Part Two: Two Sides of a Coin
I look down at Peitho with just my eyes. She's looking up at me.
“Is Metus working for Order and are you working for Chaos?”
She doesn't blink. Doesn't flinch. But she doesn't answer immediately, either.
“He keeps asking. Forgive me, Matere, but I am compelled to answer.” Before I can wonder at this little prayer she whispers, Peitho says, entirely to me, “It is hard to say. Working for? Am I working for Chaos? I do not know. I am working for my Family, my Sisters, my Mother.”
“But you think that Metus represents Order in some way,” I press.
“Why are you convinced that I must represent Chaos?”
I laugh to myself. A damsel in distress is always Chaos.
“Call it a hunch.”
“And how does that make you feel about me?”
“I'm not running, screaming yet, am I?”
“Anymore, you mean.”
I push a single chorlte out of my nose. Anymore, indeed.
R – She's evading you.
I – You must be right.
R – Or near something sensitive.
“Am I wrong?”
Peitho makes a hmm noise in her throat. Less an articulation of speculation, I suspect, of my question than of whether she should answer it.
“I guess not.”
Who said the Dark Side doesn't have cookies?
I – Do we have to join – or can we get some on a trial basis?
R – Terrible.
“Let's talk about something else,” I suggest. “I've been thinking....” How do I put this? Can't tell her about the priest, now. It's been two days.
R - You've never heard of Better Late Than Never?
I – Window closed.
“What does it mean to be The End of the world – of Time?”
“What do you mean?” Peitho asks.
“I mean that if Metus thinks I'm the Second Coming, then he also think that I am a Herald of The End.”
“Not necessarily. I think I see what you're asking, now. Even to John the Elder, The End isn't the end. Even he has an After. The Lamb, Jesus, the Second Coming announces the Truth that brings about The End. Have you noticed that? The Sword that Jesus wields is in his mouth.”
“That's – sort of what I wanted to talk about.”
“What did he say?”
“What do you mean?”
“To you – to imply that you're the Second Coming?”
“We did this... call and response exercise with the first few verses of Matthew, Chapter 4. Jesus' temptation in the desert. I played Jesus.”
“He did a call and response where you spoke the words of Jesus to Satan in the desert?”
“Yes.”
“And he played Satan? And that didn't seem... I don't know, absurd, poignant, important... convenient – nothing?”
“It seemed like I was talking to an insane person.”
Peitho sighs and rolls her eyes so hard in her head I can feel their motion against my chest.
“But insane people have reasons, Robert. Just because he may be mad does not mean that this priest does not have reasons for believing as he does – and for saying as he does.”
“You're not suggesting— No. We weren't doing some sort of ritual.”
“Possibly not,” Peitho allows. “But in his mind? Perhaps he was testing you—“
“I considered that.”
“Not your knowledge. Your fitness.”
“My fitness?”
“To be Christ!”
“That's.... Actually—“
“Not a bad point?” She looks up at me, smiling only slightly. “If I were me and I were involved in this – but it were not my artifact which needed rescuing – because certainly that is how he must think of the Rod – as being held captive by us Pagan savages—”
I am actually not so certain about that. But I don't interrupt.
“And I knew what you are and that you have a place in this—“
“Why do you assume that Metus knows what I am?”
“Does he?”
Peitho meets my eye, and I look away.
“I don't know.”
“You're a terrible liar. Does he? Has he called you the Fulcrum?”
“Of course he has. How do you know?”
“How do I know,” Peitho echoes, laughing. “Because if they are interested in you, Robert, they know what you are. On some level, whether it is conscious and deliberate or not, they know what you are. What it means to be around you. Metus— If he is as you claim – and I suspect we will find out soon, will we not?”
“I have been trying not to think about that,” I admit.
“Well— If he is as you claim, then it is certain that he knows that you are. That, indeed, he is manipulating you just as Matere and the Master are. As Pepin would. ...And anyone one else whom you have not told me about.”
I don't say anything to this. And evidently Peitho didn't expect me to. As though we hadn't had this little aside, she continues:
“ I think I could convince you that you were a messiah – an Annointed or Chosen One – so long as you gave me the Rod once you were done with it.”
The way she said that.
S – I think I could convince you that you were a messiah....
“Wait....”
“Yes?”
I look down at Peitho. Already in a sort of half-daze, mind already clogged like a sewage drain with other thoughts, I've half-forgotten what I'd started to say. When my eyes meet hers, whatever I was thinking – including but not limited to her voice repeating in my mind like the peels of a broken bell – was shattered and blown away like a stained-glass window of smoke.
