by K. J. Parker
It wasn’t just the discomfort of his wet clothes that made the brother squirm at that moment. Squeamish he definitely wasn’t – you couldn’t teach novices the eight approved cuts if you didn’t have an unusually strong stomach – but the religious concept of detailed questioning always troubled him. It was typical of the polished efficiency and dislike of waste that detailed interrogations doubled as anatomy lecturers, with a class of novices standing respectfully at the back of the room taking notes in their tablets, their lecturer pointing out, naming and describing the function of each organ and component as it was laid open by the interrogator’s scalpel. That said, the practice was a thoroughly effective way of both obtaining and conveying important information, and it wasn’t the place of a brother to criticise.
‘Sierce,’ he repeated. ‘Near Josequin.’ He hesitated. ‘I suppose it’d be best if I set off immediately,’ he said, doing his best not to sound very sad indeed. ‘While the scent’s still fresh, as it were.’
The Father Tutor smiled; his expression was warm, almost human (though he wouldn’t have taken that as a compliment). ‘I think you’ve missed enough offices as it is without skipping nocturns and prime as well. I suggest you restore your composure with a nice hot bath in front of the fire – and yes, theoretically it’s still a month too early, but you can say twenty lines of penance while you’re scrubbing your back – and that’ll put you in a properly relaxed and contemplative frame of mind for divine service. If you set off immediately after prime tomorrow, I imagine there’ll still be something of a trail for you to follow.’
It was, of course, a criticism; every act of compassion in religion was a tacit accusation of weakness, every allowance made for frailty a concession to inadequacy. Nevertheless, the brother thought as he squelched through the south cloister on his way to his quarters, it’s prideful sin to imagine oneself better than one actually is, and twenty lines was a small price to pay for a warm bath and an extracurricular scuttle of coals on the fire. The pint of distinctly non-canonical mulled wine with cloves would be an entirely separate transgression, worth at least another twenty lines, but that wasn’t a problem. Over the years he’d learned the knack of reciting very quickly indeed.
One bath and fifty lines’ worth of wine later he wrapped himself up in his warmest, heaviest blanket and walked across the cloister to the library. Just after midnight was the best time for quiet, comfortable research – there wasn’t much point in going to bed with only a couple of hours to go before nocturns, and there wasn’t much point in his going investigating if he didn’t know what he was supposed to be looking for. As it turned out he had the place almost to himself. One or two of the library monks were fussing about in the stacks, putting back the last of yesterday’s books, making a start on tomorrow’s requisitions, and there were two or three of the older brothers scattered about among the lecterns, fast asleep (with bursarial autumn still a month away, the library was warmer than their quarters, for one thing). He took down a copy of the Concordance and a couple of other likely sources of information, pulled a stool up close to the fireplace, and looked up Poldarn in the index.
Poldarn, he read; also Poldan, Polodan; cf. the Tulicite Boliden (s.v.). A deity much revered at one time in the provinces of Satn, Morevish and Thurm (make that the former provinces of Satn, Morevish and Thurm; it was two hundred years since the southern empire had been lost, though of course the Concordance, even in its latest edition, wouldn’t admit that) but little known outside them; the cult spreading to Tulice in the reign of Allectus IV and thence, fleetingly, to the home provinces. A minor god of discord, prophecy, fire, war and death, mostly favoured by artisans, craftsmen and the uneducated middle classes of small towns. Possibly as a result of the conflation of the Morevish Poldarn with the Tulicite Boliden (primarily a god of labour and the forge, thence fire in general, hence the confusion with the apocalyptic qualities of the better-established Morevish deity), also revered by those engaged in trades or crafts based on the employment of fire and heat, including smiths, founders, charcoal-burners, glaziers, potters, brick and tile manufacturers, bakers and others likely to employ fire in a forge, foundry or oven. In the brief imperial cult, most popular among the forementioned trades and among freelances and mercenary soldiers, whose practice it was to invoke the aid and forgiveness of the god when committing a captured town or city to the flames. Enjoyed a brief vogue at court and among persons of quality in the reign of Trebonian II, substantially as a god of death and transition; thence in philosophical theories propounded by the southernmost Thurmian schools, a patron of change and reincarnation – the conceit being the agency of fire to purge, purify and reshape matter, as in the melting down of metals and the refinement of gold; subsequent peripheral mentions in the writings of the alchemical movement in the south, in which the god was represented by the symbol of the crow (a carrion bird being deemed an appropriate image for the transition of dead matter into living matter by an impure agency), holding in its beak a golden ring (the gold referring to immutability, the ring to the cycle of death and rebirth) – in this context, cf. the paradoxical conceit whereby Poldarn loses his memory at the start of his journey (crude allegory for scrap metal losing its original shape when melted down in the furnace) and regains it only after encompassing the destruction of the world, presumably – though nowhere explicitly stated – in favour of the better world to come (i.e., after the molten metal has been recast in a new shape in the mould; on which, see Venercius, 36, II, n.). Thereafter in general decline, his cult decaying into superstition and folklore; latterly represented by a tradition of a god riding through rural areas in a wagon escorted by a female acolyte, his circular journey signifying the cycle of transhumance in pastoral societies, the solar cycle, et cetera. (Note also the variant tradition in which Poldarn departs across the sea after planting, travels to a mysterious unknown island and returns in time for harvest; some conflation suspected here with the historical figure of Kjartan Bollidan, leader of the Unferth Penal Colony expedition during the reign of Eucleptus III; Kjartan’s supporters maintained that he would one day return across the sea to overthrow the empire and free the oppressed; this did not, of course, happen, but the cult of personality lingered for over a century in some remote country districts.) Some literary references in the poetry of the Mannerist school under Iaco III and Caratacus, mainly referring to the alchemical character noted above and deteriorating into fixed epithet and cliché (e.g., ‘Poldarn’s journey’ fig., for a circle, ‘Poldarn’s winged servant’ for a carrion bird, ‘Poldarn’s sleep’ for forgetfulness, ‘riding beside Poldarn’ or ‘driving Poldarn’s cart’ as euphemisms for terminal illness or other such prospect of certain death, etc., in Staso, passim); now obsolete in preferred usage except as an archaism or referential. See also: Thurmites; Mannerists; Tulice; labour, patrons of; solar deities.
