The White Plague

by Frank Herbert

  Father Michael remained silent.

  “Will you be forgiving the poor country manners of an Irishman?” Herity asked.

  John stared at Herity. Jock had as much as said Herity had been in the Provos. “There’re all sorts of manners in our world,” John said. “As Father Michael would say, you can forgive anything that doesn’t cut the life out of you.”

  “A man of wit,” Herity said, but his voice was bitter.

  Father Michael shifted position, rubbing his hands in front of him. He looked first at Herity and then at John. “You don’t know about our Joseph Herity, John.”

  “Be still, Priest,” Herity said.

  “I’ll not be still, Joseph.” Father Michael shook his head. “Our Joseph was going to be an important man in this land. He studied the law, did Joseph Herity. There was them that said he might be first among us someday.”

  “That was a long time ago and it came to nothing,” Herity said.

  “What changed you, Joseph?” Father Michael asked.

  “All the lying and the cheating! And you there with the worst of ’em, Michael Flannery.” Herity put a companionable hand on John’s arm. “It’s a cold floor but a dry one, John. I’ll watch until midnight and then you can stand awake until dawn. Best we start early and go overland instead of the road. There’s trails, y’ know.”

  “Hunted men always learn where the trails are,” Father Michael said.

  “And they learn to avoid men who talk too much,” Herity said. He took up his machine gun, slipped his poncho over his head and looked distastefully at the wet cap on the floor. Rain no longer beat against the roof. He put the cap on the hearth near the fire and straightened, stretching. The machine gun made a sharp outline under the poncho as he moved. “Keep the fire,” he said. “I’ll do me watching from outside.” With that, he crossed to the door and let himself out.

  “We had grand hopes for him once,” Father Michael said. Using his pack as a pillow, he lay down with his feet toward the orange glow of the peat fire.

  The boy lay curled up like a hedgehog, his head in the anorak, a dark mound at a corner of the fireplace.

  John followed the priest’s example, his thoughts filled with Herity’s sharp questioning. You don’t reminisce. The man was carefully observant. John began reviewing their conversations, the things they said as they walked. Nothing casual came from Herity. John realized belatedly that the man was a trained interrogator, getting his answers from the reactions he saw as much as from the words he heard. He studied the law. The rough manners, the country accent – part of an elaborate pose. Herity went deep. John fell asleep wondering what he might have revealed to that watchful man.

  Much later, John awoke thinking he had heard a strange sound. He groped for the machine gun on the floor beside his pack, felt the cold metal. He took a deep breath, smelling the close odors of themselves in the confined space – an attar of human sweat distilled from their long tramp and the fatigue that sent them sprawling into sleep whenever they could. He sat up in the darkness and shifted the machine gun to his lap.

  A snort nearby. Snoring.

  The fire was out.

  The room was a black confinement that focused on a sudden sound of scratching. A match flared and John looked into Herity’s face less than a meter away.

  “You’re awake,” Herity said. The match went out. “You can keep watch from inside, John, should you prefer. There’s not a sign of pursuit for more than a mile out.”

  John stood. There was starlight visible out the window.

  “It’s turned cold, it has,” Herity whispered.

  John heard him stretching out on the floor, the little movements of trying to find a comfortable position. Herity’s breathing deepened, became slow and even.

  The machine gun was a cold weight in John’s hands. Why had Herity let him have this dangerous weapon? It could kill the three sleeping figures in seconds.

  John went to a window and stared out into the starlit night, the pale silver of a winter meadow laid out against the dark backdrop of trees. He stood there, shifting occasionally from one foot to the other, thinking about this strange man, Joseph Herity.

  The lying and the cheating.

  Herity had been an idealist. He no longer was an idealist. Father Michael’s question lay in John’s awareness: What changed you, Joseph? Change… change…

  John Roe O’Neill had been changed. No question about what did it.

  Circumstances.

