Gregory lay stiffly, his whole body trembling with silent sobs.
"Nay, my jo, nay!" Gwen gathered him up in her arms. "Oh, my poor babe! Whatever 'twas, lad, 'twill not hurt thee; lo, 'tis gone!"
Rod stroked the boy's back and bit his tongue, also his panic. Gwen was better able to maintain her composure in this kind of situation; the best he could do was give moral support.
He could see the boy go limp as she stroked his head, crooning, and the sobs suddenly became huge and racking. Geoffrey lifted his head from the next bed, awake and wondering, and Gwen picked up her youngest and took him out of the room, to spare him embarrassment, and his brother wakefulness. Rod stayed just long enough to assure Geoffrey, "He's all right, son. Back to sleep now, hm?" Geoffrey collapsed back into his bedclothes, and Rod stepped out the door, hoping he wasn't a liar.
Gwen sat in the mellow light of the tallow lamps, in the big chair McGee had just vacated, rocking Gregory and crooning till the sobs passed. The Father-General gazed down at her, then looked a question at Rod, who hesitated a moment, then shook his head, motioning for McGee to stay in the room.
The sobs eased, almost ceased, and Gwen murmured, "Now, lad. What frighted thee?" And when the boy only wept, she pressed, "Was it a foul dream?" Gregory nodded, and she urged, "Tell it me."
"I… was old, Mama," Gregory mumbled, and Rod breathed a sigh of relief. "Old, and… alone."
"Alone?" Gwen sighed. "Well, some old folk are. What had made thee so?"
"I… had gone to become a monk, and… as I aged, I forsook even their company, for an hermitage in the wood."
Anger blazed. Rod snapped, "Who's been telling this boy about—"
Gwen glared a dagger at him, and he bit off the rest of the sentence. She was right; the boy needed sympathy now. Any anger, he would construe as being aimed at him.
"There are holy hermits," Gwen admitted. "Yet they are not truly alone, lad, for their lives are filled with the company of God."
Foul! Rod wanted to scream. They go crazy with loneliness! But he held his peace, and managed to keep the thoughts unvocalized; Gregory would certainly have picked them up if he had. Rod wondered if he should leave, get as far away as he could; certainly his own emotions must be agitating the boy even more. But Gwen caught the thought, looked up, and shook her head as she said, "They go apart for study of holy books and contemplation of the Word of God, my son."
"Aye, so I dreamt," the boy sniffled, "and so I had. But… oh, Mama! Thou wert not there, nor was Papa! Nor Magnus, nor Geoff, nor Cordelia, nor even Diarmid! And life seemed so…" he groped for the word.
"Empty?"
"Aye, empty. Without purpose. Oh, Mama! How could such a life be holy, without any folk to be good for?"
What could Rod say? That Gregory wasn't the first one to ask that question, nor would be the last? At least for him it was only a dream—so far.
But the boy had calmed enough to catch the thought. He looked up at his father, eyes wide. "Is that truly what my life must be?" There was terror just under the words, and Rod hastened to assure him, "No. It doesn't have to. You have the choice, son."
"Yet I do wish to study!" Gregory protested. "Not just Holy Writ, though—the plants, and the animals, and the stars… Oh, Papa! There is so much to learn!"
Well, there spoke the born scholar. "But you can have other people around, and still find time to study, son."
"I cannot possibly, Papa! So much study as I wish, must needs leave small time for converse!" His eyes widened in horror. "Yet without folk to study for, what is the purpose of knowledge?"
"To bring one closer to God," McGee murmured.
Gregory whirled to stare at him, almost shocked.
Before he could protest, Rod stepped into the breach. "Son, we have a guest tonight. He is the Reverend Morris McGee, Father-General of the Cathodeans."
Gregory stared. "The Abbot?"
"No, the Abbot's abbot." McGee smiled. "I am leader of all the chapters of the Order of St. Vidicon, lad."
Gregory forgot his nightmare in awe. "All the monks, on all the planets that circle all the stars?"
"Only the fifty that have Terran humans on them." McGee glanced at Rod. "I thought your people were innocent of the rest of the Terran Sphere, Lord Warlock."
"Well, of course, my own children are going to have to suffer through a modern education, Father. But don't worry, they all know better than to let anyone else know."
