Part Four: Every Mother's Son
I have nowhere else to go but forward – with Peitho.
Closing my eyes, for just a second, I allow myself to feel the weight crushing down around me. Then I soldier on and through the door to the church.
The insides of these churches are never what I expect. They look like they'll be cramped, uncomfortable. But then you stand among the collonades... and it's like you're standing among the very Halls of Heaven. Santa Maria Foris Portam is not cramped.
She is not utterly dark, either.
Built in the Lombard triple-apse- and -nave style, she looks very much like the Michele Maggiore, and in fact is something of a smaller version.
Moonlight streams, silvery and dreamlike, through the carved, stylized circular window high up on the facade, illuminating a statue of the Virgin Mary on the altar in dancing shadows.
And Peitho, sitting on a nearby bench with her face lowered to the floor.
Nor is She quiet.
It must be after midnight. The voices of maybe as many as ten nuns – from the monastery that shares the church's garden – singing their nightly songs of praise to their god.
Peitho turns to me. I guess she heard me come in. It's almost impossible to close those old doors without slamming them.
By the time I make it to her bench, she has long since gone back to giving her attention to the floor. Whatever. I don't expect her to be glad to see me. I don't even know why I've come here. Not really – not yet.
As quietly as I can, I creak my way onto the bench. And sit there, while Peitho evidently ignores me, apparently deep in prayer.
The not-exactly silence is not-exactly eerie.
I try not to make eye contact with Jesus on his cross, nor to let my eyes rest on the altar statue, his Virgin Mother, knelt in mourning, watching her beloved Son of Man die.
For that matter I'm starting to have enough of avoiding all the religious symbolism around me and the tumult of stories and connections and meanings and and and that fill the space between my ears. A space I would prefer were at most as quiet as this church. Even the stone at my feet compels me to take its notice.
My hands itch to roll a Draig.
I turn and look at Peitho. I'm trying not to let my leg shake. Finally, she opens her eyes – well, the one I can see – and glares at me.
“What are you... doing?” I ask,
“Praying,” Peitho says, her gaze cold – nay, dead.
I heard how stupidly the previous question was asked with my own ears. So I ask another: “Why? ...I mean – what for?”
Our voices echo in the stone church like shuffled feet in the rafters above us – like watching, interested angels. My neck itches with formicatious feet.
Peitho exhales slowly, turning her attention to the altar. Not a sigh. Something else.
I don't see anything interesting up there.
“I was praying for guidance, if you must know.” She shifts her gaze to me. “Help. Wisdom.” I'm making an And? face. “I asked that you be returned to me.”
“Ah.” I keep my eyebrows still, but on the inside, this is surprising. Maybe most surprising of all is the vulnerability I find in her face. “And here I am.”
“Ah. And here you are.”
“Do you think your prayer was answered?”
“Here you are.”
I can't be sure – because I have – but I don't think Peitho has blinked. She sure isn't now.
S – Her stare is intense.
“Here? By—?” I'm pointedly, now, not looking at the son of God currently crucified in terrible effigy to whom I am referring. The Blood, the Lamb, Jesus the Christ almost seems to be looming over us.
This is his house, after all.
Kind of... psychopathic to keep him crucified in his own home.
“What do you know of this church?” Peitho answers. She leans back in the pew, crossing her arms. Finally, she allows me a respite from her relentless stare – if only briefly – by blinking.
I look around me and shrug. “I think Adalbert said it was built by Theodolinda in the 400s.”
“Wrong. It was built more recently – the 700s, maybe. And not by Theodolinda – probably for a king's wife, though.” She frowns, then: “Adalbert? You spoke with Adalbert et Adalbert, Margrave of Tuscany and richest man in Italy, tonight? A man who seeks your death?”
I make a face and hands-in-the-air pantomime like the screen is going to freeze and cut to commercial on my Aw, shucks – you got me. It doesn't. And not only because a commercial break, to say nothing of television, is nowhere in anyone's mind and won't be for damn near a millennia.
Peitho punches me – hard – in the chest. Right in the meat of my left tit with a straight left.
“And still you live?” She rolls her eyes. “Ugh. How have I picked up your 'And yet, and yet'?” She sighs through her nose. “What happened? And don't tell me—“
“Later.” I hold up a soothing palm. Peitho relaxes – a little. “You were asking me about the church.”
Peitho eyes me, obviously suspicious, then allows her gaze to travel the confines of the church.
“You really don't notice anything special about it?”
I look around, but impatiently. “Nothing I care to dwell on.”
“Right.” Peitho reacts as though I'd pricked her. “Well. Who do you think this church is dedicated to?”
“Mary?”
“Yes, Robert. Mary. Jesus— Which Mary?”
Now I do look around. The Mary in effigy on the altar is - “The Virgin.”
“Right. Except it's wrong. It looks like it's dedicated to the Virgin Mary, the Mother. But it's not. It's dedicated to the Maiden. It's dedicated to Mary Magdalene – the Goddess in her form as Wild Woman and Wife – the Foreigner, the Alien.”
I nod. “I know what you're talking about. You think that this church is secretly dedicated to Asherrah – the wife of God when women were allowed to worship as priestesses alongside their male counterparts.”
Peitho blinks.
At first I think I've said something stupid, then her face screws up and she's sort of smiling, perplexedly.
“Yes,” she says with a kind of laugh. “I am. Why— You know what? Nevermind. I don't actually want to talk about the Bible – about Mary and Jesus and—“ She takes a breath, then releases it slowly through her nose. Her smile – and her eyes – soften.
