Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman

CHAPTER 2

DURING THE TIME OF BROTHER BLACKTOOTH’S translation of the eleventh chapter of the seventh and final volume of Boedullus, and while he was working feverishly toward the end, a special messenger from Valana in the Denver Freestate arrived at the abbey with tragic news. Pope Linus VI, shrewdest if not the saintliest of recent popes, and the man most responsible for healing the postconquest schism, had fallen dead of heart failure while he stood shin deep in an icy trout stream and shook his fishing rod at a delegation from the Curia on shore. He was protesting to them that the Lord had never told Peter to stop fishing for fish when he commissioned him to fish for men. Pope Peter had indeed taken five apostles boating with him right after the Resurrection, Linus correctly pointed out. Then he paused, turned white, dropped the rod, and clutched at his chest; almost defiantly he gasped, “I go a-fishing,” and collapsed into the frigid water. It was later noticed that these last words were from John 21:3.

As soon as the message came, the Most Eminent Lord Cardinal Abbot began packing his fine regalia. He notified the Papal Way Station in Sanly Bowitts that he would need armed escorts for the trip, and he arranged with Brother Liveryman to make ready the fastest pair of horses and the lightest carriage, as if he planned a quick trip. He mixed his tears with a nervous sweat, as he alternated between bursts of grief and flurries of excitement in making ready for the journey. It was the dead Pope who had made him a cardinal. It was going to be his first papal election. The community understood his mixed feelings and stayed out of the way.

After he had eulogized Linus and offered a Mass for the dead, he spoke to the assembled monks in the refectory after supper on the night before his departure.

“Prior Olshuen will carry out my duties as abbot while I am away. Will you promise to render him the same obedience in Christ which you give to me?”

There was a murmur of assent from the congregation.

“Does anyone withhold this promise?”

There was silence, but Blacktooth felt people looking at him.

“My dear sons, it does not behoove us in this monastery to discuss the business of the Sacred College, or the politics of Church and State.” He paused, looking around at the small lake of faces by lamplight. “Nevertheless, you are entitled to know why my absence may be extended. You all know that one result of the schism was the appointment by two rival claimants to the papacy of an unprecedented number of cardinals. And that one of the terms of the settlement that ended the schism was that the new Pope, now of holy memory, would ratify the elevation of all these cardinals, no matter which claimant had made the appointments. This was done, and there are now six hundred eighteen cardinals on the continent, some of them not even bishops, a few not even priests. Since these are about equally divided between East and West, it may be very hard to arrive at the two-thirds-plus-one majority required to elect a pope. The conclave may last for some time. I hope not more than a few months, but there is no way I can predict.

“I fear you will hear gossip from time to time as travelers come and go. As long as the papal exile from New Rome continues, surrounded as it is by Texark forces, the enemies of the Valana papacy hope for a renewal of schism, and they keep all possible gossip alive. Listen to none of it, I beg of you.

“The force of the State has abated. The seventh Hannegan is not the same tyrant as the second Hannegan, who, as you know from history, used treachery and cattle plague to capture an empire from the Nomads, driving sick farm animals among the woolly Nomad herds. He sent his infantry as far west as the Bay Ghost, and his cavalry chased stragglers right past our gates. He killed the Pope’s representative, and when Pope Benedict laid Texarkana under interdict, Hannegan seized all the Churches and courts and schools. He occupied the lands adjacent to New Rome, forcing His Holiness to flee to asylum in the crumbling Denver Empire. He collected enough bishops from the east to elect an anti—or, I should say, a rival pope to sit in New Rome. And so we had sixty-five years of schism.

“But Filpeo Harq is the seventh Hannegan now. Indeed he is heir to the conqueror, but there is a difference. His predecessor was a cunning, illiterate semi-barbarian. The present ruler was raised and educated for power, and some of his teachers were educated by us. So have hope, my sons, and pray.

“If the right Hannegan sits down with the right pope, with God’s help, surely they can come to terms and end the exile. Pray that the pope we elect may return to a New Rome free of Texark hegemony. Everywhere, people have strong feelings about the occupation, but it will do no good for us to argue within the Sacred College whether the Texark troops must be withdrawn before the Pope goes home. That will be a decision for the Pope himself, when he is elected.

“Pray for the election, but not for any candidacy. Pray for the Holy Spirit to guide our choice. The Church now needs a wise and saintly pope, not an eastern pope or a western pope, but a pope worthy of that old title ‘Servant of the servants of God.’” In a lowered voice, Dom Jarad added, “Pray for me too, my brothers. What am I but an old country monk, to whom Pope Linus, in a weak moment perhaps, gave a red hat? If anybody in the College has a lower rank than I, it must be the woman—er, Her Eminence the Abbess of N’Ork, or else my young friend Deacon Brownpony, who’s still a layman. Let your prayers help keep me from folly. Not that I’m going among wolves, eh?”