" 'Twould fash them unduly," Gregory explained, his eyes still wide. "Nay, thou knowest all about the life of a monk, then, dost thou not?"
"All," McGee confirmed, poker-faced. "And I assure you, lad, that you don't have to be a monk in order to try to learn all you can about everything."
"Yet thou dost think such learning would lead one toward God."
"If one really studies everything, and pursues it far enough, yes—or so I believe." McGee turned his gaze toward Rod. "Perceptive little chap, isn't he?"
"Only three leaps ahead of me, most of the time." Rod turned to Gregory. "You heard it from the Order's mouth, son."
"Yet surely one must go off alone to study so much!"
"Hermitage is not necessary," Father McGee said firmly, "though you might want to think seriously before you married. If you wish to have a family, they must be more important to you than your studies."
"So that if study is to be more important to me, I should not wed?"
"So I believe." McGee nodded. "That is why many scholars become monks—so that they may still have human companionship, but be able to devote their lives primarily to study. Still, that is only true of a few Orders; ours is one of them. Many others are primarily concerned with praying."
Gregory nodded slowly. "Thus could a man have solitude to concentrate all his thoughts on study, yet still have times when he is in company."
It was positively weird, hearing statements like that coming out of the mouth of a seven-year-old, and Rod always had to fight to remember that, emotionally, he was still a very small boy. But it didn't seem to faze Father McGee. He simply nodded, very seriously, and came over to the boy. "All true, lad—if the man's studies are directed toward learning as much as he can about God, through His creations. Yet if you wish to study the universe by itself, without the need to find a connection between God and every slightest phenomenon, you might wish to be a scholar, but not a monk."
Rod breathed a sigh of relief; he had just heard an intellectual Emancipation Proclamation.
But Gregory frowned. "I do not understand."
"Why, it's simply this." McGee pulled up a straight chair and sat down. "A vocation to study does not, by itself, mean that you have a vocation to the priesthood."
Rod could see the little boy relax, a little outside, hugely inside. "I may be a scholar, yet not a monk?"
McGee nodded. "That is the way of it. The two can be quite separate, you see."
"Yet where can I find companionship, if I do not become a monk?"
"Why, wherever you may. Hindu holy men sometimes built their hermitages near villages, so that they could be there if they were needed. Ancient Taoists were supposed to build their villages near a hermit's mountain, so that they could follow his example." McGee smiled. "You might even consider gathering other scholars about you, founding the first university on Gramarye."
He gazed at the boy, smiling, and after a few minutes Gregory began to smile, too.
And from that moment, in his parents' eyes, Father McGee could do no wrong.
Chapter Seventeen
The trestles had been folded and laid against the wall, and the tabletops had been stacked. The refectory in the Runnymede chapter house had been converted into a dormitory, each monk rolling out a pallet that wasn't much harder than the cot he'd been sleeping on in the monastery. It was midnight, and the friars slept the deep, dreamless sleep of men exhausted by physical labor. Only the moonbeams through the windows lent a touch of life to the great room.
In the center of the room a
ghost appeared, a smokelike form of a man. The smoke thickened, growing more and more substantial, until it began to gain the brown of a monk's robe with the pink of a tonsure atop a lean, lantern-jawed face. The fiery eyes finally became clear, and the monk dropped the few inches to the hard-packed dirt floor with a soft thud. He looked around at the sleeping forms, and a tear rolled from his eye as he lifted a dagger. He stepped up to the nearest monk, gasping, "Fools, poor weak fools, to be so led astray! Yet thou art nonetheless apostates, and must needs die! Eh, Brother Alfonso is right in this!"
The knife stabbed down in a short, vicious arc.
Brother Lurgan convulsed into a ball, coming awake for one searing instant of agony. He made no sound, but his mind let out a tearing shriek of pain and fear before it ceased utterly, and every monk sat bolt upright, staring and crying out in panic as they felt the insubstantial essence of the man lift away from them.
The assassin yanked his knife free and spun, swinging it down at Father Boquilva.
Boquilva shouted, blocking the attacker's forearm with his own and driving a fist into his belly. The lean monk doubled over in breathless pain, and Father Boquilva caught the wrist, slamming the knife hand against his knee. The blade clattered on the floor as Boquilva shouted, "Brother Somnel! Hasten!"
