Raptor (6 page)

Yes, I gained at least a few glimmerings of the world out there, before I was thrust into it.

I do not want to give the impression that the thirteen years I spent in the Balsan Hrinkhen consisted of nothing but hard labor and hard study. Our valley was a spacious and a pleasant place, and I managed to steal some free time from my duties and my studies, to enjoy the natural beauties of the Ring of Balsam. I may very well have learned as much of value from the wide outdoors as I did from the teachers and scrolls and codices indoors at the abbey.

I ought to describe the Balsan Hrinkhen for the benefit of those who have never been there. The valley is about four Roman miles long and wide, encircled by a vertical rock cliff, shaped like a giant horse’s rimshoe and fluted like a hanging drapery, that rises from and encloses the valley. The wall is highest—at least thirty times a man’s height—at the front-end arc of the rimshoe. Along the curved sides of the shoe, the cliff wall gradually diminishes in height—or it appears to; actually, the enclosed ground within gradually rises—until, at the open end of the rimshoe, the valley land merges into the land above and surrounding it: the immense, undulating plateau called in the Old Language the Iupa, the highlands. The only road out of the Balsan Hrinkhen goes up through that open end of the rimshoe. On reaching the uplands, the road forks, going northeast to Vesontio and southwest to Lugdunum on the great river Rhodanus. There are many lesser rivers traversing that plateau, and many villages, even the occasional small town, between Vesontio and Lugdunum.

There was also a village down inside the Ring of Balsam, but it covered no more area than did the buildings of either of the two abbeys. It consisted only of the wattle-and-daub, straw-thatched cottages of the local folk who farmed St. Damian’s lands or their own—plus the workshops of artisans: one potter, one currier, one cartwright, a few others. The village had none of the amenities of civilization, not even a market square, because there was no buying or selling of provender or anything else. Whatever necessities were not produced by the local folk themselves had to be carted in from one of the bigger communities up on the Iupa.

Our valley’s water supply was not an ordinary river, like those on the plateau, but a stream that issued rather mysteriously from our cliff wall, and no man could divine the whereabouts of its source. High up in the cliff, at what I have called “the front-end arc of the rimshoe,” there was a vast, deep, dark cavern, and the water poured out of there. From the cavern’s mossy and lichened lip, the stream ran down a series of terraces, making a pool at each one before running on to the next lower. Finally, after rambling hither and yon for a considerable distance from the foot of the cliff through the declivity of the valley there, the stream became a broad, deep, placid pond, and on the far side of that was where the village had grown up.

The best part of the stream, though, was that where it leapt from the cavern’s rock ledge and came sparkling and laughing down the random, staggered rock terraces. Around the crystalline pools on all the terraces were banks of soil, brought as silt from wherever in the earth’s bowels the stream originated. Since those plots of ground were too small and hard of access for any farmer to bother tilling, they had been let to grow wildflowers, sweet grasses, fragrant herbs and blossoming shrubs. Thus that whole area, during the clement months of the year, was an enchanting place to bathe, to play or just to loll and dream.

Many a time I ventured inside the cavern whence the water came, and I may have gone farther in there than any of the timorous and incurious local folk ever have done. I always chose a time when the sunlight penetrated as far in as it ever did—which was never very far; we of the Balsan Hrinkhen were accustomed to the sun’s always “setting early” behind our western clifftops. Even when I made my entry at exactly the right time, when the green mosses on the cavern’s lip and the green vines dangling from its upper arch were all set glowing golden by the sun, that glow did not light my way for more than twenty paces inside. But I would grope my way through the thickening gloom for as far as I could, to delay lighting and expending my torch. I always brought at least one along: a hollow stem of hemlock, packed with wax-soaked flax, and in my waist wallet the flint, steel and puffball tinder with which to set it alight. Such a torch burns as long as a candle, and much more brightly.

