Secular Wizard

by Christopher Stasheff

  “You don’t fear the Lord?” Matt frowned. “Why did you back off when I recited the old charm, then?”

  “You asked Him to preserve you from ghosts, fool! If I honor Him, of course I will honor those whom He protects.” Spiro drew down his brows, turning his eyes into caverns as he frowned. “But you are no mere minstrel, are you?”

  “About that return to Greece,” Matt said hurriedly. “I’ll mention it to the current squire, but I can’t promise anything. If he wants a haunted chamber more than a usable one, he may opt to keep your mortal remains here.”

  “If he does, then I shall howl night and day, I shall groan to break all hearts, I shall give him never a moment’s rest, I shall-”

  “Haunt the whole house?” Matt said brightly. “Make it all unusable? Can you do that?”

  The ghost looked daggers at him. “Nay. I am ever drawn back to this chamber. But I can make unceasing racket herein!”

  “You might do better just not to bother anybody,” Matt pointed out. “Then he wouldn’t have any reason to keep you.”

  “But no reason to spend the money it would take to ship my bones back to Greece and bury them and be rid of me, either!”

  ‘True,“ Matt admitted. ”Sure you can’t offer him some sort of inducement?“

  “There is a treasure I buried,” the ghost said slowly, “since I had begun to mistrust my son. Two hundred years ago, it was only enough to take my bones back to Greece, but now-”

  “-what with inflation, the price of gold has gone up, and it’s worth a small fortune?”

  “Aye. When my body is buried near Athens, I shall come back to this house once, and once only, on my way to Purgatory, to tell him where to dig!”

  “Giving him a nice, tidy profit.” Matt nodded, satisfied. “Good business all around, and everybody’s happy. Okay, Squire Spiro, I’ll broach the issue to your descendant in the morning. Of course, I’d be a bit more persuasive if I’d had a good night’s sleep…”

  “My descendant is not the only one who needs a bribe, I see,” the ghost grumbled. “Very well, minstrel, I will leave you in peace for this night. But if you betray me, I shall find a way to smite you, soon or late! Remember that where my blood and bone may go, my spirit can go, though it takes a ruinous effort and causes me great pain!”

  “Meaning that you can follow Pascal, if he sticks with me?” Matt cocked his head to the side. “Interesting! An ectoplasmic DNA link goes even further than I thought Still, not to worry, Squire Spiro-what I said I’d do, I will do. I can’t speak for your descendant, though.”

  “You need not; gold speaks loudly enough,” the ghost growled. “Well, then I’ll leave you for this night-but remember your promise!” And with that he winked out and was gone. The room was totally silent, and totally dark, for perhaps a minute more. Then the candle glowed to life again of its own accord, revealing a shaken and sweating Pascal, who mopped his forehead and said, in a tremulous voice, “That was amazing, Matthew! But I think my ancestor was right-you are no mere minstrel, and are even more than a knight, are you not?”

  “Me?” Matt protested, all innocence. “Pascal! If you don’t know my secrets, who in Latruria does? Off to sleep, now. If I were you, I’d take a blanket and head for the barn. I don’t particularly fancy sleeping in this bed alone, but I think I’ll get all sorts of kudos if I can emerge bright and fresh in the morning. You don’t have to, though.”

  The primary kudo was the look of shocked amazement on the races of the squire and his family when Matt came in to breakfast the next morning. He allowed himself a feeling of satisfaction as he sat down behind a huge slice of bread that was serving as a plate, and accepted a portion of something fried from a serving girl. He nodded a pleasant thank-you, then looked about at the family with a bright smile. “Good morning!”

  “Ah… good morning,” the squire said. “Did you… sleep well?”

  “Oh, very well, thanks! Took a little while to calm down and doze off, that’s all.”

  Pascal nearly strangled on his porridge. “Remarkable,” the squire’s wife murmured, and Panegyra was staring at him with awe-no, not awe, Matt realized: fear. “You had no… dreams?” the squire pressed. “No, but I did have an interesting conversation with the resident ghost.” Matt looked up. “Really very reasonable man, once you can get him talking.”

