The monk glanced up from his reading. The abbot was still watching the buzzards over Last Resort.
"You've heard about his childhood, Brother?" Dom Paulo asked.
The monk nodded.
"Read on."
The reading continued, but the abbot ceased to listen. He knew the letter nearly by heart, but still he felt that there was something Marcus Apollo had been trying to say between the lines that he, Dom Paulo, had not yet managed to understand. Marcus was trying to warn him — but of what? The tone of the letter was mildly flippant, but it seemed full of ominous incongruities which might have been designed to add up to some single dark congruity, if only he could add them right. What danger could there he in letting the secular scholar study at the abbey?
Thon Taddeo himself, according to the courier who had brought the letter, had been educated in the Benedictine monastery where he had been taken as a child to avoid embarrassment to his father's wife. The thon's father was Hannegan's uncle, but his mother was a serving maid. The duchess, legitimate wife of the duke, had never protested the duke's philandering until this common servant girl bore him the son he had always wanted; then she cried unfair. She had borne him only daughters, and to be bested by a commoner aroused her wrath. She sent the child away, flogged and dismissed the servant, and renewed her grip on the duke. She herself meant to have a manchild out of him to re-establish her honor; she gave him three more girls. The duke waited patiently for fifteen years; when she died in miscarriage (of another girl), he promptly went to the Benedictines to reclaim the boy and make him his heir.
But the young Taddeo of Hannegan-Pfardentrott had become a bitter child. He had grown from infancy to adolescence within sight of the city and the palace where his first cousin was being prepared for the throne; if his family had entirely ignored him, however, he might have matured without coming to resent his status as an outcast. But both his father and the servant girl whose womb had borne him came to visit him with just enough frequency to keep him reminded that he was begotten of human flesh and not of stones, and thus to make him vaguely aware that he was deprived of love to which he was entitled. And then too, Prince Hannegan had come to the same monastery for one year of schooling, had lorded it over his bastard cousin, and had excelled him in all things but keenness of mind. The young Taddeo had hated the prince with a quiet fury, and had set out to outdistance him as far as possible in learning at least. The race had proved a sham, however; the prince left the monastic school the following year, as unlettered as he had come, nor was any further thought given to his education. Meanwhile, his exiled cousin continued the race alone and won high honors; but his victory was hollow, for Hannegan did not care. Thon Taddeo had come to despise the whole Court of Texarkana but, with youthful inconsistency, he had returned willingly to that Court to be legitimized as the father's son at last, appearing to forgive everyone except the dead duchess who had exiled him and the monks who had cared for him in that exile.
Perhaps he thinks of our cloister as a place of durance vile, thought the abbot. There would be bitter memories, half-memories, and maybe a few imagined memories.
" '. . . seeds of controversy in the bed of the New Literacy,' " the reader continued. " 'So take heed, and watch for the symptoms.
" 'But, on the other hand, not only His Supremacy, but the dictates of charity and justice as well, insist that I recommend him to you as a well-meaning man, or at least as an unmalicious child, like most of these educated and gentlemanly pagans (and pagans they will make of themselves, in spite of all). He will behave if you are firm, but be careful, my friend. He has a mind like a loaded musket, and it can go off in any direction. I trust, however, that coping with him for a while will not be too taxing a problem for your ingenuity and hospitality.
" 'Quidam mihi calix nuper expletur, Paule. Precamini ergo Deum facere me fortiorem. Metuo ut hic pereat. Spero te et fratres saepius oraturos esse pro tremescente Marco Apolline. Valete in Christo, amici.
" 'Texarkanae datum est Octavā Ss Petri et Pauli, Anno Domini termillesimo . . .' "
"Let's see that seal again," said the abbot.
The monk handed him the scroll. Dom Paulo held it close to his face to peer at blurred lettering impressed at the bottom of the parchment by a badly inked wooden stamp:
OKAYED BY HANNEGAN II, BY GRACE OF GOD MAYOR,
RULER OF TEXARKANA, DEFENDER OF THE FAITH,
AND VAQUERO SUPREME OF THE PLAINS.
HIS MARK: X
"I wonder if His Supremacy had someone read the letter to him later?" worried the abbot.
