by Judith Tarr
Gerbert’s shadow quivered, drawn to the scent of new blood.
And he knew.
He could not sing hosannas. He could not even, yet, thank the power that had led him to this place. He moved with great care, as if the image and the bird were nothing more to him than curiosity. He set the saddlebags on the ground by the pool and took the packet of bread and cheese, and as if on a whim, carried it into the shrine and laid it at the feet of the image. The prayer he murmured was genuine. He crossed himself, bowed, let his hand find the dove. “A pity to waste tender meat,” he said to the air.
It trembled with hunger.
Sunset blazed in his face. Above his head, trapped amid the branches of the oak, shone a single star. The moon glowed above it, pale still but brightening as the light faded. It was waning, but it was strong enough yet for what he intended.
This was not a magic that came easily to a man, still less to a priest of the God Who denied all divinity but His own. But that priesthood gave Gerbert one small edge of strength. Given to the monks in childhood, sworn to the threefold vows before his blood began to burn with the beginnings of manhood, he had never known a woman. He did not reckon it truly purity — that was for angels, and for saints whose faith freed them from any bodily temptation. But to the moon and the old magic, it was enough.
It was as heady as wine. He firmed his will against the madness in it, focused his mind on the cool and ordered paths of his mastery. The wild magic struggled, but he was strong, and skilled in his strength. For a moment he remembered a Sabbat over Aurillac, a choice made, a path taken; he smiled.
He took from his bag the four white candles for the four corners of heaven; the white stole with which he would sanctify his working; and, slowly, the athame in its wrappings of dark wool. The shadow took no notice. It yearned toward the dove which he had laid beside the pool.
He kissed the stole and laid it over his shoulders, bowing for a moment under the weight of sanctity. He set each candle in its place about the pool, naming it as it must be named. Michael of the flaming sword at the gates of the south; Gabriel the trumpeter in the vaults of the west; Raphael whose healing power warded the east; and Uriel the watchman of the north. As he spoke each name, its candle burst into flame, round and white and steady though a little wind had come to whisper in the branches.
The water was dark, still as a mirror. Gerbert bent over it. Deep within, something glimmered. His hand slipped through numbing cold to close about a hard round smoothness. A stone a little smaller than an egg, shaped like an egg, white as the moon, polished smooth. It was heavy in his hand. With as much care as if truly it had been an egg, he laid it on the moss by the pool’s edge.
He took up the body of the bird. In one swift, encompassing motion, he gathered his power, freed the athame, opened the limp white throat. Blood trickled from it onto the stone.
The shadow swooped. The athame glittered athwart its path. It reared back. Eyes as pale as moons fixed on the falling blood. But the whisper of its voice said, “No.”
Gerbert said nothing. The dove’s body emptied slowly. The stone lost its last glimmer of whiteness. He laid the bird down; he raised the stone. In the pool’s center, like an eye, glowed the moon. Gerbert’s hand eclipsed it. Where the moon had been was the shadow of the stone. He trembled. The power was like the surge of the tide, pulling at him, straining the bonds of his mastery.
“Come,” he said. “Drink.”
The spirit stretched toward the bird. Again the athame halted it. It hissed. The bloodstone drank the moon. Deep in its heart, a red light grew.
“Drink,” said Gerbert. “Drink deep.”
The spirit mantled like a hawk. Its eyes raged.
“Come,” said the mage, soft and deep. “Drink.”
The spirit howled. Gerbert stiffened, but his hand did not move. The stone glowed like a coal, beat like a heart. Moon and madness filled it; life pulsed in it. The spirit swayed as by no will of its own. Its wings fluttered wildly, now driving it back, now casting it forward. Its claws raked toward Gerbert’s face. He did not flinch.
With a cry of anguish and of resistless desire, the spirit fell upon the stone. It flared with heat more terrible than any fire. It swelled; it bloomed; it engulfed the shadow that had seized it.
oOo
Gerbert knelt by the pool’s edge, gasping, cradling his hand. Before him, between his knees and the water, lay the stone. A carbuncle a little smaller than an egg, red as blood, luminous as a coal, with a darkness in its heart.