  The squire turned white as a sheet. His wife nearly fainted, and Panegyra almost fell off her chair. Fortunately, she fell toward Pascal, and he caught her neatly and helped stabilize her. She murmured her thanks as she resettled herself, and Matt wondered if the move had been entirely accidental. “You… managed conversation with the ghost?” the squire stammered. “You… you were not… afraid of him?”

  “Well, sure, anybody would be, the way he appeared out of nowhere!” Matt said. “But I know an old charm or two-minstrels collect those sorts of things-so he backed off and tried to order me out.”

  “And… how did you refuse him?” The squire’s wife was recovering nicely. “I asked, ‘Why?’ ” Matt said simply. “And he told you?”

  “Well, there was a little more to it than that.” Matt was beginning to enjoy himself. “But the long and the short of it is that he wants to go back to Greece.”

  “Wants to go?” the squire said blankly, and his wife seized his arm. “Instantly, husband! Whatever he wishes, give it! If we can be rid of that specter, it will be well worth it!”

  “Let us first see the bill before we pay it,” the squire said cautiously. “It is old Spiro’s ghost, then?”

  “The founder himself,” Matt confirmed. “That’s why he feels he has a right to have the room to himself-he not only built it, he also died in it.”

  “The grandest room in the house!” the squire’s wife wailed. “But how can he go back to his homeland?” the squire asked, staring. “He is dead!”

  “Yes, but he seems to think that if you can dig up his coffin and ship it back to Greece, he’ll go with it.”

  “It might be worth the attempt,” the squire said, gazing off into space. “Worth?” His wife dug her fingers into his arm. “Worth it a hundred times over! Then we can have the chamber exorcised, re-open the bricked-up windows-and we can reside there!”

  “There will be some expense in it,” the squire warned. “There is the summerhouse you wished to build-that would have to wait a few years.”

  His wife turned away, sulking. “All the best families have one!”

  “All the best families have at least one ghost, too,” her husband reminded her. “We have two to spare-I shall not miss this one! He is so disagreeable, so malicious, so… frightening!”

  “But is he worth your summerhouse?”

  “Oh, aye, I would say he is!” The wife capitulated. “But there shall still be enough money to redecorate the room, shall there not?”

  “Plenty,” Matt said. “He left a few gold pieces buried some place on the estate, to dig up and pay for his passage when he was ready to sail-but he was killed first.”

  The squire turned avid. “Where is this treasure?”

  “It’s not that much,” Matt warned. “He said that once his carcass is back in Athens where it belongs, he’ll make one last visit on his way to Purgatory, to tell you where it’s buried.”

  “I may have my summerhouse still!” The wife clapped her hands. “I wouldn’t go that far,” Matt cautioned. “He said it is no treasure-belike enough to cover no more than the shipping and reburial of the coffin-and it may be a lie, to induce us to do what old Spiro wishes. Still, it is worth the gamble,” the squire said. “But there should be enough for redecoration,” Matt said. “There should,” the squire agreed, then turned back to Matt. “ ‘Tis a noisome task, digging up a coffin that is two centuries old.”

  “Lots of wormholes,” Matt agreed, “and probably falling-apart rotten. If I were you, I’d have a new casket waiting that was large enough to hold the old one-and I’d dig double-wide, so that you can set the new coffin right next to the old o
ne before you try to lift it.”

  “A coffin inside a coffin? The notion will bear thought,” the squire mused. “I’ll leave you to think about it, then.” Matt finished his last bite and stood up. “You’ll pardon me if I have to eat and ran-but I’m bound for the king’s court; I hear he’s generous to musicians.”

  “He is?” the squire said blankly, and Panegyra’s eyes lit. “Surely, Father! His court is always filled with music! You do not think his courtiers dance to their own singing, do you?”

  “Please!” Matt shuddered. “Amateurs are bad enough in their own homes!” And he managed to make it out the door while the squire’s wife was still trying to decide whether or not to be offended. They swung down the road with a long, easy stride. Matt was pushing the pace a little, hoping that sheer exertion might pull Pascal out of the doldrums. “Buck up, squire’s son! At least she didn’t tell you that she doesn’t love you!”

