Massalia: the great city, five centuries old when the first Roman legions set foot in Provence, showed her years. She lay nestled in a bowl of mountains that had protected the Greek colony from marauding Celts and Ligures, and from the Gaulish Salyens against whom she had once enlisted Rome's aid (and lost her freedom because of it). After that, the fine Greek temples on the north hill overlooking her pretty harbor were joined by Roman ones, and by an amphitheater cut into the native rock. Now the temple pillars were eroded by dust blown out of Africa and by mad Mistral winds that swept down River Rhodanus's long valley, and the amphitheater was frequented mostly by whores and their customers.
South of the harbor sprawled the red tile roofs of Saint Victor's Abbey, where lay the bones of Lazarus, first Christian bishop of the Roman city, who had not proved immortal though he had been raised from the grave by the Christ's own hand.
Great chains linked fortresses north and south of the harbor mouth, and kept raiding Moorish galleys at bay. Massalian ships traded with the Moslem world, in Sicilia, Iberia, and Africa, but the focus of prosperity in what was coming to be called "Francia" was northward now, around Parisia on the Sequana River, and in the cities of Germania. Thus the cloak Massalia spread across the land was frayed at the edges, and moth-eaten with vacant lots. Shoddy edifices built of stones thrice-used were shabby patches on the ancient, faded fabric.
Ibn Saul had a house north of the forum, the great market square. Though during an ordinary visit to the town the market was a much-anticipated destination, that afternoon Pierrette intended to visit the convent overseen by the Mother Sophia Maria, within whose walls her sister Maria lived, and prayed, and sang . . .
The three travellers parted outside the Roman gate, agreeing to meet at dawn by the wharves. Pierrette's route was south along a causeway, over a weedy creek and canebrake, past the rope-makers long, cobbled workplace. Oily scum floated on patches of open water, reeking of feces, bad meat, and moldy rope fibers. Spoiled food floated amid broken pots and household trash. The causeway was like a bridge over a very minor hell, and she hurried along it.
On Saint Victor's side of the harbor, the streets were unpaved, thankfully dry in this season, and she picked her way between fresh-thrown deposits of night soil and garbage. Those odors contrasted in a confusing manner with the delicious aroma of roasting lamb from one doorway, of rising bread from another, of fresh, crushed rosemary and hot olive oil . . .
Gustave snorted, and she whirled around. The young thief howled, and clutched his bitten hand. Pierrette grabbed the cord that held up his ragged kilt. "I didn't take anything. Let me go!" he shrilled, his voice girlish, manhood years away.
"Thanks to Gustave, you didn't," she replied. His choice was to run—and lose his only article of clothing, or to wait and perhaps be beaten. She could see the options as they passed over his dirty, mobile face.
"What do you think I have in that pannier?" she asked. "Gold? Silk from the East?"
"Cheese! I smelled it." His boyish skinniness took on new meaning: his black hair was tinged with the red brown not of sun bleaching, but of malnutrition. His belly was swollen and round not with excess, but with bloat.
"There is bread and oil, too, and salted mullet, red as sunset. But I have nothing to drink with it. Is there a fountain nearby?" The old city across the harbor was still supplied by a decrepit Roman aqueduct, but its lead pipes and channels did not extend here.
His eyes went wide with distrust. Had this older boy implied he might actually share his bounty? Again, expressive eyes signaled his warring impulses—but he could not be much hungrier that he was, and he did not wish to lose his ragged kilt. . . . "There's a well. It's not too salty to drink," he said.
"Then let's go there," Pierrette said. "I have a cup we can use." Wisely, she did not let go of the tag end of his makeshift belt.
Seated on the stone rim of the well, they ate. A half dozen skinny children crept near—and with a sigh, Pierrette motioned them to sit, and divided fully half her provisions with them. Now she herself would go hungry sooner, unless she could replace them from the market. When it was evident that no more food was forthcoming, the urchins slipped away without thanks.
Pierrette remained, remembering: long ago—had she been seven or nine?—she and her sister had approached the priest Otho with a moral dilemma. The town's Burgundian castellan, nominally Christian, but also a wearer of the horns of his own tribe's ancient forest god, was attracted to Marie. He offered to save her betrothed, Bertrand, from the burden of shedding virgin blood on Marie's wedding night. The custom—warrior-shamans were proof against the dire evils of blood—was common among Burgundian and Gaulish folk, though among Christians the blood of Christ had rendered such fears moot, at best. But the Burgundian had been sincere, if overanxious, and Marie had been—secretly—attracted to him as well. Pierrette had almost dragged her sister to the priest—who was no help at all. He took two jars of oil, each half-empty, half-full, and named one good, and one evil. He poured oil from one into the other and then back, and shuffled the jars until neither girl knew which one was which, or how much oil was in either. "Where is the good?" he asked. "Where the evil?" What had he meant? At that time, Pierrette blamed him for caring more for his own security—the castellan could insist upon a new priest, and might get one. Later she decided that good intents, evil means, and conflicting religions (neither of them like her own simple Ligure faith in the Mother) were inextricably entwined.
And now this: the evil of hunger in this rich, tawdry city, and of her own hunger, somewhere on the road ahead. The needs of one, the needs of many. Adult practicalities versus the rumbling bellies of children. The city might have a thousand urchins, and many would be indelibly blighted by starvation, their minds dulled and their bodies withered. But at least they had sunshine, and water not too salty to drink. If the terrible Black Time that Ma saw in her roiled waters came, and there was nothing living on the land, only souls enslaved in humming metal boxes, without eyes to see or hearts to ache, or bellies to feel the pangs of hunger . . . then where was the real evil? And if Minho's magical kingdom, where all were good and everything was beautiful, was destroyed—then was its destruction not evil? Which jar held goodness, and which evil—and how much was in each jar?
