"He"s aboard. With all his braying, we found him long before we found you." Then Pierrette allowed herself to slip into exhausted sleep in the iron-hard arms of Yan Oors.
She awakened to the gentle motion of a large ship quartering the swells on an easy tack. The close, m.u.f.fled sounds of the water, the creaking of timbers, told her she was belowdecks. The rustle beneath her and the woolly scratchiness above informed her she was in a bunk. She opened her eyes. "Master ibn Saul?" she asked when she saw who sat beside her bed, "what are you doing here?"
"You thought you had me fooled, didn"t you?" he replied with a good-natured grin. Pierrette tugged the wooly blanket up to her chin. When they had pulled her from the water, she had been wearing her boy"s garb, but someone had removed the wet clothing. Someone now knew she was no boy.
The scholar chuckled. "You are prettier as a girl," he said, "even soaking wet."
"You must have known I was not a boy. Surely Lovi told you, even before we all left Gesocribate."
"Lovi? He still doesn"t know. He didn"t get close when we pulled you aboard. All he saw was your nose, sticking out of a roll of blankets."
"But . . . I don"t understand." Of course Lovi knew she was a girl. "Then what did you mean, that I"d fooled you?"
"You knew all along where those pesky islands were. When you thought Lovi and I had gone, what did you do but buy a boat, and set off in search of our goal? I suspected you would do as much, so as soon as we were out of sight around the headland, I bade the captain put into a little estuary, and sent Lovi back into town to spy on you. The big ugly fellow was there, also, seeking you, but Lovi-quick-thinking lad-threw a grain sack over his head and arms, and subdued him. Later, when he was also sure you were gone, he came with us willingly enough. When you set sail, we followed you at a distance."
"I would have seen you!" Pierrette protested. "The horizon was clear."
Ibn Saul shook his head. "The greater height of our mast allowed our lookout to keep you in sight without your spotting us whenever you looked behind."
Pierrette pondered that for several long moments. "But where were you when I was ash.o.r.e?" she asked at last. "Did you sail back and forth out there for eighteen days?"
"Ash.o.r.e? Are you still asleep, and dreaming? You did not go ash.o.r.e anywhere. When I saw those great volcanic peaks looming up from the empty ocean, where none should be, I knew what they were, butwhen you sailed into that fog bank, our captain refused to follow you, not knowing what treacherous rocks and shoals they concealed. We did sail back and forth, awaiting your return, but it was only a half day, a morning, really, and there you came again, sailing madly close to the wind with your rail awash, as if a sea serpent or a shipful of pirates were in close pursuit.
"When the storm came up, we lost sight of you, but as luck would have it, we spotted your red sail and broken mast, and hove to on the spot, sending every man aloft to look for you. And we found you, didn"t we? For here you are."
"Let me see if I have heard you aright," she said. "You only lost sight of me for a matter of hours? It seemed much longer to me." Seventeen days longer, in fact, though she did not say that.
"From shortly after dawn," he affirmed, "until just into the noonday watch."
Of course, Pierrette realized then: like Anselm"s keep, the Fortunate Isles were-had been-outside the stream of time, and all that transpired while she was within the influence of Minho"s spell had occurred in a single moment from the perspective of someone outside.
But surely ibn Saul could not have missed seeing the rending clash of Minho"s kingdom against the Armorican cliffs. And what of the great wave? Then she remembered: that had occurred not in this world, but in another. Only at the last moment had she remembered to utter her spell. So what had happened to Minho and his kingdom? Were they truly gone, destroyed in the final cataclysm of the eruption, shattered against phantasmic Armorican rocks that remained unbroken here and now? Or, in their final moments, had all those tight-stretched threads and tendrils drawn the Isles back to their origin-and into the midst of the original eruption that by all rights should have destroyed them two thousand years before?
A chill took her. "Shall I get you another blanket?" asked ibn Saul.
"That would be kind," she replied, not because she was cold, but to gain a moment alone to think. If there had been no cataclysm in this world, it could only be because the lattermost case was true: in this one, Minho had never cast his great, arrogant spell. He had not cast it, and thus Thera had not been saved, and the Fortunate Isles had never existed-in this world.
Again, she shuddered. What else was not as she knew it to be? What else was different?
Ibn Saul returned, shook out another blanket, and spread it over her.
"Yan Oors is here, isn"t he? I remember him pulling me from the water. I remember his voice."
"He has not left your door since then."
"I wish to speak with him. Bid him come in." Yan Oors needed no bidding. His great shadow filled the doorway, and with a c.o.c.k of his head he dismissed the scholar. Obviously, Pierrette realized, he no longer pretended to a servant"s meekness in the presence of the other man, and did not fear the power of the scholar"s spells. That had changed.