  “No,” Pascal admitted, “but she did not say that she does, either.”

  “The fortunes of romance,” Matt commiserated. “I had that problem with a girl, too.”

  “You did?” Pascal looked up, eyes wide with hope. “What did you do?”

  “Everything I could,” Matt told him. “Made it clear that I was doing my best for her and wasn’t planning to stop.”

  “What happened?”

  “Oh, she finally admitted that she loved me.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I married her-after a very long wait. So do your best to prove your worth, and you never know what could happen.” From what Matt had seen of Panegyra, though, he thought he knew-but at least the effort might give Pascal a new interest in living. The young man was frowning, though. “If you have married a wife whom you love, what are you doing wandering the roads so far from your home?”

  “Who do you think sent me?” Matt retorted. “Look, just because she loves me, doesn’t mean she wants me hanging around the house and getting underfoot all the time. Say, who are those kids on the road up ahead?”

  Pascal turned to look, and stared at the large, boisterous group coming into sight around the next bend. “None that I know-but why are there so many of them?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me,” Matt replied. “Well, let’s go ask.”

  They caught up with the happy songsters, who were passing a bottle of wine from hand to hand-and if one of the boys occasionally paused to sip the wine from a girl’s lips, who minded? Not even the half-dozen middle-aged couples who swung along a little way in front of the pack of juveniles, with occasional glances back at their traveling companions. Matt left the young folk to Pascal and went ahead to the nearest mature pair-who, he noticed, were holding hands, but not wearing wedding rings, not even the little brass circlets most peasants wore. “G-” He was about to say “Godspeed,” but caught himself in time. “Good day, good folk! Where are you bound?”

  “Why, to the capital, of course!” said the man. “To the king’s town of Venarra!”

  “Why should we languish in the hamlets of our births?‘ the woman asked. ”There is nothing but boredom and grinding labor there! We shall go to Venarra, where all are paid in gold for their work, and there is continual revelry!“

  Matt had a notion they were due for a severe disappointment, but it wasn’t his place to say so. He did notice the use of the plural, though. So they had come from different towns-which meant that, in a society like this one, they had probably never even met before. Was he looking at the saturated end of a long-delayed love story? Or a tale of double adultery? He decided not to stay too close, in case there was an angry husband following with a knife-not to mention an angry wife. “I take it this gaggle of overgrown children are bound toward Venarra, too.”

  “Oh, let them enjoy life while they may!” the woman said, and the man agreed. “Before they must settle into the traces, let them kick up their heels awhile.”

  Matt knew from his own generation just how long that while could be-but surely not in a medieval society! “You sound as if you speak from experience.”

  A shadow crossed the man’s face, and the woman said, “Which of us does not?” She held up her hand for display. “See the wrinkles, the shriveling, the calluses? I do not rejoice in them, believe me! But any woman who has reared a family shall show you the same. Unless, of course,” she said bitterly, “she is wealthy enough to have servants, who may then ruin their hands for her!”

  Matt guessed that he was speaking to a former chambermaid and mother. “Ah, yes, sweet lady, but what would any of us do without mothers to care for us?”

  “Then there should be fewer of us,” she retorted, “so that a woman might have fewer years of drudgery. Nay, let the husbands bear the children, if they want them so badly! Let the husbands rear the ones they claim to treasure, but would as soon kick as feed when they come home o‘ nights! And let the women go free!”

  Not all women enjoyed mothering, Matt knew-and the more often he heard diatribes like hers, the greater he thought their number must be. But that was in his own world. In this world, it was a very new idea indeed. “Have you done that, then?” He forced a grin. “Left a husband to take care of his children?”

  “I have,” she said with a defiant toss of her head. “If he wants them so badly as to beget one after another upon me, then let him care for them! For myself, I shall seek excitement and adventure-and, aye, revelry and pleasure!”

