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"Tell me where my daughter Mary Beth is, then, spirit. I hope you did not leave her somewhere in this dark city to her own devices."
"Her devices are very good, Julien, allow me to remind you. But I left her to her own vices rather than devices."
"Which means what?"
"She found a Scot who would be the father of her witch."
I shot out of the chair in a protective rage! "Where is Mary Beth?"
But even then I heard her singing as she came down the corridor. She opened the door. She was very red-cheeked and beautiful from the cold, indeed, sort of glistening, and her hair was loose. "Well, I have done it at last," she said. She danced into the room, and then put a kiss on my cheek. "Don't look so stricken."
"But who is the man?"
"Don't give it another of your precious thoughts, Julien," she said. "I shall never again lay eyes on him. Lord Mayfair is a good name, don't you think?"
And so that was the lie that was written home, just as soon as we knew she had conceived. Lord Mayfair of Donnelaith had fathered her child. Indeed her "marriage" had been held in that "town"--though of course there was no town at all.
But I jump ahead of my story. I had the keen feeling at that moment that she had mated with success, and as she described this man to me, pure Scots, and black-haired and wicked and charming and very rich, I thought, Well, perhaps this is as good a way to choose a father for one's child as any.
Any pain I felt, jealousy, shame, fear, whatever, I buried it inside me. We were committed libertines, she and I. I would not have her laughing at me. Besides, I was too eager to go to Donnelaith.
As I told her what I knew, our beloved spirit did nothing to come between us. Indeed, he was quiet that night. We were ail quiet. Though down the street there was quite a bit of talk. Seems one of the local lords had been murdered.
I didn't learn till later who it was. And even then the name didn't mean anything. But I think I know now that it was the father of Mary Beth's baby.
Let's go on to Donnelaith now. And let me tell you what I discovered there.
We set out the very next day, with two big carriages, one for ourselves and our luggage, the other for several servants needed to assist us. We went north to Darkirk, to the inn there, and from Darkirk on together on horseback, with two pack animals, and two of the local Scotsmen also on horseback to guide us.
We were both great lovers of horses, you understand, and riding in this treacherous hilly terrain was rather a treat for us. We had fine horses for the trip and provisions to stay the night, though not long after we set out, I became aware of my age, and aware of many aches and pains that I had been able to ignore before this time. Our guides were young. Mary Beth was young. I was pretty much on my own, bringing up the rear, but the beauty of the surrounding hills, of the rich forests, and the sky itself drugged me and made me very happy.
There was a chilly haunted glory to all this, however. Scotland! But I had to go all the way to the glen. When I felt the urge to turn round, I kept my counsel and went on. We had a hasty lunch, then rode until almost sunset.
It was just then that we came to the glen, or rather a slope descending upon it. And from a high promontory, just out of the deep forest of Scots pine and alder and oak, we saw the distant castle across the gulf, a hollow overgrown monstrous thing above the beautiful glowing waters. And in the valley itself the high straggled arches of the Cathedral, and the circle of stones, remote, and austere but plainly visible.
Darkness or no darkness, we decided to press on. We lighted our lanterns and went down through the scattered groves of trees, and into the grassy glen, and did not pitch camp till we had reached the remnants of the town, or more visibly, the village which had lingered on after it.
Mary Beth was for pitching camp in the pagan stones. But the two Scotsmen refused. Indeed, they seemed outraged. "That's a fairy circle, madam," said one of them. "You wouldn't dare to do such a thing as camp there. The little people would take it very ill, believe me."
"These Scots are as crazy as the Irish," said Mary Beth. "Why didn't we go on to Dublin if we wanted to hear about leprechauns?"
Her words gave me a little thrill of fear. We were now deep in the broad glen. The village did not include one single stone left standing. Our tents, our lanterns must have been visible for miles around. And suddenly, I felt strangely naked and undefended.
