Part 4 (1/2)
”Lovi? That is Louis in our local patois. Is he perhaps related to the Frankish kings?”
”You mean the descendants of Chlodowechus, called Clovis? I doubt it.” ”As do I. But isn't it strange how such an odd and savage name, Chlodowechus, that sounds like someone choking, can be trans.m.u.ted by time and Christian influence into the mellifluous 'Lovi' or 'Louis?'
At that moment Pierrette, though she had no wine to choke on, made a sound that sounded very much like ”Chlodowechus.” The bishop then noticed her presence. ”Here, boy. I've forgotten you. Have some wine. Are you ill?”
”I'm sorry,Episkopos Arria.n.u.s,” ibn Saul interjected. ”This is Piers, who is, though young, a scholar in his own right, who has read many ancient works not only in Latin, but in Greek and Hebrew, and in the dead tongue of the Phoenicians as well. I am thinking he choked not on an absence of wine, but on something you may have said. Piers? Is that so?”
Pierrette nodded. ”When you spoke of the trans.m.u.tation of 'Chlodowechus' to 'Clovis' to 'Louis,' and attributed the improvement in the sound of it to the blessing of the Church, I was reminded of my own observations of how Christianity has claimed much else that was pagan, and made it its own. I was further reminded of Saint Augustine's own advice, in that regard, and that of the Holy Father Gregorius, whose ideas paralleled his.”
The bishop was wholly captivated now-and Pierrette had shaped her words just so that her own pagan estate would not likely come up. She had never lied outright even to devout Christians, and did not want to. ”Yes?” said Bishop Arria.n.u.s, leaning forward until his prominent nose almost rested on the gleaming rim of his goblet.
”It is not enough to say that Christianity mellows what was once pagan,” Pierrette said. ”It is closer to truth to say that the very realities of the pagan world have been reshaped by it. Christian influence reaches not only forward into lands where no vagrant priest has trod, and into a future no one has visited-it reaches back through time itself, and changes pagan G.o.ds into Christian saints.”
”How can that be? You speak rhetorically, of course-nothing can change the past. What has been written cannot be erased.”
”Is that so? When Pope Gregory suggested that the wood from holy pagan oaks be hewn and split, and Christian shrines built where they stood, and when pagan folks had no choice but to come and wors.h.i.+p before a cross made from that once-holy tree, didn't Gaulish Esus, the carpenter-G.o.d, become Jesus, still a carpenter, still a G.o.d?”
”But no! You tread on fearsome ground, boy! There is no connection between the one Jesus and the other!” The p.r.o.nunciation of the two names was so very similar-”Ay-soos” and ”Hay-soos,” that the bishop had missed Pierrette's slight aspiration of the one name and not the other. ”I have never even heard of a Gaulish 'Jesus.' ”
”That is exactly my point,” Pierrette said firmly. She leaned back and took a leisurely sip of wine. ”You must accept my a.s.surance that the Celtic 'Esus' once existed-at least in the minds of his wors.h.i.+ppers-because the texts in which his name is written are not here, and I cannot show them to you. Accept that, and the rest becomes evident: Esus once was, but is no longer. Jesus once was not, but now is. The very past in which pagan Esus existed is no longer: now the roots of the Christian tree are deeper in the heart of this land than were those of the pagans, and Esus, in truth, never was.”
”You play with the meanings of words!” Arria.n.u.s spat. ”You flirt with terrible heresy!” ”Where is the heresy? I have said that-in this world we live in-there is and was only one Jesus, ever.”
”But you just said there was once another . . .”
”The very fact of his existence has been erased, not just memory of him. He does not exist, and because of the strength of the Church, he never did. And he is not the only one! Shall I name other names?”
”I am afraid to ask them.”
Pierrette's dark eyes held the bishop's with their intensity. ”In the north, in Armorica, Britannia, and Hibernia, there was once a G.o.ddess whose name has changed just as Chlodowechus's has. She was the Mother G.o.ddess, whose flesh was the soil itself, whose bones were the rocks beneath it, and whose flowing b.r.e.a.s.t.s were the sacred pools and springs that well hot and cold from dark, buried places. Do you know her name?”
