Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman

by Walter Michael Miller, Jr.

  “Just praying?”

  “Not quite. We talked. One thing we spoke of was war, and I made the traditional mention of ‘the Church Militant on Earth, the Church Suffering in Purgatory, and the Church Triumphant in Heaven.’ But the Pope said to me, ‘There is no Church Triumphant in Heaven, although I have heard that foolishness before.’ I asked him why he said that, in disagreement with all the elders, and he told me, ‘John says it. Chapter Twenty-one, Apocalypse, ‘‘And I saw no temple therein.’’ In the presence of God, the Church is a discarded crutch.

  “What I am saying to you, Holy Father, is that if the Church Militant on Earth does not produce members of a Church Triumphant in Heaven, then its militancy is not…”

  “Stop. I bow to all the words of my predecessor, but not to your explanation of them. Especially not on the subject of war.”

  Nimmy fell silent, feeling stupid.

  “It wasn’t murder, when you accidentally shot that man. You don’t need absolution for it—but I can shrive you if you like.” The Pope stared at Blacktooth’s face for a time, and began to frown. “I think you would not accept absolution from me if I gave it to you!”

  “You have already given me a plenary indulgence and a passport to paradise in Scitote Tyrannum, Holy Father. What more could I ask?”

  Brownpony reddened at the sarcasm, but Blacktooth persisted in standing there with his hands spread wide as if to receive gifts. In reality, he was frozen in fright by what he had said.

  “Get out of here!” Brownpony erupted. “Go visit your patron saint at the priory. I don’t want to hear this.”

  “May I be excused now?” Stupid again!

  “Yes. Go.”

  Blacktooth glanced at the Pope’s hand. Brownpony did not lift his ring, and Blacktooth did not reach. He made a fast genuflection and beat a faster retreat. He did not see Brownpony again during that winter.

  He took residence at the Priory of Saint Leibowitz-in-the-Cottonwoods, where Prior Singing Cow St. Martha assigned him work in exchange for room and board. He was not required to assist in the Divine Office, but he was not forbidden either. So he added his voice to the choir, took dictation and penned letters for the prior, washed dishes and took his turn as cook. The brothers were kinder to him here than at the abbey, although they were the same monks; he had known them all at the monastery in the desert. They were all specialists. Brother Jonan, who used to wake Blacktooth every morning for Lauds, was a mathematician. Brother Elwen, who had been Torrildo’s lover and went over the wall, had come back repentant and become skilled in his previous studies: mechanics and engineering. Old Brother Tudlen, whom Blacktooth had barely known because he had been on leave from the abbey for so many years at sea, was a naval architect, astronomer, and navigator; he seemed somehow out of place this far from the ocean, but Brownpony, like Filpeo, had ambitions. Tudlen had built a schooner in old Tampa Bay, and it was supposedly the property of the Order; here in the mountains where the air was thin and clear, he was grinding a telescope mirror. The others were specialists in Church history, in political and military history, and in the work of Boedullus among other authorities on the Magna Civitas and its catastrophic collapse.

  Persuading Mayor Dion to permit the opening of the Leibowitzian priory in New Jerusalem had been no small undertaking. Singing Cow had only high praise for the Pope as a persuader and as a devotee of their patron saint. “His Holiness convinced Dion that we would be of educational value to the community here. But so far, no schools have called on us; Linkono runs them. These spooks don’t want their superbabies growing up to be monks. There are two layers of religion here: Catholic above ground, and New Adventist below ground. They’re out to save the world. Hadala was typical.”

  “The old Jew Benjamin told me about them,” said Blacktooth, “but he kept mumbling, ‘It’s still not him, still not him,’ and I don’t know what he meant.”

  Singing Cow smiled as if he knew but said nothing.

  He confessed to Father Prior “Mooo,” as the Brethren sometimes called him. As one ex-Grasshopper farm kid to another, it proved a strange experience for them both.

  “Were you taken into the Nomad war cult, my son?” Father St. Martha asked, in connection with Blacktooth’s confession of killing a man in battle.

  “No, Father. The Grasshopper people treated me with kindness, as they would a boy who had not yet passed through the ordeal. I did not intend to shoot the man.”

  “Of course not, but you intended to cut his throat, did you not?”

  “I thought he was begging me to. I still think so.”