Barely audible snorts and giggles caused Jarad to frown.

“As a way of showing that I am not an enemy of the Empire, I shall cross the Bay Ghost and take the route through the Province. But I m going to reschedule tomorrow’s Mass. It’s a ferial day anyway, so we’ll sing the old Mass for the Removal of Schism before I go.”

He spread his arms as if to embrace the throng, traced a great cross in the air over them, came down from the lectern, and left the hall.

Blacktooth became wildly anxious. He sought permission to speak to Dom Jarad before the abbot’s departure, but permission was denied. In near panic, he found Prior Olshuen before dawn in the cloister on his way to Matins, and he plucked at the sleeve of the prior’s robe.

“Who is it?” Olshuen asked irritably. “We’re already late.” He stopped between the shadows cast from the columns by a single torch. “Oh, Brother Blacktooth, it’s you. Speak up then, what is it?”

“Dom Jarad said he’d hear me when I finish Boedullus. I’m almost finished, but now he’s leaving.”

“He said he’d hear you? If you don’t lower your voice, he’ll hear you now. Hear you about what?”

“About changing jobs. Or about leaving the Order. And now he’ll be gone for months and months.”

“You don’t know that. Anyway, what can I do about it? And what do you mean, leave the Order?”

“Before he goes, would you remind him about me?”

“Remind him of what about you?”

“I can’t go on this way.”

“I won’t even ask. ‘What way?’ We’re late.” He began walking toward the Church with Blacktooth tagging at his side. “If Dom Jarad has a free moment this morning, and if I mention your obvious agitation, will he know what it’s all about?”

“Oh, I’m sure he will, I’m sure!”

“Now what was that about leaving the Order? Never mind, we’re holding up Matins. Come by my office in a day or two, if you like. Or I’ll send for you. Now calm down. He won’t be gone for long.”

Abbot Jarad, after he offered the Mass for the Removal of Schism, announced from the pulpit his wish that they sing a votive Mass for the election of a pope on the day appointed for the opening of the conclave, and another such Mass on the first day after any news came to the abbey from Valana, unless that news proclaimed a new pope. Afterward, he departed toward the Bay Ghost.

Two dozen or more monks, including Blacktooth and Torrildo, lined the parapet of the eastern wall and watched the plume of dust until it dwindled on the eastern horizon.

“To prove he’s no enemy of the Empire, he’s taking the way through the Province,” Blacktooth sourly echoed his master’s words. “But he takes armed guards. Why armed guards?”

“That makes you bitter?” asked Torrildo, who usually concerned himself with Blacktooth’s feelings, rarely with his thoughts.

“If he were an enemy of the Empire, things might be different for me, Torrildo.”

“How?”

“Things might be different for everybody, if nobody here had ever compromised. And he dared talk to me about pearls before swine.”

“I don’t understand you, Brother.”

“I don’t expect you would. If my own cousins Wren and Singing Cow don’t understand, how could you?” He placed his hand reassuringly over Torrildo’s where it lay on the parapet. “It’s enough that you care.”

“I care, I really do.” The postulant was looking at him with those gray-green eyes that so reminded him of his mother’s soft and searching gaze. There was something feminine about it. Embarrassed by the intensity of the moment, Blacktooth removed his hand.

“Of course you do. Let’s forget it. How is it with you and that difficult Memorabilium?”

“Maxwell’s equations, they’re called. I can say them forward and backward, but I don’t know what they are or what they mean.”

“Neither do I, but you’re not supposed to know. I can tell you this, though: their meaning has been penetrated during the past century. They’re supposed to be among the notes Thon Taddeo Pfardentrott took back to Texark with him about seventy years ago. Maxwell’s equations are among the very great Memorabilia, so I’ve heard.”

“Pfardentrott? Didn’t he invent the telegraph? And dynamite?”

“I think so.”

“Well, if the meaning has already been penetrated, why do I have to keep it memorized?”

“Tradition, I guess. No, it’s more than that. Just keep running the words through your mind, as a prayer. Keep it up long enough, and God will enlighten you, so the old-timers say.”

“If somebody’s penetrated the meaning, maybe I could find out.”

“That might spoil it for you, Brother. But you can try, if you want to. You can read what Brother Kornhoer wrote about the subject after Pfardentrott left, but I don’t think you’ll understand him.”

“Brother who?”

“Kornhoer. He invented that old electricity machine down in the vaults.”

“Which doesn’t work.”

“Oh, it worked when he built it, but it wasn’t very practical here; and for some reason, his abbot would never let him teach anyone to fix it. Have you ever seen an electric light?”

“No.”