The cleric could not look away. He wanted to. He wanted to flee from this terrible boy who knew of such things-but he was in his own house, that shared a common wall with his church, which was consecrated ground. He could not flee.
”Her name was Brigantu. That was the name of a tribe as well, a warlike tribe whose name comes down to us as 'brigand.' Today the G.o.ddess does not exist-but my friend Ferdiad, an Irish singer and teller of tales, whose people have been Christian for many centuries, says that Saint Bridget is the patron saint of his land-and has always been so. . . . If you need still another name, to be convinced, there is Mary Magdalen, patron saint of this land . . .”
”Stop! Please! No more! Magister ibn Saul, who is this frightening child you have brought here? I am afraid for my very soul, here in my own home.”
”Then you should be grateful. When we fear for our souls or our mortal bodies, we consider our actions carefully. And I have listened to what Piers has said. As I understand it, he claims that the strength of the Church is such that when a pagan deity falls before it, there can be no true apostasy. As a priest of G.o.d you should rejoice.”
”No apostasy? But there is. Everywhere, in the villages, in the countryside, folk fall into error so easily, and throw offerings into pools and springs, or holes in the ground.”
”Notrue apostasy, I said-for if the deities they importune do not exist, and indeed never did exist-then where do their prayers go? Who is there to hear them, but the One G.o.d?”
Bishop Arria.n.u.s nodded grudging agreement, then turned the conversation in a direction more immediately useful to the scholar-the state of the countryside of the Rhoda.n.u.s Valley, and the portage road to the headwaters of the Liger. The bishop gave them names of churchmen they could call on for hospitality on their way, and promised to have a packet of letters, in the morning, for them to deliver for him. Still uneasy with the boy Piers's revelations, he was quite obviously happy to have an excuse, the letters, to bid them farewell.
”Shall we sleep on the boat?” ibn Saul asked, wrinkling his great nose as they descended into the darkness of the erstwhile amphitheater. ”I can't imagine any inn here that would smell better than the garbage in the ca.n.a.l.” With several hours of daylight left, ibn Saul arranged for the galley to be towed to the river itself-the ca.n.a.l ended at Arelate-and they spent the night moored offsh.o.r.e, free from the stinks of the town and the risk of sneak thieves in the night.
”Isn't the next town Tarascon?” asked Pierrette when they were under way in the early hours, with the bishop's letters and the hedge-priest Father Gregorius aboard. Ibn Saul nodded.
Then Father Gregorius spoke (he had until then been sullenly resentful about his premature ejection from the comforts of the bishop's house, and about ibn Saul's jovial refusal to part with the letter of recommendation at their very first port of call). ”Of course we will be stopping there, won't we?” he asked.
”I hadn't planned to,” said the scholar. ”According to the galleymaster's calculation, it may be less than a full day's row, against this sluggish current. We may be well beyond Tarascon by nightfall. Why?”
”Tarascon is a very holy place,” said the priest, avoiding the scholar's eye. His gaze slid away upstream like a slippery fish. ”Saint Martha lived there, and slayed a ferocious river monster, a great beast called a 'Tarasque.' ”
Pierrette laughed out loud, and Gregorius turned angry eyes upon her. ”You don't believe it?”
”Of course I do,” she replied. ”I know better than anyone that the stories of the saints here in Provence are true. I myself saw them where they came ash.o.r.e, in the little town that grew up on that spot. I have been in the church there, built over the graves of Mary Salome and Mary Jacoba, sisters of the mother of Jesus. I was only laughing because Magister ibn Saul, the bishop Arria.n.u.s, and I, had quite a discussion of names and tales, and how they change.”
”You are mocking me,” said Gregorius. ”The saints came many hundreds of years ago, and you are still a boy.”
”I don't mean that I wasthere then,” Pierrette replied, ”or not exactly. Indeed I saw the Saints-all eight of them: Mary Magdalen, her sister Martha, their brother Lazarus, Cedonius who was blind and was healed by Jesus, Saint Maximinus, Sainte Sarah, whom some say was the elder Marys' Egyptian servant-but I saw them in a vision granted me by a very holy old woman. And another time, I spoke with one of the two old sisters, and with Sarah, in their cottage on the very spot where the church stands today.”