  Singing Cow, who sometimes liked to think of himself as a Nomad, mentioned that the Church frowned upon assisting a suicide, but that he would probably have done the same; still it was an act to be repented.

  Nimmy failed to mention disobedience among his many sins. Singing Cow did not remind him. Absolution was forthcoming, and the penance was mild: pray five mysteries of the rosary and begin singing for his supper.

  One cold night he and the Cow were walking home through the snow after singing Compline in the neighborhood Church which they shared with the local pastor and his small flock. Compline was the night prayer of the Church, concerned with sleep and wakefulness, life and death, sinning and receiving grace. But it was no lullaby, and left him feeling lonely.

  “I can tell you something I think you’ll want to hear, Father.”

  “Tell away,” said Singing Cow.

  “Remember when we ran away and tried to join the Grasshopper? They fed us, let us rest two days, and then drove us out of the camp with whips in a snow like this. Were you as bitter as I was?”

  “Those rope whips! Listen, I still don’t know what we did to offend them. I used to think that you or Wren must have made a pass at a girl. Because our parents farmed? Was that why? Yes, I was bitter, and Grasshopper Nomads still make me uncomfortable.”

  “If we had fought back, we might have had a chance; instead, we just cringed and ran. There is a Grasshopper Weejus there who thinks she remembers three wandering orphans at about the time we visited their tents. She explained to me why they offered us no more than food, water, and two nights’ sleep.”

  “Explaining cruelty doesn’t absolve it.”

  “Perhaps not. But I’ll try to repeat what she told me as best I remember. ‘Who wants to adopt a teenage nimmy,’ she said, ‘no matter how he was raised? A Weejus spends four or five years feeding him, clothing him, and teaching him the horses. In exchange for what? Unskilled and lazy labor. He’s horny and he gets in fights. He starts trouble with other families. Maybe she catches him coupling with one of her own daughters, but they can’t be married under the breeding rules. Or worse, he runs off to marry a daughter of her horse-breeding rival! A family that mourns a dead son would be better off adopting a young cougar than another boy.’”

  Singing Cow laughed. “She knew about your kitten?”

  “I was carrying Librada when I visited her. She herself had adopted a pubescent orphan girl. But among Nomads, when a girl grows up she stays with her mother. A boy grows up and leaves her and her whole family when he marries. Motherless boys are as welcome as leprosy there, unless they can fight and join the war cult.”

  “Rope whips.” Cow was ruminating on it.

  “That was more than twenty years ago, Father. This year, the sharf himself wanted me to stay and tutor his nephews. I would have been adopted, at my age.”

  “Well, I’m glad you told me why they were cruel. Charity’s rarely convenient; sometimes it’s completely impractical.” Singing Cow thought for a moment. “The sharf’s grandmother probably believed your vow of chastity protected all of the daughters,” he added.

  Blacktooth looked away and blushed. “You’re supposed to forget what I tell you in confession!” he complained as they entered the monks’ dormitory.

  At the small priory, each man took his turn at cooking or menial labor. Blacktooth had been told by the Axe that the Pope had wanted his recipe for
summonabisch stew, and when his turn came to cook, he asked Father Mooo’s permission to prepare the dish for all the Brothers, who needed permission to eat meat. When permission was granted, Blacktooth bought the ingredients from a local butcher, prepared the feast, and sent a quart of it to the Papal Palace. The lack of a response seemed an indicator of the Pope’s disfavor. Librada consumed the leftovers with gusto. She had caught a mouse on her first day, thus insuring her room and board.

  “Why did you name her Librada? What does it mean?” Cow asked.

  “It was Spanish, and means ‘set-free.’ Because that’s what she’ll be, before she’s much bigger and eats one of us.”

