Taltos Read online

  The writing on these stones, tablets, and scrolls of vellum was Greek and Latin! And we learnt it from our slaves as soon as the first marvelous connection between symbol and word was made. And then later from the traveling scholars who came into the valley.

  Indeed, it became an obsession to many of us, myself in particular, and we read and wrote incessantly, translating our own tongue, which is far older than any in Britain, into written words. We made a script called Ogham, and it formed our secret writings. You can see this script on many a stone in the north of Scotland, but no one today can decipher it.

  Our culture, the name we took, that of the Pictish people, and our art and our writing continue in modern times to be a complete mystery. You'll see the reason for that soon--for the loss of the Pict culture.

  As a practical point, I wonder sometimes what became of those dictionaries which I so laboriously completed, working months on end without stopping except to collapse for a few hours of sleep or to send out for food.

  They were hidden away in the souterrains or earth houses which we built beneath the floor of the glen, the ultimate hiding place in case humans ever swept down on us again. Also hidden were many of the manuscripts in Greek and Latin from which I studied in those early days.

  Another great trap for us, something which could entrance us, was mathematics, and some of the books that came into our possession were concerned with theorems of geometry which set us talking for days and days, and drawing triangles in the mud.

  The point is that these were exciting times for us. The subterfuge gave us a perfect access to new developments. And though we had all the time to watch and chastise the foolish young Taltos that they weren't to confide in the newcomers or fall in love with their men and women, we generally came to know much of the Romans who had come into Britain, and to realize that these Romans had punished the Celtic barbarians who had inflicted such atrocities on us.

  Indeed, these Romans put no faith in the local superstitions about the Taltos. They spoke of a civilized world, vast and full of great cities.

  But we feared the Romans as well. For though they built magnificent buildings, the likes of which we'd never seen, they were more skilled at war than the others. We heard lots of stories of their victories. Indeed, they had refined the art of war and made it even more successful at destroying lives. We kept to the remote glen. We never wanted to meet them in battle.

  More and more traders brought their books to us, their scrolls of vellum, and I read avidly their philosophers, their playwrights, their poets, their satirists, and their rhetoricians.

  Of course, no one of us could grasp the actual quality of their lives, the ambience, to use the modern word, their national soul, their character. But we were learning. We knew now that all men were not barbarians. Indeed, this was the very word the Romans used for the tribes that were filling Britain from all sides, tribes which they had come here to subdue in the name of a mighty empire.

  The Romans, by the way, never did reach our glen, though for two hundred years they campaigned in Britain. The Roman Tacitus wrote the story of Agricola's early campaign which reached Scotland. In the next century the Antonine Wall was built, a marvel to the barbarian tribes who resisted Rome, and very near it for forty-five miles the Military Way, a great road on which not only the soldiers passed, but traders bringing all manner of goods from the sea, and tantalizing evidence of other civilizations.

  Finally the Roman Emperor himself, Septimus Severus, came to Britain to subdue the Scottish tribes, but even he never penetrated our strongholds.

  For many years after that the Romans remained, providing much strange booty for our little nation.

  By the time they withdrew from those lands, and gave them up to the barbarians at last, we were no longer really a hidden people. Hundreds of human beings had settled in our valley, paying homage to us as the lords, building their smaller brochs around our larger ones, and seeing us as a great, mysterious, but altogether human family of rulers.

  It was not easy always to maintain this ruse. But nowhere was the life of the times more suited to it. Other clans were springing up in their remote strongholds. We were not a country of cities, but of small feudal holdings. Though our height and our refusal to intermarry were deemed unusual, we were in every other way completely acceptable.

  Of course the key was never, never to let the outsiders see the birth ritual. And in this the Little People, needing our protection from time to time, became our sentries.

  When we chose to make the circle amid the stones, all lesser clans of Donnelaith were told that our priests could only preside over our family rites in the strictest privacy.