A short, fat monk hurried up, glaring at the lean attacker who was struggling for breath. His glare softened into a brooding gaze, and all at once the assassin's body went slack. He crumpled to the floor. All the monks were silent for a moment of horror; then the assassin's chest rose and fell, and they felt the surge of a sleeping mind. They relaxed with sighs of relief. "Light!" Father Boquilva called, and the tallow lamps flickered into life. Then the monks saw who lay unconscious on the floor and cried out in horror. " 'Tis Brother Janos!"
"Gentle Brother Janos!"
"How can this be?" Brother Axel knelt beside the assassin, tears in his eyes. "He is a true scholar! 'Twas he who did come to know the means by which we appear and disappear!"
"Aye, and did learn thereby to control it more shrewdly, so that he might appear as slowly as he wished, and thereby with as little noise." Father Boquilva frowned. "Nay, certes he would be chosen as assassin!"
"And what hath he done?" moaned Brother Clyde. The monks all turned to stare at Brother Lurgan's dead body curled up in the flickering glow, and caught their breath in sorrow.
Father Boquilva fell on his knees beside the unconscious assassin and caught up his head, holding it between his two hands and staring.
"Brother Janos! That he could do such a deed!" Brother Clyde cried. "He, who was ever a wise and gentle man!"
"Yet he burned with zeal, Brother," Father Hector reminded him, "and was intensely devoted to the Order."
"And therefore to the Abbot." Brother Clyde nodded heavily. "Aye, he might view us as traitors. Yet surely he would not think to slay!"
"He did not." Father Boquilva's voice was weighted with grimness. "Another did put the thought into his mind, nay, did harangue him and accuse him till he was convinced of our wrongness and the need for our slaying—for he was ever great of mind, yet was ever simple of soul. As much as he understood of the cosmos, so little did he understand of human nature. Nay, he was manipulated as surely as a marionette in a Christmas play."
"And who pulled his strings, Father?" Brother Clyde demanded, his face somber.
"Why dost thou ask?" said Father Hector, with a grimace. "Who but Brother Alfonso?"
Father Boquilva looked up and nodded.
Brother Clyde's face darkened, and his fists clenched into cannon balls. "I shall be revenged upon him1."
" Tis for God to revenge!" Father Boquilva snapped, coming to his feet. "Nay, Brother, be not misled by Satan!"
"Yet may I not be God's instrument in this?" Brother Clyde implored.
"Mayhap, yet I misdoubt me of it."
"Who shall be, then?"
"One who, praise Heaven, hath come!" Father Boquilva turned to Brother Somnel. "Do thou stay by Brother Janos and keep his sleep deep, aye, and dreamless."
Brother Somnel only nodded, his gaze on the sleeping assassin.
"Come with me now, and call." Father Boquilva beckoned Brother Clyde and turned away to heft the bar out of its staples and open the door. He stepped out into the night with the friar hot on his heels, crying, "Wee Folk, hear me!"
"Wee Folk, hear!" Brother Clyde called.
"I beg thee, call the High Warlock! Bid him bring our Father-General to us as soon as he may, for we have grievous, woeful tasks laid upon us now! Call him, I beg thee!"
"Call him, call him," Brother Clyde echoed with tears in his eyes.
Moonlight striped the middle of the bed, enough to show Rod and Gwen, loosely embraced, deeply asleep.
A small figure approached their bed slowly, then climbed the headboard to call softly, "Lord Warlock."
Rod lay absolutely still, but his eyes opened wide. He glanced about until he saw Puck. The elf laid a finger across his lips, then sprang silently to the floor, beckoning.
Rod slid out of bed, stepped to the closet, and pulled on his doublet and hose. He stepped out into the main room, buckling his sword belt. "Speak softly; we have a guest."
"I am awake," Father McGee's voice said in the dark. "May I light the lamp?"
"No need." Rod frowned at a candle and its wick glowed to life.
Father McGee stared at the foot-and-a-half-tall humanoid before him.
Puck glared up at him, arms akimbo. "At what dost thou stare?"
"Oh! Pardon my rudeness." Father McGee pushed himself to a sitting position and looked up at Rod. "It's reassuring to know how accurate Father Uwell's report is."