If the stream of water ever had been broad enough to cover the cavern floor from wall to wall, it was not so in my time. There was ample walking room on either side. Of course, the rock underfoot was exceedingly slippery, from splashings of the stream and drizzlings from the domed roof. But fortunately my boots, the one pair I owned, were made of the untanned skin of a cow’s legs, with the hairy side out. The hoofs had been removed, but the cow’s dewclaws had been left on either side of each boot’s heel, so they gripped excellently even on the cavern’s treacherous flooring.

I never did get all the way to the stream’s source, even on the time or two when I brought a whole bundle of hemlock torches. But I did go far in other directions. I early discovered that the tunnel through which the water ran, and which emerged as the cavern opening in the cliffside, was only one of many interconnected tunnels. At first I was hesitant to delve into any of the side tunnels, fearing that some skohl might have been hiding in them ever since the days of the Old Religion—or even some monster that a Christian could rightly be wary of, such as an evil demon or a lustful succuba. Even if none of those lurked hereabout, I feared that the tunnels might go on branching and I should get lost in them. But after a while, when I had become less uncomfortable underground, I did begin exploring those side tunnels, and eventually explored all that I could find, even when they were such small holes that I had to proceed on hands and knees, or sometimes wriggling on my belly. I never encountered any inhabitants more fearsome than pale, eyeless lizards and a lot of bats hanging upside down from the tunnels’ roofs, which woke only to rustle and squeak and spatter me with droppings. The tunnels did often branch, and the branchings branched again, but I was always able to retrace my route by the soot trail my torch left on the roof rocks.

If I cannot claim that I discovered the stream’s source, I can say that I found more marvelous things, and I wonder if anyone else has ever set eyes on them. The tunnels not only divided and intermeshed like the Labyrinth of olden time, they often opened out into underground rooms far bigger than the cliffside cavern, so vast that my torchlight was too feeble to reach their roofs. And those immense rooms were wondrously furnished: footstools and benches and pinnacles and spires of rock had
grown
from the rock floor, and the rock of which they were made seemed at some time to have been
melted.
From the ceilings depended great hangings that variously resembled icicles and draperies, but were also made of that melted-looking rock. On one particularly exquisite tracery of melted-then-congealed rock, I wrote with the smoke of my torch the initial of my name: þ, just to show that I, Thorn, had been there, but then I realized that it marred the pristine beauty of the place, and I used my smock hem to scrub it off.

For all the mysterious and extraordinary things I found underground, however, the one most mysterious and extraordinary I found outside, on one of the familiar ledges of the cascades. It was only an ordinary rock, beside one of the cascade pools, a sharp-edged rock that resembled a giant-sized ax blade stood on end. Like the other rocks roundabout, it was mossy all over—or almost all over. What I noticed about it was that it had a V-shaped notch in its thin edge, as if it really had been used by an axman and he had carelessly struck it against something hard that had nicked its edge. But the rock was not an ax, and never had been. The groove appeared to have been gouged as if by an ironsmith’s file, a good file that had not quickly dulled, for the notch was about as broad and deep as my little finger. It was also bare of moss, and the inner surfaces of it were sleekly polished, as vellum is polished by a moleskin. I could not imagine how the notch had been cut or by whom or for what reason. It was some while before I found out, and realized how truly wonderful that simple thing was, and how much more wonderful the reason for it.

But of that I will tell in due course. For now, I will continue describing the Balsan Hrinkhen.

As I have mentioned, there were sheep and cow pastures inside the valley—not so extensive, of course, as those up on the Iupa. Around the village there were neat kitchen gardens and, farther out, small fields of various crops, orchards of various fruits, vineyards, hop fields, even olive groves, for the Ring of Balsam’s cliff-protected situation allowed those trees to flourish this far north of their native Mediterranean lands. And among all the cultivated fields were others left fallow for a season and let to grow wild.

In the gardens and orchards and pastures and fields, there were always men, women and children hard at work. A newcomer watching the work going on in the Ring of Balsam would have been hard put to tell which of the adult humans were peasants and which were the brothers of St. Damian, for all wore the same drab robes of burlap, with cowls to pull over their heads for protection from sun or rain. The dress of every man and woman in holy orders—from monk or nun on up to exalted bishop—was deliberately intended to be no more rich than the lowliest peasant’s garb.