"If so, m'Lord, would the letter have been sent?"
"I suppose not. But frivolity under Hannegan's nose just to spite the Mayor's illiteracy is not like Marcus Apollo, unless be was trying to tell me something between the lines — but couldn't quite think of a safe way to say it. That last part — about a certain chalice that he's afraid won't pass away. It's clear he's worried about something, but what? It isn't like Marcus; it isn't like him at all."
Several weeks had passed since the arrival of the letter; during those weeks Dom Paulo had slept badly, had suffered a recurrence of the old gastric trouble, had brooded overmuch on the past as if looking for something that might have been done differently in order to avert the future. What future? he demanded of himself. There seemed no logical reason to expect trouble. The controversy between monks and villagers had all but died. No signs of turmoil came from the herdsman tribes to the north and east. Imperial Denver was not pressing its attempt to levy taxes upon monastic congregations. There were no troops in the vicinity. The oasis was still furnishing water. There seemed no current threat of plague among animals or men. The corn was doing well this year in the irrigated fields. There were signs of progress in the world, and the village of Sanly Bowitts had achieved the fantastic literacy rate of eight per cent — for which the villagers might, but did not, thank the monks of the Leibowitzian Order.
And yet he felt forebodings. Some nameless threat lurked just around the corner of the world for the sun to rise again. The feeling had been gnawing at him, as annoying as a swarm of hungry insects that buzzed about one's face in the desert sun. There was the sense of the imminent, the remorseless, the mindless; it coiled like a heat-maddened rattler, ready to strike at rolling tumbleweed.
It was a devil with which he was trying to come to grips, the abbot decided, but the devil was quite evasive. The abbot's devil was rather small, as devils go: only knee-high, but he weighed ten tons and had the strength of five hundred oxen. He was not driven by maliciousness as Dom Paulo imagined him, not nearly as much as he was driven by frenzied compulsion, somewhat after the fashion of a rabid dog. He bit through meat and bone and nail simply because he had damned himself, and damnation created a damnably insatiable appetite. And he was evil merely because he had made a denial of Good, and the denial had become a part of his essence, or a hole therein. Somewhere, Dom Paulo thought, he's wading through a sea of men and leaving a wake of the maimed.
What nonsense, old man! he chided himself. When you tire of living, change itself seems evil, does it not? for then any change at all disturbs the deathlike peace of the life-weary. Oh there's the devil, all right, but let's not credit him with more than his damnable due. Are you that life-weary, old fossil?
But the foreboding lingered.
"Do you suppose the buzzards have eaten old Eleazar yet?" asked a quiet voice at his elbow.
Dom Paulo glanced around with a start in the twilight. The voice belonged to Father Gault, his prior and probable successor. He stood fingering a rose and looking embarrassed for having disturbed the old man's solitude.
"Eleazar? You mean Benjamin? Why, have you heard something about him lately?"
"Well, no, Father Abbot." He laughed uneasily. "But you seemed to be looking toward the mesa, and I thought you were wondering about the Old Jew." He glanced toward the anvil-shaped mountain, silhouetted against the gray patch of sky in the west. "There's a wisp of smoke up there, s
o I guess he's still alive."
"We shouldn't have to guess," Dom Paulo said abruptly. "I'm going to ride over there and pay him a visit."
"You sound like you're leaving tonight." Gault chuckled.
"In a day or two."
"Better be careful. They say he throws rocks at climbers."
"I haven't seen him for five years," the abbot confessed. "And I'm ashamed that I haven't. He's lonely. I'll go."
"If he's lonely, why does he insist on living like a hermit?"
"To escape loneliness — in a young world."
The young priest laughed. "That perhaps makes his kind of sense, Domne, but I don't quite see it."
"You will, when you're my age, or his."
"I don't expect to get that old. He lays claim to several thousand years."
The abbot smiled reminiscently. "And you know, I can't dispute him either. I met him when I was just a novice, fifty-odd years ago, and I'd swear he looked just as old then as he does now. He must be well over a hundred."
