Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman

by Walter Michael Miller, Jr.

  “Are you ready to run away again?” the student asked. “Like last year?”

  Nimmy snorted. “Last year, one mad cardinal was leading a crowd of amateurs. This year, the Vicar of Christ is leading three hordes of warriors and two small armies.”

  “Two? Where’s army number two?”

  “It’s moving south of us.”

  “Oh, you mean the tanks. That’s different. That’s something I’m not supposed to talk about, if I know anything, which I don’t”

  “Tanks? Secret weapons?”

  “Water tanks for all I know. We’ll need a lot of water.”

  While they marched across Grasshopper country and the Pope watched the sky, the Burregun flew over the procession so often that it became a Nomad joke. During this time, Pope Amen I appeared to Blacktooth more than once, and warned him against continuing his rebellion against his master. When he answered the old black cougar, Bitten Dog the hood accused him of talking to himself, and he sent a message to Wooshin saying that the monk needed a witch doctor. The doctor who came turned out to be the Pope’s personal physician, although the patient had never seen him before, and was unable to guess to which of several schools of medicine the doctor belonged. He wore Nomad leathers and he swore Nomad oaths under his breath, but he carried a black bag full of pipes, needles, pincers, and charms, like a member of the ancient and mystical school of allopaths.

  The doctor told him that the Pope was also not well, although he had not yet contracted the four-day fever, as it was being called. His symptoms reminded Blacktooth of Meldown. Blacktooth described the Venerable Boedullus’s summonabisch stew. The doctor immediately claimed it was an old Nomad dish, and became enthusiastic when he learned that Brownpony had thrived on it. When he left Blacktooth, he went to see the cook. The reinstitution of summonabisch stew as a foundation of the papal diet was thus probably responsible for Blacktooth’s elevation to the cardinalate when the Pope had another whimsical moment.

  Because the movement of armies of horsemen was also a religious procession, each day must be begun with a sunrise Mass, and the Christians among the Nomads must be fed the bread of Heaven before the march resumed for the day. Out of deference to his Lord Høngan, Eltür Bråm put up with this sanctimony for a whole week before he went over his lord’s head and asked the Pope’s leave to lead his warriors on ahead as skirmishers. It was a bad idea only if one assumed the worst of the Grasshopper sharf. Brownpony had done his best to see the man without assumptions. The Pope took the sharf by the arm and led him into the tent of the Qæsach dri Vørdar.

  Høngan Ösle Chür opposed the Grasshopper’s request at first, but the Pope said, “There is merit in moving to separate a strong striking force from liturgical encumbrance, especially as we grow closer to the enemy. That enemy knows very well we are coming.”

  “That is true,” said Holy Madness. “And what worries me most is that we don’t see him doing anything about it. But I am not ready to relinquish my command to Sharf Bråm. With Holy Father’s permission, I will take the sharf and as many of his warriors as he wants to bring, along with an equal number of Wilddog warriors under my command, and we shall advance as skirmishers toward the frontier.”

  The Pope turned to Wooshin, who quickly endorsed the plan, but added, “The Lord Høngan is right to worry. We must find out soon where the Texark force is massed, but skirmishers should avoid battle until our main force arrives.”

  “It is possible that they are embattled in the east,” Brownpony suggested. “They dare not lose control of the Great River.”

  “If it is so,” Axe said, “New Rome may not show much defense. Hannegan City will have the defense.”

  It was agreed then. At least six hundred warriors, part from each horde, stacked their arms for the Pope’s later blessing and knelt beside the wagon tracks to pray at their last Mass before battle. Sharf Bråm and perhaps two hundred active disbelievers, both Grasshopper and Wilddog, waited on a distant hilltop for the Mass to end. The two forces then united and rode east.

  Holding court in a field of sunflowers in the heart of Grasshopper country, the Pope mentioned the name of the next candidate for a papal battlefield promotion to the Sacred College, whereupon Wooshin went into a waking trance, while Jopo Cardinal Ombroz blinked and walked away uttering mysteries. The fall from grace by Blacktooth Brother St. George ended with athud when the Pope—in a recurrence of the whimsy which had moved him to create the rank of sergeant general for his bodyguard—created Blacktooth St. George a Cardinal Deacon of Brownpony’s old Roman Church, Saint Maisie’s.

