Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman

by Walter M Miller Jr

“Does not God decide?”

  “Father Ombroz is an enlightened man,” said Holy Madness, who had overtaken them. Both of them looked at him strangely, waiting for Høngan to continue, but he only yawned, shook his head. “The woman who may be your mother has come, m’Lord.”

  Brownpony looked at the moon and changed the subject. “The Pope is taking a walk tonight. He always walks under a bright moon and sings to the Virgin, her sister. The Pope that would give the Church away to the poor, if Nauwhat and I would let him.” My God, what are we going to do?

  “Your Eminence, do you not want to see the woman? She is of royal blood, a distant cousin of mine. Which would make you my cousin too.” He laughed, perhaps with a trace of bitterness.

  “The family name is Urdon Go, not Avdek Gole,” he said, after the cardinal’s silence. “Not a brown pony, but a sorrel colt.”

  “Oxsho told me. But my God!” Brownpony whispered, his face draining. “After all these years. The Sisters spoke Jackrabbit, of course.”

  “Your mother, if that’s what she is, is there. She is that old woman sitting on the blankets by the door of the hogan there. I would be very careful. She can be as violent as the Nunshån.”

  “Of course. Thank you.” Brownpony walked quickly toward her, then stopped a few paces away. The woman’s eyes were white with cataracts. But she had perceived his approach with her ears, her wrinkled mask facing him. “You are Texark?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Only half,” he said in Wilddog. “Only half, Mother.” Calling her “mother” was a polite form of address; she did not need to take it literally.

  But she stood. She spat on his face and his cassock. She was chewing a quid of herbs. Perhaps her aim was bad. She was nearly blind. Surely it was unintentional? But they had told him about her. Had they told her nothing about him?

  The cardinal retreated. It was no good. He could not tell her that the man she faced without eyes was what had been planted in her by force and ripped unwelcome from her thighs, and that his hair was red. He knew she would not want to know him. She was a simple woman, but bitter. He could see the family, while royal, was not wealthy. But now that it was known to Chür Høngan and the chieftains that he was her son, the news would come back to her that he was here, if she did not already know. Surely she was expecting it. There was nothing he could do about that but tell the Nomad sharfs that he was willing to come to her if she called. He felt certain she would never call. Though depressed, he was glad he had seen her, and glad to think she did not know for certain.

  “Your Eminence, please!” The voice calling to him from the doorway of a tent was that of Monsignor Sanual, the Texark Archbishop’s legate. The chubby diplomat seemed distraught. “Come in, please, Eminence, come in a moment.”

  Although Sanual had nearly snubbed him earlier in the day, Brownpony silently complied, stooping to enter a lantern-lighted space, stuffy with earth odors and the smell of spilled sacramental wine. The wine too was on Sanual’s breath as he grasped the cardinal’s arm.

  “They’re eating the old chief! I thought you would be staying in your tent tonight!”

  “And miss the show?” He carefully recovered his arm from Sanual’s grasp. “The Archbishop’s legate may sulk in his tent if he chooses. The Pope’s legate may not.”

  Sanual drew back. Both knew they were vying for the favor of the wild tribes and the new Christian chief who might soon unite the Three Hordes.

  “You’d do anything!” said Sanual. “If His Holiness knew…”

  “Look at it this way. My mother was a Nomad. The dead chief was a cousin of mine. The new chief is also a cousin. Remote, of course. But I’m not going to shun the last rites of my own people. Now what did you want to see me about?”

  “Just that. Your relationship.” Sanual was sneering. “Ombroz told me you’ve been chosen to be in the kingship ritual!”

  “I just saw Ombroz. He said nothing to me about it. Besides, you always turn your back on the man. I don’t believe you, Father. You’ve been drinking.”

  “He shouted it at me! And that cackling laugh of his. Of course, he’s senile and quite mad, but I believe him. It’s so, isn’t it?”

  “I have only been informed that, as a son of the royal mother-line, I am entitled to be honored during the celebration. The honor is personal, and has nothing to do with my office or my mission.”

  “Then for the honor of God, Your Eminence, take off the vestments of your office when the time comes.”

  “Are you here to express Texark’s disapproval of the Nomads’ pagan ritual, or are you here to honor the inauguration by them of a Christian chief?”