“This church— There was a time when the Goddess was a permanent and significant part of every life – in the form of mothers, grandmothers, aunts, wives, sisters— Every female was in her way the Goddess. She knew – because she was taught – how and when to call upon and manifest Her power. You have no doubt heard of the Eleusinian cult. Women of the past were not only equal in power to their male peers – as wives, mothers, sisters – but were, indeed, superior to them – in the politics, yes, but more importantly, of the religion of the tribe and city and the nation – and on the battlefield.
“No doubt in your head is a running tally of every woman who ever stepped on the battlefield. Yael, Tomyris, Boudica. Others. The list of names is larger even than you think must be the case, if you look – and, yes, I am motivated to look, Rob. But the truth is that the number is infinite. Not only was the Woman, fully vested in her rights as representative of the Goddess, peer to the Male in the community, but in the home, she ruled. Look at Athena, Hera—
“Father may have executed the will of the family – may, but the further back you look, the less this is the rule than the exception – but Mother determined what that will was. Not every place is the same in expressions of power – and not all women have the strength nor the desire to wield vast amounts of power – but mothers will always be mothers. And they will always raise their boys to be men and their girls to be women. The exception proves the rule. The superlative exemplifies it.”
“And what of your father?” I ask. I'm looking at Jesus.
“We do not have a Father in my Family.”
This raises my brows. That wasn't what I was asking “How is that—?”
When I look at Peitho, her face seems bored with the whole thing.
“There are males. It is not natural for— But there may be another time. We can discuss this then. The Goddess, as Wild Woman, Foreigner, is Inanna-Ishtar-Aphrodite, Hathor-Sekhmet, Artemis, Freyja, Kali—“
What was the tri-form that Wadjet showed me when she first showed me her “human” aspect?
R - Sekhmet. Nekhbet. Wadjet.
“All right. I get it. So how many forms does she have, exactly?”
“An infinitude. But – seven.”
“Oooh. A nice magical number there.”
“Shut up.”
“What are they?”
“Do you really want to do this right now? Aren't you supposed to be getting drunk?” Her voice is sharp – her eyes, too.
“Yeah, that didn't go as planned. But are you really going to question the terms of your answered prayer?”
“You don't believe that.” She looks away from me.
“No,” I agree. “But you do. And I seem to remember being told, once, that when you make a wish, you better be real specific – because terms and conditions apply – and they always bite you in the ass I the end.”
“I wish you would bite me in the ass.” She defies me out of the corner of her eye.
“Let's see it,” I say, gesturing for her to stand.
Now shes frowning at me. “For a week you have been alone with me. We spent two nights naked together – and you make no attempt to touch me, show no signs or interest, not even arousal. You treat me like a maiden – like a flower that will wilt if you so much as gaze upon me with the full joy of your heart—“
S – More like you're Artemis and I'm the poor bastard that got himself turned into a deer and hunted as such – whatshisname—
“But here, now, with the defiled body of the Child of God hanging, dying, watching, overhead – now you make a move to fuck me?”
“What? No! I—“
“You what? And if you say you were just joking, I'll punch you in the face.”
I consider it – because that had been what I was about to say. Is just joking ever a good reason for bad behavior? I guess it depends on how funny it was? Then I think of my right tit and how bad it hurts. And imagine trying to play it off in the tavern tomorrow night. My shiner? Sure, but you should see the … girl...that... beat... me... up.... Right.
“Nothing. Sorry.”
“That's what I thought.” She nods, pleased with herself,
And, sighing, I collapse.
That's an exaggeration, of course. And yet it's not.
I intend only to rest my elbows on my knees. And in so doing, it is suddenly too much to hold my head up. Soon enough, my arms are crossed between my knees, my face is buried in them, my eyes are squeezed shut, teeth clenched tight, and tears streak hot streams down my cheeks.
Peitho must notice the racking of my back – I'm not breathing.
“Robert!” she breathes, Oh....”
Her hand splays, cool, across my back. She repeats my name, not as a lamentation but in lament, cooing. I am thus compelled, so I open my left eye to regard her.
“May I call you Awen?” she asks.
I nod, and she does, making her the first and the last woman I have loved to call me by the name of my birth.
“Awen.... you are unwell. Your soul – I feel it.”
She closes her eyes, and I look away. Her breath is deep and slow and I am intensely aware of her hand on my back.
“You feel it? Like, you can see my aura?”
“What has happened?”
I want to insist that nothing has happened. So I look at Peitho to do just that. And I see her. And she is seeing me. And I don't. I say maybe the worst thing.
“Peitho, I think I— All the women I love die.”
She doesn't react the way I expect. Which— I hadn't really expected anything before I'd finished – I hadn't expected to say that.
She smiles. Soft and... somehow matronly in her ageless face. “Everyone dies eventually. Some sooner than others. Some so that another might take rightfully take their place.”
There is a challenge in Peitho's eyes. Is that what killing Regina was about?
I look away from her. I don't want to think about Regina. I don't want to think about Maria. I don't want to think about—
Peitho's hand finds my shoulder, and it feels— Well, it feels cool. As cool as stone. As cool as a serpent's belly. As cool as the mysteries of the earth. I can feel her, radiating through the heat of my body. Like cream poured into steaming-hot coffee.
I meet her eyes. Their emeralds shine with a light that is all their own, like a message, a beacon, from some indescribable Heaven. And then she speaks, and when she does, her words are music, a song sung softly, just for me – and her voice is balm, a salve, stitching and bandages for my heart.
“The pain of the heart is as real as that of the body. When the bonds of attachment are severed – between friends, between family, lovers— It is true that these are injuries as real and as severe as the cutting off – the hacking and tearing off – of an arm or a leg.
“These wounds to the soul, the psyche, are real. And they can be fatal.
“The self, the ego, is a body that lives within the psyche. It is, in a sense, that circling of energies where one's perception of the world, one's self, and one's place within the world interact. Awen, the wounds you have sustained are fatal.”