"Tell me what happened to the shadows that plagued us all through Armorica," she demanded immediately, when they were alone.
"What shadows are those?" Then Pierrette knew that the course of history as she knew it had truly changed. "You don"t remember the small, ugly wraiths that scurried away under our feet, always going westward?"
Now it was Yan Oors turn to wonder if Pierrette"s suffering had affected her mind. "I think you need more rest, before we talk further," he decided. "Your thoughts will be clearer, then."
Pierrette knew otherwise, but there was no point in arguing about it. If the Fortunate Isles had returned to their origin, and were destroyed just as if Minho had never uttered the great spell that broke the ever-turning Wheel of Time and divided the world into separate realms-his, where no evil existed, and the other, where it could not but prevail-then of course there had never been any small shadowy evils rushing westward in search of a long-lost balance. That balance had never been lost.
Pierrette waved Yan Oors away and closed her eyes, pretending to doze. What would this world be like, if evil were truly evenly matched with good? Would either one exist, or would they nullify each other? She had no idea at all what she would find, when this vessel at last put ash.o.r.e.
Pierrette did not feel well enough to be up and around until the following morning. Then, after breaking her fast with bread baked on the ship"s tiny brick hearth, she joined ibn Saul, who was leaning over the rail forward. "I can see we"re sailing southward," she remarked. "We must be well past the mouth of the Liger by now-so what is our destination?"
"Ultimately, we are going home-me, to Ma.s.salia, and you . . . to Citharista, I presume. I plan to sail up the Garumna as far as possible, then rent a smaller craft, or travel overland on the Via Domitia. Does that coincide with your own desires?"
It did, indeed-but she did not seem as happy about it as ibn Saul thought she should. "I wonder how Master Anselm is doing," she mused, seemingly pensively, but unable to keep a certain amount of tension from her voice.
"Anselm? Unless he"s finished the last of that fine Tuscan wine I brought him on my last visit, I"m sure he is making no more complaints than is usual for him."
Pierrette sighed, tremendously relieved-but she would not explain just what, in the scholar"s seemingly ordinary remark, had pleased her so much. It was this: Yan Oors did not remember the dark, fleeting shadows, the small evils, because they had never existed. And Anselm was equally a product of the Fortunate Isles-Minho"s apprentice, sent out into the world centuries before, but still tied by chains of causality to his place of origin . . . or so she had feared. Yet ibn Saul clearly remembered him, and thus he had not vanished, even the last memory of him. She could only conclude that because the spell that preserved him was separate from Minho"s, and because within his keep he was not ever really in this world or the other, his existence was no longer tied to an origin at all. Just as Pierrette"s memories of everything that had transpired during her seventeen-day sojourn in Minho"s nonexistent kingdom still remained, because she had not been in this world at the time of the destruction, so Anselm himself remained, one last embodied memory of that mythical land, ensuring that its legend, at least, would not perish.
"What will you do next, Master ibn Saul? Have you had enough of disappearing islands for a while?"
"I am not a poor man," he replied, "but having hired a ship twice now, and having nothing to show for it but a glimpse of peaks rising above a bank of fog, I intend to confine my researches to more accessibleplaces. I have still not seen the lands across the Indus, or followed the Silk Road to its far terminus, and I can travel with other people"s caravans without having to finance them in their entirety."
"I don"t think Lovi will be eager to leave on another voyage so soon. He hopes he will be able to find Gregorius again, in Burdigala or even Ma.s.salia."
"Who? Gregorius?"
"Master ibn Saul, were you daydreaming? Did you hear anything I . . ."
"I heard. But who is Gregorius?"
Pierrette felt a sudden chill. She chose her next words very carefully. "Didn"t we meet him in Arelate, where we camped aboard the galley?"
"What are you talking about? We didn"t stop at Arelate. We kept rowing, because the moon was full and the sky clear."
"I"m sure you"re right, Master ibn Saul. I am sure everything will be clearer to me when I have fully recovered. But now I must see to Gustave"s feeding. I"m so happy that you recovered him too."
"You can thank Lovi for that. He"s the one who got kicked, hauling him aboard."
"I"ll do that."
Now Pierrette"s thoughts took an entirely new turn. Of course they had stopped in Arelate. They had spoken with Bishop Arria.n.u.s, who had foisted the vagrant priest Gregorius upon them. "Of course" there had been evil and shadows as well-but not in this world. In this history, Minho"s kingdom had not survived the eruption of Thera, Lovi had not been anyone"s lover, and . . .
