Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman

by Walter M Miller Jr

  Blacktooth lowered his gaze. Dom Graneden would have sent them home if he had known.

  “So real Nomads would spit on you, would they?” Dom Jarad resumed thoughtfully. “Is that the reason? You’d rather not cast our pearls before such swine?”

  Brother Blacktooth opened his mouth and closed it. He turned red, stiffened, crossed his arms, crossed his legs, uncrossed them rather deliberately, closed his eyes, began to frown, took a deep breath, and began to growl through his teeth. “Not pearls—”

  Abbot Jarad cut him off to prevent an explosion. “You’re pessimistic about the resettled tribes. You think they have no future anyway. Well, I think they do, and the work is going to be done, and you’re the only one to do it. Remember obedience? Forget the purpose of the work, if you can’t believe in that, and find your purpose in the work. You know the saying: ‘Work is prayer.’ Think of Saint Leibowitz, think of Saint Benedict. Think of your calling.”

  Blacktooth regained control of himself. “Yes, my calling,” he said bitterly. “I once thought I was called to the work of prayer—contemplative prayer. Or so I was told, Father Abbot.”

  “Well, who told you contemplative monks don’t work, eh?”

  “Nobody. I didn’t say—”

  “Then you must think scholarship is the wrong kind of work for a contemplative, is that it? You think that scrubbing stone floors or shoveling shit from the privies would put you closer to God than translating the Venerable Boedullus? Listen, my son, if scholarship is incompatible with the contemplative way, what was the life of Saint Leibowitz all about? What have we been doing in the Southwest desert for twelve and a half centuries? What of the monks who have risen to sanctity in the very scriptorium where you’re working now?”

  “But it’s not the same.”

  Blacktooth gave up. He was in the abbot’s trap, and to get out of the abbot’s trap, he would have to force Jarad to acknowledge a distinction he knew Jarad was deliberately avoiding. There was a kind of “scholarship” which had come to be a form of contemplative religious practice peculiar to the Order, but it was not the head-scratching work of translating the venerable historians. Jarad, he knew, was referring to the original labor, still practiced as ritual, of preserving the Leibowitzian Memorabilia, the fragmentary and rarely comprehensible records of the Magna Civitas, the Great Civilization, records saved from the bonfires of the Simplification by the earliest followers of Isaac Edward Leibowitz, Blacktooth’s favorite saint after the Virgin. Leibowitz’s later followers, children of a time of darkness, had taken up the selfless and relatively mindless task of copying and recopying, memorizing and even chanting in choir, these mysterious records. Such tedious work demanded a total and unthinking attention, lest the imagination add something which would make meaningful to the copyist a meaningless jungle of lines in a twentieth-century diagram of a lost idea. It demanded an immersion of the self in the work which was the prayer. When the man and the prayer were entirely merged, a sound, or a word, or the ringing of the monastery bell, might cause the man to look up in astonishment from the copy table to find that the everyday world around him was mysteriously transformed, and aglow with the divine immanence. Perhaps thousands of weary copyists had tiptoed into paradise through that illuminated sheepskin gate, but such work was not at all like the brain-racking business of bringing Boedullus to the Nomads. But Blacktooth decided not to argue.

  “I want to go back to the world, Domne,” he announced firmly.

  Dead silence was his answer. The abbot’s eyes became glittering slits. Blacktooth blinked and looked aside. A buzzing insect flew through the open window, circled the room twice, and alighted on Jarad’s neck; it crawled there briefly, took wing again, and flew buzzing out by the same window.

  Through the closed door of the adjoining room, the faint voice of a novice or postulant reciting his assigned Memorabilium penetrated the silence without really diminishing it:

  “—and the curl of the magnetic field intensity vector equals the time-rate-of-change of the electric flux density vector, added to four pi times the current density vector. But the third law states the divergence of the electric flux density vector to be—” The voice was soft, almost feminine, and fast as a monk reciting rosary, his mind pondering one of the Mysteries. The voice was familiar, but Blacktooth could not quite place its owner.