  In time, the sky lightened to the east and a red-orange sun came over the treetops. It was a perfect Japanese Rising Sun for a moment, spokes radiating upward through a mist. Bird sounds came from the ring of trees beyond the meadow. The growing light cast a flush over the landscape, throwing into relief a dark track of crushed grass leading off through the overgrown meadow.

  Herity spoke from the floor behind him. “There’s no church bells to waken us anymore.”

  Father Michael coughed and there was a stirring from him as he sat up. “There’ll be bells again, Joseph.”

  “Only to send their alarms over the towns and the countryside. Your Church is dead, Priest, just as dead as all the women.”

  In 1054, the patriarch of Constantinople and the pope excommunicated each other. That was the end of holiness for both churches. After that, they became instruments of Satan. I’m convinced of it.

  – Joseph Herity

  ON THE narrow trails and the back roads, across the bogs and through dank tree-filled hills, twisting and turning over the heights, sometimes camping cold, sometimes snug in abandoned cottages, Herity led his party toward Dublin. They were eighteen days reaching the Wicklow foothills, another nine days circling around to come in from the northeast where they were not expected. And hardly a soul to be seen in the entire passage.

  To John, the trip became a constant careful sparring with Herity. The most casual conversation could be dangerous. One afternoon, they had passed a leaning signboard with one word on it: Garretstown. It had been cold with a wet wind whipping over the hills, and John had longed for something warmer than the sweater.

  “There’s things done for no reason in this land,” Herity said suddenly, glancing sidelong at John. Both of them were heavily whiskered now, John’s bald head a veined contrast.

  “What things?” John asked.

  “Like slaughtering the hounds of the Kildare Hunt. It was a mean thing, taking out on dumb animals the misery caused by irresponsible humans.”

  Father Michael spoke from behind them. “The Hunt was an English thing.”

  “I was there,” Herity said. “And maybe there was a reason as you say, Priest. Provocation – the Hunt crowd not understanding how easy it is to expose the devil in your neighbor.”

  John nodded, submitting to an urge to prod at Herity. “The way someone provoked O’Neill?”

  Herity did not rise to this bait, but he walked silently for a time. Father Michael moved up beside them as they came out onto a narrow farm road of unpaved dirt. The boy could be heard trailing along behind.

  “I’ve thought the same thing!” Father Michael said. He looked full at John with an expression of amazement on his long face. “The foolishness of people is beyond understanding.”

  “Like wanting to resume the Dublin Horse Show?” Herity asked, his voice rilled with slyness. He, too, looked at John, the men walking along, one on each side of John, both looking at him.

  “That was trying to bring back the good things,” Father Michael said, but he kept his attention on John.

  “Business as usual!” Herity said, looking ahead. “As though nothing had happened to make it obscene. Tell us about it, Father. You was there.”

  They plodded along in silence for almost fifty paces before Father Michael responded. In that time, he took his gaze off John and stared at the ground in front of him.

  “It was raining a bit,” Father Michael said. “We came on it after the mob had mostly gone. I saw some of the last of them coming away. Carrying boo
ts, some of them were. And bits of clothing. I saw one man with a fine coat over one arm and bloody jodhpurs over the other, a great grin on his face.”

  Father Michael’s voice was low and remote, as though he recounted something seen in a foreign land, a wonder from some heathen place and not an event from civilized Ireland.

  The four walkers were in a dip in the road now, a short bridge visible at the bottom and a boggy stream winding its way through reeds under the bridge.

  “That mob, they didn’t seem ashamed of what they’d done,” Father Michael said.

  “Ahhh,” Herity said, “there’s anger here just waiting for something to strike.”

  “There was bodies all over the grounds,” Father Michael said. “Men… dead horses… gore. No way to tell Catholic from another. They’d taken away all the crosses for their metal. Not even a ring left. Fingers cut off to get them. I knelt in the mud and prayed.”

  “But who did it?” John asked.

  “A mob,” Herity said.