  The winter of ’45–’46 was the mildest in memory. Most of the Wilddog Horde moved their cattle south as usual. Hannegan’s agents among the motherless outlaw bands observed the migration, but saw nothing unusual to report until March, when all the warriors of the horde assembled as an army under Lord Høngan himself, with Oxsho second-in-command. They rode swiftly eastward for several days, then south to the river. Before Filpeo Harq learned about the movement, the Nomad horsemen had forded the Nady Ann and attacked from the rear those Texark forces dug-in along the east bank of the Washita. With them they brought three Grasshopper dog trainers and nearly a hundred dogs who would kill any unmounted man who did not smell like a Nomad. At least six of Sharf Oxsho’s warriors were bitten for not having the usual Grasshopper aroma; by the light of the full Pascal moon the dogs tore out the throats of Texark soldiers in the trenches along with some of their reluctant Jackrabbit allies who ate too many onions to smell friendly. The dogs’ attack on the night of Holy Saturday enabled the forces of Önmu Kun to cross the Washita without coming under fire until they charged the fortifications with fixed bayonets. By Easter’s sunrise, the trainers had regained control of ravening dogs and the battle was won without further Jackrabbit casualties, and Mayor Dion’s well-rested men crossed the river to carry the war eastward on horseback.

  After the fray, Høngan Ösle Chür met with Önmu Kun in the middle of a battlefield at dawn; he then rode with the Jackrabbit’s forces without taking command. This was his reason for defying his shamans. The Jackrabbit were lacking in respect for Önmu the smuggler. Their respect for the Lord of the Hordes was enhanced by the fact that he was not Jackrabbit. Such was the self-contempt of a conquered people.

  Father Steps-on-Snake had recently come to the vicinity and he now celebrated the Mass of the Resurrection at noon on March 25th—the earliest Easter in many years—and gave the Eucharist to Lord Høngan Ösle together with Sharfs Oxsho Xon and Önmu Kun in the sight of all the warriors and the Jackrabbit population of the region. Thus did the faithful rejoice in the victory of the Nomad over tyranny at the same time as the victory of the Christ over death. Never in the memory of old Steps-on-Snake had the subject people expressed such jubilation on this highest feast day.

  Holy Madness spent nearly a week building up the Jackrabbit’s esteem for the Jackrabbit sharf by accompanying him everywhere, listening to Önmu address the rebel fighters and civilian groups, then reinforcing the sharf’s words with a few of his own, bringing on rousing cheers from the multitude.

  There were about seven hundred unwounded prisoners. Jackrabbit warriors had begun to maim them until Holy Madness put a stop to it. That Nomad custom had been abandoned soon after the Texark conquest, except for captured spies and saboteurs, but the Jackrabbit was only trying to honor the custom, for they had been told by Önmu what Høngan had done to Esitt Loyte.

  But the forces of the Hannegan were rushing westward to rejoin the battle against the Jackrabbit rebels, and Önmu’s gathering army now marched to meet them following Dion’s light horse. Having destroyed the enemy forces in the immediate vicinity and inspired the Jackrabbit fighters with a new enthusiasm for battle, Høngan and Oxsho withdrew the Wilddog horsemen from the area by crossing the Washita and riding westward to cross the Nady Ann at a point where their movement would not be observed by Texark scouts.

  When the warriors rejoined the rest of the Wilddog Horde at their wintering grounds, Høngan Ösle first sent messengers with an account of the battle to Sharf Bråm and Pope Amen. Then he summoned Father Ombroz as well as his senior Bear Spirit shaman and his own Weejus mother; he told them to prepare immediately to accompany him to New Jerusalem and the Court of Amen II.

  • • •

  The Lord of the Hordes and his party arrived in New Jerusalem at the end of April. They were greeted by the Pope and the Mayor— Dion was briefly home from the wars—with high ceremony. The Major General Quigler Durod was already in town as plenipotentiary from the King of the Tenesi. Durod had taken the trouble to learn a Nomad dialect (Jackrabbit, because in his youth he had served in the Province as a Texark mercenary), and he made friends quickly with Høngan Ösle. Besides Durod, armorers had come from the west coast, bringing samples of their latest model firearms.

  Although Høngan Ösle as Qæsach dri Vørdar spoke for all three hordes, Brownpony expressed regret that Sharfs Bråm and Önmu Kun were unable to attend the council of war. Three days later, an angry Grasshopper emissary rode up from Arch Hollow to confront the Pope.

  The Grasshopper messenger was not a Christian. He stood defiantly before Amen II and six members of the Curia to voice the demands of his sharf. “Unless you release Nyinden and the swordsman Gai-See into my custody, the Grasshopper will make war not against your enemies, but against you!”

  “Perhaps your sharf has been lied to by someone,” the Pope said. “Nyinden is staying at the priory with the other monks. If he wants to go with you, there is nothing to stop him.”

