"Not really a hurry, but I don't hate you the price of oil. Put a lamp on the table and sit down. There are some things I am about curious, and that Lady Roxanna doesn't not want it to talk about."
"Uh, as you wish, my lord."
"First, what is you name?"
"Jacques, my lord."
"Good, Jacques. First time, about the lady herself. I guessing that she was used to be married. Who was man and what happened to him?"
"You mean the Baron Roland, my lord. He was a fine young man, he was. He ruled the Barony of Avalon as well as anyone had ever done before him, he did."
"And he dead now?"
"Yes, poor man. Dead and in Heaven, if there's any justice. There was a fight in a tavern between a gardener and a merchant. Drunk, the both of them, they was. The baron went to break it up, as was his duty, and the merchant hit him on the head with a full pitcher of beer. Killed him dead on the spot. They hung the merchant for it, of course, but that didn't make the Lady Roxanna any less of a widow. It happened almost a year ago, it did."
"I see. My friend Adam was put with young widow like me. Just the coincidence, or was there some one good reason behind them?"
"Well, it's not for such as me to second-guess my betters, my lord, but don't you see that it just made sense? I mean, somebody had to nurse the two of you back to health, and teach you how to speak properly and all, so why not put you with some people who needed you as much as you needed them?"
"Oh. I see. No one has asked me for money yet, but I intend to pay for good services rendered. From what Adam say, I can afford it."
"Afford it? My lord, you are one of the two richest men in all of the Western Isles, and your partner is the other one. I mean, I wouldn't pry, you understand, but I was one of the men who was called up to help salvage your ship. There were tons of iron and steel and copper on that ship! And gold and silver, too, and other metals I don't even know the names of! There was stored food by the ton that the Warlock said would last forever, and you could see him looking just greedy at all the boxes of magic stuff we brought ashore. Yes, my lord, you can afford just about anything you can dream of!"
"Now, that's hard to me believe, but then maybe again I can probably dream a bit higher and broader than you can. So the Lady Roxanna is in need of money? Well, I'll be glad to oblige her."
"Yes, my lord, she needs cash, and don't we all know it. Not that I'm speaking on my own behalf, you understand. I mean, the wife and me will make out some way or another, no matter what happens. Even if the lady loses her lands and apartment, why, we'd probably go right with the land, so to speak, unless the new baron had some other servants that he wanted in our stead. Not that we'd want to stop serving the lady, of course, but if she really lost the land, what could we do for her? I mean, me being just a gardener and all."
"Relax. I don't think you lose a job, nor will the others either. Like I will say, I'll see that Roxanna is good paid."
"Thank you, my lord, and that's from all of us. And maybe we'd all be eating a little higher on the food chain if you could see fit to pay her something real soon," he said.
"Certainly. But if urgent things were now, why she say anything didn't?"
"Because she's a lady, and used to be a baroness. She's got her pride, she has. And mostly, I think, because what she really needs is more than money alone, if you get my meaning."
"No, I'm afraid I don't get meaning yours at all," I said.
"Well, confound it, I'm talking way out of line here, my lord, and if you want to have me whipped for it, so be it. But somebody has got to talk some common sense into you!"
"I'm not going to have you whipping, and I've punished never a man for speaking the truth. So if you have something to say, go out with you!"
"Yes, my lord, since you put it that way. The Lady Roxanna needs what every young widow needs. Namely, a new husband! And here she's been serving you and tending your wounds and even bathing you like a helpless baby, and you've not so much as patted her on the butt! You haven't kissed her, let alone pinched a tit, and what's a woman to think about that? I mean, what is it? Are you some kind of a pervert that likes to fondle little boys, or some such unholy thing?"
"Damn you, I'm not a fucking queer!" I had to say it in English, since if there was a word for those people in Westronese, Roxanna hadn't taught it to me. After a bit, I said, "Look. I am `lost' my own wife not too long ago, and, well, I just haven't felt like it, that's everything."
"Sorry, my lord, I didn't know. How long ago did it happen?"
"A year ago. Just over a year from now."
"Again, sorry. But the time of mourning is long passed for you. Any priest would tell you that. You need a wife. Every man does, and you'll not find one better than the Lady Roxanna. A fine lady, she is."
"I'm . . . I'm not sure that I'm to be ready for that gross of a commitment."
"What commitment, my lord? You'll always need someone to manage your household, and there's none better for that than Lady Roxanna. And if you tire of her, or see another that you like better, why, with your wealth you can always take on a concubine or two. God's Hooks, my lord, you could afford dozens!"
"Dammit, I don't want dozens of concubines! One woman was everyone I ever need. But the you talk way about it, you'd tell me they for sale were. Or, I mean, they aren't, are they? You don't own people here, do they?"
"Slaves? No, my lord. Not for a thousand years and more. But there are always more servants than people to hire them, and many who would settle for a room and the food they eat. And not the best food at that. There's never been enough land to feed everybody, even with the three crops a year a good gardener like me can grow. But as to women, why they're mostly just like men under the skin, if you get my meaning. They like a little extra loving now and then just like most men do. And what with your wealth, why, if you see one you like, just tell her so, and the odds are fair she'll be in your bed that night."
