BOOK I: THE HERMIT
Chapter I: The Corn Moon, AD 480
Ex oriente lux.
From the east, light.
* * *
“I could kill you,” said Merthen to the black widow climbing one of the braids in his long white beard. “That would be the prudent course of action.”
When he was a red-headed child in
“This island will be the end of you,” said Merthen to the eight-legged stranger.
Just offshore, near where
“You will not survive this evening’s frost,” said Merthen. He removed the feather writing quill tucked behind his ear, and pointed it at the tiny stranger. He inhaled, aware of the flow of his breath. “I recommend you return to your ship.”
He flicked the black widow into air. It spiraled down, landing in a puddle by the sea wall. As if on cue, a sedge warbler swooped low and snapped it up in its beak. The bird flew off to its nest in a stand of bull rushes. Three fuzzy chicks poked up their gaping mouths.
Merthen was sliding his pen back in place when he felt something strike his left buttock. Whatever connected with him was a blunt object, soft like the head of a yearling ram not yet sprouting horns. Still, it was enough of a jolt to make him lose his balance. He fumbled to hold on to his ash wood walking stick.
From behind him, Merthen heard the voice of a young boy saying, “That hurt.”
Merthen twisted backward to identify this child, and in so doing completely lost his footing. His lanky old body toppled over. The eighteen Indian rosewood beads strung around his left wrist smacked against the cobblestones, and his staff flew out of his hands.
The boy, a street urchin with shaggy brown hair and a snakelike fish in his hand, rubbed the top of his forehead, but he did not cry. Instead, he directed his hazelnut eyes at the trumpet swan carved onto the head of Merthen’s walking stick and asked, “Is that a duck?”
“No,” said Merthen, “it is a piece of wood.”
During Merthen’s fall, the four ponytails that hung down his back had wrapped around his face. He untangled them.
“Are you sure?” said the boy. He scratched at his bottom. “It looks like a duck to me.”
Merthen, still lying on his back, popped the lid off the leather cylinder tied to his belt. From it, he pulled out a small vial of ink. He checked to make sure that the glass was not cracked. He snapped at the urchin. “You should be minding your step, boy. Where are your parents?”
Out from behind a stack of wool bundles, Widow Blodwen, the fishmonger, charged forward, with a meat cleaver in her fist. “Thief,” she cried. “Stop him!” Her more than ample hips pounded across the marketplace. Her freckled face was furious red.
The boy broke into a sprint. Merthen reached over, and retrieved his walking stick. With a well-aimed flick of the wrist, he tossed it at the child’s gangly legs. The boy glanced back. With all the grace of an acrobat, he leapt into the air. The long wooden staff spiraled under the child’s dirty feet.
Widow Blodwen barreled onward.
The boy banked to the left. His shoulder bumped against a rickety table displaying used arms and cutlery. That was all it took to send a cacophony of knives and throwing hatchets scattering in all directions. The arms dealer was a wooden-shoed Frank with a huge handlebar mustache, two thick pigtails above his ears, and the back of his head shaved. He sprang from his stool and yelled, “Oh bugger!”
The boy zigzagged, first around the kettle at the tanner’s stall, then up hill towards the castle. Widow Blodwen followed, huffing all the way.
The last sword left on the table teetered on the edge before it tipped, handle-down toward the earth. It ricocheted off a cobblestone that jutted up above the rest. Merthen, his face flush to the ground, observed the old weapon slide point-first toward his eyeballs. He jerked his head upward. Just below his earlobe, the tip of the freshly-honed blade slid to a stop.
Merthen’s heart pounded against his ribcage, but not because of his brush with impalement. In his peripheral vision, he saw a dark figure, no bigger than a kitten. All the commotion had disturbed a black-eyed bilge rat, whose reaction was to scramble across the marketplace, terrified.
The rodent raced toward Merthen’s belly, then changed course, scrambling down towards his feet. Merthen felt the slither of its tale brushing against his ankles. For a brief moment he shivered like an epileptic caught in the grips of palsy. And then the rat disappeared, employing the ancient talent for retreat all vermin possess.
Merthen closed his eyes. He jiggled the rosewood beads around his wrist. In a whispered tone he chanted, “Gah-tay, gah-tay, para gah-tay, parasam gah-tay, bodhi svaha.” A bead of sweat seeped into his eyes. His body stopped shaking. His mind stopped racing. He regained control, at least for now.