  The monk was not immediately informed of this signal honor, for such announcements normally emerged from a full consistory, but he got wind of it in small whiffs, as when Aberlott first addressed him as “Your Eminence.” Nimmy correctly attributed this to sarcasm. He therefore blamed Aberlott again when Wooshin rode back to the hoodlum wagon on the Pope’s white stallion and used the same form of address.

  “The Holy Father sends me to thank you for the special stew, and to ask about Your Eminence’s health,” said Axe.

  Blacktooth glared quickly at Aberlott and responded, “I shit sixteen times a day, Axe. I’m weak. Every fourth day I have fits and Bitten Dog ties me up. Except for that, I’m very well, thank the Holy Father.”

  “I’ll tell him you’re dying,” Wooshin grunted, and left. The physician returned that afternoon to check him over again.

  “You have the Hannegan’s science to thank for your illness,” he told the monk. “Jackrabbit warriors brought the curse up to us from the south.”

  Sometimes the physician spoke Rockymount with aGrasshopper accent, and sometimes he spoke Grasshopper with a Rockymount accent. He made Nimmy eat bits of charcoal from a mostly dung fire and drink a slurry of its ashes. He put Blacktooth on a diet of meal boiled in milk, and gave him some bitter bark to chew. These measures could be either Nomad medicine or allopath remedy, but he blew keneb smoke toward the four quarters, mumbled a litany, and prescribed keneb to be smoked on Blacktooth’s crazy days. The Pope apparently liked this medicine man, and Blacktooth was grateful to Brownpony for his care.

  Before he left, the physician gave him a small package. “The Pope sent you this. I almost forgot.”

  Blacktooth neglected opening it. A gift from his former master would make him feel more guilt.

  Sometimes he wanted to go to the Pope and prostrate himself as he had often done in his early years before Jarad and his brethren to obtain their forgiveness for putting a lizard in Singing Cow’s bed, or for yodeling in choir; but that was within a brotherhood of equals under the Equalissimus. His present laesae majestatis culpa seemed much less forgivable. But that, of course, was before he opened the package and found the red hat. It was not the big red hat that was customarily nailed to the cathedral ceiling after the first wearing, but only an extra scarlet zucchetto borrowed from Chief Hawken Cardinal Irrikawa; it was identifiable by the hole in the brim through which the cardinal monarch inserted his feather.

  “Now we shall have to ordain you deacon of Saint Maisie’s,” said Brownpony’s note.

  The Pope gave him three days to recover before summoning him to the head of the papal caravan. Blacktooth refused the honor. The Pope refused his refusal. “Put on the red cap,” he said. “It means you get to vote for the next Pope. It is not a reward for holiness or good behavior.”

  “Then for the stew?”

  “Not even for the stew of many blessings, Nimmy.”

  “A punishment for sin, then?” Blacktooth wondered.

  “Ah! Symmetry. Either punishment or reward. You were always a symmetrical dualist, Nimmy.”

  “A symmetrical duelist?” asked the Qæsach dri Vørdar. “What is that, Holy Father?”

  “Ambidextrous swordplay,” the Axe told him in an aside.

  Blacktooth was still holding the hat between thumb and forefinger as if it were dripping slime.

  “Grab him, Axe,” said the Pope.

  Wooshin seized
his shoulders. Brownpony took the zucchetto from his hand and centered it carefully upon his stubbly tonsure, then patted it down. When the sergeant general released him, his hand darted toward his head, but the Pope grabbed it and laughed.

  “Do I have to wear it all the time?” asked Blacktooth Cardinal St. George, Deacon of Saint Maisie’s.

  When news of the war finally came, it came from the rear. Texark cavalry had descended mysteriously out of nowhere to fall upon the Wilddog families in the west. They were dressed like motherless ones, and they made a great slaughter of the Weejus women and their breeding stock, the messenger said. At one family compound—that of Wetok Enar—there was a complete massacre, apparently to eliminate witnesses, but two daughters nevertheless survived, and one described a cavalry colonel with a wooden nose and long hair that covered his ears. The other, Potear Wetok, lived long enough to name her former husband, Colonel Esitt-of-Wetok Loyte, as the commander of the troop of Texark marauders. She had watched them shoot her whole family before he, full of hate, personally shot her in the lower spine so that her death was slow.