  “I was hoping to do both, but I hadn’t counted on your willingness to take the Devil to your bosom. We ought to be together on this. For the love of God, Cardinal, tolerance has to stop someplace.”

  “I was never a priest, Father, until just recently. I’m just a lawyer to whom my late lord the Pope Linus Sixth gave a red hat, and Pope Amen just made a bishop. Fine points of theology are not in my repertory.”

  “Cannibalism is a fine point, Your Eminence?”

  “I take note of your objections, Messér. I’ll mention them in my report to the Pope, as I am sure you’ll mention them in your report to your Archbishop. Is that all you wanted to see me about?”

  “Not quite. There is a rumor that you were sent to assert a pretended episcopal authority over Churches in our missionary territory. Is this true?”

  “Your missionary territory is not your missionary territory except by right of conquest, and no right of conquest exists except when a war is a just and defensive war. Pope Amen has made me Vicar Apostolic to the Three Hordes, if that’s what you mean, and it has nothing to do with your masters, either of them.”

  “Damn! There is no pope! We agree on nothing! Not on common decency. Not even on saving the Church from schism!” Sanual turned his back. Brownpony left the legate’s tent at once, strode toward the main bonfires, briefly observed the orgy, and then retired.

  But that night the blind old woman came and tried to kill him in his sleep. At his outcry, Oxsho leaped from his sleeping bag, grappled with her briefly, forced the knife from her hand, and led her away.

  “She cannot be your mother,” the warrior said upon returning.

  “She is. She just proved it.”

  Cardinal Brownpony spent the rest of the night staring at the drifting patch of stars framed by the smoke hole in the top of the tent. He thought of Seruna, his wife. He thought of the Sisters who raised him, of the Church and the Virgin, and the Høngin Fujæ Vurn to whom the nearby pit was sacred. He knew now that he must indeed accept the ordeal of courting the Wild Horse Woman in her place of ancient fire. If he was to become the highest Christian shaman in the eyes of the People, he must become a Nomad as fully as Father Ombroz. The drunken words came back to him: Sometimes I take a piece of bread and consecrate it as the true body of Christ. Sometimes I take the true body of Christ and consecrate it as…

  Somehow it sounded like a thing Amen Specklebird might say.

  The moon had almost set when a dark shadow filled the doorway. Not his mother again! Oxsho was snoring. But it was Holy Madness who called softly to him: “Dress quickly, m’Lord. I want to show you the pit.”

  Brownpony obeyed, but when they were outside, he asked, “Couldn’t we see it better by day?”

  “No. If you must face the test, you must face it at night. Even full moonlight obscures the glow of the poison.”

  They mounted the two horses Høngan had brought and rode quietly out of camp. The orange moon was just touching the horizon and there was little light, but the horses knew the terrain. The rim of the crater was a half hour’s ride from the camp. A sentry gave them a sleepy challenge as they passed the outskirts, but he recognized a grunt from his sharf and sat down.

  When they came near the edge of the pit, the moon was down and there was scarcely a hint of morning twilight in the east. The pit was a lake of blackness, and they appro
ached cautiously on foot. Holy Madness grasped the cardinal’s arm.

  “Damn!” he said after a moment.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The fire comes and goes. Tonight I can’t even see it.”

  “I don’t even know where to look.”

  “Look at the sky. Find the brightest star in the Thief and then bring your eyes straight down. There should be a tiny red spot near the center.”

  “The Thief is a Nomad constellation.”

  Høngan pointed. Brownpony sighted along his arm. “I think we call that Perseus. Yes, and that star must be Mirfak.”

  They both sat at the rim of the crater and watched in silence. The only sound was the wind and the distant howling of the wilddogs. Occasionally Chür Høngan swore under his breath.

  “Does it really matter?” the cardinal asked. “Can’t you show me by daylight?” He glanced east. The sky was brightening.

  “It does matter. You should see it glow. You must take note of the wind, and stay out of its lee. Some nights you can see a trail of vapor, as well as the hole it comes from.”

  “Isn’t it better if the fire is inactive?”

  “Yes, but the whole pit is somewhat contaminated. The only vegetation in it is on the weather side of the average wind here. You should stay where the weeds grow, except when the wind is wrong. You can see what I mean in a few minutes.”