His shadow was free under the moon. He turned his face to the cold light; and for all the agony of his charred and blistered hand, his heart swelled with purest joy. “Now,” he said. “Now I shall be healed.”
Part Three
Pontifex Magicus
Rome, A.D. 996
15.
His Holiness, Gregory, fifth of that name, Bishop of Rome, Pontifex Maximus, servant of the servants of God, shifted on the cushions of his throne and throttled the urge to yawn. The tiara was an aching burden on his brow; the vestments were a torment in this ghastly Roman heat. Briefly he considered hating his royal cousin for condemning him to it. He might have had a blessed, simple, unvexing bishopric in a climate suited to human habitation. Hungary, perhaps. Poland. Even the people there...a horde of heathen Magyars, man for man, was rather more genteel than the populace of Rome.
For a gratifying moment, he considered the prospect of a match, Roman against Magyar, bare-handed. He would wager on the Roman. Magyars drank mere bull’s blood. Romans imbibed sedition with their mothers’ milk.
He was not, God be thanked, a Roman. He was a royal Saxon; and he was, at the moment, displeased.
Rheims again. It was always Rheims. The Franks were as quarrelsome as Romans, and as stubborn in their rebellion. He had the tale of it from his predecessor’s chancery, which it had vexed to no perceptible end. A man of dubious lineage and uncertain loyalty, but duly elected and duly endowed with the pallium, that bit of linen embroidered with crosses and blessed by his properly ordained superior, that was sign and seal of his right to hold his office: that was Arnulf whose partisans clamored in the curia. A man of no lineage at all and proven loyalty to the imperial dynasty, but elected in dubious circumstances and unsanctioned with the pallium: that was Gerbert who had displaced him. The Frankish king — himself an interloper with no blood right to the crown — and the bishops convened in synod without papal sanction had presumed to resolve the matter to their own satisfaction, despite protests from Rome. The papal legate himself, Abbot Leo of legendary probity and monumental obstinacy, had interdicted all who took part in that second election, and removed the interloper from his see. To no visible effect. Arnulf had not been permitted to take back his place. Gerbert had continued in it, administering it with — of that, Gregory had been assured — exceptional competence.
Damn the man, thought Gregory, regardless of his sacred office. Which man he meant, he hardly cared.
The one in front of him was voluble if hardly eloquent. “And so you see,” said Herluin, “when my lord Rothard died, unworthy though I am, the bishops elected me to succeed him in the see of Cambrai. But I feared, Holy Father, to accept consecration from hands themselves unconsecrated by the approbation of the Holy See. Hands that — if I dare say it — ”
He floundered to a halt. The man with him took up the gauntlet. Notker, his name was, Bishop of Liège. His eyes glittered; he fairly foamed at the mouth. “Yes, brother, dare to say it!” He faced the pope. “The man, Holy Father, is a liar and an interloper, a lowborn grasper after power. Any power, Holy Father. The whole world knows that he sojourned in Spain in his youth; half the world knows what he studied there. Sorcery, Holy Father. Necromancy. All the black arts.”
“Well,” said Herluin, fluttering. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say — ”
Notker rode over him. “The man is a sorcerer. He practices his arts in the very cathedral of Rheims. He frequents the company of Jews and Saracen
s, and worse than that, Holy Father, worse by far — he teaches the arts of the devil to the youths of his school, and he does so openly, flagrantly, with no vestige of shame.”
Gregory straightened on his throne. He had heard the charge before.
“Simon,” the bishop of Liege was thundering. “Simon Magus is born again. The devil — the Antichrist — ”
What, Gregory wondered, had Gerbert done to earn such detestation?
“Really,” Herluin babbled. “Really, Notker, just because he’s blunter than you like — ”
It was past time to put an end to this. Gregory’s guards restrained Notker before he could do murder; a chamberlain saw to Herluin, who was almost weeping with distress.