Gustave would have to wait. She questioned ibn Saul further while saying very little herself. What she learned was this: indeed they had been seeking a legendary island off the coast of Armorica, but it was theInsula Pomorum they sought, the burial place of the ancient Britannic kings-Avalon, not the Fortunate Isles. Now Pierrette"s head swirled with conflicting memories: it was going to take years of study, in the eternal daylight of Anselm"s library, to establish just how different the world was, without Minho in it. But that would be later. Now, she realized she had the opportunity to recover a treasure she had thought forever lost. . . .
"Why are we doing this? What is down here?" Lovi complained as he followed Pierrette into the darkness of the ship"s hold. "What great secret is hidden here, among these bales of smelly wool? I can"t see anything."
"Stop complaining. We don"t dare bring a lamp down here. A fire among these bales . . ."
"I know. I know."
Pierrette wriggled between two bales, and emerged in a small open place. She reached back and grasped Lovi"s hand. "You"re almost there now. Come in."
"What is this place?" "My secret nest. I have feathered it with my cloak."
"It"s hot down here."
"Take off your tunic. We"ll be here a while."
"How will I find it again in the darkness?"
"I"ll make a light, later. Now do as I say." She heard his m.u.f.fled grumbles as he struggled out of his garment. Then she stretched out her arms, and drew him to her. Her own clothing lay in a heap nearby.
The springy hairs on his chest made her bared nipples tingle.
"You"re not . . . you are not a . . ."
Pierrette giggled, and ran her hand across the front of hisbracae . "Not a boy? Indeed not-but you surely are."
Even in that dark and stuffy place, a vagrant current of fresh air found its way to them, cooling the sweat that slicked Lovi"s arms and shoulders, that pooled in the small of Pierrette"s back as she sprawled on top of him. "What are you trying to do?" she murmured as he wriggled about.
"I want to see you! I can feel you, but I won"t believe until I can . . ."
"Is that all? Stop thrashing, then. Here. I"ll make a light." She whispered the words of the first spell she had learned as a small child. Just above her upraised fingertips appeared a faint glow, like sunlight through the haze of a summer morning, warm and welcoming yet without the heat that would come as the day unfolded. As it brightened, it gave her skin an olive cast, a lovely contrast against Lovi"s pale, sun-bathed bronze, and it caused his hair to shimmer as she ran her fingers through it.
"Now do you believe?" she murmured. He did not reply, only cupped her small b.r.e.a.s.t.s in his hands, then stretched to kiss them.
Later still: "We must go soon, or ibn Saul will think we"ve fallen overboard."
"I don"t want to go. When next I see you in your boy"s clothing, I"ll think this was a dream, and that you are only Piers."
"Would you care? Aren"t you attracted to boys?"
He feigned a slap that became a caress. "I am attracted toyou . Was I blind, before, or had you ensorcelled me? You were so cruel. I almost believed that I was . . . that I . . ."
"Never mind," she whispered. "I was cruel to you, but I suffered also. When first I deceived you, I knew no better. The G.o.ddess said I must remain virgin, or I would fail, and would become . . . ordinary."
"Never that," Lovi murmured.
"I did not dare let my feelings for you show, because I knew where that would lead. I was not wise enough to understand that there is a considerable s.p.a.ce to wiggle in, between the words of a G.o.ddess"scommand, and what she really intends. A very wise man taught me that."
"I am grateful to him."
Pierrette glanced around herself, as if someone were watching them, there in that tiny secluded nest.
Was it Aam, peering through the Veil of Years, feeling her heat and her happiness? Was it the Roman Calvinus, or Alkides, or all three of them? One thing was sure: it was not Minho, King of the Fortunate Isles.
"Welcome, my dear friends," she whispered. "Thank you for this gift."
"What did you say?"
"I was just wondering if you were content, even though we did not . . . consummate . . . our union?"
Lovi laughed. "I won"t complain. You must obey your G.o.ddess, and . . . and at least you"re not really Piers, and a boy."
"There is that," she said as she laced her tunic and made ready for the climb back into the light of day.
The next day they moored at Burdigala, where ibn Saul hired a galley, and they made good time upstream over the next several days. Eager to be home, the scholar did not hesitate to hire a well-sprung Gallic carriage for the eastward leg of their journey on the Via Domitia.