  Their vigil lasted until the sun cleared the hill. The pit did seem lifeless, except for a little vegetation at the foot of a cliff. At the moment, the breeze was blowing away from it.

  On the following day, the leaders of the Bear Spirit and Weejus met to consider Brownpony’s wish to pay court to the Høngin Fujæ Vurn in the Navel of the World and face the hidden fires of Meldown. The cardinal himself was excluded, but twice Chür Høngan emerged from the council lodge to ask a question.

  The first question: “Will you treat the Great Mare with the same reverence as the Holy Virgin?”

  “Yes, if I may say my usual prayers to her.”

  An hour later came the second question: “You realize that if she rejects you, you will not be accepted as having any authority over Christian Nomads of any horde. Will you resign the office the Pope gave you?”

  “If I live long enough to resign, yes.”

  Høngan gave him a hard look and returned to the meeting. When it was over, the Wilddog sharf announced that the cardinal would spend Thursday night in the pit. Friday the Wilddog sharf Holy Madness would pay court to the Wild Horse Woman, and the Saturday’s vigil was for the Grasshopper sharf Kindly Light. The Grasshopper’s complaint was that of the three of them, only Høngan would have a full moon from dusk to dawn, but Holy Madness explained to him privately: “If you are familiar with the pit, so that you do not stumble into trouble in the dark, the moon is not your friend. You cannot see the hellfire by bright moonlight, and as you know, sometimes not even by dark. Clouds may cover the moon. Spend the day studying her breeding pit from every angle. When the wind changes, you will have to move.”

  The following night he spent in the pit. Oxsho led him to the place of descent. The moon, nearly full, was in the east at sundown. He carried a blanket but no bedroll. Sleep would be dangerous, but a chill would settle over the area after midnight.

  “My teacher wishes me to spend the night on the clifftop and keep a fire burning,” the young warrior told him. “I’ll hold up a torch when the wind is changing. Watch for the torch. Sometimes a light breeze may be hard to feel down there.”

  “Is this permitted?”

  Oxsho paused. “I won’t start it until everyone’s asleep, and behind this rock nobody’ll see it. And only Sharf Bråm might object. God and the Mare keep you, m’Lord.”

  A wind that swooped down from the lip of the crater carried wisps of dust that dimmed the stars, but it was the dust of the prairie, not the pit. He chose a resting place in the sparse clump of vegetation where the dust of the devil’s hole would blow away from him. He was still very sad because of the encounter with the bitter woman whose womb had borne him against her will. He had been a son of violence and hate before his adoption by the Sisters, but his memory of the Sisters was tinged with resentment, except for Sister Magdalen (“Cries-a-River”), a former Jackrabbit Nomad who told him stories and made his education her special concern. Seruna, when he married, had reminded him of Magdalen. Now both were dead. When he passed through Jackrabbit territory to visit some of his Churches, would he visit the orphanage? And was it nostalgia or resentment that made him think of it? Better not, he decided. Neither emotion would benefit his ecclesiastical and political project.

  After a while the cardinal began to pray, saying his rosary at first, and letting his eyes linger around the patch of darkness that marked the cave entrance under the moonlit ledge of rock. He spoke softly to the patch of darkness, but he still felt the sting of his real mother’s spit like acid in his face. He spoke now to that other mother of myriad names: Regina Mundi, Domina Rerum, Mater Dei, Høngin Fujæ Vurn, even the War Buzzard. Her manifestations were always associated with a place: Bethlehem, Lourdes, Guadalupe, and here at the Navel of the World.

  “I was born in the south end of your realm, Mother, and I know your paths. Even there, where the People are servants of those who took your land, I have seen your ways. Miriam, mother of Jesus, pray for me.”

  Oxsho held up his torch when a cloud covered the moon near the zenith. He could at last see a kind of luminosity above and about the hole at the center of the pit, and he moved a hundred paces away from the direction pointed out by the flame.

  “Lord, have mercy. Kyrie eleison.”

  Fortunately, the wind was at his back again.

  “My mother was a woman of the Wilddog tribes, Mother; my father did evil to her, and to your people. Let him be dead, as she is now dead for me. Let me not find him, lest I kill him. Long ago, before I knew she was dead to me, her spirit told me to come here. I have not done as she wished. I have left the People. I have taken the religion the Sisters taught me. But at last I am before you, Mother.”