"Three thousand two hundred and nine, so he says. Sometimes even older. I think he believes it, too. An interesting madness,"
"I'm not so sure he's mad, Father. Just devious in his sanity. What did you want to see me about?"
"Three small matters. First, how do we get the Poet out of the royal guest rooms — before Thon Taddeo arrives? He's due here in a few days, and the Poet's taken root."
"I'll handle the Poet-sirrah. What else?"
"Vespers. Will you be in the church?"
"Not until Compline. You take over. What else?"
"Controversy in the basement — over Brother Kornhoer's experiment."
"Who and how?"
"Well, the silly gist of it seems to be that Brother Armbruster has the attitude of vespero mundi expectando, while with Brother Kornhoer, it's the matins of the millennium. Kornhoer moves something to make room for a piece of equipment. Armbruster yells Perdition! Brother Kornhoer yells Progress! and they have at each other again. Then they come fuming to me to settle it. I scold them for losing their tempers. They get sheepish and fawn on each other for ten minutes. Six hours later, the floor shivers from Brother Armbruster's bellowing Perdition! down in the library. I can settle the blowups, but there seems to be a Basic Issue."
"A basic breach of conduct, I'd say. What do you want me to do about it? Exclude them from the table?"
"Not yet, but you might warn them."
"All right, I'll track it down. Is that all?"
"That's all, Domne." He started away, but paused: "Oh, by the way-do you think Brother Kornhoer's contraption is going to work?"
"I hope not!" the abbot snorted.
Father Gault appeared surprised. "But, then why let him—"
"Because I was curious at first. The work has caused so much commotion by now, though, that I'm sorry I let him start it."
"Then why not stop him?"
"Because I'm hoping that he will reduce himself to absurdity without any help from me. If the thing fails, it'll fail just in time for Thon Taddeo's arrival. That would be just the proper form of mortification for Brother Kornhoer — to remind him of his vocation, before he begins thinking that he was called to Religion mainly for the purpose of building a generator of electrical essences in the monastery basement."
"But, Father Abbot, you'll have to admit that it would be quite an achievement, if successful."
"I don't have to admit it," Dom Paulo told him curtly.
When Gault was gone, the abbot, after a brief debate with himself, decided to handle the problem of the Poet-sirrah! before the problem of perdition-versus-progress. The simplest solution to the problem of the Poet was for the Poet to get out of the royal suite, and preferably out of the abbey, out of the vicinity of the abbey, out of sight, hearing, and mind. But no one could expect a "simplest solution" to get rid of the Poet-sirrah!
The abbot left the wall and crossed the courtyard toward the guesthouse. He moved by feel, for the buildings were monoliths of shadow under the stars, and only a few windows glowed with candlelight. The windows of the royal suite were dark; but the Poet kept odd hours and might well be in.
Inside the building, he groped for the right door, found it, and knocked. There was no immediate answer, but only a faint bleating sound which might or might not have issued from within the suite. He knocked again, then tried the door. It opened.
Faint red light from a charcoal burner softened the darkness; the room reeked of stale food.
"Poet?"
Again the faint bleating, but closer now. He went to the burner, raked up an incandescent coal, and lit a splinter of kindling. He glanced around and shuddered at the litter of the room. It was empty. He transferred the flame to an oil lamp and went to explore the rest of the suite. It would have to be thoroughly scrubbed and fumigated (also, perhaps, exorcised) before Thon Taddeo moved in. He hoped to make the Poet-sirrah! do the scrubbing, but knew the chance was remote.
In the second room, Dom Paulo suddenly felt as if someone were watching him. He paused and looked slowly around.
A single eyeball peered at him from a vase of water on the shelf. The abbot nodded at it familiarly and went on.
In the third room, he met the goat. It was their first meeting.
The goat was standing atop a tall cabinet, munching turnip greens. It looked like a small breed of mountain goat, but it had a bald head that appeared bright blue by lamplight. Undoubtedly a freak by birth.
"Poet?" he inquired, softly, looking straight at the goat and touching his pectoral cross.
"In here," came a sleepy voice from the fourth room.
Dom Paulo sighed with relief. The goat went on munching greens. Now that had been a hideous thought, indeed.