Pierrette removed her hat and shook out her hair before approaching the convent gate, where taciturn Sister Agathe answered her ringing. The air was redolent with the scents of exotic herbs whose neat, tiny patches quilted the colonnaded cloister. It was one of Pierrette's favorite places, a placid island in the bustling, stinking sea of the city. She settled onto a stone bench to wait Mother Sophia's convenience.
"Welcome, child," the abbess said when she swept into the courtyard, her arms outstretched. Once again, Pierrette was a small, motherless child, starved for such warm, feminine affection. They embraced, then Mother Sophia stood back, hands on Pierrette's shoulders. "You've grown again!" she exclaimed. "You'll soon be as tall as Marie."
"Will I be able to see her, Mother?"
"You mean, 'Is she in trouble again?' don't you?" Marie had a mischievous streak, and thus often incurred penances that kept her occupied when Pierrette visited. "She is not—and that worries me."
Pierrette laughed. "That worries me too! In this world, a surfeit of goodness is more suspect than the evils we have come to expect."
Mother Sophia gave her a queer glance. "Philosophy, child? What strange paths do your thoughts tread?"
Pierrette sighed. She recounted her sharing with the urchins. "And here," said the abbess, "where we pray and worship God, we are well fed. Some women come here to fill their bellies, and consider roughened knees and tedious routine a small price to pay. Their first year, we don't even question their true conviction." She shook her head. "And then there's Marie—here not for the food, but for the prayer, her life itself a penance—who still plays pranks on naive newcomers, and winks at the bishop during mass." She shrugged. "Share her pallet tonight," the abbess said, "and if she has no mischief to recount to you, her sister, I will really begin to worry. . . ."
Pierrette dined with the abbess, and when dusk crept up the walls, Mother Sophia suggested they have light. Pierrette glanced at the bell-cord that would summon someone with a lamp, but: "Would you once again allow me to see by . . . a different light?"
Pierrette could not refuse her. So quietly that none but she herself could hear it, she voiced ancient words . . . and this time, no flame perched atop her finger. Instead, from a shadowy object on the far wall issued a pure, white light, that suffused the room and left no shadow undispelled.
"Saint Mary's light," gasped the abbess, her face a theater-mask of rapture as she gazed upon the rude old crucifix that was its source. "Thank you, child, for this blessing."
Pierrette was not so sure of that. For her, the different effect of her firemaking spell, in this Christian place, demonstrated how mutable—and ultimately how vulnerable—was all magic. Here, in Christian Massalia, in the shadow of Saint Victor's great abbey, the premises underpinning the spell's words were Christian ones, and allowed not fire, but this pure, holy light. Elsewhere, where neither the innocent pagan relicts of Citharista nor Christian purity prevailed, the spell produced a red and oily glow, funereal flames as of flesh burning atop a pyre.
But here it was white and Christian, and the dear woman's smile was all the payment Pierrette could make for the hospitality she was receiving.
Moonlight cast a distorted image of Marie's barred window across the patchy gray blanket they shared that night. Neither sister was as prone to giggling as she had been as a child, and they gave the nuns in neighboring cells nothing to curl their pious lips about. Marie seemed as jolly as usual, especially when she recounted her personal mission—only recently allowed by Mother Sophia's superiors—among the whores in the old amphitheater, where the dramas were all small, each one with a cast of two.
"You should have seen the poor girl's face," said Marie, grinning, her teeth aglitter with moonlight. "She made sixteen coppers that night—and she slept with seven men. And the little slut was proud of herself! Sixteen coppers! So I showed her . . . this." Cool moonlight seemed almost magically to warm, to turn as golden as noonday and as green as springtime, transformed when it reflected from the ruddy precious metal and the luscious emeralds of the dangling necklace.
"Marie! Where did you get that?"
"From a customer—my own last customer, I think—when I was earning my living in the amphitheater. I retrieved it from its hiding place, a chink in the wall."
Pierrette could not suppress her shudder. She didn't want to remember that. She wanted to remember her big sister as a girl, and as a nun—and nothing between. But Marie had not forgotten.
"I told her if all she could make was a few coppers, she was in the wrong profession, and that despite my own success, I had given it up to . . . to become God's whore."
"Marie!" Pierrette, though herself pagan, was scandalized.
"Oh, don't be stupid! After all I've done, how could I ever call myself a 'bride of Christ,' or wear his ring? And besides, it worked. The little wench is here, on her knees, not her back."
"So which jar is half-empty," Pierrette mused quietly, "and which one half-full?"
"What?"
"What Father Otho said, when the castellan Reikhard gave you his medallion, with the horned god on it, and you . . ."
"Oh, that. I always thought he meant the Church couldn't help me get out of that, and to accept my . . . fate. And since the Church wouldn't intervene . . ."
"You rejected it. And a demon took you. We took you to Saintes-Marie-by-the-Sea, where it was exorcised, and . . ."
"Not all of it was—or I'd be a perfect little nun, and wouldn't even think of strolling around in that brothel, talking with whores."
"And you wouldn't impress any stupid little girls with your emeralds, either—or convince them to come here, instead."
"I suppose not. Go to sleep now. You can sleep in, but I have to be up long before dawn."
"I wouldn't worry about Marie, Mother," Pierrette told the abbess in the morning. She did not explain further.