Less than a month after Pierrette had been plucked from the sea, she found herself, again alone except for Gustave, on the heights above Citharista, just beyond the dragon"s bones. At the last, a few miles back, even Yan Oors had left her, pleading that he had seen-and smelled-enough of cities on this one voyage to last him another lifetime as long as his own. She had parted from Lovi outside Ma.s.salia"s Roman gate; even love-if that was what indeed they shared-had limits, and there was no place for her in ibn Saul"s household, just as there was no place for another apprentice in Anselm"s.
Far away and below, on the knifelike scarp called the Eagle"s Beak, stood Anselm"s fortress, unharmed and unchanged. East of the scarps, enclosed within crumbling walls, the red tile roofs of Citharista were like garnets set in the lid of a reliquary box. Had anything changed? It did not seem so.
That was no idle concern. Once before, when she had parted the Veil of Years, Pierrette had returned home, and a little boy named Cletus, whom only she remembered, had never been born. Soon-when she turned onto the trail that led to the beech grove, she would pa.s.s the foundation of an old house, abandoned when its Roman owners departed, and never reoccupied. In another history, one only she remembered, they had never left, and their descendant, little Cletus, had lived there, in a room never torn down for its stones. How often had she walked him home at dusk, because-in that world-the road had not been safe for a child, beyond the town"s protecting walls?
Now Cletus was not, and never had been, and again, Pierrette had changed what was and what might have been. Did the vagrant Father Gregorius still regale Bishop Arria.n.u.s"s subordinates in Arelate? Or had he turned north or west on some road leading elsewhere, and ended up in another town instead? Or had he never been born, his tall tales of life among the Vikings never told?
Her anxiety intensified as she descended from the heights and turned onto the northeastward trail. There stood two ancient olive trees, the remains of a grove planted by Greeks, two trees that had felt the heatof a thousand summers, whose roots had sipped of a thousand winters" rains. But the last time she had pa.s.sed this intersection of paths, this crossroad where a small unnamed G.o.d presided over the choices men made of which way to go, there had been only one surviving tree and a gnarled stump-hadn"t there?
A mile beyond that turning, swathed in brushy oaks whose leaves were no larger than her father Gilles"s thumbnail, were the remains of the Roman fountain whose waters had once splashed into a man-made pool. The Romans had diverted waters from the sacred grove to fill that fountain, but now the trickle had regained its earlier course, and the fountain was dry. . . .
Now more anxious than ever, Pierrette quickened her pace, even as the slope steepened and the defile became narrower. Her thigh muscles burned with that effort. Her mind burned with another effort entirely: the sacred pool and the G.o.ddess would not be changed, she told herself. They had existed long before Minho had uttered (and now had never uttered) his terrible spell. They would not be changed.
When she clambered over the last blocky boulders that delineated the boundary between damp and cool, sere and dry, between tiny-leaved scrub oaks and moisture-loving beeches and maples, she was-slightly-rea.s.sured, because the air was indeed sweeter here, and the sun"s rays were broken into small, dappled patterns that fell not upon dry gravels, but upon green, lush moss . . .
"Whatever for are you hurrying so?"
Pierrette spun around at the sound of the familiar old voice. She had not yet eaten a red mushroom or taken a pinch of the dried blue-and-yellow flowers from her pouch, but here, before her, in the same homespun skirt, patched and frayed, the color of old dried leaves . . .
"You don"t need the spell any more," said the G.o.ddessMa . "The barrier is gone. You need no mushrooms to deceive your mind, no deadly flowers to fool your body, before you can see me."
And so it was. Of those long hours until dusk dimmed the reflection of beech leaves upon the smooth waters of the pool, Pierrette has never spoken, so what was said there and then cannot be written down.
Perhaps she berated the G.o.ddess of the pool for tricking her, because the choice to save or destroy the mad king"s realm had never really been hers. She had cast no great counterspell; she herself had been the G.o.ddess"s weapon, and had brought the three things that destroyed Minho: the sorcerer Cunotar, the iron ring, and Father Otho"s gift to her, a tiny golden cross.
Was the hand of the G.o.ddess at work when Father Otho gave it? He was no longer the good Christian he had once been (he knew better than to deny the existences of powers he could not understand) but Christian he remained, and preferred to think otherwise, and write only that Pierrette was a catalyst, and that whatever the ultimate causes, she brought what was needed, when it was needed.
Perhaps she was disappointed that her prowess as a sorceress was not tested, but it was better that way, because she harbored no guilt. She did not destroy the enchanted kingdom, or send all those ancient souls to whatever fate awaited them. As a Christian, of course, her chronicler chose to believe that the thousands who heard the Hermit"s words gained access to a proper Christian Heaven, and that a forgiving deity gave Pierrette credit for that, pagan though she was. But only G.o.d can say.