The other women shook their heads in horror, trying to quiet her, telling her it was not possible, such a thing. And my mother turned her head into the pillow, crying for her own mother, for her sister, for those who loved her, averring that no one would stand with her. That were it not a mortal sin in the eyes of God, she would take her own life.
Now how do I escape, I thought. I felt fear for my mother. Yet I hated her that she didn’t love me, that she thought me monstrous. I knew what I was. I knew there was a place for me, that I had a destiny. I knew this. I knew that her attitude was irreverent and cruel, but I could not put this into words or defend such a position. I wanted only to protect her.
We stood in this candlelighted chamber, I and these women, beneath this dark wooden ceiling, and the midwife gained possession of herself and forswore her former joy. This monster must be taken out, destroyed.
Destroyed? The same old song. Not this time, I thought. I did not intend to be destroyed so easily. No. We must learn more each time, I thought. I will not be destroyed.
Finally to the secret door came my father, Douglas of Donnelaith, a big shaggy man, more crudely dressed but nevertheless noble and decked in fur.
He had been in the castle and in great haste answered the Queen’s secret summons. When he was admitted to the birthing room, and beheld me, his face was a puzzle. I did not see in him the pure horror of the women. I saw something else, something vital and partial to me, something almost reverent. And he whispered, “Ashlar, who comes again and again.”
I saw that his hair and eyes were brown; from him as from the poor sad Queen I had these endowments. But I was Ashlar! I felt this news-and it was news-come into me as if my father had thrown his arms around me and showered me with kisses. I was happy. And when I looked at my mother, in her sadness, I wept.
I said, “Yes, Father, but this is no place for me. This is a place hostile to me. We must leave here.”
And I realized I knew no more of what I was or what he was than what had been said. It was the strangest kind of knowing, knowing without a tale to it, a knowing that was stable but out of time.
He needed no direction from me. He too was in terror. He knew that we must escape. “There is no hope now for the Queen,” he said softly, crossing himself and then making the Sign of the Cross on my forehead. We were already following the winding stairs.
We were out of the castle within moments, going down directly to a covered boat which waited for us in the dark waters of the River Thames. It was when we reached the Thames that I realized I had said no farewell to my mother and I was overwhelmed with sorrow, with a sense of horror suddenly that I had been born in this particular dreary and treacherous place and into this inexplicable time. My struggles were to begin all over again. I remember I would have died then if I could; I would have retreated. I stared down at the water, which stank of the filth of London, the filth of thousands, and I wanted to die in this darkness. Indeed, I saw in the mind’s mist a dark tunnel down which I had come, and I wanted to go back into it. I began to cry.
My father put his arm around me. “Don’t weep, Ashlar,” he said. “It is the work of God.”
“How so the work of God? My mother could be burnt at the stake.” I was already thirsting for milk. I wanted hers, and it embittered me that I had not taken more before I left. And the thought that anyone could commit this flesh of my flesh, my mother, to the flames, seemed impious and worth dying to prevent.
This is my birth I’m describing to you. This is a succession of hours, lived by the light of candles and never forgotten as long as I was in the flesh. This is what I now remember vividly, because I am flesh again. But the name Ashlar I didn’t know, I do not know now and never will know who Ashlar really was-as you shall see.
Mark me on this. Understand. Understand fully. I know nothing of the original saint.
Later I would see things; I would be told tales. I would see St. Ashlar in the stained-glass window in the great Highlands Cathedral of Donnelaith. I would be told that I was he, and I had “come again.”
But what I am telling you now is what I remember. What I knew!
It took us many days and nights to reach Scotland.
It was the dead of winter, it was in fact the first days after Christmas, when the worst fears grip the peasants, and it is thought that spirits walk and witches do their evil work. It was the time when the peasants forsook the teachings of Christ and, dressing in animals’ skins, went prowling door to door, demanding tribute of the superstitious inhabitants. Old custom.
We slept only fitfully in small village inns when we came upon them, usually amid the hay and with others, and often sickened and annoyed by the vermin. We stopped again and again so that I might have milk. I drank milk warm from the cow. It was good, but not as sweet as the milk of my mother. I ate the cheese in handfuls. It was pure.
We traveled by horseback, wrapped in heavy woolens and skins, and through most of this journey, I was gazing in quiet astonishment at the falling snow, at the fields through which we rode, the small villages where we sought shelter, with their half-timbered inns and scattered thatched huts. There were revels in the woodland, fires burning, men in the skins of beasts dancing. A fear gripped those who remained indoors.
“Look,” said my father. “The ruins of the great monastery. See there, on the hill. An abbey built in the time of St. Augustine. Burned by the King. These are days of horror for all Christian men. Everything looted. The nuns driven out. The priests driven out. The statues burned, the windows broken, the cloisters now the shelter of the field rats and the poor. It is all gone, broken. And to think it is the will of one man. One man could destroy so much of the work of others. Ashlar, this is why you have come.”
I was very doubting of this. In fact, it frightened me that my father would think this, that he would express his faith in such simple terms. It was as though I knew something different, and this sense of knowing something different was merely what you call incredulity. I felt an innate doubt, an innate sense that my father was misguided, and dreaming. Yet why I couldn’t know.
I saw the vision of the circles again, the many widening circles of figures dancing. I tried to see the stones which were almost at the center, surrounding the first circle of figures inside.
I searched my mind consciously and rigorously for the full extent of the knowledge with which I was endowed. That I had lived before, yes, this was certain, but not that this man knew my purpose or who or what I really was. I trusted that the truth would come to me. But then again, how did I know?
We rode through the ruins of the monastery, our horses’ hooves clattering on the stone floors of the roofless cloister. I began to weep. I felt an uncontainable sorrow. The desolation of the place, the loss-it filled me with a crushing sense of hopelessness. I shrank from the pain of being flesh. My father reached out to comfort me. “Be still, Ashlar, we are going home. This has not happened in our home.”
We entered the dark forest, barely able to see our way. It seemed wolves ran in the darkness; I could smell them near us, smell their fur and their hunger. When we came upon small huts, those within would give no answer, though smoke came from a small hole in the roof.
The deep high forest crept up into the mountains. The roads grew steeper and steeper, and the vantage points more splendid of coast and of sea. At last we had to sleep in the woods without shelter; and we huddled together, my father and I, beneath heavy blankets, with our horses tethered at our feet. I felt defenseless in the darkness, and all the more so for I thought I heard whispers and strange sounds.