Like most poor men, he was convinced that money is the most powerful aphrodisiac. Having been well off, once, I can testify that it just isn't so, but there was no point in spoiling his dreams.
"You mean to tell me that around here is everybody into free love?"
"Well, of course, my lord, everybody isn't into anything. I mean, people are all different, you know. A lot of us commoners, we married the women we wanted and are happy with them. Me and the missus, we're both well content with just one another. The nobility and the wizards and the clergy, though, well, the law says that they have to breed the best that they can, so marriage to them is more like a business contract, if you get my meaning. So as long as all the children born are from the married husband and wife, well, the husbands have their friends on the side and the wives do the same. They do it on the quiet or in the open, as it suits them."
"So you have method of baby control? What is it?" I asked.
The wick in the oil lamp started smoking, so the gardener adjusted it and put a bit of animal fat nearer the flame to be rendered into grease.
"In truth, my lord, I don't know. You'd have to ask a nobleman or a wizard. My wife and I are servants who were born of servants, and neither of us did really well on the tests, so we aren't troubled by that sort of thing."
"You mean that you don't care who the father of a child is?"
"No, my lord. I mean that we can't have children. We've both been sterilized. It's the law."
THIRTEEN
In the grey dawn, Roxanna came to me and said that it was Sunday. My period of quarantine was over and I was well enough to get around, so therefore it was fitting that I should join the household and go to church with them. I wasn't happy with the idea, but wisdom and maturity had taught me when to keep my mouth shut.
You see, I was raised a Catholic, and I spent my teenage years vigorously fighting the system. It wasn't easy. The Christians had started indoctrinating me during the first year of my life, and they were so proud of this brainwashing of children that they publicly bragged about it.
They bent so me hard I damn nearly broke. They began programming their party line into me long before I was old enough to think rationally about what they were saying. They dumped a load of undeserved guilt into my young subconscious long before I learned enough discrimination to sort their turds from their shit. They gave me the same ugly guilt treatment that they shoveled into every other helpless child they got their hooks into, but because I was more honest, more sincere than most, I think that those hooks hurt me more than they hurt most of the others.
I was many years straightening out my mind and my thoughts about religion, and in the process I diligently studied all of the major religions. In the end, my conclusions were very simple.
Western religions all feed on the most fundamental terror that a living being can ever face, the innate fear of death. They all said that if you would just live your life exactly according to the pattern that was given to us on the high mountain, if you would give up most of life's little pleasures, and if you would shell out a major hunk of your after-tax income for the greater glory of God, then by golly, they'd take care of everything and you wouldn't really have to die after all! They'd written vast piles of impossibly obtuse and deliberately unintelligible theology to prove that every word of it was true.
The real truth was that it was all a bag of nonsense designed for the sole purpose of keeping priests well fed and comfortable without any of them ever having to work for a living. It gave them a high-status job, being the direct representatives of the absolute boss, while letting them all live as lazily as any cheat on welfare.
It was so simple. All you have to do is to invent a God and then say that everything you wanted to do was on his orders. Only to pull that off, you have to explain just what this God thing is. Well, to be a God, a being must have at least three main attributes. He must be all-powerful, all-knowing, and all- loving.
What throws a wrench into the works of every Western theology is the obvious existence of evil. There is a lot of really bad shit happening in this world, and God lets it go on happening. The innocent are wrongly punished. The good die young. Babies are born with incurable brain cancers. God lets it happen.
Obviously, if He and evil both exist, He either can't get rid of evil, or He doesn't know about evil, or He doesn't much care if evil exists or not. Yet if He has only two out of the three godly attributes, He just doesn't make it as somebody worth worshiping.
If He is all-knowing and all-loving, but not all-powerful, then He knows that evil is happening and really feels bad about it, but He can't do a thing about stopping it. Well, that's the same position that I'm in, and it would be pretty stupid to worship someone who's no better than me.
If He is all-powerful and all-loving, but not all-knowing, then He's sitting somewhere up there like a fat cat thinking that everything is just fine with us darkies down below. I could never worship so ignorant a being, and even if I did kowtow to Him, what difference would it make? If He doesn't know about something as obvious as evil, how could He notice something as insignificant as me? How would He know if I was worshiping Him or not?
And if He is all-powerful and all-knowing, but not all-loving, then the existence of evil proves Him to be one nasty son of a bitch. He must like it, that a baby is born with brain cancer! I'll be damned if I'll worship such a bastard! I may lack His power and knowledge, but I'm still a better, more moral being than He is, since if I could cure all the wretchedness and pain of this world, I would certainly do so!
All of which goes to prove that if there is a God, His character and abilities are such that He's not worth worshiping. Not that there is the slightest bit of evidence proving that such a critter exists in the first place.
It would take a very strange sort of mind to believe both in the painful world about us and in a full, three- attribute God. My mind isn't strange enough in that direction.
I'm a rationalist, and if that means that I will be dead when I die, and there's no pie in the sky by and by, well then, so be it. I'll just tough it out and die dead. Better that than to live out the only life I'll ever have as a fraud.