Well then, the brother thought, and now we know. He’d had an idea the name was familiar from somewhere; presumably he’d come across it at some stage when he’d been reading for finals, and it had lain hidden in the hayloft of his memory ever since, useless and unobtrusive, its purpose forgotten like some rusty old tool you find hanging in a dark corner of the barn. Curious, perhaps, to pick such an out-of-the-way god to impersonate; certainly not one the rubes in the villages would be likely to have heard of. He grinned; he could narrow his search down to renegade scholars, rogue Mannerist poets and southerners. In the countryside between the Mahec and Bohec rivers, anybody belonging to any of those categories would stick out like a turd in a cake shop.
Even so, it all seemed reasonably straightforward; nevertheless, he amused himself by chasing up a few references until the bell went for nocturns. He shuffled into chapel with the rest of them, took his place at the back of the middle section of stalls designated for the junior ordained, and spent the first quarter of an hour gazing meditatively at the distinctly uncanonical sculpted frieze that spiralled round the column nearest to him. The column was one of the best-kept se
crets in the order; it stood in a blind spot in the field of view from the lecterns and pulpits, which presumably was how it had escaped the notice of the Father Abbot who’d commissioned the chapel decorations three centuries ago, and it was an unspoken convention of the order that when one was promoted to a level of dignity and grace where one couldn’t possibly sanction such things, one conveniently forgot all about it, along with all the other guilty secrets and pleasures of the junior orders. Great art it definitely wasn’t; come to that, it wasn’t even biologically accurate, having presumably been put up there by a chapel monk who’d only ever read about such things; but it was fun, a little scrap of permitted rebellion in the stronghold of the Rule.
A lifetime of practice enabled him to snap out of his reverie in plenty of time to join in the hymns and responses, and as his mouth shaped the words (far too familiar by now to mean anything) he turned his mind to the divine Poldarn and the practicalities of his mission.
Going openly, as a religious, in garb and observing the Rule, he might expect a certain degree of co-operation from the pious and the fanatical that he wouldn’t get as a casual traveller. On the other hand the order wasn’t unduly popular outside its own lands at the best of times. These days, with bizarre cults springing up all over the place and crazy people burning down granaries in the name of the coming apocalypse, he might find garb made him unhelpfully conspicuous, not to mention a target for every overstressed hysteric with a grudge and a hayfork. (For some reason, the order had never got around to developing an approved course of combat for sword against hayfork, and as a result experienced brothers tended to treat the weapon with a healthy degree of respect. A fine weapon it was, too, with the potential for some quite sophisticated parries and disarms. One day, perhaps . . .)
In that case (they were singing the ‘Father, In Thy Mercy’) he’d need a persona, something from the order’s catalogue of appropriate identities for spies and infiltrators. He gave the matter some thought, but nothing obvious sprang to mind. Most of the personas in the catalogue were designed for the gathering of political, military and commercial intelligence in mind; the idea that one day there might be a need for an undercover scholar would seem not to have occurred to the early fathers, in spite of their quite awesome ability to predict virtually any possible contingency. In a way it pleased him to have come up with an angle that wasn’t covered by the Rule; when he got back, assuming he was still alive and had managed to achieve his objective, he’d be able to write it up as a paper, possibly even submit it for adjudication towards the junior fellowship he was surely in line for.
They knelt for prayer, and he dutifully herded all such thoughts out of his head as he opened his mind for the voice of the Divine. And, as always, the Divine chose not to speak to him on that particular day; and then they stood and sang the ‘Perfect Grace’, allowing him to continue with his train of thought.