Shame fills my being and I tear my eyes away from her to look to the floor.
Her hand catches my cheek. I can feel her fingers in my beard. I don't resist when she pulls my chin back to her.
“Awen.... I tried to tell you. This – what you are experiencing, what you are feeling— This is the Liminal State. They want you, Awen, and they will not stop until they have you. I should have known. I should have known they were wrong. I should have— But should haves and could haves. If they resulted in gold coins we'd all be rich, wouldn't we?
“I did not see you then. I see you now. There is no shame in being who you are – being what you are. Shame is.... Not worthless, but of what are you ashamed? That I, a woman who— A woman who is willing to accept you for what you are will see you for what that is?”
She tilts her head and smiles as though she's talking to a child – an idiot. And I feel like one.
S – Is that what she is? A woman willing to accept me?
I feel it – the desire, the twinge to think something cynical. But that's all it is. The rest is her eyes.
“Wounds can heal. Wounds can teach us. Pain is an indicator that something is not right, Awen, and that you – that we – should be doing something differently.”
“And what is that?” I ask, and I hear the gasping desperation in my throat.
She blinks, slowly, and when they are opened again, her eyes are somehow larger than ever, seeming to take up even more of my visual perception than ever.
“You have come to a crossroads, Awen. A place where you must make a choice what to make of your life, for you surely will die.”
“What do you know?”
“I do not speak oracles. You know this. I mean only the obvious – if you continue as you are, if you do nothing to treat the injuries to your soul, you will surely die. “
I do not mean to mutter:
“But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
My eyes drift from Peitho as I consider the words I hear fluttering from my mouth like a talking dreamer. Then my attention snaps back to her.
“Was that—“
“Intentional?” Her eyebrow flicks, then she turns to gaze upon the statue of Mary Magdalene, represented as the Mourning Mother. “You know that these altar statues – they're significant. No matter what the man standing on that altar says, no matter how he represents his Religion, the artists who built and filled these churches tell our eyes everything we need to learn.
“I know you know this – but these churches are designed in the same way as those temples which they replaced. Not everyone is sensitive. That is, not everyone is receptive to the Other, to Spirit. This environment, the art that fills it – it's all designed to unlock whatever it is that is locked away inside the Sensitive. Now – what Christendom does with their Sensitive.... Well, they say no to suffer a witch to live, don't they?”
Then why am I thinking of what they did to Metus
“When we were in Venice, when my room was— I was visiting Saint Mark's Cathedral.” Peitho looks at me with a kind of shrug. “A girl like me – you might only get one chance. You have to take it, right?”
I don't know what to say, so I don't say anything. Which seems fine. She looks back at Mary anyway. And then I privately smile at her, like a boy secretly holding a daisy behind his back, too scared to share it.
“The altar statue there is of Saint Theodore – a soldier killing a dragon. I hate it. And I admire it. I... must admit to being inspired by it.”
“Why? What does it mean to you?”
She turns to regard me. The emeralds of her eyes shine bright in the dark of the church.
“Do you know Theodore's story?”
I shrug. “Probably. But I don't feel like remembering it, and you probably tell it better.”
“Is that so?” Peitho hides a private smile. “Well – according to legend Theodore was a Roman soldier who refused to worship some pagan rite and was arrested. Then released; then he burned down a temple to Cybele – another of the Aspects of the Mother – and was killed.”
“Not an especially dramatic story,” I note.
She shrugs. “I don't want to tell the story. I want to talk about his statue – about what the story means. His statue – the drakaina he is slaying is Chaos – The Goddess. It is a memory, captured in ikonic image, of the story of Tiamat. The slaying of Chaos and the making of Order from her dismembered body.”
Her eyes wander the church's ceiling. My mind wanders the word drakaina.
“This used to be a pagan temple, you know. A temple to a goddess. You can tell that they built this over an existing structure.”
S – You can?
Instead of asking this, I say: “That happens all the time.”
“We kill the Goddess and from her bones, we make our homes,” Peitho says, nodding, evidently agreeing. “We hide in the dark and tell ourselves that we are asleep.” She turns back to me, her face unreadable. “To these people, I am a Drakaina. I hate them for it. They would destroy me and my family if they could. If they knew what we are. And yet, we do not hide for our sakes, for our safety. We hide for theirs. What a pitiful existence theirs must be – to be so ignorant, and to be happily kept that way. Because to know the Truth would be... too.... What?” she closes her eyes and sighs through her nose. “How do you live your meaningless life, how do you plow and tend a field year in and out without end, when you know the Truth? What society is prepared to absorb the shock of it? What kingdom could not crumble?”
As I'm listening to her say these things, my thoughts are having a little tussle on the periphery of my mind. I'm hearing the things that Metus has said – and Adalbert – and the friendly priest in Verona – and what little Caesar had to say – and the various masters of tavern and inn – and I'm interpreting them literally while insisting they are only metaphorical. Meanwhile wondering what Truth Peitho could mean and knowing that it doesn't matter.
She's right.
People's lives come crashing down around them after learning the simplest truths. I saw it happen all the time in Genoa. Hell, whatever did happen to whatshisname, the Goatfucker? And somehow I still haven't realized that my life was in a tailspin, still falling apart, from learning the simple truth about Adalbert that he was a man with power and secrets – a man who would do what it required to keep them.
Were there truths that could collapse Christendom?
I didn't know. But I thought yes. Now....