  The wind was shifting a lot that night. He kept moving.

  “Christ, have mercy. Christe eleison.”

  He moved again to keep the wind at his back, taking his cue from the occasional torchlight, but he went on talking softly in the direction of the cave.

  “My hair is red. His was red, she told them. The Sisters who took her in. The Sisters raised me. Miriam, Mother of Jesus, pray for me. If he were living, I would kill him. Ora pro me, Wild Horse Woman. Kyrie eleison.”

  Once during the night, he actually saw her: a woman’s figure, black against the glow from the fire pit. Her arms were raised like wings. The Nunshån? No, the figure was young; the Night Hag was old. Because of the wings, she had to be the Burregun, the War Buzzard. But when he stood, she vanished.

  Amen Specklebird spoke of her as if she were a fourth member of the Holy Trinity, and that was one of the excuses of the Benefez faction for refusing him recognition. A pope who could utter heresy was no pope. But he had not been pope when he said it. Would he say it still? No. Surprising to Brownpony was the ease with which the old man shifted into his papal role. A doubter would call it hypocrisy. A believer would call it the work of the Holy Ghost, protecting the flock against error.

  How many popes were in Hell? he wondered. Dante had named a few, but the list was incomplete. The last pope before the Flame Deluge was surely one of them.

  On that thought, he lapsed into slumber, for the moon had sunk below the rim of the pit. It was the brightness of the sky and the shouting of Oxsho that woke him. The wind had gone wrong. He grabbed the blanket and trotted as fast as he could toward the path leading upward. For better or worse, his trial was over.

  “If you are sick within the week, you will die,” was the matter-of-fact first prognosis of the Weejus who talked to him. “If you do not die soon, you can expect a shorter lifetime. They told you this beforehand?”

  “Of course, Grandmother.�
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  She questioned him closely. He told her about seeing the woman with upraised arms he had seen against the glow of the hellfire. She stared at him. After a long pause, she asked, “Do you know of the Buzzard of Battle?”

  “I have heard of the Burregun.”

  “The Buzzard of Battle is red in the sky.”

  “She was not in the sky.”

  The old woman nodded, and that was the end of the interview. She took her opinions with her into the council lodge. Later that day, Chür Høngan came to tell him that the Bear Spirit accepted him conditionally as Christian shaman. The condition was that he not fall ill anytime soon.

  Brownpony saw little cause to celebrate. A messenger came from Valana to report that Jarad Cardinal Kendemin, Abbot of Saint Leibowitz, had gone to meet the Judge. A report also came that the Pope and his party were encamped in the no-man’s-land between Wilddog and Grasshopper domains. Holy Madness graciously offered to swap his appointment with the Høngin Fujæ Vurn for Kindly Light’s, so that Hultor Bråm could leave with his escort party of warriors on Saturday morning to meet Amen Specklebird and lead him to the frontiers of the Empire.

  Brownpony decided to ride south with the warriors. Bråm, fresh from his encounter with the Mare, offered no objection.

  Early Saturday morning, an hour before their departure, Cardinal Brownpony borrowed bread, wine, a missal, and a portable altar from Father Ombroz. It was his wish to celebrate a pontifical High Mass; it would be good politics and showmanship, but he could not sing well, and had said no more than a dozen Masses since his ordination. Monsignor Sanual stiffly declined his request to serve either as co-celebrant or acolyte. The Red Deacon looked at Ombroz.

  “Will you hear my confession first?” asked the old Ignatzian.

  “You have something recent to confess?”

  Ombroz took his meaning, and shook his head in annoyance. He called instead for Oxsho, his own altar boy. Between them, they rounded up all Christians and invited all the Weejus and Bear Spirit people who wished to attend. The Vicar Apostolic to the Three Hordes offered a simple Mass there on the high prairie with the smoke of dung fires in the breeze and a congregation of wild Nomads circling the altar at a safe distance. Probably more people came forward to receive the Eucharist than there were Christians in the encampment, but he questioned no one. Those who looked surprised at the bland flavor of the Body of Christ were probably pagan shamans. Neither Sanual nor Ombroz came forward to receive. After the Ite, missa est, a cheer arose from the crowd, but he could not be sure who incited it. Obviously, he was accepted as the Christian high shaman of the People.