Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman

by Walter M Miller Jr

  “Oh, of course. I was only thinking about how he just last week took in a refugee from Leibowitz Abbey. He hired a young Brother Torrildo as his assistant and acolyte. He’s always thinking of the welfare of young boys.”

  “I’m acquainted with my uncle, Father Colonel Pottscar. My question is: do you think spending money to Christianize the Nomads would be a wise investment?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the Nomads would be baptized, take the money, ignore the priests, and do as they have always done.”

  “Just so. Well, look at the clock! Let us go inspect the wares of the gunsmiths, gentlemen.”

  “Wait a moment, Sire,” said Goldæm. “I think Carp…uh, the admiral might have something to say first.”

  “Go right ahead, Carp,” said the Hannegan.

  The admiral winced slightly, but said, “The guns the alien warriors brought with them disappeared soon after they met Brownpony.”

  “How do you know that? And if true, what does it mean?”

  “I heard it from Esitt Loyte, Sire. Their homeland has firearms superior to our own, and such guns are now being made on the west coast.” He took out a small pistol, only to have it snatched from his hand by one of Filpeo’s bodyguards. The guard seemed to have trouble determining if the gun was loaded. The admiral assured him that it was not.

  “Where did you get that thing?” Filpeo asked.

  “About fifty-eight hundred nautical miles from here, Sire. On a great circle course, almost northwest, I’d guess. Or sixty-three hundred miles, by rhumb line course, nearly due west. That’s my best guess without looking at the charts.”

  “Across the ocean? Not our west coast?”

  “No, but they’re in production on our west coast by now.”

  “Show me how it works, Admiral,” said Filpeo.

  Carpios Robbery pulled five cartridges out of his pocket, loaded the revolver, walked to the nearest window, aimed at the sky, and shocked their eardrums by holding down the trigger and rapidly fanning the hammer five times with the edge of his hand. When he turned around, Filpeo looked pale.

  “My God! Is that what’s been piling up in the Suckamint Mountains?”

  “I have no way of knowing that, Sire. But this special battalion you want Goldy to organize should have a lot of firepower.”

  “Give me the weapon. Let’s go see the gunsmiths.”

  The admiral released the pistol with obvious reluctance.

  According to the gunsmiths’ salesmen, the prototype of a similar weapon was already on the drawing board and might be ready in two years, but they were alarmed to see a competitive firearm already in production.

  “Would your possession of this gun hasten production?”

  “That is very likely, Sire.”

  Carpios Robbery winced again.

  “I’ll let you have it before you leave the city,” Filpeo said, then looked at his admiral’s expression and added, “Of course, you must send it back to its owner here when you’re done with it.”

  “Certainly, Sire.”

  Brownpony’s interview with His Imperial Majesty Filpeo Harq, Mayor Hannegan VII, happened in City Hall, also called the Imperial Palace, on Thursday, the 5th of January, thus giving the lie to a Jack-rabbit rumor extant in the Province which held that Filpeo Harq always had himself locked up in his private quarters for three days about the time of the full moon, and would see no one. That Thursday the moon was full, and after opening the sealed papers from Pope Amen, the Monarch flew into such a rage that Blacktooth wished the rumor were true. He and Weh-Geh were made to sit on a bench in the corridor outside the mayoral throne room, and they could hear only muffled shouting without being able to understand much of it. None of the shouting was done by the cardinal.

  Presently a priest with a monsignor’s bellyband came down the hall and spoke to the guards. One of them knocked hard, opened the door, and shouted, “Monsignor Sanual, in obedience to the Lord Mayor’s summons,” and pushed him inside, then followed him and closed the door. There was a lull in the shouting.

  Blacktooth had never seen Sanual before, but had heard enough about him from both his master and Father Steps-on-Snake to know that he would be anything but a friendly witness, and that Brownpony’s actions at the funeral festival on the Plains and his participation in the affair with the Wild Horse Woman were on the court’s agenda. He exchanged a glance with Weh-Geh, and saw that both of them were aware of this.

  The guard who took Sanual inside now opened the door and spoke to the other guard. “Seize them,” he said, and again closed the door.

