night they slept at an inn-Lovi and ibn Saul in a wide bed, and Piers, pleading a touch of claustrophobia after the open sea, on the stone balcony. Only when the others were long asleep did she feel a calloused hand on her shoulder. "Yan Oors! Where were you? How did you get here?" she whispered.

"I rowed," he said, a grin crinkling his dark face. "It wasn't much fun."

"But how?"

"Last night I followed the scholar to the docks, and listened while he haggled with the galley's master.

Then I followed a crewman home, and when he drifted off to sleep . . ."

"Then what?"

"He dreamed dark creatures of the deep, tugging on his oar, pulling him overboard. What a wondrous dream he had, called to account before the king of the watery realm, who had octopus arms, and fish swimming in and out of his nostrils!"

"You're cruel! That poor man! What then?"

"This morning his bench was empty. I sat down in his place, and took his oar. The master even paid me.

See?" The tiny silver bit was dwarfed in his huge hand. "He says he'll exchange this for a s.h.i.+ny obol if I stay on as far as Arelate, at the end of the ca.n.a.l."

"Where did you learn to row, to keep time with the others?"

"I don't remember. Perhaps I sailed with the Venetii, buying tin from the Ca.s.siterides, or maybe I guided Pytheas the Ma.s.silian there, hundreds of years ago. It's all very vague to me now." His deep voice was tinged with regret.

"I'm sorry. But you're here. You remembered enough, and you're here now. I'm glad for that."

"Me too, little witch. And so are my bears." He gestured over the stone bal.u.s.trade. Did the shadows conceal ghostly ursine shapes? Was that flicker of greenish light an eye-a bear's eye-or only a cat stalking small prey?

Enormous salt pans crowded the approach to the ca.n.a.l-dikes separating shallow ponds where seawater evaporated. Many ponds were blood-red with tiny salt-loving organisms. The galley progressed up the weedy waterway under oars: why should its master pay good coin to rent oxen who could not walk as fast as his crew could row-and the only crewman who was getting paid extra for this leg of the journey was the craggy fellow at the third starboard oar.

Even now that Pierrette knew Yan Oors was aboard, she could not distinguish him from the other broad backs on the benches, without going aft to look in every face on her return to the bow. She chafed at the tedium of this phase of the voyage. On her left, never far from the ca.n.a.l, were the weedy, s.h.i.+fting channels of the river, the vast reed sea of the Camargue, and on her right just beyond the towpath was the Plain of Stones, just as flat, radiating heat.

Bored, she wished Lovi would repeat his odd pastime. Ibn Saul had explained that northerners whonever got enough sun in their native lands often did that, and called it "sunbathing." At least, the scholar had commented, Lovi had sense to limit his exposure to the hours before dusk, when the sun was not too fierce. "I've seen northern galley slaves burn and blister so badly they died," he said, "and after all the effort I've spent training that boy . . ."

Cattle grazed a broad expanse of open ground from the rude stone wharf to the monstrous structure that towered over even the broken Roman aqueduct. "What is that?" asked Pierrette.

Lovi smiled condescendingly. "That," he said, "is the town of Arles, once called Arelate. What did you think it was?"

"I know what itwas ," she snapped. "It was a Roman arena, before all the arches were blocked up with stones and mortar, and those four square towers were built. If that is the city of Arelate, I am ashamed how far we descendants of Roma have fallen."

"Don't be too critical," said ibn Saul. "This city has been ill used by just about everyone-the Visigoths were not so very bad, but the Moors breached the old walls, and burned most everything outside of them. When the Franks took the city back, they burned most of what was inside the walls. Now the survivors live in the only completely defensible place left. There are probably two hundred houses inside the amphitheater, and two churches that I know of. I think it would take a bigger and better army than Franks, Moors, or Burgundians could produce to overwhelm it without a long siege."

"I want to go inside," said Pierrette. The theater in Ma.s.salia was a brothel, while this was a town.

Whatever ambiance, whatever tenuous connection with the Roman past might have existed in Ma.s.salia's stone warren, the misery, greed, and pa.s.sions of the present overwhelmed them. Pierrette thought it might be the same here, but such monuments of the past sometimes provided glimpses of what had once been, as if the Veil of Years were worn thin there.

"Are you sure? It's crowded, dark, and dangerous. I have sent a boy from the wharf to announce me to Arria.n.u.s, a bishop, who is reputed to be of a scholarly bent. Otherwise I would not go in myself."