At the time, I think that the whole cathedral of cards is built on the notion that Jesus the Christ was a man who was born in Bethlehem, lived in Nazareth, and died and was resurrected in Jerusalem. The whole thing could come crashing down if it turned out there were undeniable proof that the story was even partly fictional. Imagine if the whole thing were invented. I think could because the Faith crested that particular wave some 500 years before my thought. It could crest it again. Unless all of the faithful learned the Truth at the same time. But would that cause people to drop their civilized lives and return to barbarism?
I'm not so sure.
Civilization has survived literal nuclear bombs with next to no felt impact.
That sounds like an easy excuse for keeping a secret to me: We can't tell them about UFOs because it will make them question Reality – right?
S - Is it so bad that people should question Reality? I'm doing it – and I'm fine.
I - Are we fine, though?
S - Fine enough, I guess.
R - Fine enough to go plow a field tomorrow so people who aren't your immediate family, friends, neighbors might eat?
I can't imagine a secret so big that people would drop out of civilization entirely. Peitho thinks she can. That's evident.
“That's the secret meaning – the oppression of the Goddess throughout the world,” she says. “The Goddess has been denied to each of them; each of them denies her great promise. But I admire it, too – these monuments to the slaying of Drakaina. Because we need heroes. We need exemplars. We need people among us to stand up and go into the cave and seize the lamia by her hair and throw her from the cliff.”
That phrase – Take the lamia by the hair and throw her from the cliff – tickles recognition at the back of my mind. Actually, it more than tickles it – I recognize it entirely, but choose to ignore it to enjoy the rest of what she has to say.
“There are other ways the world might work. And after you return with her head to say, 'There is nothing to fear. The Other is like a spider – just as weak and as frightened and as fragile as you, their existence as much a thing of terror as ours – except it has good reason to fear us!' there is always another lamia to slay. Always another unknowable threat out there just waiting to come and destroy the world as you know it. Look at Beowulf.”
S – Let's, please.
R – It started this whole mess.
“He slays the Grendel, then he slays Grendel's mother, the Source of the Chaos which terrorized those people. In effect, he didn't only go out and kill the wolf that's terrorizing their flocks – he killed all the wolves in the world. Or so he – or at least, so his people – probably thinks. At the end he runs off in his old age to slay an actual dragon, the wounds from which ultimately kill him.”
“Is that what you're doing?” I ask. “slaying your sister's dragon? Are you the hero of your family's story?”
Peitho looks at me from the side of her eye.
I – Idiot. She's slaying her sister's dragon-slayer.
“My family are no threat to this world. It is keenly unfair that we should pretend that we do not exist that they might enjoy the tedium of their lives.”
“Do you not enjoy the tedium of your life?”
She turns her head to look fully at me. And for a moment something passes between us – understanding. She doesn't have to say anything, and I understand: yes – she does not enjoy the tedium of her life. The same way I didn't enjoy the tedium of the life she shattered by entering it.
“Are you going to prove you are worthy of trust? Is that it?” I ask. “Are you trying to get the Rod back so you can prove that your family aren't going to destroy the world?”
She pushes air out of her nose in a sort of inverted sniff.
“I do not know what I am going to do. But I want the world to know that I lived. If I must shake it to its foundations, then so be it. My sisters and I deserve our place.”
Peitho really knows how to punctuate a statement: Suddenly she stands. And for all the world, she looks like a cobra rising from the ground.
I recoil – instinctively.
Maybe it was a trick of the light. That's certainly what I tell myself when Peitho frowns questioningly down at me. Maybe it was just my eyes, the way she moved in my periphery – my imagination – that made her seem like she had been not sitting on the bench but sort of draped over and arranged beneath it.
I shake my head rapidly, as much indicating nothing to Peitho as to rattle the image loose from my eyes' memory.
“Get up. Move. Come on.”
“Aack!” I get to my feet, hustling to get out of the pew. “What the—“
“Shut up. Follow me.”
I sigh, watching as Peitho makes her way out the side of the church and around behind – to the cemetery. Then make my way to follow her.
In the light of the moon alone – outside the town proper as we are, there aren't even street lights – not that there really were street lights – the cemetery is... a cemetery, different only in that ours is accompanied by the mournful soundtrack of nuns singing in worship. And – a small forest of wood staves, stuck at the head of the graves, each topped by a carving in wood of a bird, each pointing its own direction.
“A stave church,” I say almost beneath my breath, coming to meet Peitho somewhere near the cemetery's center. “I've heard of these. You know— I've lived this close to Lombard Italy for how long and never made a chance to see one?”
True to her nature, Peitho ignores this entirely to say to the bird atop the stave she stands beside:
“There is a way to interpret history where women are and have always been at the top of the social hierarchy. Everyone has a mother. And all of the men who have dominated history were made into the men they became because of the women in their lives. Look at the Odyssey and the Argonautica – those stories are motivated by and moved forward by women. The Iliad, too, really. Are not Aphrodite, Athena, and Helen the majorest players? Odysseus is only trying to get back to Ithaca to keep his wife from fucking another man. Jason's most influential relationships are with women. Circe in particular.
“And no relationship is more powerful or dominant in the life of the human male than those specifically with his mother. The mother makes the son the man – and if he transgresses her, she destroys him.”
“Is that a threat?”
Peitho meets my eye. The shadows clinging to her face suggest exactly what she says:
“It's not a threat – it's a promise. A fact. I won't bore you with Oedipus or any of the number of Romans who were poisoned by their mothers. If they are not already in your mind, then,” she looks at me and shrugs dramatically.
“Do you think that Mary sacrificed Jesus? Is that what— That it wasn't the Father's sacrifice to make, but the Mother's?”
She eyes me. The way she responds, I'm not sure whether shes referring to what I said, or continuing as though I hadn't.
“It is true because it accurately reflects reality, but also because it is metaphorically true. As above, so below. The Goddess does not tolerate a people who forget Her entirely. The Drakaina – Chaos – the Goddess....”