  And as we grew bolder, we let the others come, but only in far-reaching outer circles. Never could they see what the priests did in the very heart of the assembly. Never did they see the birth. They imagined it was only some vague worship of sky and sun and wind and moon and stars. And so they called us a family of magicians.

  Of course, all this depended upon considerable peaceful cooperation with those who lived in the glen, and this remained stable for centuries.

  In sum, we passed for people, in the midst of people. And other Taltos partook of our subterfuge, declaring themselves Picts, learning our writing and taking it, with our styles of building and ornament, to their strongholds. All Taltos who truly wanted to survive lived in this way, fooling human beings.

  Only the wild Taltos continued to flash about in the forests, risking everything. But even they knew the Ogham script and our many symbols.

  For example, if a lone Taltos lived in the forest, he might carve a symbol on a tree to let other Taltos know that he was there, a symbol without meaning for human beings. One Taltos seeing another in an inn might approach and offer him some gift, which was in fact a brooch or pin with our emblems.

  A fine example of this is the bronze pin with a human face, discovered many centuries later by modern peoples in Sutherland. Humans do not realize, when they write about this pin, that it is a picture of an infant Taltos emerging from the womb, its head huge, its small arms still folded, though ready to unfold and grow, rather like the wings of a new butterfly.

  Other symbols we carved into rock, at the mouths of caves or upon our sacred stones, represented fanciful conceptions of the animals of the lost land of tropical abundance. Others had purely personal meanings. Pictures of us as fierce warriors were deceptive, and skillfully made to actually show people meeting in peace, or so we imagined.

  The art of the Picts is the common name given to all of this. And that tribe has become the great mystery of Britain.

  What was our worst fear? The worst threat, so to speak? Enough time had passed that we did not fear human beings who really knew anything about us. But the Little People knew and the Little People longed to breed with us, and though they needed us, to protect them, they still occasionally caused us trouble.

  But the true threats to our peace came from witches. Witches--those singular humans who caught our scents, and could somehow breed with us, or were the descendants of those who had bred with us. For the witches--who were always very rare, of course--passed on, from mother to daughter and father to son, the legends of our kind, and the lovely, mad notion that if they could ever couple with us, they could make monsters of size and beauty who might never die. And other fanciful propositions inevitably grew up around this idea--that if they drank the blood of the Taltos, the witches could become immortal. That if they killed us, with the proper words and the proper curses, they could take our power.

  And the most awful aspect of all this, the only real, true part of it, was that the witches could often tell on sight we were not mere tall humans, but real Taltos.

  We kept them out of the glen. And when traveling abroad, we took great pains to avoid the village witch, or the sorcerer who lived in the wood. But they of course had reason to fear us too, for we too knew them infallibly on sight and, being very clever and very rich, we could make plenty of trouble for the
m.

  But when a witch was about, it was a dangerous game. And all that was required to make it worse was one clever or ambitious witch determined to find the true Taltos of the Highlands among the tall clans that dwelt there.

  And now and then there was the worst challenge, a powerful spellbinding witch capable of luring Taltos out of their dwellings, of wrapping them up in charms and music, and drawing them to her rituals.

  Occasionally there would be talk of a Taltos found elsewhere. There would be talk of hybrid births; there would be whispers of witches and Little People and magic.

  By and large, we were safe in our strongholds.

  The glen of Donnelaith was now known to the world. And as the other tribes squabbled with one another, our valley was left in peace, not because people feared that monsters dwelt there, but only because it was the stronghold of respectable noblemen.

  It was in those years a grand life, but a life with a lie at its core. And many a young Taltos could not endure it. Off he would go into the world, and never return. And sometimes hybrid Taltos came to us who knew nothing of who or what had made them.

  Very gradually, over time, a rather foolish thing happened. Some of us even intermarried with human beings.