  John looked at Father Michael, fascinated. He pictured the priest coming on that scene, staring down at bodies of Horse Show officials and audience. Father Michael’s simple words conjured a vision.

  “They even took most of the boots and stockings,” Father Michael said. “Boots and stockings. Why did they do that?”

  The vision of bare feet outstretched in that muddy carnage like a final gesture of lost humanity stirred John oddly. He felt deeply moved, far beyond the brutal facts being recounted in Father Michael’s dull voice. Something besides life had gone out of Ireland with those deaths, John thought. He even felt an absence of glee from O’Neill-Within. Interest, yes – fascinated interest, but no particular joy. Perhaps it was satisfaction, O’Neill-Within felt… a feeling of contentment.

  John realized then that there was a deep and telling difference between happiness and contentment. O’Neill-Within might be content with what had been wrought even while it brought him no happiness.

  “How do you feel about this, John?” Herity asked.

  “It brings me no joy,” John said.

  “A black day,” Father Michael said.

  “Would you listen to him now?” Herity asked. “The only Catholics there was the hostlers and the grooms, the hard-working folk. A pack of Protestant landlords answered for their misdeeds and the priest is upset.”

  Father Michael spoke more strongly. “They were murdered! Slaughtered like animals – with knives, clubs, pitchforks and bare hands. There wasn’t a shot fired.”

  Herity looked at John. “Does this give you any idea atall, atall, what might happen should the Madman O’Neill appear in our midst?”

  John sensed O’Neill-Within, silently watchful.

  “All those deaths and no good reason,” Herity said. “Oh, there was reason, but I’ll agree with the priest that it was better not done.” Herity leaned across John to address Father Michael. “But you were fascinated by all that death, weren’t you, Priest? A good reason to pray with your knees in the mud.”

  Father Michael plodded along with his gaze directed downward. He shuddered.

  John glanced at the priest, sensing the darting accuracy of Herity’s remark. Yes, Father Michael shared his Church’s love-hate relationship with death. It was his source of power as a priest, but the man-within could not be denied, either. No more could O’Neill-Within. Death was the ultimate failure, the human weakness that went beyond illusion into illusion, that intervention whose absolute sway could not be avoided.

  Herity saw concealed things!

  “It’s educational it is,” Herity said, “listening to the voice of a man when you cannot see his face.” Again, he leaned forward to peer across John at the priest. “I listened to you, Michael Flannery. You telling about that slaughter and not a sign to say you see at last why I spit on your Church!”

  Father Michael did not respond.

  Herity grinned and returned his attention to the road ahead of them. The boy could be heard behind them throwing a rock into the bushes. They had topped the rise beyond the stream now and looked down a long hill where the road entered a thick barrier of evergreens.

  “You see, Priest,” Herity said, “what is most difficult is to be abandoned by God. He left me. I did not leave Him. They have taken away my religion!”

  Father Michael’s eyes glistened with unshed tears. He thought: Oh, yes, Joseph Herity, I understand about that. I know all the psychological things they taught in the seminary. You would say the Church is my substitute for sex. It’s the love I could never find from a woman. Oh, yes, I understand you. It’s a new Church you think we have and not a woman for any of us.

  Without knowing why, Father Michael felt strength entering him from Herity’s words.

  “Thank you, Joseph,” he said.

  “Thank me? What is this you’re saying?” Herity’s voice was filled with outrage.

  “I thought I was alone,” Father Michael said. “I see that I’m not. For that, I thank you.”

  “Crab the man!” Herity said. He fell into angry silence, replaced presently by a sly smile. “You’re confused, Priest,” he said. “There’s none of us together.”

  John saw the look of amusement on Herity’s face. And Father Michael… confusion? Herity obviously took malicious enjoyment from another’s confusion. Did he enjoy Ireland’s confusion as well? No… that went contrary to Herity’s Cause. The plague had upset the untouchable. Recognizing this, John realized with an abrupt shock of awareness that he had the key to Herity, the thing that would undo the man.