Drakaina is the Greek word for Dragon – I believe I've mentioned that before? If not, I am now. This word – and its associated meanings – snags my mind like a fishhook through my cheek.
Peitho's fingers flirt with the grave's stave.
“This civilization does not give enough credit to its mothers. But this is the way of boys of loving mothers. If they have served their role properly, it will seem as though they have done nothing at all. And this is what they believe, their sons: that they have made themselves as they are, with no help and no interference.”
Peitho's looking at the bird, her face filled with sorrow.
“This is the first great lie of this civilization. Because what was once made explicit is now coded when it is said at all, men do not know that it is their mothers, their sisters, and their wives – and their mothers and sisters and aunts and grandmothers – who make them, the men, whole.”
“Aristophanes,” I breathe.
“Indeed. They believe this because boys do not only have mothers – they have fathers. And fathers are jealous of their sons – and well they should be. Their sons' mothers are raising them to be better versions of their wives' husbands, the son's fathers – or, worse, other men altogether – to ultimately replace the son's fathers.
“This is the way of beasts. Civilization is a comedy performed by beasts in ill-fitting costumes, silly wigs, and incoherent masks. And this one, nearly all of them, is a civilization built on the corpse of a hated mother. A civilization who traumatize their sons with the rapes of their sisters, the slavery of their mothers, and the murders of their grandmothers. And then tell them to suck it up like a man.”
Peitho spits her disgust, then sighs, and I can see that she is visibly running out of steam, out of the outrage which caused her to voice this in the first place. Because let's remember that I haven't told her why I'm here, yet. She still thinks she has to convince me, somehow, to stay.
“Civilization is machinery – it is a soulless beast we brought to life and will not let die – the corpse of a memory of a great person, a system set in place by a father to remind his sons and theirs and theirs into perpetuity that he is and will forever be better. This civilization is a white-bearded god sitting on his throne decreeing the world be as he says and only as he says. A tyrannical father – and tyrannical kings acting in his image.”
I can hear Adalbert's voice echoing this sentiment.
That is not civilization. That is a man-god stalking among the people doling out holy writ. You do not force peace by fiat – a Man cannot decree that he is perfect before the Lord God. That is an abomination. Whatever else you do, Fulcrum, you must not allow that to come to pass.
“Do you know why I came here to pray?” Peitho looks over at me.
I falter dumbly. I'm not sure whether I've missed something she's said. I don't appear to have, because she answers her own question without giving me time to come up with an inappropriate riposte.
Her hand is gripping the stave.
“I wanted to remind myself of my mothers, Lamiya and Wadjet. You know that women as participants in religious mysteries have been banned all over the world. Nearly everywhere, women are excluded or forced to watch from afar during public worship – but in private, too, they are given inhuman, perfect icons to commune with, to look to, and to be shamed by. Yes, shamed – not to be loved, not to be sought for compassion and understanding as only a real woman, a mother and sister and grandmother can provide.
“For the women of this Civilization, life is to seek and find only shame.”
Peitho strains toward the bird above her, some pining filling her face near to tears.
“My heart aches – because, while these false replacements for the Goddess were devised by men, it is women who propagate and give them authority. And yet....” Peitho's eyes wander away from and then back to the bird. Rolling?
I – She did it again.
“I cannot blame them or cast aspersions.” Her fist tightens around the stave. “I want to. I want to paint them as evil, conniving harlots, complicit in the sacrifice of their sisters for their own profits. And, sure, there have been many of those. But it was not they who profited, was it? Woman is not the serpent, the drakaina, the Lamia for no reason. We have played the various games of life to our strengths. To do otherwise would be our utter destruction.
“Strengths which men always fall prey to sooner or later.”
She still isn't looking at me, and, ironic or not, I am sure that she is not referring to how she plans to kill me one day, whatever my choices.
“Strengths which have, by and large, been banned from the various game boards. Where women have been allowed to play at all.” She pauses, playing her fingers along the stave and twining her arm around it. “Women do not take arms and join in combat because they are not allowed. Not because there are not women who want to defend their homes, their brothers, their sons – their husbands – and of course their daughters and sisters and mothers with their lives and the strengths of their arms.
“How many queens were fierce archers?
“Is it such a disgrace to be killed by a woman with a bow? More than by a child with same?
“I don't know. Sometimes I do not understand men. I have not known enough of them.”
Her gaze finds mine, and my body reacts with that arousal she said I never show. Maybe I'm just cleverer than I think – or there's less to conceal than I'd like. Again, either way, she doesn't seem to notice.
“Weak women claim that they are not allowed to play. That they are not allowed into the boy's games at all. Because weak women make excuses. Women who want to play – who want to fight – play. Weak women want to be treated by the world the way their fathers treat them: like nuns, like princesses – like livestock, like pets. Weak women want to win without competing. Because weak women wield the illusion of their mothers' power.”
“Like boys with their fathers'”
“Fathers who forget the part their wives play in their power are soon to lose it.”
Peitho sighs and looks up at her chosen bird.
“Men may write history, but it is through women that it is remembered. They aren't called old wives tales because old husbands were fond of telling them. Though everybody loves a story from their granddad, it's grammom who has the ones that really matter – that really stick with and inform your life.
“Do you know what these staves are? What they mean?”
I shake my head, jarred only slightly by the sudden – and jarring – change in topic.
“Right. Of course not. They're a woman's tradition. Why should you care?” She's smiling. “These are the graves of mother's sons who have fallen in battle. The bird is pointed in the direction of where he fell. This pole is a mother's magick, a marker to call the spirit of her son home. To rest. The bird is not the call. The bird is the focus of the devoted and loving mother. It reminds her which direction to send her prayers, that he might hear them – and return.”