“I shall,” said Gregory in the echoing silence, “give thought to this matter.”
oOo
This audience was considerably quieter, and although summer was considerably more advanced, rather cooler. Gregory had set it for the morning, before the day’s heat was at its fullest. Unfortunately, it was no more pleasant than its predecessor had been.
Not that he disliked the man who stood in front of him. Herluin was a weakling and Notker a bully. Gerbert was neither. A little brusque, a little impatient with the demands of ceremony, but honestly respectful of the office and of the man who held it. He had not insulted Gregory with archepiscopal regalia. He looked well in the simplicity of a priest’s gown, not a handsome man but a distinguished one, with his strong blunt face and his clear grey eyes — or were they brown, or green? — and his silvered hair. He had a beautiful voice, which he knew how to use. Once, when he smiled, his face lit like a lamp; and for a moment Gregory was dazzled.
But all the charm and all the eloquence and all the competence in the world could not alter one essential fact. “You hold your see without sanction from Rome,” said Gregory. “You have held it in defiance of your vow of obedience. I cannot confirm you in what was never rightly yours.”
Gerbert’s anger was plain to see: his eyes went pale, his lips tightened. Yet he spoke softly. “Holy Father, I believe that I am the rightful archbishop of Rheims. My lord Adalberon chose me to be his successor. My king, though for a while he went awry, came in the end and through suffering to the same conclusion. Arnulf is and was an invader and a breaker of his oath.”
“He was,” said Gregory, “duly elected. Rome granted him the pallium. Rome never stripped him of it.”
“Rome was suborned by the serpents in his pay!” Gerbert controlled himself with a visible effort. “My lord, we did what we had to do. He had laid waste to his see; he had handed it over to the enemies of the king, in defiance of the vow he swore on the Eucharist itself.”
“Still,” said the pope, “he was judged by those who had no right or power to judge him.”
Gerbert was speechless. Gregory almost pitied him. He could not but know that he was in the wrong, and yet he had done it out of the conviction that he must. There was a dilemma for an honest man.
This honest man had made and broken kings. And no kingly blood in him; none at all. Gregory, who was the kinsman of emperors, stiffened his back and his will. “I see one recourse,” he said. “I will judge your case, in full.” Gerbert stood rigidly still; in his eyes was a dawning of hope. “On one condition. You will restore Arnulf to his see.”
Gerbert’s mouth opened.
Gregory went on, implacable. “Restore him, and I will judge him. If I determine that his crimes merit his deposition, then I will depose him.”
“And if not?” Gerbert demanded. “If you decide that he is more convenient mitered than unmitered? What then? Shall I see my people torn again out of the few years’ peace which I have won for them? Must my king fear anew the threat to his crown?”
“The pretender is dead,” said Gregory. “His sons are dead or powerless. There is only Arnulf to consider. He can claim no kingship. If he has sinned as grievously as you allege, then he will lose the archbishopric. What have you lost but a few months’ uncertainty?”
“Rheims,” said Gerbert, as if he could not help himself.
Gregory set his teeth and straightened his back. “It has been said that you are ambitious; that you abetted Arnulf in his treachery until you saw greater advantage in the king’s cause.” Gerbert erupted in protest; Gregory silenced him with a lifted hand. “This is not a trial. I simply warn. Your friends are many and your fame great. Yet, like any man who would dwell in high places, you have enemies; and men who are neither, but who strive to perceive you for what you are. Some might propose that the petty treachery of your rival is as nothing to the multiplicity of your sins.”
“One of those accusers being, perhaps, the Bishop of Liège?”
Gregory had smiled before he thought, a swift, mirthless grin. “You are, by all accounts, an honest man. Surely you can understand what force constrains me. I am the Vicar of Christ. I must administer the laws which I and my predecessors have made. To begin this trial, I must demand that Arnulf be restored. Then and only then may I judge him.”
Gerbert’s head bowed, but not in submission. “Holy Father — ”
“No,” said Gregory.
It was flat, and it was final. Gerbert made obeisance with excruciating correctness, and left.