They entered the fortified town through the west gate, a Roman portal now surrounded by one of those ugly foursquare towers. Flaring torches illuminated patches of smoke-stained wall, and Pierrette had the impression of vast, dark s.p.a.ces beyond. This had once been the outer concourse of the amphitheater.

She tried to imagine it with graceful arches open to the sunlight, clean-swept and crowded with Romans in togas, with red-and-bronze-clad soldiers managing the traffic-but the exercise was doomed to fail, because everything was too dark, too ugly, and once beyond the gate itself, the air was still and foul, the Roman tile flooring lost beneath the humped fill and rubble of centuries, and the once-n.o.ble corridor was crowded with mostly roofless enclosures, which she realized were dwellings.

"This way," said ibn Saul, working his way leftward, pus.h.i.+ng through a clot of dull-clad denizens of this awful place, who had gathered beneath a guttering torch. They ascended a worn stone stairway, Roman stone that emerged from Visigothic, Saracen, and Frankish dirt as if pus.h.i.+ng up through it. Pierrette followed, lured by the faintest glimmer of clear natural light from an archway ahead.

That light came cascading down a stairway, which they ascended. At the top was another arcade, just as crowded as the one below, but some of its inward-facing arches were still open. Pierrette drew a welcome breath of air that did not taste as if it had already pa.s.sed in and out of hundreds of pairs of lungs. From below, smoke trickled upward from a hundred hearths: the entire floor of the amphitheaterwas crowded with stone, timber, and plaster houses, amid a maze of tiny streets hardly wide enough for two skinny people to pa.s.s.

To her relief, the scholar led her upward, not down into that chaos. She suddenly appreciated poor run-down Citharista. It had not known prosperity since Rome fell, and though half its ancient buildings had collapsed and not been rebuilt, at least its streets were still Roman-wide, and its Roman cobbles were still unburied. But Arelate had remained a prosperous town, a hub for northbound travelers, the seat of an archbishop and a Burgundian kinglet (who wisely spent his days elsewhere, traveling about his realm).

The bishop's house, and his church, were built atop the uppermost tier of stone seats, their leveled floors cannibalized from the Roman stone of the uppermost arcade. A cool, moist breeze eddied through the anteroom. The bishop himself ushered them into a white-plastered hall with scenes from the lives of saints, and a long table set with silver candlesticks, goblets, and a tall pitcher bedewed with moisture.

"Please sit," he urged. "I've recently read your treatise on the progress of Mother Church among the savage Wends," he said to ibn Saul, ignoring Pierrette entirely. "I must hear all about your voyage among them."

Pierrette sat quietly, and both men forgot that the boy Piers was even there. Although four goblets had been set out, Bishop Arria.n.u.s poured wine only for himself and the scholar, and Pierrette was not so thirsty she was willing to disturb either of them.

Ibn Saul obviously wanted to speak of his present voyage northward, but the bishop had interests of his own. "You wrote that the entire mission among the Wends is comprised of men of theordo vagorum , itinerant priests unaccountable to authority higher than their own questionable consciences. Is it entirely so? We have nothing but trouble from such wanderers in these parts. They come, drink our sacramental wine to quench unquenchable thirsts, regale us with tales that are surely lies, and then most quickly heed some inner call that leads them onto the roads again, when the novelty of their welcome wears off, and the topic of labor and toil arises. In fact we have one such here now, a self-proclaimed Father Gregorius, who claims to have voyaged with the Nors.e.m.e.n who infest the lands above Armorica."

Ibn Saul s.n.a.t.c.hed at that straw. "Ah! Armorica! How opportune it is that you should speak of it. I have long suspected that those hairy Viking barbarians-more savage, some say, even than Wends-must know the place we seek . . ." He described the rumors and tales of a mysterious pagan kingdom, a relic of ancient days, that was reputed to lie somewhere in those very waters the Nors.e.m.e.n claimed as their private sea. "Is this Gregorius nearby? I would like to question him . . ."

"Better still-as his welcome here has worn thin, and his tales have grown stale, I'll provide him with whatever impetus he needs to move on, and a letter-to whom it may concern-that I will give not to him, but to you. If he serves you well in your quest, you may choose to pa.s.s it on to him-I'll tell him that. He won't refuse to accompany you as a guide and perhaps as a . . . spiritual counselor." He said that with raised eyebrows as if someone with the odd name of Muhammad abd' Ullah ibn Saul might not welcome such a one, but the scholar smiled and nodded. "If he is truly 'Father' Gregorius, he will know the sacraments, will he not? I hope that is so, not only for myself, but for my Frankish apprentice, Lovi, who is most devout, and whose moods become quite black when he is denied confession, when we voyage far from Christian lands."