  “You, too?” Matt asked the man. After all, it was kind of a logical conclusion.

  The peasant shrugged. “My wife was at me night and day to cease trying to order her about and order the children about. At last she cried that she would be better off alone, for all the good I did.”

  The woman frowned, moving a little away from him. “She did not say that she wished you to go!”

  “Not in words, no,” he said, “but in her looks, in the tone of her voice, in the hatred flashing from her eyes, she did”

  “So you think that you should lord it over your wife?” The woman’s tone was dangerous. “A wife, yes.” The man grinned and caught her close around the waist. “But a woman who comes with me for revelry and delight, and the pleasures we may give one another-nay. I have no claim upon her, nor she on me, but only company, while we are agreeable to one another!”

  He pulled her close for a kiss, and she yielded, but without quite as much zest as she had before. At a guess, Matt decided, this was the first time the two of them had discussed that particular issue. Pascal showed up beside him with a grin, eyes shining. “They have all left their parents and the labor of the plow and the kitchen, to seek wealth and gaiety in the king’s capital of Venarra, friend Matthew!”

  Matt eyed him narrowly. “You sound like you think they’re doing the smart thing.”

  “Well, they may not have found wealth,” Pascal said, “but they have surely found gaiety! If you will excuse me, friend Matthew, I find their company quite enjoyable!”

  He dove back into the happy, singing throng. Matt gazed after and saw him flirting with a pretty girl. Well, it certainly did pull him out of the doldrums over Cousin Panegyra-but it didn’t say much for his fidelity to her. Admittedly, the treatment she’d given him was only one step from a brush-off, but more vicious, in its way, since it was designed to keep him bound to her-no doubt she was one of those girls who rated her worth by the number of boys she kept on strings, which boded ill for her future as wife to an older man. Pascal was ripe to lose himself on the rebound, for better or for worse. Matt hoped it wasn’t worse. On the other hand, the merry band did afford excellent cover for Pascal, and Matt wasn’t exactly going to be glaringly obvious with the middle-aged adventurers. Okay, he was a little young, being only in his thirties, whereas everybody else looked to be in their late forties or early fifties-though in a medieval society, that meant they were probably late thirties, or younger; sometimes peasants looked positively ancient by thirty-five. Okay, so being right between the two groups, he stood out a bit-but he was a min
strel, and nobody would be surprised to see him attaching himself to such a festive crowd. Matt, however, was a little concerned about this southward migration. These village kids just didn’t know enough to be able to cope with the big city-and none of the elders were wearing wedding rings; he suspected they had all kicked over the traces, just like these first two. “All” because he could see more of them ahead, as the roadway straightened out-two groups of youths, laughing and passing a skin of wine from hand to hand, and several smaller groups of older people, talking and jesting and flirting just as baldly as their juniors. Was half the countryside migrating to Venarra? And what was the other half doing at home, abandoned? Besides taking care of the kids, of course-if they were even bothering to do that. He found out when their band stopped at a wayside inn for lunch-along with half a dozen similar groups. “We are full inside!” the harassed landlord said, standing in the doorway, waving them off. “We will gladly sell you meat, bread, cheese, and ale-but there are no more places to sit!”

  In a few minutes he and his serving-girl staff had a thriving business going in take-out orders-but as the older folk stepped up for service, a middle-aged woman came out of the inn door and berated them. “You clods, you lumps of earth! You have no more heart than a stone! Would you leave your wives and children to the wolves, then? Would you sacrifice them to your own greed and lust? For shame!”

  The older travelers looked up in surprise. Then one buxom matron threw back her head and laughed. “I have not left a wife, I assure you!” The whole crowd joined in her laugh, with a note of relief. The woman flushed. “But you have left children! The pretty little ones who sucked at your breast-you have left them to the blows and rages of their father! You have left your husband to fend for them all, trying to plow the fields and somehow manage to care for the little ones! Can there be anything but disaster for any of them?”

  “It would have been disaster for him if I had stayed,” the errantwife retorted. “I doubt not he will find a woman to fill his bed-let her care for the children!”