“Yes,” came his answer. “It’s a terrible thing to see. Especially if the poor creature is a woman. For then she is judged to be the devil’s child, without trial, for she cannot possibly be Ashlar. But these are the Highlands, and our ways have always been very mysterious.”
“Have you yourself ever laid eyes on the female thing?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “Never. But there are some who say they have known those who have seen it. There is talk among the sorcerers, and those who cling to the pagan ways. People dream that they will bring the female and the male together. But we should not speak of these things. We suffer those witches to live because now and then they can cure. But no one believes their stories, or thinks them proper for the ears of Christian people.”
“Ah, yes,” I said. “I can well imagine.” I thanked him.
I did not wait for morning Mass to see the strange, tall priest.
I caught his scent as soon as I approached the rectory, and when he came to the door, having caught mine, we stood staring at one another. I rose to my full height, and of course he had done nothing to disguise his own. We merely stood there, facing one another.
In him I saw the old gentleness, the eyes almost timid, and the lips soft, and the skin as fresh and free of blemish as that of a baby. Had he really been born of two human beings, two powerful witches perhaps? Did he believe his destiny?
Born remembering, yes, born knowing, yes, and thank God for him it had been the right time that he remembered—and the right battle, and the right place. And now he followed the old profession they had marked for us hundreds of years ago.
He came towards me. He wanted to speak. Perhaps he could not believe his eyes, that he was looking upon one exactly like him.
“Father,” I asked in Latin, so that he was most likely to answer, “was it really from a human mother and father you came?”
“How else?” he asked, quite clearly terrified. “Go if you will to my parents themselves. Ask them.” He grew pale, and was trembling.
“Father,” I said, “where is your like among women?”
“There is no such thing!” he declared. But now he could scarcely keep himself from running away from me. “Brother, where have you come from?” he asked. “Here, seek God’s forgiveness for your sins, whatever they are.”
“You have never seen a woman of our kind?”
He shook his head. “Brother, I am the chosen of God,” he explained. “The chosen of St. Ashlar.” He bowed his head, humbly, and I saw a blush come to his cheeks, for obviously he’d committed a sin of pride in announcing this.
“Farewell, then,” I said. And I left him.
I left the town and I went again to the stones; I sang an old song, letting myself rock back and forth in the wind, and then I made for the forest.
Dawn was just rising behind me when I climbed the wooded hills to find the old cave. It was a desolate spot, dark as it had been five hundred years before, with no sign now of the witch’s hovel.
In the early light, cold and bitter as that of a winter’s eve, I heard a voice call me.
“Ashlar!”
I turned around and I looked at the dark woods. “Ashlar the cursed, I see you!”
“It’s you, Aiken Drumm,” I cried. And then I heard his mean laughter. Ah, the Little People were there, garbed in green so that they would blend with the leaves and the bracken. I saw their cruel little faces.
“There’s no tall woman here for you, Ashlar,” cried Aiken Drumm. “Nor will there ever be. No men of your ilk but a mewling priest born of witches, who falls to his knees when he hears our pipes. Here! Come. Take a little bride, a sweet morsel of wrinkled flesh, and see what you beget! And be grateful for what God gives you.”
They had begun to beat their drums. I heard the whining of their song, discordant, ghastly, yet strangely familiar. Then came the pipes. It was the old songs we had sung, the songs we taught them!
“Who knows, Ashlar the cursed?” he cried out. “But your daughter by one of us this morn might be a female! Come with us; we have wee women aplenty to amuse you. Think, a daughter, Your Royal Majesty!