Popes and Phantoms

by John Whitbourn

Even so, a low but musical growl of disapproval greeted Admiral Slovo as he approached the Elfish army. Powerless to alter matters, he found it easy to ignore and soon was in the midst of the be-plumed and feathered soldiery.

  According to their tribe or inclination, some were in plain black, or green, or gold. Others were as gaudy as a Cardinal in all his glory. Over long evolution, far longer than humans had had to develop, their swords and halberds of bronze had mutated into wild and complex multi-edged forms, contrasting with the earnest practicality of the man-made guns.

  Who knows? thought Slovo, Perhaps I am wrong, maybe they do stand a chance. The smallest, most ill-favoured Elf towered six inches over his own head, he noted.

  ‘You are impressed,’ said the King, ‘and rightly so. The old chieftains counselled patience – arm if you must, they said, but do not gather; lie low. Wait for the usurpers to slip; for a plague, a famine, world-wide war, for anything to shorten impossible odds. But we have waited too long; like rats, your kind survives every misfortune and grows even stronger. The younger and better of us grow impatient and slip away from their people. They join and merge with the human victors and become great artists, soldiers and suchlike – not for their own people, no – but for you!’ The King shook his helmeted head. ‘That must all end,’ he said. Suddenly he drew out his two-handed sword and hacked down a nearby warrior. ‘Which it will not do,’ he continued, wiping his blade on the Elf’s sundered body, ‘whilst Elf-kind display such personal laxity as that individual. His hair was deplorably ill-dressed. I cannot abide that, can you, Admiral?’

  ‘No indeed, Your Majesty,’ replied Slovo, favourably impressed by the lack of reaction shown by the Elfish troops. Drilling continued unabated around and over the deceased.

  ‘Well,’ said the King, as they passed through the soldiers and into the camp on the valley’s opposite side, ‘I suppose you must receive your reward.’

  ‘If it’s quite convenient,’ said the Admiral, masking anticipation from his voice.

  The King shrugged his mail-clad shoulders. ‘It is all the same to me,’ he said. ‘But who is this Marcus Aurelius you revere so much as to betray your race for him?’

  Admiral Slovo borrowed heavily from his ample reserves of patience. ‘Was, Your Majesty, was. He was a Roman Emperor of the second Christian century and a primary exponent of the Stoic philosophy to which, in all humility, I adhere. It was always thought that his writings survived in one volume only, the incomparable Meditations. However, it transpires you have in your possession a second book of equal merit …’

  ‘Just so,’ smiled the Elf-King mercilessly.

  ‘… an eighth or ninth-century monkish copy of a hitherto unknown original whose title I do not know.’

  ‘Because I will not show it to you,’ said the King cheerfully.

  ‘Indeed,’ replied Slovo, knowing now how Tantalus suffered in Hades.

  The King crooked his finger and from the chaos of cook-fires and horse compounds trotted an Elf-boy carrying a bundle wrapped in fine, scarlet Elf-silk.

  ‘A page, I believe, was my promise,’ said the King, withdrawing a wood-bound volume from the proffered bundle. With one long finger he flicked randomly through its crumbling contents, never shifting his gaze from Slovo. ‘Of course, you could end up with a mere chapter heading or a blank,’ he said, full of mock sorrow.

  ‘There is that possibility,’ agreed Slovo.

  ‘But fate decrees you shall have … this!’ The King’s left hand halted its headlong progress and with thumb and forefinger seized a page by its top corner. ‘A full page of writing – and a complete discussion at that: On the cultivation of a bounteous harvest of Indifference. Mother Fortune has smiled on you, Admiral: may this bring you much happiness – or indifference to happiness.’

  The page was carelessly torn from the book and handed over.

  Admiral Slovo scan-read it then and there lest, in a refinement of cruelty, the Elves straightaway snatched it from him. He had the substance of the matter committed to memory before he looked up again.

  Like the children that they in some ways are, the Elves had suddenly lost all interest in him and abruptly wandered off. The book, the King, the Elf-boy were gone and Admiral Slovo was left alone and unregarded in the midst of their camp whilst the bustle continued all around him. It was his dismissal.