The sword that nearly skewered Merthen lay still, pointing at him like Dame Fortune’s giant finger. Having been trained as a clerk, Merthen could not help but be drawn to the Latin words stamped on the weapon’s blade. He read them out loud, since he was not one of those few literati who could read silently. “Made in
The Frankish arms dealer, who was down on his knees gathering up his knives, responded, “No, not
Merthen hoisted himself up, using the weapon like a cane. He tapped his fingernail against the imprint. “I can read, Sir. According to this text, this sword was manufactured in
“Ostragoths?” The Frank slapped his own head. “Those Germans make crap!”
With one well-practiced whirl, Merthen circled the sword above his head. “I suspect it is actually laminated iron. Excellent welding, though. It should clean up fine.” He passed it over. “I am a freelance clerk, by the way. If you need any receipts, my fees are quite reasonable.”
The Frank squeezed the handle of the sword. “That uppity hag! She sold me a two-bit butter knife! How am I supposed to sell this garbage?”
Merthen shook the dust from his cloak. “I really should not be spending money right now.” He picked up his staff. “However, I might have a use for this piece. I harvest an apple orchard up in the hills. This could reach the fruit in the higher boughs. Would you be willing to part with it for fifteen denarii?”
The Frank shoved the blade back into its sheath. “Twenty denarii is as low as I can go. When my wife finds out about this, she is going to skin my testicles with a rusty razor.”
“That would be distressing,” said Merthen. He dug into his purse to gather all the cash he had, twenty denarii. “Twenty is reasonable price. Do we have a deal?”
The Frank gave him the sword and scabbard. “If any one asks, you did not buy this from me. I only sell Roman stock.”
“We never met,” said Merlin. He bowed, then felt a tug on one of his braids. The sun-burned face of the little street urchin was at the end of it.
“I dropped my kipper when you fell,” said the boy. “Did you see where it went?”
Merthen scanned the square. He could not locate Widow Blodwen, but he did find the fish. It was half submerged in a puddle next to a wine crate. “That is a dead eel. Go away.”
The boy stuck his finger up his nose. “I saw a piglet today. He had eyes like yours. Why are your eyes so blue?”
From upslope a ways, Widow Blodwen yelled, “There he is!” She jogged a few steps, leaned over and wheezed. The boy dashed off past the chandler’s booth. He rolled under a cow’s belly, and like the rat, disappeared into the maze of vendor’s carts.
Merthen strolled over to Blodwen. He secured his new purchase to his belt.
Blodwen tucked an auburn-gray tendril back into her headscarf. “Quite a show, eh?” she said. “Why did you let him go?”
“Gentlemen in their dotage do not run.” Merthen scooped up the limp fish from its puddle. He gave her a wink. “How is business, Missus B? I was hoping to purchase a baleen whale this morning, much like this specimen, but preferably more sanitary. Might you have one in stock?”
She shook her cleaver a halfheartedly. “Back in my day, I used to outrun all the lads.” She hobbled back to her fish stand. “Are you getting any work?”
“Not lately. I sold some rabbits to Missus Myfany last week.” He tossed the eel’s carcass into the bay. “Have you heard any news about our neighbors?”
She plucked up a sea bass by the gills and slapped its skull onto the nail that stuck up from on her butcher’s block. “I spoke with a skipper from
“Did you injure yourself?”
“I took a spill the other day. My bum is all sore. And here I go chasing a sneak thief.”
Merthen dug into his cloak pocket, and pulled out a strip of willow bark. “Chew on this. It should reduce the swelling. Unfortunately, I know of no poultice to protect you from thievery. I shall keep an eye out for your little crook.”
“No point to that.” She wiped some scales off her hands. “Some slaver will ship him off. I see those street orphans once, maybe twice, never three times.”
“Excuse me?” said Merthen. A drop of sweat rolled down his face.
“Are you all right?”
Merthen sat down, with his legs forward like a child. He shuddered briefly, then closed his eyes. Tears streamed down his cheeks.
Widow Blodwen stumbled onto her knees. She shook him by the shoulders. “Merthen? Mister Ambrosius? Can you hear me?”
* * *
All he could hear was the creaking of a slave ship. He opened his eyes. A single clay lamp lit the galley. He tried to move his legs, but the cage that surrounded him was too confining. A rat arched its back in the corner.