  The Texarki seemed to know just which horses to kill among the breeding stock in order to ruin every Weejus as a breeder. Between murderous raids on family encampments the marauders were observed doing something to the Nomad cattle whenever they had made camp for the night.

  When all this was reported to Brownpony, the Pope became sad but was not surprised. He looked at Hawken Irrikawa and said, “Your Majesty was right. They were Texarki you encountered in the north, although I’m surprised they made it that far west without encountering the Wilddog.”

  He turned to Sharf Oxsho and said, “You’ll have to take care of it.” To Blacktooth, it sounded like neither a command nor a suggestion, but simply an observation about Oxsho’s fate, or perhaps his own.

  Sharf Oxsho called together the Wilddog warriors who had not ridden on ahead with the skirmishers. “There is a difference between being a shepherd to the Lord’s sheep and a cowherd to Christ’s wild cattle,” Brownpony said mildly, as he watched a fourth of his army prepare to advance to the rear. He sent the Wilddog messenger on eastward to report the raids to the Lord Høngan Ösle.

  Three days later Høngan returned to confer with the Pope and Wooshin. He brought no news from the east. No Texark patrols had been encountered, and even the motherless bandits were staying clear of the hordes as they advanced in battle array. The Grasshopper sharf had sent patrols toward Texark, but they had not yet returned when Høngin left the skirmish line to come here.

  They took a census of the forces remaining to them after the homeward departure of Oxsho and his warriors. Their strength had diminished by a quarter. All leaders conferred, and were joined in conference by the spook commander from the secretive train to the south. There could be no change in the master plan. The strongest force would be directed southeast toward Hannegan City, as before, and only the force of the assault on the “protectors” of New Rome would be diminished.

  But tonight the Pope determined that for a few hours, at least, there would be no more talk of war. Since leaving New Jerusalem, the same group of people always gathered around the Pope after supper on the trail. The summer nights were hot, and everyone sat well back from the fire, but close enough to hear and be heard. In the beginning the cardinals had wanted to say Compline at this time of evening, followed by religious silence. But the Pope objected to this as an imposition on non-Christian Nomad leaders who were part of his court, and he called this his “Curia Noctis,” and encouraged the telling of stories. Tonight, he had determined that the subject would be saints and holy men, although anything but talk of war might be permitted.

  Because Holy Madness was still with him, he sent for Cardinal Blacktooth to join them at the fire. The monk was too weak to walk alone. Axe gave him a shoulder to lean on, but at last carried him on his back to the Pope’s vicinity.

  “Where is your red hat?” Brownpony demanded.

  “It was stolen by a holy man, Holy Father,” said Blacktooth.

  “Really? Who’s the holy man, Your Eminence?”

  “Your predecessor, Holy Father.”

  “You have been visited by Amen Specklebird, Brother St. George?”

  “He comes to see me every fourth day.”

  “If so, he should have cured you. Tell him we need miracles to canonize.”

  “I don’t think he wants to be made a saint.”

  “Why, Blacktooth! Nobody makes a saint. He is already a saint, or he isn’t And that is up to us to decide.”

  “Of course, Holy Father.”

  “Well, make him give you your hat back. Don’t come back here without it.”

  Blacktooth confided in Wooshin. “Tomorrow is my crazy day. I already feel queer. Don’t let me do anything disgraceful.”

  Some of the cardinals seemed to be dozing. There was a long silence at first. The Pope looked at Wooshin. The Axe cleared his throat, then offered a few words to open the session. “I admire the saints. You may not think so, Lords and Eminent Fathers, because I myself am not religious, but my people do honor holy men, and one of them was called Butsa. When he had squeezed his way out from his mother’s gateway at birth, he stood erect. He pointed upward with one hand, down with the other, and said, ‘Sky above, ground below, and I alone am the honored guest.’”