  It would happen in this way. One of our men would go on a long pilgrimage, perhaps, and come upon a lone witch in a dark wood with whom he fell in love, a witch who could bear his offspring without difficulty. He would love this witch; she would love him; and being a ragged poor creature, she would throw herself upon his mercy. He would bring her home; she might at some point in the distant future bear him another child before she died. And some of these hybrids married other hybrids.

  Sometimes, too, a beautiful female Taltos would fall in love with a human man, and forsake everything for him. They might be together for years before she would bear, but then a hybrid would be born, and this would unite the little family even more closely, for the father saw his likeness in the child, and laid claim to its loyalty, and it of course was a Taltos.

  So that is how the human blood in us was increased. And how our blood came into the human Clan of Donnelaith that eventually survived us.

  Let me pass over in silence the sadness we often felt, the emotions we evinced at our secret rituals. Let me not try to describe our long conversations, pondering the meaning of this world, and why we had to live among humans. You are both outcasts now. You know it. And if God is merciful and you really don't, well, then, you can still imagine it.

  What is left of the glen today?

  Where are the countless brochs and wheelhouses which we built? Where are our stones with their curious writing and strange serpentine figures? What became of the Pictish rulers of that time, who sat so tall on their horses, and impressed the Romans so much with their gentle manner?

  As you know, what is left at Donnelaith is this: a quaint inn, a ruined castle, an immense excavation that is slowly revealing a giant cathedral, tales of witchcraft and woe, of earls who died untimely deaths, and of a strange family, gone through Europe to America, carrying with them an evil strain in the blood, a potential to give birth to babies or monsters, an evil strain evidenced by the glow of witches' gifts, a family wooed for that blood and those gifts by Lasher--a wily and unforgiving ghost of one of our people.

  How were the Picts of Donnelaith destroyed? Why did they fall as surely as the people of the lost land and the people of the plain? What happened to them?

  It was not the Britons, the Angles, or the Scots who conquered us. It was not the Saxons or the Irish, or the German tribes who invaded the island. They were far too busy destroying each other.

  On the contrary, we were destroyed by men as gentle as ourselves, with rules as strict as our own, and dreams as lovely as our dreams. The leader they followed, the god they worshiped, the savior in whom they believed was the Lord Jesus Christ. He was our undoing.

  It was Christ himself who brought an end to five hundred years of prosperity. It was his gentle Irish monks who brought about our downfall.

  Can you see how it might happen?

  Can you see how vulnerable we were, we, who in the solitude of our stone towers would play at weaving and writing like little children, who would hum or sing all day long for the love of it? We, who believed in love and in the Good God, and refused to hold death sacrosanct?

  What was the pure message of the early Christians? Of both the Roman monks and the Celtic monks who came to our shores to preach the new religion? What is the pure message, even today, of those cults which would consecrate themselves anew to Christ and his teachings?

  Love, the very thing we believed in!

  Forgiveness, the very thing we thought practical. Humility, the virtue we believed, even in our pride, to be far more noble than the raging hubris of those who warred endlessly upon others. Goodness of heart, kindness, the joy of the just--our old values. And what did the Christians condemn? The flesh, the very thing that had always been our downfall! The sins of the flesh, which had caused us to become monsters in the eyes of humans, copulating in great ceremonial circles and bringing forth full-grown offspring.

  Oh, we were ripe for it. Oh, it was made for us!

  And the trick, the sublime trick, was that at its core Christianity not only embraced all this, but managed somehow to sacralize death and at the same time redeem that sacralization.

  Follow my logic. Christ's death had not come in battle, the death of the warrior with the sword in his hand; it had been a humble sacrifice, an execution which could not be avenged, a total surrender on the part of the Godman to save his human children! But it was death, and it was everything!

  Oh, it was magnificent! No other religion could have had a chance with us. We detested pantheons of barbarian gods. We laughed at the gods of the Greeks and Romans. The gods of Sumer or India we would have found just as alien and distasteful. But this Christ, why, my God, he was the ideal of every Taltos!