He covered his face and screamed. More rats appeared. Their claws tapped against the wooden floor.
Through a dim haze, Merthen saw the figure of a street urchin with a splint of glowing sandalwood in his dirty little hands. The boy remained silent. The sweet figgy fragrance of blossoming bo trees wafted through the air.
Merthen called out, “There is nothing I can do! Can you not see this?”
Like a troupe of dancers, the rats paired off into four sets of two. Each couple paced around in a circle, one following the tail of the other. Merthen focused on the first pair. One of the creatures was emaciated. Its cohort was fat.
The second pair emitted noises. One hissed like a snake while the other cooed like a dove. The third set consisted of one contented individual, and one who was forever dissatisfied. The last two rats were mirror images; one exuded love under all conditions, the other perpetually withheld it.
Merthen cried, “I am trapped! Save me!”
Faster and faster the rats twirled. A whirlwind spiraled up from each pair. The flame in the clay lamp flickered, then went out.
Merthen extended his arm as far as he could. With his bare hand, he grabbed for the boy’s burning incense. In so doing, Merthen snuffed out the ember, casting himself into total darkness.
“Enough,” he screamed, “enough!” Although he could no longer see the rats, he could hear them crawling ever closer. The slither of their tales brushed against his ankles. He shivered. It all seemed oddly familiar.
And then he realized that he was repeating the events that had taken place earlier in the day. What he was experiencing was not reality, but a mental formation: a half-cocked hallucination cobbled together from jumbled memories. It had been a while since he had suffered one of these episodes. He was rather hoping he had seen the last of them.
One of the rats clasped its forepaws onto the soft skin below his toenail. Merthen wanted to remain dispassionate, to observe this pain as if he was an outsider. If he could only overcome the attachment to the self, none of this would concern him. He would be free.
But instead he wept. Was it just the harsh sting of the rat’s sharpened teeth piercing the tips of his toes? Or was it the frustration that they had come back again, forcing him once more to bleed so they could lap up his warm wet blood.
His emotions swung between infantile terror and abject confusion. His thoughts were knotted together, like the rigging of a ship whose mast had been snapped off in a storm. He was unable to tell where one strand ended and the other began. When ropes get bollixed like that, all a sailor can do is find his sharpest knife and cut the lines.
Perhaps that was why there was only one thought that Merthen’s exhausted consciousness could generate. It was, “Kill the rats. Kill them all.”
* * *
Merthen’s cheeks were bitter cold. Did someone slap his face? He opened his eyes. Widow Blodwen still held the wash bucket she had just emptied onto him. His hair was sopping wet.
“Where have I been?” he asked. “What did I say?”
Blodwen hoisted him onto a keg of salt and patted his cheeks dry with her kerchief. “You were right here. You said nothing. What happened?”
“I appear to have been struck by a mania.” He took a swig from the water sack that hung from his belt. “I apologize for exposing you to my malady.”
She gasped. “Mother of God! You had a vision. Did you see an angel? Did you see a fairy?”
“No.” He massaged his temples with the flat of his hands.
Merthen put no stock in angels, fairies, or the charlatans who claimed to commune with them. Sorcerers and oracles were manipulative liars, reaping profit from broken souls desperate for answers. Even the Buddha, a man who would have gladly shared his dinner with a congress of demons, had no patience for those who, as he put it, trafficked in miracles.
“All I saw,” said Merthen, “was a boy.”
Blodwen inched closer. “What do you suppose that means?”
Merthen knew better than to affix meaning to the froth stirred up by his hallucinations. And yet, a vague concept congealed in his mind. The urchin boy he saw during his madness was holding incense like a monk. Could this boy be trained as a monastic? If that were true, then Merthen would not be the only one. Why, he might even start a monastery.
But then again, no. This was foolishness. Merthen was far too familiar with the dangers of expectation. Expectation led to craving and attachment. It enslaved the mind to the illusion that things are not impermanent. He would not tempt that, not again.
“It meant absolutely nothing,” he finally said. A young woman was eyeing the brook trout on Blodwen’s display table. “You have a customer.”
“She can wait. Like it or not, you are not an average man, Mister Merthen. I may not be as worldly as you, but I know how many beans make five. This is a sign, old boy. Anyone can see that.”
Merthen flung off his cloak. “You are far too superstitious.” His flaxen blouse and orange silk neckerchief were drenched in perspiration. “Is there some place I can hang these?”
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