Curiously, there are people who are both rational and religious. My best friend Adam is that way. How he manages to do it is beyond me. All I can guess is that he and the others like him must have minds that are somehow compartmentalized. There are areas where they are rational about everything, and areas that are blocked off, like a computer memory in "protect" mode. These are things about which it is not permissible to think. Or something like that.
Growing up in a staunchly Catholic family made breaking away from religion a very painful process for me and everyone around me. I did it because I felt that I had to, for my own self-respect, my own integrity, and for my own superior moral code.
It was a battle that I fought long ago, but along with wisdom and maturity comes a certain amount of resigned cowardice. I wasn't going to change these people. They were going to keep on believing in God no matter what I did. Hell, they still believed in magic!
There was also the fact that if these people sterilized their servants and let people starve to death just because they couldn't afford the food, I wouldn't put it past them to burn a foreign heretic!
* * *
Thus, I went to religious services with Roxanna and the servants. Dressed in our best, we walked together for a quarter hour to the church. It was in a section called Troicinet, where Roxanna had grown up. There was a closer church, but she preferred her old one.
Between the medieval schtick that pervaded this floating island, and the fact that Roxanna never mentioned any but the one religion, I had naturally assumed that the church that we were going to would be Roman Catholic. And maybe it was. Sort of.
Like everyplace else on the island, it was a huge cavern hollowed out underneath a field of growing plants. Also like the mansion I was living in, the walls and ceiling were heavily carved and decorated, but the decorations were not at all what I expected.
Every Catholic church has an altar in front, above which hangs that ancient instrument of torture and death, a cross. Nailed to the cross is a graphic representation of a dead, mutilated human body, with blood and gore dripping down. Here, though the centerpiece was still a persecuted Jew, it was now the Christ of three days later, after He had arisen. I thought that it was much less offensive than the way I was used to, even though they still displayed a dead man's body. There were other changes, too. There was a series of carvings on the walls of the room, where the bloody Stations of the Cross are usually displayed, only now they showed scenes from Christ's life, rather than his death. From where we sat, I couldn't see them all, but I recognized Christ with the little children, and the Sermon on the Mount.
In fact, glancing about, I saw not one single gory scene of slaughter and mayhem. Not one single martyr was being pincushioned with arrows or being burned to death at the stake. Oh, the decorations were done in a fairly heavy-handed, polychromed medieval style, but there was an attempt to suggest that maybe they weren't trying to make you worship a snuff movie.
In keeping with the general lack of metals, there weren't any of the usual heaps of gold encrusting the bastion of humility and austerity that you see in mainland churches, but there was instead an incredible amount of color and, of course, embroidery. I suppose it was pretty, in an abstract sort of way.
I leaned back, waiting for the boring thing to get over with. I noticed in the service a lot of small differences from the mass that I was used to, and I thought at first that I must be attending some sort of Protestant ceremony, a thought that pleased me not at all. The Catholics, at least, have a certain amount of dignity about them.
Most of the service was in Latin, I think, and could have been in Swahili, for all that I could understand of it. There was a sermon in Westronese, but what with my still-poor understanding of the language and the lousy acoustics of the cave we sat in, I didn't understand that, either. After what seemed like
dozens of hours, the long, dreary, and infinitely boring show was finally over and we could leave.
FOURTEEN
I asked Roxanna how far it was to the place where the wreck of The Brick Royal was kept, and it turned out to be pretty much on our way home. I insisted on visiting it.
There were three guards on duty at the only door into the warehouse. One each from the duke, the archbishop, and the warlock. It gave me the feeling that the local triad of powers-that-be weren't all that loving and trusting of one another. The guards wore various sorts of waxed leather armor, and carried carefully polished quarterstaves, but had nothing of metal on them except for small belt knives, with blades barely two inches long.
With Roxanna's help, I managed to convince them that it was all right for me to see my own stuff, but they weren't really happy about it. I had the feeling that they each wanted to immediately report our visit to their respective superior, but at the same time, they were each afraid to let the place be guarded only by the competition. But that was their problem, not mine.
The boat itself took up the center of the huge cave. It was pretty much lying on its side, since the massive, winged keel was still fastened on. I walked around it, inspecting.
There was an eighteen-inch hole in the bottom, near the keel, where the mast had punched through. This was much smaller than my memories of the wreck had made it seem. If Adam had a bag of concrete on board, and it hadn't gotten wet, doing a patch job wouldn't be that hard. The mast itself was surprisingly intact, as best I could tell, as was much of the rigging. Even the sails looked to be in reasonably good shape, and we had a spare set of sails around somewhere, the first ones I had purchased, made of Dacron. Crawling up on top, I saw that the cockpit had been gutted, but in a careful sort of way. The instruments had been removed, presumably for safer storage, but nothing was actually destroyed. The upper deck was cracked where the mast had come down across it, but the solar still and the solar cells seemed to be okay. The hole in the deck where the mast had gone through was a mess, of course, but I thought it was repairable. With a month or two of work, The Brick Royal could be made ready for sea again.
The Fata Morgana Page 9