  And though he had not sprung full-grown from his mother's womb, he had nevertheless been born of a virgin, which was just as miraculous! Indeed, the birth of Christ was just as important as his submissive crucifixion! It was our way, it was the triumph of our way! It was the God to whom we could give ourselves without reservation!

  Lastly, let me add the piece de resistance. These Christians, too, had been once hunted and persecuted and threatened with annihilation. Diocletian, the Roman emperor, had subjected them to these things. And refugees came seeking shelter in our glen. We gave it to them.

  And the Christians won our hearts. When we spoke to them, we came to believe that possibly the world was changing. We believed that a new age had dawned and that our elevation and restoration were now at least conceivable.

  The final seduction was simple.

  A lone monk came into the glen for refuge. He had been chased thither by ragged wandering pagans and begged shelter. Of course we would never refuse such a person, and I brought him into my own broch and into my own chambers, to pick his brains about the outside world, as I hadn't ventured out in a while.

  This was the mid-sixth century after Christ, though I didn't know it. If you would picture us then, see men and women in long, rather simple robes trimmed in fur, embroidered with gold and jewels; see the men with their hair trimmed above the shoulders. Their belts are thick, and their swords are always near at hand. The women cover their hair with silk veils beneath simple gold tiaras. See our towers very bare, yet warm and snug, and filled with skins and comfortable chairs, and raging fires to keep us warm. See us as tall, of course, all of us tall.

  And see me in my broch alone with this little yellow-haired monk in brown robes, eagerly accepting the good wine I offered him.

  He carried with him a great bundle which he was eager to preserve, he said, and first off, he begged me that I give him a guard to escort him home to the island of Iona in safety.

  There had been three in his party originally, but brigands had murdered the other two, and now he was wretchedly alone, dependent u
pon the goodwill of others, and must get his precious bundle to Iona, or lose something more valuable than his own life.

  I promised to see that he reached Iona safely. Then he introduced himself as Brother Ninian, named for the earlier saint, Bishop Ninian, who had converted many pagans at his chapel or monastery, or whatever it was, at Whittern. This bishop had already converted a few wild Taltos.

  Young Ninian, a very personable and beautiful Irish Celt, then laid out his invaluable bundle and revealed its contents.

  Now, I had seen many books in my time, Roman scrolls and the codex, which was now the popular form. I knew Latin. I knew Greek. I had even seen some very small books called cathachs which Christians wore as talismans when they rode into battle. I had been intrigued by the few fragments of Christian writing I had beheld, but I was in no way prepared for the treasure which Ninian revealed to me.

  It was a magnificent altar book that he carried with him, a great illustrated and decorated account of the Four Gospels. Its front cover was decorated with gold and jewels, it was bound in silk, and its pages were painted with spectacular little pictures.

  At once I fell on this book and virtually devoured it. I began to read the Latin aloud, and though there were some irregularities in it, in the main I understood it, and began to run with the story like someone possessed--nothing very extraordinary, of course, for a Taltos. It felt like singing.

  But as I turned the vellum pages, I marveled not only at the tale which was being told to me, but also at the incredible drawings of fanciful beasts and of little figures. It was an art which I loved truly, from having done my own similar form of it.

  Indeed, it was very like much art of that time in the islands. Later ages would say it was crude, but then come to love the complexity and ingenuity of it.

  Now, to understand the effect of the gospels themselves, you have to remind yourself of how very different they were from any literature which had come before them. I didn't include the Torah of the Hebrews, because I didn't know it, but the gospels are even different from that.

  They were different from everything! First off, they concerned this one man, Jesus, and how he had taught love and peace and been hounded, persecuted, tormented, and then crucified. A confounding story! I couldn't help but wonder what the Greeks and the Romans thought of it. And the man had been a humble person, with only the most tenuous of connections to ancient kings, that was obvious. Unlike any god of whom I'd ever heard, this Jesus had told his followers all sorts of things which they had been charged to write down and teach to all nations.