”Oh,” said Gregorius flatly. ”Visions.”
”You don't believe in visions, Father? Then what of burning bushes, and blinding lights on the road to Damascus, and . . .”
”I didn't say that!” Only now did he realize what a formidable opponent the slender boy in the conical leather hat could be. Did he perhaps fear that he might be unmasked as a fraud? But no rule stated that a vagabond priest had to be educated, though many, the bishop might have said, were far too erudite for their own-and the Church's-good.
”Tell us why you laughed,” said ibn Saul. ”What about Tarascon, or river monsters, bears on our own conversation with the bishop?” ”To answer that, I must tell not one, but three tales, and it is almost noon. Let us eat, and then nap through the heat of the day, and I'll tell the first of them tonight, around the evening fire, when we have moored the galley.
Pierrette napped, as did ibn Saul, but Gregorius did not, nor Lovi. The priest recited poetry in fine, cla.s.sical Latin, and the apprentice was obviously enraptured. From what Pierrette heard, they were not stolid Christian verse, but romantic tales of faraway places, of adventures, treasure-seekers, and seventh sons. Were they the same tales with which he had captivated the bishop's clerks and scribes?
As luck and River Rhoda.n.u.s's currents would have it, they had not reached Tarascon by the time the sun dropped below the trees on the river's west bank. They drew up along a sandy spit downstream of a summer island-so called because it did not exist in winter or spring, when the water was high. Though no trees grew on it, several dead ones had snagged on its upstream end, and there was plenty of wood for a cheerful fire, where crew and pa.s.sengers alike settled when their stomachs were full.
Chapter 7 - The Pagan Tale.
”This is how it was in the most ancient time,” said Pierrette. ”The people called Gauls or Celts came out of the east riding war chariots, wearing arms made of iron, which was a new metal then, and was cheap, if one knew the secret of drawing it from red, yellow, and black rocks, which were everywhere. Because it was cheap, every man was well armed, and was a warrior, so Gaulish iron overwhelmed bronze, and took this land from the small, dark Ligures who had cherished it from the very beginning. That is why, to this very day, some old granny-women who dabble in herbs and potions will not touch cold iron.
”The Gauls' main G.o.ds were Taranis, who was the sky, Teutatis, father of theteuta , the tribe, who was a war G.o.d, black as iron, red as blood, and lastly Danu, the river. Danu was really G.o.ddess of another river, far away, but wherever Gauls conquered, they brought her, and gave every great river her name.
That is why so many great streams bear it, as does this one: Rhodo-danu, the 'rosy river,' perhaps so called for the red salt pans that are her painted mouth.
”But the Gauls did not conquer the Ligures easily. The small folk resisted, and killed them when they ventured from the high ground and open-sky places, and the G.o.ds of the land fought them also.Ma , whose belly was the soil, whose bones were the rocks, whose b.r.e.a.s.t.s were springs and holy pools, whose veins were rivers and streams, did not accept the usurper-G.o.ddess Danu, and she kept many dark ones safe in her swamps and low places.
”The Gauls called upon Taranis, whose legs were snakes, and upon Danu, herself winding across the land like a serpent. Danu promised to mate with Taranis if he rid her of the flukes and worms-the humans-that infested her. So Taranis lay with her, and in time she gave birth to a beast with a serpent's body, but with legs to stride on land, with a great maw filled with teeth sharp as lightning bolts, and as bright. The beast's name was Taran-asco, which meant 'in Taranis' stead,' and it went where the Gauls feared to go, into the swamps and low places, where it lived upon the bodies of the small folk. ”Only iron could harm it, and the dark people had no iron, only bronze, and little of that. They had nowhere further to flee, so many of them died. When Taran-asco came upon a village, it consumed young and old, women and babes, and this was an abomination even to the Gauls, especially Teutatis, who was of honest blood that tasted of iron.