Peitho looks away from me. If I were looking at her with fresh eyes, with eyes who had lived a lifetime of lifetimes and the benefit of 20/20 vision, I would say that for just a second, a single frame in the film, she is smirking – smug, and self-satisfied. And then she is speaking and I'm looking at the stars, feeling....
What is love? Baby, don't hurt me, don't hurt me no more? Or— What has love got to do with it? Is it a secondhand emotion? Who does need a heart – when a heart can be broken?
I wasn't thinking this, of course.
But I pause, here, watching this. Because I'm thinking about it now.
What is love?
This is a question that, by the point we have reached in my twenty and fifth summer, I had not answered for myself. I had asked it – to Peitho, no less. But I had not pondered it. Aside from what was directly on our tongues, I had devoted no time to pondering anything. All of my energy was on rest – on, in the most archaic of senses, exercise.
It's a question that maybe I don't ask until it's too late.
Love is another of those things, which has a different meaning to nearly ever person you will ask. It is, in the strictest sense, a set of chemical reactions in the brain – literally a dependency-cum-addiction to another person. It does not have to be physical – but the physical act is not call lovemaking for no reason: the chemicals released during and after the coital act are powerful intoxicants.
But are they love?
The Greeks believed something which may be strange to the modern mind, but which is actually fundamental to the structure on which so-called Western thought is built on: the emotions were not something happening within us – as we understand them, the emotions were not chemical processes in the brain. How could they have conceptualized that? Well, I suppose the same way they were able to conceptualize and calculate the circumference of the planet, the distances between it and the moon and sun, the difference in magnetic and true north— But I digress.
The emotions, to the Greek mind, were gods. And the gods played out their little cosmic, deific psychodrama in the lives of mortals. This is how gods could come to stand for things like Persuasion – the god came before the broader concept. To them, Love was— Well, saying to them is a broad and unfair statement. Eros was many things. He would become the chubby winged Cupid so popular during Valentine's Day.
But once he was one of the Primordial gods who created the material universe. A Strapping, verile youth and accomplished poet. Later, he was a blind child.
This evolution is an evolution of a people's understanding of – or their accepted notion of what was understood about – Love.
Eros wasn't just love. He was responsible for the lovemaking act. The carnal rutting which keeps a species alive. Aphrodite is commonly thought to have that particular domain – erroneously. Aphrodite reigned over non-erotic love – that is the kinds of love which don't result from coital coupling. Conversation, for instance. But Eros was a poet, too. An artist.
A magician?
“What did you mean, done with it?” I ask, my voice cloudy to my own ears.
“Once you were done with it,” Peitho says again, as though the words I didn't understand would elucidate themselves. “Once you had gotten ahold of it and done whatever it is I am motivated to have you do with it.”
I won't meet Peitho's eyes as she says this. She doesn't seem to be looking at me, but I can't even venture to look. My eyebrow, however, does raise.
“So that you could limit the effect of my very Christ-nature.”
“Exactly. Those that have come before who have been something like what you are, they impacted the Weave like a comet from Heaven. Allowing you to use the Rod, to impact—“
“You could make yourself the Moses to my Aaron. Let me duel the Egyptians – I'll let you talk because I don't want to deal with the crowds – and then—“
“ And then I end up with the Rod when you have outlived your usefulness. Probably after a sexual scandal. How do you feel about teenaged girls?”
She looks up at me. My eyes shoot to hers, horrified. She's smiling.
“This is the kind of thing I need to know before our partnership. I have to be ready to explain why the Goddess has no problem with you tormenting children.”
“You're not funny, Peitho.”
She sure doesn't seem to think so – at least, that's what her laughter would indicate.
“Yes— Having the Rod for myself could be my way of making sure that it is my name which is remembered with your crater – if not I myself who am remembered as having falling from Heaven. Was that all that he said to you?”
The things Peitho is saying to me right now – they're giving me cold chills. Am I afraid of her? Am I afraid of her honesty? I don't think so. I don't feel afraid.
I feel like I felt the first time I felt naked steel in my hands – the first time I knew for absolute certain that a simple motion of my arm was enough to maim a person or even end their life.
What is this feeling?
“That wasn't all he said to me.” I want to answer her. I want to think about Metus, about Venice, about anything other than that… feeeling.
I effort to replay Metus in Venice over in my mind, recalling to the best of my effort his words.