“Neither have I, but the Palace of the Hannegans in Texark is full of them. And they’ve got some at the university there. Brother Kornhoer and Pfardentrott became friends, as I recall, but the Abbot Jerome didn’t approve. Say, why don’t you read that placard that hangs over Kornhoer’s machine?”

“I’ve seen it, but I never read it. The machine is a nuisance to keep clean. So many cracks and crannies for dust.” Torrildo was an underground janitor and warehouse clerk. “You never told me about your Memorabilium, Blacktooth.”

“Well, it’s a religious one. I don’t think it has any secret scientific value. They call it ‘Saint Leibowitz’s Grocery List.’” He tried to suppress the flush of pride he felt at being given the Founder’s Memorabilium, but Torrildo did not notice.

“Does anything special happen when you say it?”

“I wouldn’t say yes, I wouldn’t say no. Maybe I never worked at it hard enough. As Saint Leibowitz himself used to say, ‘What you see is what you get, Wysiwyg.’”

“Where is that saying recorded? What does it mean?”

Blacktooth, who loved the cryptic “Sayings of Saint Leibowitz,” was spared answering as the bell rang the hour of Sext, marking the resumption of the rule of silence, which the abbot had suspended for the morning of his departure. The monks on the parapet wall began to leave.

“Come see me in the basement, if you get a chance,” Torrildo whispered in violation of the rule.

Blacktooth’s Nomadic ancestors had always placed a high value on ecstatic magical or religious experience, and this heritage, while pagan, was not incongruent with the traditional mystical quest which he had found so attractive and natural in the life of the monastery. But as his feeling of unity with his professed brethren gradually waned, he found himself less captivated by the formal worship of the community. Processions and the chanting of psalms no longer elevated his spirits and sent them soaring. Even the reception of the Eucharist during Mass failed to entrance his heart. He felt this as a distinct loss, in spite of his doubts about his vocation to the Order. He tried to recover by his solitary devotional practice what he was losing in the public worship.

A monk’s time alone in his cell was limited to seven hours a night, of which at least an hour and a half was to be spent in meditative, affective, or contemplative prayer. Some of this prayer time was devoted to the reading of those parts of the divine office which his daily work at the abbey prevented him from singing in choir at the regular hours, but Blacktooth rarely needed more than twenty minutes to finish his breviary, and the rest of the time he gave to Jesus and Mary. In his sleep, however, his dreams were often colored by the myths of his childhood and of the Wild Horse Woman whom he had seen.

His confessor and spiritual adviser had sharply warned him, more than once, against taking seriously any seemingly supernatural manifestation that came to him during the contemplative work, such as a vision or a voice, for such things were usually either the work of the Devil or simply the spurious side effects of the intense concentration demanded by meditative or contemplative prayer. When the visions began coming to him one night in his cell, he attributed them to fever, for he had fallen ill the previous day, and was excused from the scriptorium.

He knelt on a thinly padded block of wood beside his cot and gazed unwaveringly at a small picture of the Immaculate Heart that hung on the wall. When his mind strayed, or a thought arose, he brought his attention back to the picture. The painting was undistinguished, lacking in detail, and hardly more than a symbol. The prayer was a wordless, thoughtless fixation of the mind on the image and the heart of the Virgin. He was a bit dizzy from fever, and a numbness came over him as he knelt there. Occasionally his field of vision darkened. The heart began to pulsate, and then expand. He could no longer focus his eyes on it. His mind seemed to be plunging into a dark corridor toward emptiness.

And then, there it was: a living heart suspended before him in the blackness of space, beating in cadence with his own pulse. It was complete in every detail. A puncture of the left ventricle leaked small spurts of blood. For a time he felt neither fear nor surprise, but continued to gaze in complete absorption. He knew, beyond words, that it was not the heart of Mary, but not until later reflection did this puzzle or perplex him. He simply accepted what came to him, at the time it happened.

A rap at the door dissolved the trance. His skin crawled at the sharp change in his consciousness.

“Benedicamus domino,” he answered after a moment.

“Deo gratias,” came a muffled voice from the corridor. It was Brother Jonan, arousing everyone for Matins. The footsteps receded.

He arose and made himself ready for his usual routine, but he carried the spell cast over him by the vision all that day and the next. It was very puzzling, even after his fever passed.

When Prior Olshuen had not summoned him by the third day of Dom Jarad’s absence, Blacktooth sought him out. Olshuen was an old friend; he had been Blacktooth’s teacher and confessor in the days before he was made prior, but just now the appearance of his old student at his office doorway evoked no smile of welcome.

“Oh, well, I did tell you to come see me, didn’t I?” said Olshuen. “You might as well sit down.” He returned to his chair, put his elbows on the desktop, pressed his fingertips together, and at last smiled thinly at Blacktooth. He waited.