  “And the yellow warrior? Where is he?”

  “He’s in the city’s jail. I did not put him there. The only man in this room with any voice in city affairs is Cardinal Linkono, who grew up here. Your Eminence, would you please?” He beckoned to a short man with a white beard who looked like a gnome wearing a red skullcap. Then he said to the messenger, “I think your sharf would want his message to go to the right man. I am the wrong man, and His Eminence Abraha is not the right man either, but he can take you to the right man.”

  “Are you not the most powerful man in this awful place—not Pope Redbeard, the Lord of the Christian Horde?” the Nomad demanded.

  “Not really Lord as you understand it. You might think of my office as that of a high priest.”

  Linkono limped up to stand beside the Nomad, facing him, and spoke in a voice surprisingly deep for so small a man. His Nomadic was heavily accented but understandable.

  “Young man, why is this an ‘awful place’?”

  Brownpony himself explained: “The Nomads say evil spirits come down from the mountains, especially the Old Zarks, and inhabit wombs. The belief explains why a Nomad woman sometimes gives birth to a glep baby.”

  “I see. Well, young man, compare our Pope to your oldest Bear Spirit shaman. Neither he nor your sharf has to obey the other. The sharf in this place is Mayor Dion. But he just left here to go back to the war. His son takes his place. This, the Church, is like the Bear Spirit Council. There is nothing we can do for you here, my nephew, except pray.”

  Linkono was smart enough not to say “my son” to a Nomad, but this Nomad did not like “nephew” either.

  “My only uncle is Demon Light, gray runt. My name is Blue Lightning, and I am the eldest son of his eldest sister. We both witnessed Hadala’s crimes.”

  “Surely you mean the crime against Cardinal Hadala!”

  “I mean Hadala’s crimes, for which he was executed.”

  The gnome’s jaw fell. “Crimes under what law? Nomad law?”

  “The Treaty of the Sacred Mare. He violated it by bringing an army into our lands. Hadala violated the law and defied our sharf. By his order, his officers killed his own men. If Nyinden and the yellow warrior hadn’t put him to death, my uncle would have done it.”

  “I had not thought of it in that way before,” Brownpony said. “He’s right, you know, Abra. Ha
dala clearly violated the Treaty.”

  “Holy Father, I can’t believe what I’m hearing!”

  Blue Lightning grabbed the small cardinal by the shoulders and shook him. “I can make war or peace, little man. My words are my uncle’s words. Perhaps we cannot bring war to you here in your evil mountains, but we can join the war against your men who fight south of the Nady Ann. Take me to the man who jails the victim instead of the criminal.”

  Linkono limped toward the exit as fast as he could move, with the burly Nomad crowding his heels. When they were gone, Brownpony turned to his personal guard. “Axe, go with them, and take Jing and Qum-Do. Keep that Nomad out of trouble, and make sure Slojon has to look you in the face when he talks about Gai-See.” Then, to the Cardinal Penitentiary who was also his personal confessor, he said, “Go to the guests’ quarters, please, and tell Høngan Ösle Chür what has happened here. Blue Lightning does not realize that his Qæsach dri Vørdar is in town.”

  In the administration building, Slojon haughtily dismissed the Nomad’s claim. The Nomad grabbed him by the ears and hauled him, squeaking in pain, across the desk. A sergeant drew a pistol, and instantly three swords were in the air.

  “Drop it, or lose your head,” said Axe. The sergeant dropped it.

  Eltür’s nephew now stood behind Slojon with his arm in a hammerlock and a knife held to his throat. He pushed him toward the door. “This fart is going to jail,” said the Nomad.

  Slojon screamed as he felt his own blood running down his chest.

  “Stop him, Wooshin! Stop him!”

  “Only you can stop him, Messér. Take him to the jail in peace.”

  “Brownpony is behind this!”

  “No, the Pope is not! The man behind it is also behind you, right now. You did violate the Treaty, Messér.”

  “All right, we’ll go to the jail.”

  The trip to jail was halted by the sudden entrance of Høngan Ösle Chür and his two shamans. Blue Lightning took one look at him, gasped, and released the Mayor’s son. He made a sweeping kokai to the chosen one of the Day Maiden, Husband of the Prairies, then fell silent to await orders.