“I made fun of him, I think. Asked him if he wasn't being heretical by having me quote Jesus. It seemed like he might be setting me up to be Jesus. He said that he – the way Metus talks is weird. He never uses personal pronouns – I, my – he always refers to himself in the first person plural – with we. Like he means the Venatores collectively.”
“Perhaps he does. Or perhaps he means he and his God – or he and his daemon.”
This makes me frown. “Why do you think that Metus has a daemon?”
“Ah, a rumor that even the prodigious patron of parables has not heard! My lucky day.” The delight in her voice and the movements of her body feel genuine. Still, I suspect irony.
“You remember we discussed them – in my room, in Genoa.”
“Where you expressly forbade me to come, I know.”
“Why did you, by the way?”
She's looking up at me. I look down at her, and it's not compulsion which causes me to answer. I shrug.
“I hadn't meant to. I was going to the tavern, to have a drink and think. But it was packed. I'd never seen anything like it. Not in two years.”
“Maybe you didn't go by at the right times?”
“The right times?”
I – You never left the house on holy days.
R – Or when you knew lots of new people were in town.
“It's possible,” I allow. “I was there every day, it feels like... but I could have avoided when he was busy. Anyway, he told me you were upstairs and I— I just kind of... went. I didn't really think about it. I mean I did, but— I was there. What was the worst that was going to happen? I guess you could have thrown me out the window.”
“I probably should have.”
“Probably.”
“So, you talked in Genoa about how the Venatores found something beneath Rome, in the catacombs where they practiced their Worship,” Peitho says, her voice taking on the timbre of the lecturer.
“Right.”
“I am surprised that you have heard this, but not what it was.”
“What was it?” I ask this, knowing full-well in my heart at this point that it must have been some means of visiting the Yaldabaoth's Pit – and Him, in his Prometheus form.
“No one knows, for sure. But there is one thing they say – the Iustitiarii and the Canum Sanctum, they are each gifted a daemon, a nature spirit or entity—“
“One of the gods who stayed,” I hear myself intone, strangely breathless.
I feel Peitho go still against my chest, her cheeks stretch in a smile. “Yes.”
“That... doesn't seem very Christian.”
“You didn't believe that they were actually disbanded for their involvement in Hypatia's death, did you?”
Hypatia. Now there's a death I don't like to think of too often or in too great detail.
“That is what I was taught: After the burning of the Sarapaeum and Hypatia's lynching, the Venatores were disbanded. The implication is for political reasons – they were too powerful, maybe, or too zealous. Maybe they were giving the Church a bad name moving into the latter half of the fifth century and needed to be removed. I don't know.”
“Do you know the story of Saint Catherine of Alexandria?” Peitho's question surprises me.
“I do. But I'm sure you tell it better.”
The noise she makes is kind of like a mewl. She buries her nose into my shirt.
“Saint Catherine of Alexandria. Legend has it she lived in the third century. She was supposed to be of rare beauty and intellect. What does that mean, by the way? Does it mean that she was of both rare intellect and beauty? Or does it mean that she was rare for being both hugely intelligent and attractive? Is that why it's noteworthy? Like, if she were of just great intellect she wouldn't have been as rare? The way we talk and write about women— Anyway—“
“You know we talk about men the same way, right?”
“What?”
Peitho looks up at me like she hadn't meant to say most of that aloud.
“We talk about men based on their looks, too.”
“Yes, but—“
“It hasn't been used to make women property?”
“Emperor Maximian was killing Christians at the time, according to the story,” Peitho says, her eyes on me hard, “and Catherine's mother was a secret Christian. Catherine was apparently a prodigious student and lover of wisdom. So her mother sent her to a Christian hermit who lived in a cave in the desert, and he told Catherine all about Jesus and Christian magick. Well, she was interested, so she ended up having two visions of the Virgin Mother Mary. In the first, Catherine was told that she was too impure, so she dedicated herself to the cult and the hermit baptized her to the faith. In the second, the Virgin Mother gave Catherine a ring, symbolizing her marriage to Jesus.”
“She sounds a little... perfect, doesn't she?”
“Like someone felt bad about the whole Hypatia thing and skinned Catherine over her? You know, they say they found her body a hundred years ago?”
“Catherine?” I ask. Peitho nods. “Did they, now?”
“They say the ring is still on her finger. Well, anyway, she becomes a great proseletyzer, and gets the attention of Maximian. Some say that she went to Maximian herself, to demand better treatment of the Christians who were being martyred left and right in Alexandria. So he, because it's not a good story if he doesn't, has her debate fifty of his best pagan philosophers. And one by one she converts them all to Christianity. So she's thrown in the dungeon. After being scourged so thoroughly that no part of her body wasn't weeping blood. And she was left there to starve.