A tear treks down Peitho's cheek.
“Do you believe that?” I ask. “That that's what they did it for, the Lombards – their mothers?”
“This civilization is a boy with no mother. Who will heal him when he is injured or ill? Who will soothe his broken heart? Who will right his wrongs and praise his victories? For whom does this civilization have to build and be better – to protect? Who will lay him to rest when he dies?
“These staves— This is not a Christian tradition. And yet, long after the last stave is put in the ground, until they are all removed, they will stand here, a testament to The Mother's love.”
I am thoroughly confused. Unsure what is real, what is metaphor, and what it all means.
“The next most important relationship in a man's life is with his wife. A boy with no mother is a man who will find weak women, venal women, vain women, cunning and complicit women.”
“Behold,” says the Teacher, “I have discovered this by adding one thing to another to find an explanation. While my soul was still searching but not finding, among a thousand I have found one upright man, but among all these I have not found one such woman. Only this have I found: I have discovered that God made men upright, but they have sought out many schemes.”
A shudder courses through my body.
S – Was even Solomon a Motherless son?
“When what he needs is a Strong woman.”
I find Peitho's eyes in the dark.
“A woman like you?” I ask
Peitho does not avoid me.
“A woman like me. Solomon needed a woman like me. And you need a woman like me.”
My eyebrows practically fly from my face.
“You act as though you do not know that I think this.” Peitho releases the stave and takes my arms, bringing herself close to me. Too close for a causal chat.
“Peitho, you—“ don't have to do this, I try to say, but she presses a finger to my lips, her other hand draping itself from my shoulder, too near my neck.
“I can heal you, if you will let me.”
“Heal – “ I gulp, “me?”
“And more. I can teach you things – I can make you things you did not believe were possible.”
“Yeah?” I breathe, trying to shape my face like I almost think this whole thing is laughable and knowing I'm failing.
“Yeah.” She presses herself against me. Her lips are cool against my ear. Her hair smells like cool, damp stone and the night air. “Mary Magdalene could not be written out of the story because she made Jesus the Christ.”
'Why do you love her more than all of us?” “Why do I not love you like her? When a blind man and one who sees are both together in the darkness, they are no different from one another. When the light comes, then he who sees will see the light, and he who is blind will remain in darkness.”
What is that from? And why did I know it so readily?
I didn't know at the time – and the question is asked with so brief a space to ponder it that it is all but forgotten. But I am making time to tell you, now. It's a conversation between Jesus and his male disciples about Mary, the one called Magdalene, in the non-canonical Gospel of Philip.
“I could make you a hero – a king – a Messiah – a god.”
Her voice tickles something within me. More than tickles it. Strokes it. Some hidden part of my ego – some forgotten, discarded dream I once had.
And I am wet clay on her wheel.
Peitho pulls away from me, directs my attention back to the church.
“Who is worshiping at this church, Robert? Look at it. It is built on the site of a pagan temple. You can just feel it. There has been something here since long before these walls went up – and something was put here, something replaced what was here before – either destroyed to make the wall – or because it was too old, too closely connected to the past – to the Truth.”
I side-eye her. “That's corny.”
“But possible. More than possible. Likely.”
She's smiling. There's mischief and mystery dancing in her eyes, and I want desperately to kiss that smile. But I don't. I put my hands in my pockets.
I can't imagine the nuns would approve of us appropriating their ceremony – whatever the mothers of the past might think.
“You understand what it means, to hide that Mary, the one called Magdalene, was Jesus's Mission's embodiment of the Goddess, right? If Jesus was meant to be the Son of God, the literal embodiment of God—“
“Then the Magdalene was his wife? ”
I'm looking at her, my mouth turned down in a kind of postulating grimace. She rolls her eyes and pulls her embrace away from me.
“There were three, you know – Maries.”
“So you think that the Gospel writers coded the triune goddess – the Maiden, Mother, and Crone – into the characters of the three Maries? That seems.... Like a lot of work. Especially for how sparse they are in the Gospel accounts – and, you know, invisible in the Acts and Epistles.”
“Did I say it was deliberate? There are three. The Virgin Mother, the Magdalene, and the rich, elder benefactress – the Aunt.”
“But that's— There's so much editing and tampering with the Magdalene character— Who knows? Do I really want to argue Christian theology with you in a pagan graveyard? Who's to say that any of them are real as they are described – or historical at all?”
I can't help but think of the nuns again – of what they'd think if they could hear us. And is it just my imagination, or are they a little louder now? Trying to drown us out?
I would be too.
V wants me to say that that's just a joke. If I didn't want to be a part of this conversation with Peitho I would have left it. I wasn't exactly... what's the word... considerate of politeness in conversation back then.
“Aren't the Apostles real, though?” Peitho asks. “Didn't the Books get written?”
“The ones in the Bible and many others, sure,” I admit. “But does that prove the story as it's told? The Apostles didn't even tell it. They definitely weren't the authors of the books named after them. There are too many errors – and the Apostles were illiterate, anyway. Anonymous assholes some two to three hundred years later wrote the Books. And how does it matter – to me – to us?”
“What if the only part that's actually real are the three Maries?” Peitho asks. “And the Magdalene being the one to tell the Disciples to go out and spread the message. What then? What if the point, the secret teaching – because Jesus says repeatedly throughout the books we have – and the ones we don't – that he teaches in parables because there's a message for the crowd and another for his circle. But what of his tent? What if the secret is that he was trying to re-marry the God with the Goddess? What if the Maries were the real cult leaders?”