  He re-read the page for safety’s sake and then pocketed it lovingly. His horse was not far off, sheltering amidst the Arab stallions of the Elves, and, with luck and disregard for comfort, he could be back in Rome in five days. There was time to attend to his Vatican duties before he need worry about arranging death in Venice.

  Everything was going supremely well – although he was careful not to permit himself more than moderate enjoyment of the fact. Admiral Slovo turned and smiled on the Elves training in the evening sunlight.

  Acquisition of the whole book was an unrealistic aspiration. However, there was, he considered, every reasonable chance of digesting its substance, a page here, a paragraph there, before events resolved themselves. Perhaps the attack on Pisa would succeed and the Old Ways would rise as the King predicted. Then they would need fresh arms if mankind was to be finally swept from the scene. Alternatively, Pisa (judiciously forewarned by … someone) might repulse the rising and force Elf-kind’s first Over-King to fresh considerations. Time alone delayed the revelation that the guns Slovo had supplied could not survive (and were specifically designed not to survive) more than a few score firings. One way or another, the trickle of inducements to himself would continue.

  Come what may, across the chasm of the centuries, Admiral Slovo would hear what the Stoic Emperor Marcus had to say; and in reading the book and taking its message to heart, he would be content with whatsoever transpired.

  ‘Didn’t quite work out that way, did it, Admiral?’

  Back at the end of his life, Slovo was still talking to the Welsh Vehmist.

  ‘Sadly no. When I next returned to the Over-King’s camp, everything was gone as if it had never been. Oh – apart from one thing – one of my arquebuses was lying in the middle of the clearing, neatly snapped in half. I assumed that was for my benefit.’

  ‘Correct,’ confirmed the Vehmist.

  ‘Well, I got the message,’ Slovo continued, ‘and never went back. In fact, that was the last I heard of the matter. I didn’t get my book.’

  ‘No,’ said the Vehmist, trying to sound decently regretful. ‘We didn’t feel that you’d deserved it.’

  Slovo toyed with a green fig, powerfully indenting it with his fingers. ‘So it was another of your schemes, then?’ he said, regarding the wounded fruit.

  The Vehmist answered, ‘We curtailed your little bit of private enterprise as a favour to ourselves and our allies. Mind you, your deviousness up to that point quite delighted us. The first we got to learn of anything was the attack on Pisa.’

  ‘Oh,’ smiled Slovo, ‘so they got around to that, did they? How come I didn’t hear of it?’

  ‘Because,’ the Vehmist replied simply, ‘by then we were on the case. It was in the interest of all concerned parties – declared or not – to draw a veil over things. And the Pisans are an incurious lot, not given to history or recording. If they can’t eat it or fuck it …’

  ‘Yes, quite,’ interrupted the Admiral fastidiously. ‘So what happened?’

  ‘I said you’d ask,’ laughed the Vehmist, ‘but my Master wouldn’t have it – not a man in his position, he said. Good job I read the file right through for all the details …’

  ‘I’m a military man,’ said Slovo. ‘I like neat endings.’

  ‘Just so, Admiral, and I’m here to humour you in every respect. Well, it’s easily told. They didn’t do too bad, all things considered. Bear in mind, for instance, they were all separate peoples and tribes. Also, their last real experience of full scale infantry action was, what—?’

  ‘A thousand?’ suggested Slovo.

  ‘Yeah, maybe a thousand years beforehand. Not
only that, but they weren’t using their preferred weapons, like the repeating crossbow and assassin’s blades, but those guns you’d so kindly got them. Like I said, it was quite a creditable effort, really.’

  ‘But to no avail, I take it?’

  ‘No. They came on in pike columns, heading for the Town-Gate, covered by a skirmish line of your arquebus fellows. It was all rather neat apparently – given their undisciplined propensities. The Elvish cannons even scored a few decent hits, though how you’d miss a town wall I’m not quite sure.’

  ‘You’ve clearly never fired a gun in the midst of battle,’ observed the Admiral acidly.

  ‘No, thank gods,’ said the Vehmist, the gibe bouncing harmlessly off him. ‘Well, the Pisans were surprised, of course. But they got some shots off, taking a few Elves out and – blammo – all order flees. Among the Elves it just turned into a mad scramble for the Gate and racial enemy, knives drawn.’