We should have gone up to the ruins of the castle, I thought. And then I realized it. We had not heard from our spirit all day. We had not felt his touch, his nudge, his breath.
The thrill of fear deepened. "Lasher, come to me," I whispered. I feared suddenly that he had gone off to do some terrible thing to those we loved, that he was angry.
But he was quick to respond. As I walked out alone with my unlighted lantern in the tall grass, each step an ordeal since I was so sore from the ride, he came with a great cooling breeze, and made the grass bow to me in a huge circle.
"I am not angry with you, Julien," he said. But his voice was thick with suffering. "We are in our land, the land of Donnelaith. I see what you see, and I weep for what I see, for I remember what there was once in this valley."
"Tell me, spirit," I said.
"Ah, the great church which you know, and processions of the penitent and the ill come for miles through the hills and down to worship at the shrine. And the thriving town full of shops and tradesmen, selling images...images..."
"Images of what?" asked I.
"What is it to me? I would be born again, and never waste my flesh this next time as I did in those years. I am not the slave of history but rather the slave of ambition. Do you understand the difference, Julien?"
"Enlighten me," I said. "There are few times when you make me genuinely curious."
"You are too frank, Julien," it said. "What I mean to say is this. There is no past. Absolutely none. There is only the future. And the more we learn the more we know--reverence for the past is simply superstition. You do what you must do to make the clan strong. So do I. I dream of the witch who will see me and make me flesh. You dream of wealth and power for your children."
"I do," said I.
"There is nothing else. And you have brought me back to this place, which I have never left, that I might know it."
I was standing there idle under the darkling sky, the valley huge, the ruins of the Cathedral just ahead of me. These words sank into my soul. I memorized them.
"Who taught you these things?" I asked.
"You did," Lasher said. "It was you and your kind who taught me to want, to aim, to reach, rather than to lament. And now I remind you, for the past calls to you under false pretenses."
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nbsp; "You think so," I said.
"Yes," he said. "These stones, what are they? They are nothing."
"May I see the church, spirit?"
"Oh yes," said he. "Light your lantern if you will. But you will never see it as I saw it."
"You're wrong, spirit. When you come into me, you leave something of yourself behind. I have seen it. I have seen it with the faithful crowded to the doors, and the candles and the Christmas green--"
"Silence!" he declared and I felt him like the wind wrapping me so roughly suddenly he might knock me over. I went down on my knees. The wind ceased. "Thank you, spirit," said I. I struck a match, shielding it carefully, and lighted the wick of the lantern. "Won't you tell me of those times?"
"I'd tell you what I see from here. I see my children."
"Do you speak of us now?"
But that was all he would say, though he followed me as I made a path through the high grass, over rocky and uneven ground, and came at last to the ruins themselves and stood in the giant nave looking at the broken arches.
Dear God, what a grand cathedral it must have been. I had seen its like all over Europe. It was not in the Roman style, with rounded arches and paintings galore; no doubt it was cold stone, and lofty and graceful as the Cathedral of Chartres or Canterbury.
"But the glass, does anything remain of the glorious glass?" I whispered.
And in mournful answer the wind swept broadly and serenely across the entire darkening glen and passed through the nave, once again, making the wild grass bend to and fro, and ruffling around me as if to embrace me. The moon had risen a bit, and the stars were shining through.
And suddenly beyond the very end of the nave, where the rose window had once been, where the arch stood at its height, I saw the spirit himself, immense, and huge and dark and translucent, spread across the sky like a great storm rolling in, only silent, and collecting and re-collecting and then in one sudden burst dispersing into nothingness.
Clear sky, the moon, the distant mountain, the wood. All that was plain and still and the air felt cold and empty. My lantern burnt on bright. I stood alone. The Cathedral seemed to grow taller around me, and I to be dwarfed and vain and petty and desperate. I sank down to the ground. I drew up my knee, and rested my hand and my chin upon it. I peered through the dark. I wished for Lasher's memories to come to me.