  The guard had no way to seize them, but he pointed his gun at Weh-Geh and told him to throw his swords aside. Two seconds later, he was flat on his back with a sword point at his throat.

  “Get his weapon, Brother?” It was a suggestion, not a command.

  “No,” said Blacktooth. “That was a mistake, Weh-Geh. Remember the cardinal.”

  Weh-Geh looked at the door. Then he booted the fallen guard in the stomach. Having taken the wind out of the man, he grabbed the gun and burst through the door. Nimmy observed the startled Monarch sitting on his throne. Brownpony had been forced to his knees, and the guard was holding a pistol to his head. Weh-Geh aimed at Filpeo Harq, and barked, “Let my master go!”

  Nimmy leaped away from the door, for the Mayor was flanked by two more guards with raised muskets. The man gasping for breath crawled toward Nimmy, who leaped over him to avoid a fight.

  There were three distinct explosions, then silence, followed by Filpeo Harq’s voice: “Take him and the one in the hall away.”

  Blacktooth looked inside again. Weh-Geh lay in a growing pool of blood. One of the musketeers was down, but the Mayor himself was holding a pistol. It looked like the one Ædrea had showed to him in the cave. It was impossible to guess who had killed Weh-Geh. All weapons were still pointed at his body. When the Hannegan saw Nimmy standing white-faced in the door, he raised his pistol again, but the monk leaped aside. He made no attempt to escape. A frightened and humiliated Cardinal Brownpony was still kneeling there.

  One of the jails at Hannegan City was part of the public zoo, where interesting prisoners were exhibited in cages not unlike those used for cougars, true wolves, and monkeys. On the way in, they passed an open area girded by a heavy fence on which there was a sign saying CAMELUS DROMEDARIUS, AFRICA, CONTRIB. ADMIRAL E’FONDOLAI.

  “Guard, what are those things?” Brownpony asked.

  “It says right there,” snapped the jail guard. “Don’t stop to gawk.”

  “They’re domesticated!”

  “How astute of you. Otherwise, the boy wouldn’t be riding on the animal’s back, eh?”

  “Are they useful?”

  “They can go for longer periods without water than horses. The admiral says they are used in desert warfare where he got them.”

  “Are there more of them?”

  “Not as far as I know, but there soon will be.” He pointed to a female with a large belly. “But they’re the only camels in captivity on this continent, as far as I know. The admiral brought them in the hold of a giant schooner. Now move along, move along!”

  They were escorted past cells full of lesser animals, and then cells full of human prisoners. On each cell was posted the name of the occupant species. The humans were mostly murderers: a Homo sicarius, a Homo matricidus, but two Homines seditiosi, and one child rapist. All of them jeered as the two clerics were locked into the third cell on the left. The jailer unwrapped a sign and posted it above the door of the cage, out of sight and out of reach. The man in the cell across the roofless corridor from theirs looked at it, entered a whispered conversation with the man in the adjacent cell, and fell silent, watching them as if in awe. His own cage was labeled not Homo but Gryllus (Grasshopper), and his crimes were war crimes. His jeering had been limited to Nomad grunts, so when the jailer was gone Blacktooth spoke to the man in his native tongue.

  “What does
our sign say?” he asked.

  The man did not answer. He and Brownpony were staring at each other. “I know you,” the cardinal said in Wilddog. “You were with Hultor Bråm.”

  The Nomad nodded. “Yes,” he answered in his own dialect. “We took you south to meet your Pope. You asked me why the Lord Sharf called us a ‘war party.’ Now you know. I was the only captive, to my great shame. But Pforft here says that you tried to murder the Hannegan.”

  “Is that all our sign says?” Nimmy asked.

  Evidently the Nomad could not read. He conversed again with the man named Pforft, then shook his head. “I don’t know what all those words mean.”

  Pforft, himself a pederast, spoke to them: “It says heresy, simony, the crime of wounding majesty, as well as attempted regicide.”

  Fortunately, the hour was late and the zoo was closed for the day. Although the other prisoners wore uniforms, none were furnished for the cardinal and his secretary. Each of them received three blankets against the January cold. The cage was open to the weather on the south side. At least they would get sun during part of the day.