  Admiral Slovo shook his head sadly. It didn’t matter any more, but even at the remove of decades, displays of uncorseted emotion had the power to upset him.

  ‘So they were all packed together like a mad mob by the time they neared the Town,’ the Vehmist continued, trying manfully to conceal a modicum of amusement. ‘Meanwhile, the Pisan militia had woken up, so to speak, and trundled a cannon or two to the spot and, after that, the Elf horde couldn’t do a thing right …’

  ‘After that,’ interjected the Admiral, concluding on the Vehmist’s behalf, ‘they were torn asunder with grapeshot and fled, bewildered, each a victim of their own solipsistic individualism.’

  ‘Neglecting to carry their wounded with them, I might add,’ said the Vehmist reprovingly.

  ‘Naturally,’ said Slovo. ‘They’re Elves.’

  ‘It doesn’t excuse them,’ the Vehmist persevered. ‘We were quite inconvenienced by their left-behinds – living and otherwise. Still, it all got sorted out in the end: “bandits”, was the official explanation, unusually ambitious ones. It suited all parties to swallow it.’

  ‘And the left-behinds?’ queried Slovo.

  ‘A rather odd burial mound beside the City walls – a puzzle for antiquaries and grave-robbers to come: such long limbs … such elegant skulls. At their request, we left it to the other petty Elf-Lords to deal with their High-King. It was all done with consummate treachery.’

  ‘I thought they might act sooner or later,’ agreed the Admiral. ‘He was premature – and bad publicity. His race do not care for undue attention.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said the Vehmist. ‘Fen and fell and Downs folk they must remain for a good while yet; till either their ambitions are modified or man’s intolerance is moderated. Unless, that is, some reckless individual such as you, acts to fan their ancient grievance and deludes them once again into ruin.’

  ‘I got impatient,’ said Admiral Slovo, wondering why on earth he felt the need to explain any more. ‘Quite aside from the delectable bait the High-King was holding out, you lot seemed to have abandoned me in the dusty labyrinth of the Vatican bureaucracy.’

  ‘Sin, most grievous sin,’ confessed the Vehmist. ‘Apparently our attentions were particularly focused elsewhere during those years – although that hardly excuses our neglect. Your little project perforce drew our eyes back to Italy and made us realize there were blades we’d failed to sharpen back there. It was decided to tell you more.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ recalled Slovo, ‘the international conspiracy annual dinner-dance …’

  The Vehmist both smiled and winced.

  The Year 1493

  ‘I die in Germany. Afterwards, I am enrolled in a conspiracy.’

  ‘You will sleep here, brother.’

  Slovo stepped in. The first thing he noticed was the lack of a roof, the second the sound of the door locking behind him.

  ‘You will sleep here,’ came the voice of the Vehmic Knight from outside, ‘and wake to life anew.’

  Admiral Slovo did not answer. He was here at the Holy Vehme’s pleasure and there was nothing to gain by vain protest.

  The sea journey, a rarity for him nowadays, had revived old memories and forgotten tastes. All the way from Rome to … this place, where Germania merged into land disputed with the Turk, he had pondered the unnaturalness of his life, pushing a quill-pen, not a stiletto. The subtle and learned Vehmic courier (a friar in normal life) assigned to accompany him, and to subvert his every settled opinion, found little work left for him to do.

  Everything had been arranged on Admiral Slovo’s behalf, as neat and quick as a thunderbolt. The notice of leave of absence, signed by a Bishop no less, had arrived on his Vatican desk just like any other piece of correspondence. That same afternoon, a clerk in his office, hitherto suspected of being nothing more than he seemed, confided to Slovo that a certain ship was sailing on the evening tide and that he must be on it. Admiral Slovo gladly surrendered to the equally pressing tide of events and let himself be borne along.

  Now he found himself in an open-topped stone-built box observing the stars that shone down on him and the rest of the forsaken landscape. Even had he wished to escape, the constraining walls were too high and sheer to climb. The one and only door looked simple and sturdy enough to resist a siege. Slovo would be here just as long as the purpose of the Vehme required.