Blacktooth sat on the edge of his chair, eyebrows raised. He also waited. The prior began flipping opposed fingertips apart, a pair at a time, and flipping them back together. Blacktooth always found this habit fascinating. His coordination was perfect.

“I came to ask—”

“Dom Jarad told me to throw you out if you came to ask for anything more than a blessing, unless you’re through with Boedullus, and I know you’re not. I don’t throw you out, because I had already invited you.” He punctuated each phrase with a pause and a flip of the fingertips. He did this only when nervous. “So what do you want, my son?”

“A blessing.”

Easily disarmed, the gentle Olshuen lowered his hands, leaned forward, and laughed his relief.

“On my petition to be released from my vows.”

The smile vanished. He leaned back, pressed fingertips together again, and said in a mild tone, “Blacktooth, my son. What a dirty rotten little Nomad kid you are!”

“You’ve obviously spoken to Dom Jarad about me, Father Prior.” Blacktooth risked a rueful grin.

“He said nothing you’d want to hear, and he said a few things you’re better off not hearing. He spent at least half a minute on the subject, talking fast. Then he told me to throw you out, and he left.”

Blacktooth stood up. “Before I get thrown, would you mind telling me how I can find out about the procedure?”

“The procedure for what, to abandon your vows?” Olshuen waited for Blacktooth’s nod, then went on: “Well, you turn right when you go out the door. You walk down the hall to the stairway, and then you take it down to the cloister. You go around to the main entrance, and on out into the courtyard. Across the courtyard is the main gate, and outside that, you go to the road. From there, you’re on your own. The way to your new future lies open before you.” He found it unnecessary to add that Blacktooth would be under excommunication, ineligible for employment in many places, deprived of all right to petition in ecclesiastical courts, cut off from the sacraments, shunned by the clergy and the pious among the laity, and readily victimized by anyone who realized that he was unable to sue in the courts.

“I meant to get out legally, of course.”

“There are books on canon law in the library.”

“Thank you, Father Prior.” Blacktooth started to leave.

“Wait,” said the prior, relenting. “Tell me, son—if, after you’ve finished Boedullus—this is hypothetical, understand?—if, then, you’re given a choice of jobs, how would you feel about the other thing?”

The monk hesitated. “I would probably think about the other thing all over again.”

“How close are you to being finished?”

“Ten chapters to go.”

Olshuen sighed and said, “Sit down again.” He rummaged through papers on his desk until he found a sealed envelope. Blacktooth could see his own name on it, written in Dom Jarad’s hand. The prior slit it open, unfolded the enclosed note, read it slowly, and looked at Blacktooth. He put his fingertips together again and began tapping them by pairs as before.

“A choice of jobs?”

“Yes—he left you a choice. When you finish The Book of Origins, you can do the same author’s Footprints of Earlier Civilizations. Unless you’re sick and tired of the Venerable Boedullus.”

“I’m sick and tired of the venerable one.”

“Then you will be assigned to translate Yogen Duren’s Perennial Ideas of Regional Sects.”

“Into Nomadic?”

“Of course.”

“Thank you, Father Prior.”

Blacktooth went down the hall to the stairway, descended to the cloister, left it by the main entrance, crossed the courtyard, and walked out to the road through the main gate. There he stood for a while, gazing uncertainly at the arid landscape. Down the trail lay the village of Sanly Bowitts, and several miles beyond the village arose the flat-topped hill called the Mesa of Last Resort. There were mountains in the distance, with a few hills in the foreground. The land was lightly covered by cactus and yucca, with sparse grass and mesquite growing in the low places. There were distant antelope, and he could see Brother Shepherd leading his flock through the pass, his dog snarling at the heels of a straggler.

A wagon drawn by a swayback mule pulled to a stop, engulfing Blacktooth in a thin cloud of dust. “Going to town, Brother?” asked its grizzled driver from his perch atop a pile of feed sacks.

Blacktooth was tempted to go past the village and climb Last Resort. It was said to be haunted, a place monks sometimes went alone (with permission) for a kind of spiritual ordeal in the wilderness. But after a brief pause he shook his head. “Many thanks, good simpleton.”

He walked back through the main gate and headed for the basement vaults. When Saint Leibowitz had founded the Order, tradition said that there had been nothing here except an ancient military bunker or temporary ammunition dump, which he and his helpers had managed to disguise so that one might pass a stone’s throw away and never notice its existence. It was in this place that the earliest Memorabilia were preserved. According to Boedullus, no living quarters were constructed on the site until the middle of the twenty-first century. The monks had lived in scattered hermitages and came here only to deposit books and records until the fury of the Simplification had abated and the danger to the precious documents from skinheads and simplifiers had waned. Here, still underground, the ancient Memorabilia and the latter-day Commentaries awaited a destiny which had, perhaps, already come and was swiftly receding.