  The cardinal still had not fully recovered from the curse of Meldown. “My Lady of the Buzzards had a buzzard’s breath, it seems,” he told Blacktooth, when he was feeling almost hysterically cheerful. “When Urion’s Angel of Battle fights my Buzzard of Battle, which do you bet on to win?”

  “M’Lord, doesn’t that old prayer go: ‘Holy Michael Archangel, deliver us from battle’?”

  “No, it doesn’t, Brother Monk. It’s ‘defend us in battle,’ but ‘deliver us from the snares of the devil.’ As you well know. But what would you bet right now on either prayer being answered?”

  “Nothing. If I remember the Nomad myth right, your Burregun, since you claim her, always mourns as she eats the fallen warriors, the children of her sister the Day Maiden. She doesn’t want war either.”

  “You are right, we must pray for peace while girding for war. Of course you are right, Nimmy, you’re always right.”

  Nimmy hung his head and frowned. But Brownpony was not being just sarcastic. To avoid being understood by other prisoners, they were speaking neo-Latin, and the cardinal’s speech was unguarded.

  “I mean it. You were right to leave the abbey, although you are a monk of Leibowitz. You were right to fall in love with a girl like Ædrea. You are right to disapprove of my importing and selling west-coast weapons without telling His Holiness.” Blacktooth looked at him in surprise. Brownpony noticed the look and went on: “Pope Linus Six, who gave red hats to your late abbot and me, was the man who assigned me the task, in a letter which I still have in Valana. Linus told me not to show it to anyone unless I got caught, and then only to a pope. Frankly, Nimmy, I have almost wanted to get caught.”

  “Oh.” Blacktooth thought it over. It was certainly true that Brownpony had not been cautious, allowing even Aberlott the Mouth to learn of his activities. But he would probably rather be caught by Amen Specklebird. Suddenly the cardinal seemed less sinister, an unwell man with a hump on his back and an uneasy conscience.

  Fortunately, during visitor’s hours, when children would spit at them through the bars of their cages, the human animals were fed raw beef and raw potatoes for the amusement of the crowd. No one was watching when they ate cornmeal mush for breakfast. Nimmy remembered from Boedullus that eating raw meat, or better still, drinking fresh blood as the Nomads sometimes did, was “good for the patient’s own blood,” and he persuaded Brownpony to eat some of the meat. Nimmy liked flesh raw, if fresh, but sometimes the jail meat tasted like coyote kill, and raw potatoes gave them both a stomachache. Filpeo’s government did provide enough mush to keep the zoo’s display specimens from looking starved. During their stay at the prison, three inmates were led from their death cells to the chopping block. From fellow prisoners, they learned that Wooshin had been replaced with a chopping machine, not another electric chair. The electric dynamo, an expensive affair, could be put to more productive use than frying felons.

  The moon phase had waned from full to new. Then one afternoon past visitors’ hours, a man in a lacy surplice came and stood looking in at them.

  “Torrildo!”

  The former brother winked at Nimmy but remained silent.

  “What do you want, man?” Brownpony snapped.

  “My Lord the Archbishop wonders if you would like the Eucharist brought to you here.”

  “I would like bread and wine with which to offer Mass myself.”

  “I’ll ask,” said Torrildo, and departed.

  “Find out if the Pope knows we’re in jail!” Blacktooth called after him.

  “Nimmy!” hissed the cardinal.

  But Torrildo had stopped. Without looking back, he said, “He knows,” and resumed his departure.

  “Damn! It’s all over.” Brownpony was angry and downcast.

  Blacktooth decided to let him alone. He rolled up in his blankets and took a nap in the icy wind.

  Three days later Torrildo came back. This time Blacktooth winked at him. Torrildo blushed. “I never saw a sarcastic wink before,” he said.

  “What about the bread and wine?” the cardinal asked.

  “Your Eminence will not have time to say Mass.” He produced a letter from a sleeve and a key from his pocket. “I am to let you go when you read this and promise to obey these instructions.”

  Brownpony accepted the papers and began reading, handing each page to Blacktooth as he finished.

  “Damn! It’s all over,” the cardinal repeated, again downcast but without anger.

  “I thought every cardinal had a Church in New Rome,” Nimmy remarked as soon as he read the first lines.

