Episode Three: One Starry Night
Part One: A Polite Distance
It's long after dark when I find Peitho.
I don't know how I see her. I probably don't. I see the hill just behind the stables as I'm returning to the inn. I don't especially want to toss and turn on that stinking straw mat. I already know what is going to happen: I'm going to lie there thinking about what just happened. I could do that just as easily – and more comfortably – beneath the canopy of one of the trees on yon hill.
In a daze I made it to the inn, and in a daze I changed and set course.
When I reach the hill and find Peitho reclining beneath the tree I'd chosen, I'm not surprised. It's like I knew she'd be here. Like she had to be. No doubt for the same reasons I am. She looks up at my approach and smiles. The emeralds of her eyes shine in the moonlight.
“Peitho – I—“
She pats the ground beside her. I sit, crossing my legs beneath me a polite distance away.
“I did not know whether I should anticipate you – or how long to wait.”
I turn to her. She is staring out into the night, her face impassive.
“You were waiting for me?”
“No.” She quirks the corner of her mouth. “I was waiting to decide whether I would be disappointed if you didn't come.”
“I didn't come on—“
“I know you didn't mean to. Not really, you didn't. But here you are.”
“Have you decided whether you're glad?”
She must feel me watching her, but she looks straight ahead. She's been sitting with her feet kicked straight out before her, hands on the ground at her sides, back perfectly straight. You could measure corners with her – or whatever right-angle protractors are used for.
She looks about like a mermaid on a rock, doesn't she?
With a sigh that is appropriate neither to my question nor the vacuum of her silence, she reclines against the tree.
“The night is really lovely.”
I turn to gaze out at the night and can't disagree. Don't want to.
It's lovelier when it's got you in it.
Don't you dare say that.
“What is happening with you?”
There's no reason to search her face for meaning. I know what she's asking. She doesn't wait to see how long I'll stay quiet before I feign ignorance.
“You don't sleep at night. When you're not sleeping during the day, you're either writing in your journal or staring out the window. What are you watching for? The priest – Metus?”
I feel the cool of her hand once more enveloping mine.
I look down at it. From my periphery, I can see that Peitho's eyes still face the night.
“Not Metus. The—“ I stop myself. “I think I'm losing my mind.”
“The what?”
I take a deep breath and sigh. My posture was not as good as Peitho's – and now it's worse.
“The... landscape.”
She turns to me, now. I don't look at her.
“Do you have dreams, Peitho?”
“Are you asking me if I am a seer of visions?”
“No. Do you have dreams?”
“Sight is not among my gifts.”
I pause a moment, only just keeping my eyes ahead. No one is this dense. Why is she evading me? It's a simple question.
“That's not what I— When you sleep, do you dream?”
I can hear her breathing.
“Yes. Occassionally.” I hear the difficulty in the mutedness of her voice. I can all but feel the tension in her, the teeth-grinding effort to keep something unsaid. Then she sighs. “We are not meant to.”
“Believe in them? Interpret them? Talk about them?” I ask stupidly.
“Have them.”
Oh.”
The silence which follows her faroff tone is the kind you don't break. Even the night respected her need for space to figure out what she had just said and what to do about it.
So I do.
“I realize that I have not been very friendly to you – from the moment we first met. I have a lot of.... But of course you know I have a lot of things on my mind.” I sigh. “You couldn't have shown up in my life at a worse time.”
“Regina?”
I almost turn. Hearing Regina's name in Peitho's voice.... My arms are numb.
“Yes. She.... She wanted me to help her divorce her husband.”
I can feel it – the same way I felt it with Caesar— When I fall silent, there is a sort of void between the two of us. Indescribable energy pulls on me to fill it – to continue speaking.
“For you?”
“I don't know. I think so.”
“She must have loved you. Did you love her?”
“...I don't know. I must have. What is love? Right? That's what I have to answer – for myself – if I'm going to answer that. I think— I think that love is... love is being able to accept someone for what they are, to see them for what they could be, and to ignore their flaws when they don't matter – if you can't find a way to endear yourself to them.”
“There is a Psalm, is there not?”
“It's not a Psalm. It's Paul's first Epistle to the Corinthians:
- “'Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.'”
- “There is more – is there not?”
- “Yeah. Most people don't—“ I realize I'm stalling for time. Why? Why don't I want to think about the next part of the Epistle?
- “'But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.'”
I close my eyes. Tears burn behind them.
What are you doing? You can't cry in front of a girl!
A woman I love is dead. My life is in shambles. I'm being chased by a murderous priest and coerced into helping a woman who might be as mad as he is do gods know what by God knows which gods. If any of this is even real. What am I supposed to do? Just pretend I feel nothing?
Suck it up like a man.
Peitho's voice, when she fills my tormented silence, is hesitant – tentative, even.
“Were you going to help her?”