  Dom Jarad sighed at last and spoke. “No, Brother Blacktooth, you won’t disown your vows. You’re thirty years old, but outside these walls, what are you still? A fourteen-year-old runaway with nowhere to go. Pfft! The good simpletons of the world would pluck you like a chicken. Your parents are dead, yes? And the land they tilled was not their own, yes?”

  “How can I be released, Father Abbot?”

  “Stubborn, stubborn. What have you got against Boedullus?”

  “Well, for one thing, he’s contemptuous of the very Nomads—” Blacktooth stopped; he was in another trap. He had nothing against Boedullus. He liked Boedullus. For a dark-age saint, Boedullus was rational, inquisitive, inventive—and intolerant. It was the intolerance of the civilized for the barbarian, of the plantation owner for the migrant driver of herds, of Cain, indeed, for Abel. It was the same intolerance as Jarad’s. But Boedullus’s mild contempt for the Nomads was beside the point. Blacktooth hated the whole project. But there across the desk from him sat the project’s originator, giving him pained looks. Dom Jarad was as always Blacktooth’s monastic superior, but now he was more than that. Besides the abbot’s ring, now, he wore the red skullcap. As the Most Eminent Lord Jarad Cardinal Kendemin, a prince of the Church, he might as well be titled “Winner of All Arguments.”

  “Is there some way I can get out, m’Lord,” he asked again.

  Jarad winced. “No! Take three weeks off to clear your head, if you want to. But don’t ask that again. Don’t try to blackmail me with hints like that.”

  “No hints, no blackmail.”

  “Oh, no? If I don’t reassign you, you’ll go over the wall, right?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Good! Then listen, my son. By your vow of obedience, you sacrifice your personal will. You promised to obey, and not just when you feel like obeying. Your work is a cross to you, is it? Then thank God and carry it. Offer it up, offer it up!”

  Blacktooth sagged, looked at the floor, and slowly shook his head. Dom Jarad sensed victory and went on.

  “Now, I don’t want to hear anything about this again, not before you’ve finished all seven volumes.” He stood up. Blacktooth stood up. The abbot shooed the copyist out of his office then, laughing as if it had been all in fun.

  Brother Blacktooth passed Brother Singing Cow in the corridor on his way to Vespers. The rule of silence was in force, and neither spoke. Singing Cow grinned. Blacktooth scowled. Both of his fellow runaways from the wheat plantations knew why he had gone to see Dom Jarad, and both lacked sympathy. Both thought his job a cushy one. Singing Cow worked in the new printing shop. Wren worked in the kitchen as Brother Second Cook.

  He saw Wren that night in the refectory. The second cook stood on the serving line, apportioning mush to the platters with a large wooden spoon. Each man in passing murmured, “Deo gratias,” and Wren nodded back as if to say, “You’re welcome.”

  As Blacktooth approached, Wren already held a huge gob of mush on the spoon. Blacktooth held his platter to his chest and signaled too much with his fingers, but Wren turned to speak “necessary” instructions to a busboy. When Blacktooth relaxed his platter, Wren piled it on.

  “Half back!” Blacktooth whispered, breaking silence. “Headache!” Wren raised his forefinger to his lips, shook his head, pointed to a sign—SANITARY RULES—behind the serving line, then pointed toward the sign at the exit, where a garbage monitor checked for waste.

  Blacktooth laid the platter on the serving kettle. With his right hand he scooped up the heap of mush, with his left hand he seized the front of Wren’s robe. He pushed the mush in Wren’s face and massaged it until Wren bi
t his thumb.

  The prior brought word directly to Blacktooth’s cell: Dom Jarad had relieved him of his job in the scriptorium for three weeks, in order that he might pray the stone-floor-scrubbing prayer for the cooks in the kitchen and dining area. And so for twenty-one days Blacktooth endured Wren’s smiling forgiveness while knee-skating on soapy stones. More than a year passed before he again raised the standing question of his work, his vocation, and his vows.