When working afield, the monks and the peasants not only looked alike, they all worked equally silently, except for a few shepherds and goatherds who might be tweedling on reed pipes. (I am convinced that the pagan god Pan invented his pipes for the same reason that all herders play them: out of sheer boredom.) The monks would speak or at least nod to me when I strolled among them. The peasant men and women seemed never to see me, or anything else except the task immediately under their noses; their gaze was as vacant as that of their cows. They were not being either aloof or unfriendly; it was merely their normal torpor.

One day I came upon an elderly man and woman forking sheep dung into the ground under their olive trees, and I asked why their neat and tidy rows of trees were interrupted by a tremendous circular gap in the middle of the grove. The old man merely grunted and went on with his labor, but the old woman paused to say, “Look you, boy, at what is growing in that gap.”

“Only two other trees,” I said. “Shade trees.”

“Ja, and one of them an oak. Olives dislike oak trees. They will not bear if they are planted close to an oak.”

“I wonder why that should be, I said, “The other tree, right beside the oak, is a linden. It does not seem to mind.”

“Akh,
always
you will see an oak and a linden growing together, boy. Ever since a loving man and wife of the olden time—of the Old Religion—once asked the old gods please to let them die at the same moment. The compassionate old gods made that happen, and more than that. When the aged couple died, they were reborn as an oak and a linden, lovingly growing side by side. And so those two trees have ever afterward lovingly continued to do.”

“Slaváith, old gossip!” growled her husband. “Get on with your work!”

The woman murmured—to herself, not to me—“Oh vái, the olden days were the good days,” and resumed her manure-forking.

But even the peasants did not labor during every minute of every day. In the evenings, the menfolk would often forgather to play at dice, and to get quite drunk on wine or ale at the same time. As they tossed the three little dotted cubes of bone, they raucously invoked the help of Jupiter, Halja, Nerthus, Dus, Venus and other demons. Of course, they could not call on any Christian saints to intercede in an activity that involved wagers. But the game of dice was evidently older than Christianity, for the highest possible cast—three sixes—was known as “the Venus throw.”

Like the peasants’ penchant for gambling, some of their other doings appeared to me to be rather contrary to the Church’s “you shall not” admonitions. Every summer they indulged in a riotously jolly celebration of the pagan Feast of Isis and Osiris, with much eating, drinking, dancing and apparently other enjoyments, for a spate of children always got born nine months afterward. Also, while it was usual for a newborn peasant baby to be christened or a peasant couple to be married or a dead peasant to be buried according to the Christian sacraments, the peasants performed for all of those persons an additional kind of blessing. Over the infant or the bride or the grave, a village elder would swing in circles a hammer crudely made of a stone bound by thongs to a stout stick. I recognized that object, from my readings in the Old Language, to be a replica of the hammer of the Old Religion’s god Thor. Sometimes, on a wall of the house where the child had been born, or of that where the new bride would live, or in the loose earth covering the new grave, would be scrawled a sign—the gammadion cross of four equal, angular, crooked arms; what some call the “cramped” cross—intended to represent Thor’s hammer being swung in a circle.

In my wanderings and adventurings, I think I acquainted myself with every tree, plant, insect, bird and animal in the Balsan Hrinkhen. Of the wild creatures that lived or visited there, only the venomous adder was to be always avoided, or quickly killed if possible. Even the mischievous redheaded woodpecker was not dangerous in the daytime. I often followed one’s flutterings from tree to tree, because it was said that that bird could lead a person to a hidden treasure, though none ever revealed any such thing to me. But I took care never to stretch out for a nap when a woodpecker was about, for it also had the reputation of boring a hole in a sleeping person’s head and inserting maggots therein, so the person would wake up insane. Of the other birds, the white storks that arrived every spring were sometimes almost unbearably noisy, talking among themselves by clattering their bills, so they sounded like mobs of people dancing in wooden shoes. But their presence was welcome, because they were known to bring good luck to any house on the roof of which they chose to nest.