“I hadn't decided. That's what I— ...Was thinking about the day you came to my door. But by then – it was too late. The decision had been made for me.”
Peitho doesn't say anything. I can feel the effort of her will, the pulling of the strange gravity between us.
“Her husband.”
“Yeah. ...You... know about that?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you—?”
I hear her hair rustle her tree as she nods. I can't look at her. Can't move.
“Yeah.”
I thought, when I asked the question, as I waited for the answer, that I would feel something, if she confirmed. But I don't. All I feel is emptiness – and guilt that I don't feel something more profound.
Of course she did. I knew she did. I suspected she did.
For a moment, I'm not lying in the grass beneath a tree older than the civilization which has spared it, on an idyllic hill under the black of night, staring up at an infinite universe of stars forever out of reach – and I'm standing over Francis. For one horrid moment, all I can see is the lurid holes in his neck, the twin punctures I was so sure were the bite of a viper.
“How? Why?”
“Don't worry about how,” Peitho says. Her voice is distant. Maybe she's in the room with him, killing my... what? My partner? My oldest acquaintance in Genoa? He wasn't either of those things – not really. “But why? The answer is simple: Matere wished it done. You'll ask why of that, though – even though you should not. You should be able to guess correctly. It is simple: You would not help me if you were tangled up in his plans.”
“And Regina?”
I hear my question before I know I've thought to ask it.
“No.”
I look at her. She is still looking up at the night, but slowly she turns her head to face me. The emeralds of her gaze lock my eyes on hers. I feel the energy between us, the pull, the grappling gravities – only now it is I who is losing. Not against the urge to speak, but to fall so deep into her eyes I never climb back out again.
Can I believe her that she didn't kill Regina?
It would make sense if she did.
It would make sense to lie.
But Regina was the straw that broke the camel's back. I ran because—
You ran because you were going to run. Regina was—
Insurance. Ensurance.
Instinct speaks with Lamiya's voice, but I know it isn't implicating her. Nor does it imply Wadjet.
The Yaldabaoth?
I sigh. “I was just trying to say – you know my reasons for being paranoid. I've made neither a genuine nor a fair effort to get to know you. You wanted to know what's happening with me – I'm trying to answer. I— I don't know how to feel about Francis. He was a prick. Beat Regina. Stole her money. He acted like he was the one who made me rich, but he lost more of my money gambling and leaving it for whores than he ever made me. But.... He wanted to make me king. Did you know that?”
Peitho slowly shakes her head.
Our eyes have drifted apart, but we're still facing one another.
“Yeah. He wanted to make me king of Genoa and declare independence from the Kingdom of Italy.”
“What did you say?”
“The same thing I told his wife when she asked me to divorce them!” I exclaim. Then, all but throwing my hand over my mouth, I lower my voice by an order of magnitude. “No.”
“Why?”
“I wouldn't divorce them because I wasn't willing to destroy him. He wasn't my friend, but he had been a friend to me. That's.... He didn't have to do that. I owe him my loyalty, if nothing else.”
“And to you that means not involving yourself in his eating his just desserts?”
“I don't think that's the—“ I meet her eyes, see the beginnings of a smile on her lips, and realize she is joking. “Ah. Um. Yes. That.”
“That is noble. Difficult, though, to do anything for yourself – if you are not willing even to be involved in someone's self-destruction. How can you say you have defeated your enemies if they are not utterly destroyed?”
“Perhaps.” I turn and practically flop against the tree. “There isn't anything in the world valuable enough to me to be worth destroying someone – even tangentially – even by their own doing. Want— Desire— I feel like half of what I say when I talk about myself is quoting the Buddha.” Peitho says nothing.
Does she know the Buddha?
Why don't you ask her?
Isn't that how conversation works – you ask a question, she answers, you steer the talk in a direction—
Yes, yes. All right.
“You're a priestess, right?”
I hear her head turn to me, and look out the side of my eye to regard her. She is the picture of suspicion – if only it were naked.
“Why do you think that?”
“I was once showed a statuette of a woman dressed like you. The... man who told me, my teacher, he said the women those figurines represented were priestesses, some of the most powerful people to ever live – men or women. But also because Metus said so.”
“You believe the things this priest tells you?”
“Not all of them. I do believe that he believes them, irrespective of reality. When you're dealing with a person who believes – or wants you to believe – that he is a member of a cult famous for torturing and eradicating other cults, you take notice of what he says. Or maybe you don't. I do.”
“Because even though he's crazy, he's not necessarily wrong.”
I don't argue Peitho's reasoning. She's right. I lean back, now, sliding down the tree, kicking my legs out in front of me and crossing them back at the ankles.
“Then he has told you that I am a priestess of some mysterious cult. What did he tell you about us?”
I meet her eye. “Why don't you just tell me the truth?”
She looks away, nods. I watch her watching the night.