  During this year, Blacktooth felt that the rest of the community had begun to watch him rather closely, and he sensed a change. Whether the change was really in the attitudes of others, or entirely within himself, its effect was loneliness. Occasionally he felt estranged. In choir, he choked on the words “One bread and one body, though many, are we.” His unity with the congregation seemed no longer taken for granted. He had spoken the words “I want out,” perhaps before he really meant them; but not only had he uttered such a thing to the abbot, he had allowed his friends to learn of the incident. Among the professed, among those who by solemn vows had committed themselves irrevocably to God and the Way of the Order, a monk with regrets was an anomaly, a source of uneasiness, a portent, a thing in need of pity. Some avoided him. Some looked at him strangely. Others were all too kind.

  He found new friends among the younger members of the community, novices and postulants not yet fully committed to the Way. One of these was Torrildo, a youth of elfish charm whose first year at the abbey had already been marked many times by trouble. When Blacktooth was sent to the cooks for three weeks of floor-scrubbing penance, he found Torrildo already scrubbing there as punishment for some unannounced infraction, and he soon learned that Torrildo’s had been the muffled voice reciting a Memorabilium in the room adjacent to Dom Jarad’s during the professed monk’s unhappy interview. They differed widely in their interests, origin, character, and age, but their common penance pushed them together long enough for a bond to form.

  Torrildo was glad to find an older monk who was not impeccable. Blacktooth, while not quite admitting that he envied the postulant’s relative freedom to leave, began imagining himself in Torrildo’s sandals, with Torrildo’s problems, Torrildo’s charm, and Torrildo’s talents (which evaded the notice of many). He found himself giving advice, and was flattered when Singing Cow told him sourly that Torrildo was copying his mannerisms and becoming his talk-alike. It became a brief case of father and son, but it further estranged him from the ranks of the professed, who seemed to frown on the relationship.

  He was beginning to find it hard to distinguish the frown of the community from the frown of his conscience. One night he dreamed he knelt for communion in the chapel. “May the Body of Jesus Christ lead you to eternal life,” the priest repeated to each communicant; but as he came closer, Blacktooth saw that it was Torrildo, who, as he placed the wafer on Blacktooth’s tongue, leaned close and whispered, “One who eats bread with me here shall betray me.”

  Blacktooth awoke choking and gagging. He was trying to spit out a living toad.

  CHAPTER 2

  The first degree of humility is obedience without delay. This is the virtue of those who hold nothing dearer to them than Christ; who, because of the holy service they have professed, and the fear of hell, and the glory of life everlasting, as soon as anything has been ordered by the Superior, receive it as a divine command and cannot suffer any delay in executing it.

  —Saint Benedict’s Rule, Chapter 5

  URING THE TIME OF BROTHER BLACKTOOTH’S translation of the eleventh chapter of the seventh and final volume of Boedullus, and while he was working feverishly toward the end, a special messenger from Valana in the Denver Freestate arrived at the abbey with tragic news. Pope Linus VI, shrewdest if not the saintliest of recent popes, and the man most responsible for healing the postconquest schism, had fallen dead of heart failure while he stood shin deep in an icy trout stream and shook his fishing rod at a delegation from the Curia on shore. He was protesting to them that the Lord had never told Peter to stop fishing for fish when he commissioned him to fish for men. Pope Peter had indeed taken five apostles boating with him right after the Resurrection, Linus correctly pointed out. Then he paused, turned white, dropped the rod, and clutched at his chest; almost defiantly he gasped, “I go a-fishing,” and collapsed into the frigid water. It was later noticed that these last words were from John 21:3.

  As soon as the message came, the Most Eminent Lord Cardinal Abbot began packing his fine regalia. He notified the Papal Way Station in Sanly Bowitts that he would need armed escorts for the trip, and he arranged with Brother Liveryman to make ready the fastest pair of horses and the lightest carriage, as if he planned a quick trip. He mixed his tears with a nervous sweat, as he alternated between bursts of grief and flurries of excitement in making ready for the journey. It was the dead Pope who had made him a cardinal. It was going to be his first papal election. The community understood his mixed feelings and stayed out of the way.

  After he had eulogized Linus and offered a Mass for the dead, he spoke to the assembled monks in the refectory after supper on the night before his departure.

  “Prior Olshuen will carry out my duties as abbot while I am away. Will you promise to render him the same obedience in Christ which you give to me?”

  There was a murmur of assent from the congregation.

  “Does anyone withhold this promise?”

  There was silence, but Blacktooth felt people looking at him.