“What if Christianity began as a breakaway Asherah/Shekinah cult?” I ask. I want to be incredulous – because that seems incredible. But I'm not. I want to know if that's what she means and how she plans to defend it. “Is that what you're suggesting? Some sort of Late-Jewish hybridization – or re-hybridization – with... what? Asherah had been outlawed for lack of a better word for centuries by Jesus's day. The Isis cult? Would he have really tried to infuse the most popular cult of the Roman-pagans into the Jewish heartland? Does that even make sense? And what does it matter?”
“What does it matter?” Peitho is incredulous. “Civilizations stretch hundreds of thousands of years into the past. Before history. History is the accounting for the present through stories of the past. This is the divide, right? Between the legendary and what really happened? History. The story of history is the tale of how one particular style of civilization – a highly Ordered and totalitarian civilization – came to dominate all others. The story of how our world was built by, at the expense of, and on the murdered corpse of the slain Crone, the enslaved Mother, and the repeatedly raped Maiden.”
Peitho falls silent. What am I going to say? That I agree with her? Do I patronize her like that? I don't – can't – just agree with an idea that broad and caustic the first time I hear it. No matter how intuitive it is – no matter how close I've come to saying and thinking and feeling the same things.
I – There sure is a lot of rape in those old stories.
R – And the new ones, too.
It's not like there's ever been a world where females are free of violent, horrific, agonizing maimings – and deaths – of their own to look forward to.
“What are her forms?” Peitho looks at me when I ask this. “You said there are seven.”
“I did.” She nods, closing her eyes and opening them to look at the stars. “The Maiden, the Mother, the Crone; these are those which survive in art and as archetypes with names – those aspects which cannot be fully obliterated and forgotten. The others are Healer, Creatrix, Priestess – Her roles which have either been denied or made superstitious when not outright illegal, and that tolerated of her because it is her one undeniable physical utility— And... The Wild Woman.”
“Aruru made Enkidu, the Wild Man,” I muse. It isn't always the best habit, but trying to relate a foreign idea to something you think you know well can seem like it's moving the conversation along. “The priestess who went to Enkidu and made him a man, 'handsome', 'just like a god,' Shamhat was her name – I was stalling to try to remember— She was a sacred prostitute of Ishtar. Mary is remembered as a prostitute. Maybe not his wife, but a sacred prostitute? The Asherah cult—”
“Yes. I know the practices of the Asherah cult. And gods, I hate that term. Sacred prostitute.” She spits these words out of her mouth like she'd just gotten tobacco on her tongue.
“I mean, it's about as stale a way to describe what they did as I can think of,” I try to explain.
“Sure. I guess. But it only describes part of parts of what they did. Prostitutes are...” Peitho sighs. “What does it matter – they are professional and religious roles in service of the Divine Masculine – what should it matter to women what men call us when we are not around? But what of when we are?”
She isn't saying this to me. And I have to wonder whether she doesn't hate the phrase because she feels it cheapens her role as Peitho – priestess and... prostitute? Harlot?
Yeah, I hate it, too.
If only because of what it implies about me, her John. Or, I guess, her prospective Joshua.
“So,” I try to get the conversation back on track, “you say the Goddess was destroyed, basically. Demoted and forgotten.”
“By the Civilization. But not by all of its women – in secret. Always in secret, the Drakaina sleeps.”
Peitho stops, and her face takes on a musing cast. “I have been trying to think of how to describe it to you. It's like— The War, yes? As above—“
“So below,” I finish, nodding.
She smiles slightly, inclining her head. “It is like a game. More appropriately, it is like an infinite series of games, many infinities of concurrent games proceeding in an infinitely expanding—“ She takes a breath. “But the game they are playing. I have tried to imagine it. It is not Chess – not exactly. Sometimes games like Chess are played by the Lower Orders of Players.” She looks at me sharply. “You are familiar with Chess?”
I nod. I was.
Chess has been with humanity for a very long time. The current game as it looks is probably some 1500 years old, and antecedents can be dated back another millennium at least. I had played it often. With al'Shamshir.
“In Chess, the goal is to either capture the opponent's king or to force a draw, yes? Win, lose, draw – white versus black – standard wargame rules, in effect. But this does not accurately— I imagine a game something like Gomoku— “
Gomoku is another old game. Probably a spinoff of Go or games like it, it's something of an abstracter, more freeform version of Connect 4 – only you're connecting five – and only five.
“The goal of the game isn't to take your opponent's pieces from the board, as in Chess. The goal is to turn your opponent's pieces from their color to yours. And as the game expands and pieces are turned, the winner is determined in two ways – either the one at the end of the game with the most pieces of their color on the board – or, in the case of Total Victory, when all of the pieces are turned to one color. In a game like this— See, if each game of Chess – or whatever – that is being played is deciding which color each piece that is being placed – or turned – will be....”
Peitho breathes hard through her nose, obviously struggling.
“In a game like that, so long as you aren't totally removed from the gameboard there is always – depending on the rules and the setup – at least theoretically the chance that victory is still attainable. In a tournament that is an infinite series long – until it is suddenly and decisively over – draws can be played as more valuable than wins. With wins and losses—”
“You have to manage your wins and losses, making sure to closely balance them to stay in the tournament – to stave off—“ my eyes find the stave in Peitho's hand – “suddend crushing, total defeat.”
Peitho somehow pulls my gaze to her. She doesn't move. Doesn't even seem to be blinking. But I'm looking at her. And I can feel it – the weight – the pull. Something I just said is more right than I may ever know. I ask, now:
“If everything falls to Chaos at the end, no matter what, then Chaos can be content to wait eternities for Order to make a mistake. Is that what you're trying to tell me?”
She blinks.
“That isn't. Not in those words. But it is also true. I meant to describe her worshipers, how they can survive in secret, in shadows, in whipsers. Not content— Are we content?”
