Pierrette could hardly slither through the small opening beneath the wooden stairs that led to her father's house. When she had been little, she had spent many hours in the dim space the hole led to, between the broad floorboards of the house and the sloping, irregular bedrock beneath. There, she had experimented with the powders and potions her dead masc mother no longer needed—her mother's dying legacy to her youngest child.
Pierrette had not been in that secret place of late, but now . . . if she were to leave Citharista, there was one thing, one terrible, dangerous object, that she did not dare leave behind. Wiggling a small stone loose from the house foundation, she reached behind it, and withdrew a shiny bauble on a string. It was a globule of fused glass, mostly clear, but veined with red and blue, the patterns not painted on its surface but weaving through the clear crystal like a fisherman's net, tangled in the water.
The reticulations of that net held no fish, but something deadlier than a shark. The warmth of her hand, or the anxious tenor of her thoughts, set the droplet aglow, an orange light like the flame of a cheap, fatty candle. It illuminated her tense features. "Is that you, little masc?" The harsh, scraping voice was inaudible to the mice huddling in their shredded leaf nest in the corner, and to the old ladder snake (so called for the pattern on its back) that preyed on them. Only Pierrette heard it, and answered the speaker.
"Who else, Cunotar? Did you hope it was some innocent you could charm into breaking my 'serpent's egg' and freeing you to devastate this world and time as you strived to do to your own?"
"Why do you disturb me? You aren't seeking pleasant conversation, I warrant, though you must be bored with your trivial life, and surely crave conversation with someone wiser than yourself."
"Wiser? You've been locked in that egg for eight centuries. Events have passed you by, and the world outside is like nothing you remember. You have nothing worthwhile to say."
"But you're here. That's cause for hope, isn't it?"
"I've come for you only because I dare not leave such evil unguarded. I—we—are going on a trip."
"How lovely! Will you let me see what ruin you and your kind have made of the countryside, or must I ride in the darkness and sweat between your breasts?"
Ruin, indeed. For the most part sunny Provence was a lovely place, and people didn't give much thought to ghosts, demons, or creatures of darkness. It had not always been so. In Cunotar's day, druids like him had ruled with terror, commanding a legion of fantômes, dead Celtic warriors who served because the druids owned their heads, and kept them preserved in cedar oil.
But Pierrette did not like to think of that. Long ago, the druids' plans had been foiled, the heads burned and the fantôme souls freed, and only Cunotar was left to remember. Struggling with Pierrette, she had tricked him into falling on his own sword, and Pierrette's bauble, a goddess's gift, had been his only refuge: confinement forever, or death. Carefully wrapping the "serpent's egg" in cloth, she crept out through the opening into the bright, clear Provençal sunshine.
She carried her meager belongings to the stable behind her father's house. In her guise as the boy Piers, she always travelled lightly burdened; her donkey, Gustave, was as stubborn as a root, as skeptical as the scholar in ibn Saul, and bore his wicker panniers with less and less grace, the heavier they were loaded. "But we've been through a lot together, old ass," she said. "I wouldn't dream of going anywhere without you."
One of Gustave's panniers contained oats to supplement his grazing, and to bribe him with. The other contained Pierrette's own things: pens, ink, and a leather-bound sheaf of blank paper for her journal, a pouch of coins and the Celtic "serpent's egg" that held the trapped soul of Cunotar. So much for his hopes of seeing her world. The less he knew of it the better.
She packed a pale blue dress of ancient Gaulish cut, a tan leather belt with gold phalerae mounted on it, engraved disks whose patterns changed when one looked at them, from snakes to a maiden's long hair, to leaves and branches . . . She rolled those in a tight bundle in her white wool sagus, her cloak; together those comprised her "official" wardrobe.
She tossed a wheel of cheese in the pannier along with several fat loaves of bread, two dried, salted fish, and a flask of oil from her father's olive grove. She made sure the pannier's clasps were tight, proof against Gustave's mobile lips and strong teeth.
"Are you ready, Yan Oors?" she asked. No one answered her. John of the Bears would not be seen unless he wanted to be, and he most definitely did not want Muhammad abd' Ullah ibn Saul to see him. Even worse would be if he did want to be seen, and the scholar could not see him—would he cease to exist on the spot, in a withering blast of the scholar's disbelief? But outside, something metallic clanked against the cobbles, as if someone's horse had stamped an iron-shod hoof.