  “My dear sons, it does not behoove us in this monastery to discuss the business of the Sacred College, or the politics of Church and State.” He paused, looking around at the small lake of faces by lamplight. “Nevertheless, you are entitled to know why my absence may be extended. You all know that one result of the schism was the appointment by two rival claimants to the papacy of an unprecedented number of cardinals. And that one of the terms of the settlement that ended the schism was that the new Pope, now of holy memory, would ratify the elevation of all these cardinals, no matter which claimant had made the appointments. This was done, and there are now six hundred eighteen cardinals on the continent, some of them not even bishops, a few not even priests. Since these are about equally divided between East and West, it may be very hard to arrive at the two-thirds-plus-one majority required to elect a pope. The conclave may last for some time. I hope not more than a few months, but there is no way I can predict.

  “I fear you will hear gossip from time to time as travelers come and go. As long as the papal exile from New Rome continues, surrounded as it is by Texark forces, the enemies of the Valana papacy hope for a renewal of schism, and they keep all possible gossip alive. Listen to none of it, I beg of you.

  “The force of the State has abated. The seventh Hannegan is not the same tyrant as the second Hannegan, who, as you know from history, used treachery and cattle plague to capture an empire from the Nomads, driving sick farm animals among the woolly Nomad herds. He sent his infantry as far west as the Bay Ghost, and his cavalry chased stragglers right past our gates. He killed the Pope’s representative, and when Pope Benedict laid Texarkana under interdict, Hannegan seized all the Churches and courts and schools. He occupied the lands adjacent to New Rome, forcing His Holiness to flee to asylum in the crumbling Denver Empire. He collected enough bishops from the east to elect an anti—or, I should say, a rival pope to sit in New Rome. And so we had sixty-five years of schism.

  “But Filpeo Harq is the seventh Hannegan now. Indeed he is heir to the conqueror, but there is a difference. His predecessor was a cunning, illiterate semi-barbarian. The present ruler was raised and educated for power, and some of his teachers were educated by us. So have hope, my sons, and pray.

  “If the right Hannegan sits down with the right pope, with God’s help, surely they can come to terms and end the exile. Pray that the pope we elect may return to a New Rome free of Texark hegemony. Everywhere, people have strong feelings about the occupation, but it will do no good for us to argue within the Sacred College whether
the Texark troops must be withdrawn before the Pope goes home. That will be a decision for the Pope himself, when he is elected.

  “Pray for the election, but not for any candidacy. Pray for the Holy Spirit to guide our choice. The Church now needs a wise and saintly pope, not an eastern pope or a western pope, but a pope worthy of that old title ‘Servant of the servants of God.’” In a lowered voice, Dom Jarad added, “Pray for me too, my brothers. What am I but an old country monk, to whom Pope Linus, in a weak moment perhaps, gave a red hat? If anybody in the College has a lower rank than I, it must be the woman—er, Her Eminence the Abbess of N’Ork, or else my young friend Deacon Brownpony, who’s still a layman. Let your prayers help keep me from folly. Not that I’m going among wolves, eh?”

  Barely audible snorts and giggles caused Jarad to frown.

  “As a way of showing that I am not an enemy of the Empire, I shall cross the Bay Ghost and take the route through the Province. But I m going to reschedule tomorrow’s Mass. It’s a ferial day anyway, so we’ll sing the old Mass for the Removal of Schism before I go.”

  He spread his arms as if to embrace the throng, traced a great cross in the air over them, came down from the lectern, and left the hall.

  Blacktooth became wildly anxious. He sought permission to speak to Dom Jarad before the abbot’s departure, but permission was denied. In near panic, he found Prior Olshuen before dawn in the cloister on his way to Matins, and he plucked at the sleeve of the prior’s robe.

  “Who is it?” Olshuen asked irritably. “We’re already late.” He stopped between the shadows cast from the columns by a single torch. “Oh, Brother Blacktooth, it’s you. Speak up then, what is it?”

  “Dom Jarad said he’d hear me when I finish Boedullus. I’m almost finished, but now he’s leaving.”

  “He said he’d hear you? If you don’t lower your voice, he’ll hear you now. Hear you about what?”