  There was the very minor comfort of knowing that he was (technically) not alone. The brief night-time glimpse he’d been granted of the camp revealed at least two score similar cells. It was to be presumed that, for reasons of time-economy if no other, the Vehme initiated their recruits on a batch basis.

  There were some minor furnishings in the cell but Slovo suspected there would be more than ample time to investigate them at his leisure. By forcing his mind to dwell on the writings of Euclid he caused himself to sleep.

  In the morning, a hatch in the door opened and Slovo exchanged the cell’s chamber pot for bread and wine. It had rained during the night but he did not complain or in any way converse with the invisible owner of the proffering hand.

  Sitting on the muddy ground, he meticulously nibbled his way through the half-loaf and then sipped slowly at the wine. He memorized each mouthful’s exact taste as solace in case there came a time of want – and so that he should know if and when his food was given that little narcotic or poisonous extra.

  He had committed whole chapters of the Meditations and Epictetus’ Dissertations to memory, and so had the faculty to wile away some hours in ‘reading’. When this palled, as even the most sublime literature eventually must, he refreshed the body as he had the mind, with a period of vigorous exercise. The fierce glare of noon alerted him to the fact that the cell would never be more illuminated than now and it was thus an auspicious time to inspect fully the fixtures of his little world.

  On the side opposite his chosen station there was a curious little table – perhaps an altar in intention – made of a stack of new-cut corn, levelled off below the head and made flat for a vase to rest on. This vase was also a direct gift of Nature, being made of cunningly woven green grass. In it stood a single stem and ear of bearded wheat.

  Behind this on the wall were two images, paintings on wood, somewhat redolent of the icons Slovo had seen brought or pillaged from the schismatic Greeks and Rus. One was plainly of Zeus the Unconquered Sun – the second picture Slovo failed to recognize.

  These items turned out to be the sum total of the diversions provided him and it took the calling to mind of his wife’s sexual repertoire for Slovo to lull his mind to sleep.

  After twenty-three days, the food stopped arriving. By then the wheatsheaf altar had dried and drooped towards the ground to which it would eventually return. Admiral Slovo had had more than enough opportunity to observe its slow demise. Made cussed by boredom and the attentions of sun and rain, he deliberately refused to enter a decline. Others undergoing the same test failed to bear up so well. Several times he heard voices raised in protest from nearby cells. The Vehme clearly had some means of rapidly silencing these weaker br
ethren for each remonstration was abruptly aborted within seconds. Slovo took the hint and kept his own counsel.

  After a further week of a water-only diet, the Admiral grew light-headed and reconciled. All rancour and rebellion flowed out of him, hitching a lift atop his departing reserves of strength. At the very end of the week, after a day without even water, just before dawn, the disembodied hand offered a change of clothes in the form of shining white raiment. Slovo was glad to accept for reasons of personal delicacy, if no other.

  Almost directly, the door was sprung and the transformed Admiral Slovo stepped out to rejoin the world. After initial difficulties with distance focusing, he discovered himself in the company of a dozen similarly hesitant figures. There were men of European race, some negroes, even one woman with yellowish skin and curiously arranged eyes. Still attuned to the discipline of the previous lunar month, no one spoke, and each kept even their visual curiosity under control.

  Slovo was impressed by the organization brought to the occasion: the troops of cavalry which appeared served both to herd the initiates on their way and to explain how the camp remained unmolested. The horsemen were silent and answered to no orders but those already in their heads. Even so, they drilled and rode in perfect order as though they had been together for long and eventful years; brothers all, who knew each other’s thoughts. Slovo wondered how this could be when they clearly came from each and every nation, race and army, retaining the dress and weapons appropriate to each. He could not conceive what force might cause Gendarme, Stradiot, Reiter and Spahi to act in such harmony.

  Like bright-fleeced sheep the newly liberated prisoners of the Vehme were shepherded away by these grim and speechless horsemen.

  They were left at the mouth of an underground temple. There was no prospect of flight – the Vehmic cavalry would straightaway have ridden them down. This being so, Admiral Slovo boldly led the way forward, endeavouring, in so far as his weakened state would permit, still to appear the master of his own fate. A wizened Turk of similar fortitude joined him at the front.