  Ombroz laughed. “Every squealing baby says that before I baptize it. That’s exactly what the kid’s howling about. He is all too much the honored guest.”

  Sitting cross-legged, Axe smiled as if his point was made. He closed his eyes and became a sixteen-foot golden body, weighing seventeen tons. Then he vanished and became a blade of grass. Blacktooth noticed that Pope Amen I, having come earlier than expected, was standing in the fringes of the firelight. He had stopped there to piss. Having retucked his long black member into his robes, he slowly approached the fire—but he cautioned Nimmy by touching a finger to his quiet smile. It was plain that nobody else could see him. Blacktooth could even smell him, and he smelled like death.

  Made nervous by the smiling Specklebird spirit, Blacktooth broke the silence.

  “Saint Leibowitz spoke at birth too, you know,” said the monk. “He stuck his head out of the birth canal and asked the midwife, ‘Now what?’”

  “The midwife answered, ‘For ninety-nine years, a great waste.’”

  “Ag!” It was a low grunt from the Axe.

  “Saint Isaac said, ‘Begone!’”

  “She vanished. He lived ninety-nine years, you know.”

  The Pope smiled wryly. “Saint Leibowitz had the Devil for a midwife, then? Does this story come from the basement of Leibowitz Abbey?”

  “You can find strange legends down there, Holy Father,” Blacktooth admitted. “The earliest ‘Life of Saint Leibowitz’ was anonymous. A man could be hanged for writing a book. We have no bylines from those decades. But that’s not the only story that connects Leibowitz with the Devil.”

  “Tell another,” said the Pope.

  “I can’t, really. Did you ever hear of Faust, Holy Father?”

  “I think not.”

  “It’s about a pact with the Devil. We have only pieces of the story. I can’t tell you why the Venerable Boedullus thought Faust was Leibowitz.”

  “Didn’t the simpletons think he made a pact with the Devil?”

  “Yes, but the Venerable Boedullus was no simpleton.”

  Amen II laughed. The word “simpleton” had come to be a polite form of address, and Nimmy had just asserted that Boedullus was no gentleman.

  “I mean, he was not a Simplifier, who thought the Devil inspired all books except Scripture.”

  “And the Venerable Boedullus didn’t think so?”

  The questions were making Blacktooth dizzy. He watched Pope Amen II, who slowly and in a serpentine manner was becoming the sixteen-foot golden body of the idol Baal. Blacktooth after a moment of dizzy indecision lurched up to smash the Pope idol, until Wooshin objected. They took him to the hoodlu
m wagon bloody but unbowed, and they helped Bitten Dog tie him down. It was another day of the plague, and the war that disappeared only at the Curia Noctis.

  During his dementia, the cougar Librada ran away.

  CHAPTER 28

  In time of famine, when the garden fails,

  when the brothers are eating yucca roots,

  cactus paddles, chaparral cocks, snakes,

  and the laying hens, and yet are near to starving,

  let the Abbot pray for Saint Benedict’s blessing

  and allow them to eat the four-footed livestock,

  unless there be able hunters among them

  to stalk the wild blue-head goats.

  Rule of Saint Leibowitz , Deviations 17

  ABBOTS WERE NOT ALL ALIKE. JEROME OF Pecos, abbot before the Conquest in the time of Pope Benedict XXII and Mayor Hannegan II, had thrown open the monastery gates to the world, and had allowed his sons to listen to natural philosophy lectures by practical atheists and play with electricity machines in the basement. What had happened to the religious vocation in that time, Abbot Olshuen could only wonder. The monks of Leibowitz Abbey under his guidance had kept themselves as unaware as possible of the changing world, including the controversial pontificates of the two Amens. Without offending the Pope, such isolation had not been possible under Abbot Jarad, who was also a cardinal, but Dom Abiquiu had discontinued Jarad’s policy of letting the monks know about Church affairs outside the monastery. Always conservative in his interpretation of the Rule of Saint Leibowitz, the abbot withheld most news, including ecclesiastical news, of the outside world from his cloistered flock; the only monks he had told about the bull Scitote Tyrannum were the abbey’s business manager and those Brothers native to Texark or the Province whose families were in the path of war, and these were told to keep silent.