"That may be the only thing that's reassuring about seeing Puck in the middle of the night." Rod turned to the elf. "What moves, hobgoblin?"
"Bloody murder," the elf answered with a scowl. "Thou must needs come to the friars. Lord Warlock, and be not anxious for the harmony of thy garb."
Somewhere the monks had found some black cloth to drape on the wall in a makeshift archway. The dead monk lay under it, hands folded over his breast, his robe neatly patched where the knife had entered.
McGee stood over him, burning with suppressed rage. "An abbot! That an abbot could so forget morality as to command the murder of one of his own monks!"
"He wasn't one of the Abbot's own any more," Rod pointed out. "Widdecombe thought of him as a traitor."
"As Christ, thought of Judas, Lord Warlock! Yet He did not slay His betrayer, and neither should have Abbot Widdecombe!"
Rod wondered why he was taking the Archbishop's side. Pure cussedness, probably. "But the Abbot thought of him as a heretic."
"The unity of the Faith is not worth men's lives, Lord Warlock, as Rome has learned to its sorrow."
"Just because they lost the Beta Crucis Crusade—"
"Yet we did learn! When faith is used as an excuse for war, the warriors have lost faith, and morality has been corrupted into immorality!"
Rod felt the impulse to continue the argument, but recog-nized McGee's wrath from his own paternal instincts—the Father-General was filled with grief and guilt because one of his spiritual sons had died. For a brief, dizzying moment, Rod had a glimpse of what it must feel like to be responsible for hundreds of thousands of monks on fifty different planets, and shuddered. McGee didn't have to take his title so seriously.
Or did he? Judging from the man, he didn't have much choice.
Rod looked for a change of subject. "I think one of your monks is managing to dredge some information out of the would-be mass murderer. Father. Could we go eavesdrop?"
"Mm?" McGee looked up, frowning, then nodded. "Yes. Of course. There may be something we should know." He turned away from Rod, Father Boquilva beside them.
Brother Janos lay on his side on a cot, eyes closed, chest rising and falling with the rhythm of sleep. Brother Somnel sat beside him, sad gaze fixed on the assassin's face. He didn't seem to be doing anything, and Rod wondered
why he was there. Another monk sat beside Somnel, murmuring, "He did command thee to slay us all?" Then he waited patiently; finally. Brother Janos nodded.
Rod stared.
"Who did so command thee?" the inquisitor asked gently.
"Brother Alfonso," Brother Janos answered with a sigh.
McGee stood, face wooden.
Rod regarded Brother Somnel. puzzled. "Are you a hypnotist?"
Brother Somnel looked up at him, silent for a moment, then slowly nodded.
Rod felt his spine prickle. "Well. Your Order is just full of surprises."
Brother Somnel gazed at him a moment longer, then turned back to Brother Janos.
"He did not, then, have his orders from the Abbot," McGee said slowly. "Who is this Brother Alfonso?"
"The Archbishop's secretary, Father-General," Boquilva said at his shoulder.
"McGee," the Father-General replied absently.
Rod leaned closer to McGee and muttered, "We have reason to believe Brother Alfonso is the agent I mentioned earlier."
"Oh. You have a spy in the monastery?" McGee murmured, and when Rod didn't answer, he nodded. "So the orders may have come from the Abbot, or may not."
"Ask, Brother Comsoph," Father Boquilva instructed.
The inquisitor leaned forward again. "Did Brother Alfonso say this was the Archbishop's will?"
After a moment Brother Janos breathed, "Nay. He did say we must protect our Lord Archbishop from his enemies, for he is too kindly to take arms against them."
"I wronged the man," McGee admitted.
Rod frowned. "Sounds as though Brother Alfonso did a full-scale persuasion job on Brother Janos."
"Do not doubt it, Lord Warlock." Brother Comsoph looked up at him. "Brother Janos was ever a good and gentle man, but scholarly and quite naive."
"He always tried to see the good side of everybody around him, hm?" Rod knew the syndrome. "But if he was so gentle, how could he be maneuvered into murder?"
"He was very fervent in his faith," Father Boquilva explained. "Such zeal can be twisted."
Rod murmured into McGee's ear, "If it helps any, we should have Brother Alfonso in custody soon."
The Warlock Heretical Page 21