  “There is a Saint Michael’s in New Rome,” Brownpony told him. “And it’s Urion’s Church, but there he is not called the Angel of Battle.”

  They read in silence while Torrildo watched and impatiently drummed the key in his palm. The first page was thus.

  To His Eminence Elia Cardinal Brownpony, Deacon of Saint Maisie’s.

  From Urion Cardinal Benefez, Archbishop of Saint Michael the Archangel.

  Inasmuch as the pretended Pope, one Amen Specklebird, has by trying to resign the papacy, admitted that he was never Pope, it has pleased His Imperial Grace the Mayor of Texark to pardon all of your crimes except attempted regicide, for which you and your servant Blacktooth St. George are under suspended sentences of death. You are to be expelled from the Empire as personae non gratae. By countersigning this letter in the place indicated below, you enter a plea to the remaining charge against you of nolo contendere, which His Grace is persuaded to accept, and you agree to be escorted under guard as swiftly as possible to a crossing point of your choosing on the Bay Ghost River, and promise never to return except by order of a reigning Pontiff, a General Council, or a Conclave, and only for the purpose of direct passage to or from New Rome from the nearest border crossing.

  There was a place for their signatures below a statement acknowledging the charges with a plea of no contest, and agreeing to obey a decree of permanent banishment.

  The other pages were a more or less personal plea from Benefez to Brownpony and other Valanan cardinals to accept New Rome as the proper place for an immediate conclave to elect a pope. When Brownpony finished reading, he looked up at Torrildo. The acolyte was holding a metal pen and a phial of ink out to him through the bars. They quickly signed, and the key turned in the lock.

  Their trip back to the Bay Ghost by coach on the main military highway west was a fast, rough ride, taking less than ten days. Before they left the Province, the guards permitted Brownpony to buy two horses from a Jackrabbit farmer. The moon was full again, allowing them to ride sometimes by night. When they came at last to Leibowitz Abbey, an excited Abbot Olshuen knelt to kiss the cardinal’s ring and tell him that he, Brownpony, was now Pope-Elect, chosen by an angry conclave of Valanan cardinals, called by Pope Amen before his resignation. The cardinals were eagerly awaiting his accepto.

  �
��Who brought this crazy message?” Brownpony demanded.

  “Why, it was an old guest of ours, who went to New Rome with you. Namely, Wooshin. Cardinal Nauwhat sent him with the letter from the Curia—it’s in my office—and an oral message from Sorely.”

  “What was the oral message?”

  “That he had opposed the conclave, but hoped you would accept the election anyway.”

  “He knows it isn’t legal” was the Red Deacon’s immediate comment. “Of course I won’t accept.”

  “You have a more immediate problem,” said Olshuen, recovering from his initial awe of the cardinal.

  “And what is that, Dom Abiquiu?”

  “Have you told Brother St. George about his young lady? She came for him while you were gone. He thought she had died. She said you knew she was alive.”

  Brownpony was suddenly nervous. “We’ll talk about that. Let’s go to your office. I need to read the letter from the Curia.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Let all guests who arrive be received as Christ, for He is going to say, “I came as a guest, and you received me.”

  —Saint Benedict’s Rule, Chapter 53

  HEY HAD ARRIVED AT LEIBOWITZ ABBEY DURING the recreational hour in the late afternoon of Ash Wednesday. The Yellow Guard presided over several kick-boxing matches between novices, and even the professed Brothers Wren and Singing Cow were sparring clumsily. Blacktooth observed that the style of fighting differed in some respects from that of Wooshin—although the Axe would never admit to having a “style”. However, Foreman Jing, who had fenced with Wooshin, called it the “way of the homeless sword,” and a “style of no-style.”

  Brownpony’s first duty was to confer with Abbot Olshuen.

  Blacktooth’s was to bring bad news to the Yellow Guard. First he established himself in the guest room.

  “You’re still here!” he exclaimed upon entering.

  “No, no,” said Önmu Kun, the Jackrabbit gun smuggler. “I’m back for the second time since you left.” He was full of wine and the urge to talk. “The Jackrabbit Weejus and Bear Spirit have chosen me as sharf, did you know that?”