“Well, little could Maximian know, but he was dealing with the real deal – a true Christian magician. Angels visited her in the dungeons. They healed her wounds and fed her, and when Maximian sent for her starved corpse, what he received was her – well and hale – and another contingent of her converts. So she was condemned to public execution – to be broken on a spiked wheel. Legend has it there were more than two hundred people in attendance. When she was brought to the wheel and offered one last time to denounce her faith or die, she refused, praising her god. And when she touched the wheel....”
Peitho raises her arms in the air above us so I can't miss the pantomime: She forms a wheel with her hands, then shatters it apart with a dramatic wiggling of her fingers.
“It shattered into a million tiny pieces. Everyone there except Maximian instantly converted to Christianity. And every last one of them was martyred for it. Finally, after all of her converts were killed and her earthly works apparently undone, the pagan Emperor had Catherine's head cut off. But! Instead of blood, a milky white substance flowed from the stump of her neck, healing anyone who touched it – and again converting everyone in sight.”
“That's pretty impressive.”
“Her body— They say that her remains still weep that white substance, and that if you are worthy, she is still capable of miracle healings.”
“That's kind of... macabre.”
“No more or less macabre than any other death cult. And we have been talking about how Christians who call themselves the Witch Hunters found a way to make themselves even more powerful than the world's most powerful magicians and armies almost overnight – while meanwhile this sort of thing could also be happening to Christians. Christianity is, in a way, a death cult.”
“The Romans persecuted them with such claims.”
“In order to be remembered as a good Christian, you are almost required by canon law to die a horrible death – not always at the hands of enemies. You know the story of Saint Lawrence?”
“I do, actually. I've been thinking a lot about it late.”
R – Now. Do it. Tell her about the priest.
“All right, then. Then I'm preaching to the quire. Did you know, then, that beyond the Maries Virgin and Magdalene, Catherine might be the most important female character in the whole Christian pantheon?”
“She is the Patron Saint of philosophers,” I sagely agree.
“Yes. And I think that she is the Church's way of apologizing for Hypatia – of apologizing for the Library – of trying, in their way, to right the wrong which is at the heart of their Civilization.”
“To apologize for the Venatores, or— Ah. The Goddess – enslaved, imprisoned, nearly flayed alive, but not dead, not forgotten?”
“In as many words. Rob—“ she stops, makes a noise something like a grunt in her throat, then continues: “Metus thinks that you know the Secret.”
“The Secret?”
“The one and the same. The same secret that Catherine knew – that, if I'm not wrong, he himself knows. That one, which, once revealed, exposes the Lie of Civilization. He believes that soon you will speak or act or choose and the world as it is known today will end. That you will kill Civilization.”
“Hmm.” I make a noise in my own throat, twisting my lips.
I – That we will kill Civilization. Like David killed Goliath or Jesus was supposed to have harrowed Hell itself.
“But that also makes you the god of what comes next.”
I look down at Peitho. I felt the arousal ripple through her body, and now I see it in her face.
“Helping you will make me a god?” I ask her, not unaware of the irony.
“Depends, I guess, on what, exactly, you choose – how you help me.”
I don't like this. I don't like any of it – not the idea that anyone might think I have the power either to destroy or to save the world, not that it feels like whatever I choose it's helping someone – someone, likely, whom I don't want to help – or hurting everyone.
I want to sigh. To slump. To give up and go to sleep.
Except I want to dream even less.
“And if you fail?” I ask
“Matere will no doubt send another of my sisters to secure your aid.”
“Not fail to—“
“If you do not choose to help me, then Order will have their way. I cannot get the Rod back on my own. I know that, now.”
“It sounds like you're telling me that no matter what happens in Pavia you'll be back to following my trail.”
“That's because that is what I'm telling you.”
“Hmm.” I don't look down at her, but I do imagine what that life would be like. “So then I'd be running from two of you.”
“If I were not replaced. Yes.”
“Replaced?”
“Mother is not forgiving, and she does not forget.”
“So what you're telling me is to help you get the Rod or... you die anyway. You said that last night. I see. Hmm.”
“Or— Another situation is that you could run, I could chase, one of my Sisters could chase me, and you spend your life evading me – and as a consequence of that, her. You will force me in this scenario to work with you. If I want to survive. Which is why I am chasing you in the first place. I'll have to prove to my Sister – somehow, but unlikely – that I am still working for the family. Meanwhile the Rod is doing... what?”
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