Ibn Saul did not travel lightly. Two horses were hitched to heavily laden carts; three others, saddled and bridled, stood with their reins tied to posts. There were three unsaddled remounts as well. A glossy black mule stood by them, lightly burdened with the scholar's carefully packed and padded instruments—devices, he said for measuring the earth, the sky, and everything in between. Pierrette shuddered when she thought about that.
Pierrette's father Gilles came to see them off. So did the village priest, Father Otho. She wished she had some token of her father's, to carry with her. Whether things went right or wrong on the upcoming voyage, it was not likely she would return here, or see Gilles again. She would be dead, destroyed along with Minho's kingdom (in the unlikely event that she succeeded with the goddess's task) or lost in distant enchantment or, as in her childhood visions, sitting on a gold-and-ivory throne, far away. But Gilles was poor, and had nothing to give her, and would not have thought to do that anyway. She carried Gilles's heritage in her blood, and that would have to be enough.
But Father Otho? He had been her first teacher, and had (unknowingly, of course) prepared her for her apprenticeship with Anselm, by teaching her Greek and Latin, and by stimulating her small mind to feats of thinking. Perhaps she uttered those thoughts aloud, or perhaps Otho needed no such urging. "Take this," that priest said, holding up something small and glittery. It was a cross on a delicate Celtic gold chain, and she knew at once that it was something ancient. "It was my mother's, and her mother's before that," the priest said, his eyes downcast as if embarrassed. Pierrette had known Father Otho all her life. He had consoled her when her mother died. He had helped drive a demon from her sister Marie, now a nun in Massalia. But . . .
"Father Otho, that is a cross, and I have never been baptized."
"It won't harm you, child. It's not magical—only a token. Take it. Wear it—for me." Frankish kings in the north might issue Christian edicts against pagan practices, but here in the dry, remote southlands, where broken Roman gods still pushed marble arms and heads from the soil, an uneasy tolerance reined. And besides, if rumor was true, Otho had known—and loved—her mother Elen before he took vows, and she married Gilles. He would not willingly do Pierrette harm.
Did she dare? He said it was not magical, but what did he know? Christians had made baptismal fonts of ancient sacred pools, and the goddesses that had inhabited them fled, or were now worshipped as Christian saints. Priests chopped down ancient sacred trees, and built chapels of the wood. They placed little shrines and crucifixes at every crossroads—which had always been sacred to the ancient spirits. Only the pool of Ma was left, because nobody knew of it except Pierrette. Once she had feared that Christianity was consuming all the magic in the world, and that it was almost gone. When it was gone, she feared, the Black Time Ma spoke of would come. Now she was not so sure, because the world was much more complicated than that, but still . . .
She sighed, and lifted the chain over her head. It nestled between her small, tightly bound breasts, and she did not even feel it there. She didn't feel any different either.
Travelling, in an age when Roman hostels had crumbled, when Roman roads were overgrown with veritable trees pushing up between their great paving slabs, was not undertaken lightly. But if one were rich—as was Muhammad abd' Ullah ibn Saul—it was not uncomfortable or terribly risky. The carts carried tents, folding cots and soft featherbeds, pots, pans, and jars of spices. Ibn Saul and Lovi went armed with long swords and lances.
Because Pierrette wanted to maintain her disguise as the boy Piers, she made her own camp a bit apart from the others. The role came easily to her because she had been raised as a boy, in bracae and tunic, her hair cut short. An inheritance dispute over her father's lack of a male heir, long since settled, had been the initial reason for the deception, but now it was a convenience: girls could not travel as freely as boys, and were subject to the importunities of male lust. Besides the necessity for privacy for her female functions, her secluded bed allowed a secret visitor once dusk had fallen. . . .
"He is like an uneasy draft," said the gaunt one, squatting, leaning on his iron staff. "He himself is preposterous—neither Jew nor Moor, or perhaps both. Why should I fear his chill gaze?"
"Ambiguity suits him—not knowing what he is, neither Christians, Moslems, nor Jews inconvenience him in his travels. I, too, find such deception . . . convenient."
"It seems unfair. If my bears were real, not ghosts, I'd give him such a scare he'd have to accept me."
"If he decided you were a clever peasant with trained animals, and wrote of you in that light, you would be trapped in that guise, because the written word is a terrible, powerful spell. You must continue to avoid his attention. Have you given thought to how you'll do that, when we board ship in Massalia?"
"I'll think of a way," said Yan Oors.