The Poet lay sprawled across the bed with a bottle of wine within easy reach; he blinked irritably at the light with his one good eye. "I was asleep," he complained, adjusting his black eyepatch and reaching for the bottle.
"Then wake up. You're moving out of here immediately. Tonight. Dump your possessions in the hall to let the suite air out. Sleep in the stable boy's cell downstairs if you must. Then come back in the morning and scrub this place out."
The Poet looked like a bruised lily for a moment, then made a grab for something under the blankets. He brought out a fist and stared at it thoughtfully. "Who used these quarters last?" he asked.
"Monsignor Longi. Why?"
"I wondered who brought the bedbugs." The Poet opened his fist, pinched something out of his palm, cracked it between his nails, and flipped it away. "Thon Taddeo can have them. I don't want them. I've been eaten up alive ever since I moved in. I was planning on leaving, but now that you've offered me my old cell back, I'll be happy—"
"I didn't mean—"
"—to accept your kind hospitality a little longer. Only until my book is finished, of course."
"What book? But never mind. Just get your things out of here."
"Now?"
"Now."
"Good. I don't think I could stand these bugs another night." The Poet rolled out of bed, but paused for a drink.
"Give me the wine," the abbot ordered.
"Sure. Have some. It's a pleasant vintage."
"Thank you, since you stole it from our cellars. It happens to be sacramental wine. Did that occur to you?"
"It hasn't been consecrated."
"I'm surprised you thought of that." Dom Paulo took the bottle.
"I didn't steal it anyway. I—"
"Never mind the wine. Where did you steal the goat?"
"I didn't steal it," the Poet complained.
"It just — materialized?"
"It was a gift, Reverendissime."
"From whom?"
"A dear friend, Domnissime."
"Whose dear friend?"
"Mine, Sire."
"Now there's a paradox. Where, now, did you—"
"Benjamin, Sire."
A flicker of surprise crossed Dom Paulo's face. "You stole it from old Benjamin?
"
The Poet winced at the word. "Please, not stole."
"Then what?"
"Benjamin insisted that I take it as a gift after I had composed a sonnet in his honor."
"The truth!"
The Poet-sirrah! swallowed sheepishly. "I won it from him at mumbly-peg."
"I see."
"It's true! The old wretch nearly cleaned me out, and then refused to allow me credit. I had to stake my glass eye against the goat. But I won everything back."
"Get the goat out of the abbey."
"But it's a marvelous species of goat. The milk is of an unearthly odor and contains essences. In fact it's responsible for the Old Jew's longevity."
"How much of it?"
"All fifty-four hundred and eight years of it."
"I thought he was only thirty-two hundred and—" Dom Paulo broke off disdainfully. "What were you doing up on Last Resort?"
"Playing mumbly-peg with old Benjamin."
"I mean—" The abbot steeled himself. "Never mind. Just get yourself moved out. And tomorrow get the goat back to Benjamin."
"But I won it fairly."
"We'll not discuss it. Take the goat to the stable, then. I'll have it returned to him myself."
"Why?"
"We have no use for a goat. Neither have you."
"Ho, ho," the Poet said archly.
"What did that mean, pray?"
"Thon Taddeo is coming. There'll be need of a goat before it's finished. You can be sure of that." He chuckled smugly to himself.
The abbot turned away in irritation. "Just get out," he added superfluously, and then went to wrestle with contention in the basement, where the Memorabilia now reposed.
14
* * *
THE VAULTED BASEMENT HAD been dug during the centuries of nomadic infiltration from the north, when the Bayring Horde had overrun most of the Plains and desert, looting and vandalizing all villages that lay in their path. The Memorabilia, the abbey's small patrimony of knowledge out of the past, had been walled up in underground vaults to protect the priceless writings from both nomads and soi-disant crusaders of the schismatic Orders, founded to fight the hordes, but turned to random pillaging and sectarian strife. Neither the nomads nor the Military Order of San Pancratz would have valued the abbey's books, but the nomads would have destroyed them for the joy of destruction and the military knights-friars would have burned many of them as "heretical" according to the theology of Vissarion, their Antipope.
A Canticle For Leibowitz Page 15