I don't think I was meant to hear this last. It was whispered, to the ground and away from me. But I did. And now you have.
“Maybe that is what I am trying to tell you. Yes. And in these churches.... I see it all over these churches. Allusions to some Truth. Someone wants the Goddess remembered. The School must have built them. Or a splinter. Or....” She looks at me. “What do you call people found living, stranded on an island after centuries? Not refugees.”
Shocking to hear her echo my thoughts. I'd been wondering that same thing.
What all does she know?
“A fragment,” I suggest. “A remnant. A precursor.”
“Hm.” Now she's looking at the ground, and for the first time I detect a noticeable – if minute – slump in Peitho's shoulders. “But what does it matter? Hm? If I do not survive what is coming? What does it matter if I survive? I will be returning the Rod to my family – the Rod to my family, and myself to prison.”
Suddenly she's looking at me, and her eyes— They're all I can see. Huge and emerald and damp with tears I don't understand.
“Awen— Why do you refuse to give yourself to me?”
“Is that what you want?” I don't hesitate to ask, but my voice is low, tentative.
“That is what is required, for you—“
My eyebrow raises.
“...For you to be made whole.” Peitho does not seem to be glad to be saying this, but saying it she is.
Now I'm exhaling hard through my nose. Thoughts I can't seem to hold on to long enough to give voice swirl around just outside the reach of my tongue.
“Peitho, there's something I need to understand.” She nods, slightly. “Why me? How is the Rod an existential threat?”
“Is that what it will take? Do you need me to make you out to be a hero, to make you believe that you are saving the whole world? Awen.... Is not one human life enough?”
“Yours?” I ask.
She scoffs, looks away. Is that shame I see in her eyes?
“No. All of the men who will be at this battle Pepin is heading toward have families. No few of them wives, children. I should not need to tell you that they will not be the ones to suffer their deaths. Is it not enough to spare even one child the suffering of growing up fatherless? Don't do it for me. Do it for—“
“But why do you care?”
“Why do I care?” Now it's her turn to be incredulous. “Have I not—?”
“That's not why, and I know it. You don't care about those men, about their wives and children. You don't know them. They make your heart feel like it should bleed, but you do not bleed for them. Why? You hate this civilization. Why not watch it burn for what its ancestors did to yours? Except.... That's not it, is it?”
“Does it matter?”
Suddenly Peitho is defensive, standing with her shoulders thrown back, her hips tilted, and her arms crossed over her chest.
“No – I guess not.”
“Did you come here for this?” she asks, apparently having finally lost her patience with me. “Does your cooperation hinge on my reasons?”
R – We did say no more secrets.
S – But I haven't exactly been forthcoming, have I?
“Fine.” Peitho's voice is hard, even a little angry, but relenting. “Fine. Do not do it for them. Do not do it for my family – for my sister and her honor, possibly her memory. Do not do it because it is the right thing.” She levels her gaze on me, and I can tell that she feels exactly the way I felt before I got here. She can take no more. “Do it for me. Do it because it's what I want from you. Do it because—“
“Because Mary was no mere cult prostitute, was she?” I'm looking at Peitho. I'm seeing the way she lets her arms hang at her sides as though she is defeated, as though she is submitting to me – and the way her shoulders will never bow, her neck will never bend from anything besides its proud height. This I think she means. “She was the High Priestess. She was the one who gave the Messiah the authority and the power to do as he did. She was the One. The Decision behind the Decider.”
Peitho doesn't say anything, but I can see the fires in the emeralds of her eyes. She wants that. She wants to do something with her nature as Peitho.
She, too, is tired of sitting in a dark room with big thoughts in her head and nothing to do with them.
I nod, make a cynical set with my mouth, but say, “All right. Fine. But as fun as discussing world domination with you in a pagan graveyard behind a church dedicated to the forcibly-divorced wife of a brutally murdered son of an uncaring god... I actually came here to tell you something.”
Peitho blinks.
“We need to leave. Now. Actually, we probably should have left hours ago – maybe never stopped here at all.”
Peitho looks at me stupidly, mouth agape, unblinking – until she does. “What? Why? Oh, Adalbert – what did he say to you?”
“It doesn't matter why. I have a bad feeling.”
“A bad— You're always in a bad mood.”
“Funny. But seriously.”
“Why, then?” Peitho insists. “What has frightened you, little bunny? Is your Metus about?”
“No. I'm not sure. I don't think so.”
“Then what is it?”
I meet her gaze. It might be the emphasis she put on these four words, it might be that I really want to tell her and I'm just being dramatic. Whatever the case, I say:
“Pepin was here. For days. Now he's not. There's a chance we might be able to catch him before he... gets to where he's going.”
“You don't believe that. You would have made me have this talk with you in the carriage. But you've changed your mind? What happened? Really. And have you talked to Ted?”
“How do you think I found you?”
“Right.” Peitho frowns, looks at the church. “I am not finished here.”
I look at her, then decide not to ask what she's actually doing here. Her secrets are hers, as curious as they are to me. The best choice is leaving her to them. And getting out of Pavia before Metus has the chance to show up, too, really wrecking everything.
S – Is that what I'm afraid of? That the longer we stay here the more certain it is he shows up?
“Not finished,” I repeat. “That's fine. Just— Meet us at the inn when you're done.” She nods and turns to return to the church. I open my mouth to tell her to hurry, but close it without a word, watching her in the moonlight.
S - Do I love her?
I - Does it matter?
R - It does if you're doing this for her.
I sigh.
Closing my eyes, I hold my lungs empty for a count of four thump-thumps of my heart. Then I make my way round to the front of the church and discover what, exactly, I'd been trying to avoid.
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