“The night sky really is beautiful, isn't it?”
She is not good at evading questions she eventually has to answer.
“I'd never seen it, the night sky, before four weeks ago. How is that possible, you no doublt wonder – don't worry about it. It doesn't matter.” She sighs, deep and hard. “The thing I don't understand is— You knew I am trying to get a relic of my people back. Why did you need this Metus to tell you— How did this not scream to you— You know what? Nevermind. You are a stubborn man. I imagine you resist your own eyes with the same tenacity as a donkey – and it's just as much work for you to make up your own mind as getting a donkey to do anything. Even something it wants.”
If what she is saying is meant to do anything other than make me frown and wonder whether I'm as transparent to her as nearly everyone else seems to me, she has failed. I don't know how this makes me feel. Is it a boon or a burden to feel exceptional? The donkey that is my mind wants, initially, to resist this, and I nearly laugh. She's right, and I'm already forming arguments how she's necessarily wrong even as I know she's right. Am I just a contrary person? It's easy to tell yourself you're just searching for the Truth in everything by arguing every side until one naturally wins. But some truths are statements, and once stated, can only either be taken as they are or left to be rediscovered later – often at the worst possible moment.
I feel exposed, fraudulent, under her silent scrutiny – imagining that this is how Adam must have felt when he stood before his god, naked and ashamed, in the Garden.
“I think,” Peitho says slowly, “I understand why you said you feel like the Buddha. Desire, yes? You believe that you have shrugged away its mantle, that in doing so you can escape suffering. Am I wrong?”
“You're not wrong.”
“You and I both know you desire.”
Our eyes meet. Her emeralds seem to look right through me.
“Maybe it's not a question of whether I desire,” I say. ”The Secret of Buddhism is that there is no Secret. Maybe it's a question of degree. I mean—“
“How badly do you desire.” She does not ask this as a question. She states it as a truth.
I feel that... feeling between us. Only now it is not rigid, static. Now it's... loose, almost gelatinous. Soft and curving like—
“What am I willing to sacrifice to get what I want,” I correct her.
My voice is chilling to my own ear. Peitho says nothing for a long time, and I'm not going to interrupt her, not after that. Well, I wasn't.
“Do you miss her?”
Peitho looks over at me, frowning, confused. “Who?”
“Your sister. Are you worried for her?”
“My sister. Right. You surprised me. Do I miss her?” Peitho gets quiet, looking into the night. “Yes. Am I worried?” She swallows hard – some lump of some emotion; I don't know – I'm not watching her. “No. She will meet the Fate the Goddess has in store for her one way or another. I just hope... I just hope she managed to survive this and get what she wanted.”
“Do you want to talk about her?”
I don't look over, and Peitho is silent for a long moment. Silence is all I get from my dreams, too.
“She.... I feel I may have deceived you, Rob.”
Is this where she confesses that the sister isn't real?
She stole the Rod – just watch.
Listen. Don't watch her too closely.
“My Sister is not my sister. We are related – but in the same way that everyone from a town, especially an island town—“
“Lesvos,” I confirm.
“...is related. She is my Sister – in that we are both a part of a Sisterhood.” She takes a deep breath. “It is forbidden for me to tell you more.”
“You don't have to tell me more than you want to, Peitho. I'm out at Pavia either way.”
I meant this to sound comforting, but even to my own ears it feels like a threat: Tell me what I want to hear or I abandon you in the mountains. Eesh.
“We are a people,” she says with a sigh. “A civilization – ancient and forgotten – and secret. It is difficult for me to explain without describing our society from top to bottom.”
I reach into my jacket like I mean to get out my pen and journal. She laughs.
“It is fair, perhaps easiest, to think of us as a cult. Of course, not all of us, all of my family, my people, are cultists. We are not as hierarchically structured as Christianity – there is very little specific structure at all.”
“That sounds Chaotic,” I chime in. She does not respond directly.
“But we have nobility and commoners – and what amounts to priests. My Sisters – we call ourselves the Daughters of Lamiya – this is what we are. But I am not a priestess – no more than we are a cult. Yes, we are mysterious – we are religious, but in the same way that all people have been since the first ritual behaviors of our ancientest ancestors. I am not a priestess. I am not any one thing. I am multiplicity. But I am trained to serve in that function as need be.”
“But not as an oracle?”
“No. Sight is reserved for Matere alone.”
“Is that how she is chosen?”
“No one knows how she is chosen.”
“How can that be possible?”
“Well – I'm sure the Matere knows. But if there's a process.. it's a secret, and no one is talking.”
“Does that mean it's a secret from me?”
She looks over at me. “It doesn't, no. All of this is a secret from you – from anyone who does not already know. I have no reason to lie to you – not anymore. As soon as I started talking about my family, my people, I broke my vows. A broken vow is not desire – it is not judged by to what degree it is broken. A broken stalagtite is broken. The degree of its breaking is the carnage wrought in its wake. Matere is not... lenient. She does not forgive – and she will not forget. I do not know whether she is capable of it.”