Apart from a religious, what sort of person goes around the countryside asking questions about gods, prophecies, strange happenings, miracles and magic? Offhand, he could-n’t think of anybody. Nor were they the kind of topic that’d be likely to crop up in ordinary taproom conversation, except in passing, without the level of detail necessary for his observations. Very well, then; he’d have to approach the problem from another angle. There was, for example, always force; a man at the head of a column of cavalry can ask any question he likes and expect a detailed and civil answer. But that would be clumsy, as well as constituting an embarrassing show of strength at a time when the order preferred to stay quiet. Father Tutor wouldn’t like it at all, and might well suspect that he was doing it to be annoying, as a protest against being sent on what was palpably a penance assignment. Not force, then; what did that leave? Wandering lunatic? Surprisingly effective in some cases, though pretty gruelling, and the outskirts of Josequin were a long way away; sheer hell to have to stay in such a disagreeable character all that time, on foot, sleeping in ditches . . .
All right then, what about the other extreme? What about a wealthy eccentric, an amateur scholar compiling material for a book about – let’s see, how about ‘some observations concerning popular superstitions in the northern provinces’, something like that? Oh, he’d suffered enough of the works of such fatuous dilettanti in his youth – still the primary sources for several topics, even though the lecturers complained bitterly about their inaccuracy and lack of scientific method. There weren’t nearly so many of them nowadays – not many people could afford the time or the money, even if they had the interest – but the stereotype would still be recognised (translated into village speech, it’d come out as ‘bloody nuisance with too much money and time on his hands, coming round here asking bloody stupid questions’ – an accurate enough assessment, at that). At least it’d have the advantages of allowing him to sleep in a bed at an inn instead of curled up under a bush; he’d be able to ride and carry a couple of changes of clothing, eat whatever passed for a good meal.
So engrossed was he in planning the details of his new persona that he didn’t notice that the service was over, even though he’d correctly chanted the responses and sung the hymns (automatic, like the draw; and there were some who said that only the man who no longer thinks about praying can actually pray, since in reflexive action there is no thought, and without thought there can be no doubt – ‘the hand believes that the sword is in the sash; the heart believes that the divine is there,’ as someone or other so memorably put it). He came to just as the choir monks were starting to file out of the chapel, quickly reminded himself of who he was and what he was due to do next, and hurried back to his quarters to start getting ready.
Chapter Six
‘No point trying the act in Sansory,’ Copis had said earlier that day. ‘Wouldn’t work. If a god were to show up in Sansory they’d kidnap him and hold him to ransom.’
The first thing they saw after they’d driven under the amazingly high arch of the city gate was a fight. They had no option but to stay and watch, since the crowd of enthusiastic spectators had jammed the street solid and it was perfectly clear that nobody was going anywhere until there was a result. The participants were two old men: one was tall, bald and stooping, and the shaggy fringe of white hair around the back of his head was streaked with blood from two deep scalp wounds on his crown; the other was just under average height, with grey spikes plastered across his forehead and a palpably smashed jaw. They were fighting with quarterstaffs, which clattered together with a sound like a fast-running capstan as they struck and parried faster than Poldarn could follow. It didn’t take him long to see why both men’s wounds were to the head; it was clearly the primary target in quarterstaff play, with a few shots being reserved for the solar plexus, groin, kneecaps and elbows. The stamina and ferocity of the fighters was quite awe-inspiring, as was their apparent ability to take punishment. The bald man, for example, misjudged a ward and was jabbed in the teeth (he hadn’t had many to start with), followed by two lightning-fast cracks to either temple, a savage downward blow in the middle of his forehead, and an upward cut directly under his chin that knocked his head back so sharply that Poldarn was sure his neck must have been broken. But, after staggering back three or four paces, still managing to dodge a shot or two while he was at it, he found a wall to back into and straighten himself up again, and launched himself at his enemy with a feinted jab to the throat, instantly converted into another feint to the groin, and carried home as a slanting smash to the cheekbone that sprayed the first three rows of the crowd with a fine mist of blood. Then it was the other man’s turn to stagger for a moment; three or four exchanges later, however, they were back to being evenly matched, both of them moving as fast and as fluently as ever.
Poldarn leaned over to whisper. ‘Does this sort of thing . . . ?’
‘All the time,’ she replied, her eyes fixed on the fight. ‘It’s part of their rich and unique cultural heritage. Whee!’ she added, as the shorter man stepped into his enemy’s attack, deliberately taking a sickening
blow to his left temple so as to close and slam his staff into the other man’s groin. ‘You must admit, they put on a good show here.’
Even the bald man couldn’t keep standing up after a shot like that one. He doubled up, his head bobbing forward, straight into a chin-lifter even more blood-curdling than the one he’d planted on the other man a few moments before. It was followed up by four crushing side blows, two to each ear, and rounded off by a left-to-right lowhand cross that broke his nose and set it back at a truly bizarre angle, leaving him crumpled up on the ground like a child who’s just fallen out of a tree. After that he didn’t move at all. The shorter man, having kicked him in the ribs a few times in the interests of total security, spat on his face and hobbled awkwardly away, using his staff as a crutch.
‘One thing we must do while we’re here,’ Copis said, ‘is try the smoked lamb. It’s the local speciality. Apparently, it’s something to do with the kind of wood they use.’