Gregory took off the tiara and rubbed his aching brow, and glared. Servants scattered. He barely noticed. He rose. “Enough of this,” he said. “By God, enough!”
One brave idiot dared to remonstrate. “Holy Father, the Margrave of — ”
“A plague on the margrave!” Gregory cast off his cope in the face of assembled shock, and bared his teeth, shocking them further. Why they should be so appalled after the godless fools who had gone before him, he could not imagine. He turned his back on them all and went in search of a moment’s peace.
oOo
“May God preserve us from an honest pope.” Gerbert had been pacing for a good hour, simmering. The words burst out of him all at once. He stopped, spun to face the Jinniyah.
She met his glare with a level stare. “He’s in the right, as he sees it. How can he help but refuse you?”
“He refuses to see what stares him in the face.”
“How can he see it? He wasn’t there. All he knows is that the king and the bishops of Gaul are contesting his power to sanction a bishop’s election. That’s striking at the heart of the papacy itself.”
“Since when,” gritted Gerbert, “have you been an authority on papal politics?”
“Since my master involved himself in them.”
He snarled and went back to his pacing. It was his privilege as an archbishop from Gaul — however hotly contested his right to that title — to lodge in a room of his own in a hostelry not excessively far from the papal palace. It was a tiny cell of a room, airless and indifferently clean, but its door was solid. He could be reasonably certain that no one heard his colloquy with his antique bronze.
At the moment he did not care if the entire papal curia knew that he had a heathen spirit for a familiar. “Everything,” he said. “Everything I do withers on the branch. First Rheims is snatched from me by a king’s misguided policy. Then I win it at no little cost to body and soul; but can I keep it? Arnulf and his allies spew their poison wherever they go. They turn my bishops against me. They hiss in the ear of the pope himself. They smite me with the cold hammer of the law; they teach my people to hate me. No one in Rheims will dine with me or attend my mass. I am sick of it, I tell you. Sick, sick, sick!”
He broke in a torrent of coughing, cursing through it, until the room filled with frightened servants. He could not even drive them out; he had no voice left. They put him to bed, hovering and fluttering, maddening him with their worry.
He had to feign sleep before they would leave him. Then in truth, for a little while, he did sleep. He dreamed that Richer was there, fretting but being bearable about it.
He woke with a start. He was alone. Richer was in Rheims, looking after the inner school and writing a history of the Franks. Th
e two went together with an odd logic. Gerbert, as Richer liked to say, was in both. They had not kept the idiot from all but packing himself in Gerbert’s baggage. Gerbert had had to trap him with a threat: to set over the school of the Art no less a master than Arnulf himself. That was a low blow; but it won Richer’s submission.
Gerbert would never admit that he had misjudged. He had been ill at intervals since the year began. He had seemed to be better when he left in haste for Rome, hoping against hope to arrive before Herluin could win his case and his pallium. Now the sickness was back and Herluin had his sanction from the pope’s own hand, untainted by Gerbert’s intercession; and Gregory would not hear Gerbert’s defense unless he surrendered his see.
“And that,” he said into the airless dark, “I will not do. Rheims belongs to me. I have paid for it. I will not give it up.”
16.
Gerbert clung to the saddle of his mule and tried to peer through the dazzle of sunlight. His eyes were full of water; his ears rang; his lungs labored against the weight of sickness. He thought he saw walls, towers, a blurred banner. “Rheims?” he tried to ask.
“Pavia,” someone said. And in a different tone, which perhaps he was not meant to hear: “Can we move any faster? He’s about to drop.”
“Better not,” said someone else. “Stubborn old bastard. If he’d let us put him in a litter...”
“No,” Gerbert said clearly. Or he thought he said it clearly. Of course this was not Rheims. This was the royal city, Pavia that was queen of Lombardy, set like a jewel in the richness of the plain, and far away on the edge of the world, the march of mountains. The Alps that had defeated Hannibal would hardly slow Gerbert, sickness or no. His city was beyond them, his school of the arts and of the Art, his poor beleaguered archbishopric which he did not intend to give up.