“You think she will know about this? How?”
The statuette is hot in my pocket.
Peitho pivots her whole torso to face me. I don't need more than a darted glance to see too much of the don't-be-fucking-stupid written in her features.
She rolls her eyes and slithers down the hill so that she is lying flat on her back with her hands, crossed at the wrists, touching the tree behind her head.
“Magick. That's how.”
I hear this and immediately think she's joking. Then I hear the surrender in her voice – and the absence of sarcasm. She means this. Literally.
“You act like she's listening to us right now.”
“She more than probably is.”
“Why aren't we doing anything to stop her?”
“Do you know how to make a Privacy Bubble – by that or any name?” Peitho's voice is a challenge – hard, already presuming the answer.
“No. But surely you—“
“Sure – but not one strong enough to keep her out.”
“That's insane.”
“Who cares about the insanity of it?” Peitho sounds as relaxed and carefree as though she were lazily floating on a lake. I am half-inclined to explore that Disappearing Into the Forest Option. I may have dismissed it too quickly. “It is what it is. It is what she does – it may be what she is. Don't look at me like that. You are a Dreamer of Dreams, a Seer, the Fulcrum of Fate, no less. Not only are you capable of it, you have tripped across the Weave of Fate. The question is what you've seen – not whether Matere can or might as well – better, and with more control.”
That would mean I actually am dreaming Pepin in real-time.
More importantly that means you've been watched this whole time.
The back of my neck itches with the feeling of formicatious feet – a sensation, I realize, I have been ignoring possibly for weeks now.
“That's impossible.”
“What? That oracles are real? Open your eyes, Robert. Not only is magick real, but you are meant to be capable of it. Not just capable – of great capacity for it. Nothing is impossible.”
Nothing is impossible. The mantra of the Master. Everything is possible. You are limited only by—
“Why do you think that?”
“Because that is what I was told. The way I heard it, you're a regular Merlin.”
“Well... I'm not.”
“Merlin wasn't always the wizard of the stories. There was a time before his greatness. You can't know what you are capable of until you put yourself in a position to try.”
She's reached over to touch my hand, craned her neck to look up at me.
“You're the Fulcrum of Fate. You can do anything you put your mind to.”
I look away from her, twisting my mouth. I know manipulation when I see it.
“And what do you want me to put my mind to?”
“I have to find the Rod, Rob.”
Of course you do.
“Is that what you are, then? Some kind of Guardian?”
“Sort of, yes. But not in that order. My family – my people - … you might say we and everything it is to be us – are guardians, yes. Of the Rod, first – but of our way of life, our history, and our sacred gnosis of the Goddess, the Great Mother.”
“Metus called yours a cursed bloodline. You're a secret civilization. Does that make you some kind of Lost Tribe of Israel?”
She laughs. I smile a little bit. But it's not funny. That is a serious claim, and many have made it – and died for it. That sort of legitimacy, if she could prove it, would instantly make her and her family players on the world stage. I just like the sound of her laughter.
Or would they?
Lesvos? With Muslims or Christians on all sides?
No. You hide. You wait for a less hostile future to become the present.
You hide in a hole. Like a bunny.
Peitho's right about you – you're no fox.
“Again – sort of. But not Israel. Older than Israel. Older than Abraham. Thousands of years older. The Jewish people aren't the first or the only people to survive history's extinctions. Hell – Zoroastrians still exist throughout Anatolia and Persia.”
“Is that why Metus is concerned with you? He seems to have no interest in the Rod.”
“Have you discussed Pepin with him?”
“No. At least, I don't think so.”
“It may be that he wants you to have no interest in it.”
“Why do you say that?”
“What does he say about it? What exactly does he say he wants from you?”
“He says it's nothing – just an ikon from a long time ago. And he tells me to stay away from you – and to give him the Rod.” I almost didn't say this last. But— “So much for that.”
“Indeed.” Peitho agrees. “You have failed to evade falling into my clutches. I hope you can endure the torture of my presence. Did he warn you about my clawed hands and how I grow bat wings at night – and how my vagina has teeth?”
She says this with wicked glee – which makes me half-wonder whether she's not joking.
“He has not, no.”
“If I were trying to keep you from doing something, I would want to dull your interest in it – maybe suggest other things I would prefer you to do. He is probably not concerned with me at all, but does want the Rod.”
“And if you're wrong? How does he even know about you?”
“I don't know – how he knows about me. If I'm wrong... we will cross that bridge when we come to it. No plan survives contact with the enemy – isn't that what they say?”
That's what Helmuth von Moltke would say in the 19th century – “That or something like it, for sure,” I mutter.
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