  Destroy his belief in his Cause!

  But that was the very thing Herity was trying to do to Father Michael. How could that be a weakness in Herity and… yes, a strength in Father Michael?

  “What’re your politics, Joseph?” John asked.

  “Me politics?” He grinned. “I’m a liberal, I am. Always was.”

  “He’s a godless Marxist,” Father Michael said.

  “Better than a godless priest,” Herity said.

  “John, d’you know about the war of indefinite duration?” Father Michael asked.

  “Close your fly trap, Michael Flannery,” Herity said, his voice even and venomous.

  “Never heard of it,” John said. He sensed a poised stillness in Herity.

  “That’s the Proves,” Father Michael said. He returned Herity’s black look with a smile. “Prevent any settlement, kill the ones who’d compromise, terrify the peacemakers, prevent any solution. Give the people only war and violence, death and terror until they’re so sick of it they’ll accept anything in its place, even the godless Marxists.”

  “You’ll recall,” Herity said, “that this priest mourned the Prod landlords at the Dublin Horse Show. The greedy capitalists!”

  “They were greedy, right enough,” Father Michael said. “I’ll grant you that. It’s greed that drives the conservatives. But it’s envy driving the liberals. And these Marxists…” he hooked a disdainful thumb at Herity “. . . all they want is to sit in the seats of the mighty and lord it over everyone else. The intellectual aristocrats!”

  John heard a new strength in Father Michael’s voice. The man apparently possessed powerful roots and he had found them. He might be beset by doubts, but the strength he gained by struggling against his doubts accumulated. It grew day by day.

  “Now that I know how to pray for you, I shall pray for you, Joseph Herity,” Father Michael said.

  John looked from one man to the other, sensing the deep currents between them.

  A malicious grin came over Herity’s mouth but did not touch his eyes. He patted the machine gun on its strap at his chest. “Here’s me soul, Priest. Pray for this.”

  “There’s a demon loose in our land, Joseph,” Father Michael said.

  Herity sobered. A wild look entered his eyes. “A demon is it?”

  “A demon,” Father Michael repeated.

  Still with that sober look, Herity said: “Mercie secure ye all, and keep the Goblin from ye,
while ye sleep.” His wolfish grin returned. “The words of Robert Herrick, Priest. Y’ see the advantages in a classical education?”

  “There’s advantages in fearing God as well.” Father Michael’s voice was calm and assured.

  “Some things we fear because they’re real, Priest,” Herity said. “Some things’re only illusion. Like your precious Church and its pretty words and its fancy rituals. A poor substitute for living as a free man.”

  “Are you a free man, Joseph?” Father Michael asked.

  Herity paled and looked away. He spoke with his gaze directed at the side of the road. “I’m freer than any man present.” He whipped his gaze around to focus on John. “I’m freer than this John Garrech O’Donnell and him with something terrible hidden deep inside him!”

  John’s mouth clamped shut. He felt a jaw muscle twitching. Damn the man!

  “There’s illusions and there’s illusions,” Herity said. “Sure and we all know it.”

  John kept his attention directed straight ahead. He could feel the pressure of attention upon him from both sides. Was it only illusion after all?

  “A substitute for life,” Herity said, a terrible pressure in his voice.

  John looked to his right, seeking help from Father Michael, but the priest kept his gaze on the road at his feet.

  “D’you find your illusions comforting, John?” Herity asked. “As comforting as the illusions of the priest there?”

  John felt the stirring of O’Neill-Within. How did I come by this thing? he wondered. Was there ever a place where it could be identified? He felt that the acquisition had been slow… like a growth, perhaps, or a new skin. Steadily constant, casually demanding but never importunate. It was the self intrinsic and the memories were real.

  Father Michael wrestled with his own demon, feeling it aroused by Herity’s words even though he knew these words were not directed at him but at the poor soul walking with them. Was it truly the Madman in this quiet American?