Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman

by Walter M Miller Jr

  And there was news from Texark. Although the text of what purported to be Pope Amen’s resignation had appeared there, by telegraph, the original signed copy of the document, if it existed, could not be found in Valana or anywhere else. One enterprising forger in the Empire’s capital sold a clever counterfeit of the original to the Archdiocese of Texark for ten thousand pios, a sum paid after a police expert affirmed that the handwriting was that of Amen the Antipope. But afterward, another expert showed that the document contained egregious errors of the kind often occurring during transmission of text by a telegraph operator, including several pure operating codes, such as ZMF, meaning “break, more follows.” The forger escaped into Jackrabbit country and was never seen again.

  “As I told you, the Pope refuses to live in the palace,” said Nauwhat, “and he has returned to his old home. He said Easter Mass at home, not at John-in-Exile. He will see anyone who comes to him, and cheerfully submits to any indignity. He has signed blank bulls, perhaps by the dozen. He will press his seal of approval into the wax of almost anything. I don’t know if he always reads it first. Did he really appoint all these new cardinals, or was it done for him? I should know, but I don’t. Because he found out about some guns at SEEC, and he thinks I am responsible.”

  “Well, I must confess to him on that—”

  “No, don’t do it. I am responsible now. His actions are those of a man who has lost his bearings, if not his sanity, but not his good humor. You, Elia, he speaks of constantly, and he will rejoice that you have returned. You must go to see him tomorrow. You and Brother Blacktooth as well.”

  “Of course. But what are the agenda, if not weapons?”

  “It was he who placed your name in nomination as Pope. His only agendum, probably, will be to submit to you as Pontiff.”

  “I must set him straight on that.”

  “Well, you can try. But besides the new cardinals, the College is coming into town again in numbers. And some from the East are bringing the military officers and envoys you invited. They pass for bodyguards.”

  “In response to the same summons I got? Who was it wrote that foul thing?”

  “Domidomi Cardinal Hoydok.”

  “Do I know him?”

  “No. He’s one of the new ones. He’s from Texark, but Benefez excommunicated him for supporting Pope Amen, so the Pope created him cardinal. He is a civil lawyer, not a priest.”

  “How are the Easterners getting here?” Brownpony asked.

  “Mostly through the Iowa country. There, the farmers seem to get along better with the Grasshopper. They trade a lot. Only a few Texark patrols go north of the Misery River, and they wouldn’t stop a cardinal there, even if they knew he was coming to conclave.”

  “Misery River?”

  “The old name was ‘Missouri,’ m’Lord,” Nimmy put in.

  “‘Misery’ better suits it now,” said Sorely. “Before the occupation of the farmlands, it was a natural route to New Rome.”

  “Of course. My memory is slipping. The first thing I must do tomorrow is send a messenger to Holy Madness and Swimming Elk to come here for a conference, and to send a war party to New Jerusalem for the new weapons.”

  “Swimming Elk?”

  “Sharf Eltür Bråm, Hultor’s brother. The Grasshopper sharf.”

  Dinner was brought to them. This time there was venison and a good red wine. They were nearly starved after the long Lenten trip on light rations. Nimmy wondered absently if he should confess to eating barbecued wilddog on abstinence days, even though the cardinal had granted dispensation in an emergency situation.

  “How are things in Texark, by the way?” asked Cardinal Nauwhat.

  “Well, the Province is seething with revolt. And of course there is sporadic fighting with the Grasshopper. In Hannegan City, little has changed, except they are importing some desert animals from Africa for warfare in dry country. And they know about our guns.”

  “Two bad omens.”

  “And one other thing.” He glanced at the adjoining table and tapped Wooshin on the shoulder. “Axe, I think I forgot to tell you of one small change.”

  “M’Lord?”

  Brownpony looked at Blacktooth. “You tell him.”

  “His Imperial Majesty the Mayor has replaced you with a mechanical head chopper, Axe.”

  Wooshin shrugged. “A man without shadow and form, when he chops heads, becomes a chopping machine. No change.”

  This caused a murmur, apparently not of approval, but perhaps of recognition, from the rest of the warriors present.

  “A remarkable man,” Sorely said with a shiver in his voice as Wooshin turned away again.

  “One without shadow and form,” Brownpony mused aloud.

  Four weeks had passed since they last saw Gai-See, and they had just begun to fear that he had been shot down in Scarecrow Alley when he arrived, not with the well-laden pack mule with “gifts for the Curia” as in Brownpony’s message, but with Mayor Dion, Ulad, eight heavy wagons, and a whole brigade of light-horse infantry, bristling with new and superior arms. The secret of New Jerusalem was no longer secret. Brownpony showed no surprise, and Nimmy realized that the message to Dion had been code.

  There was no way Valana could accommodate both the influx of cardinals and a whole brigade of light horse, of whom the citizens of the city were quite frightened as the word was quickly passed around that these armed men were spooks. But Magister Dion had no intention of imposing. His troops immediately set about building a fortified encampment on a hill well outside the city. As soon as the wagons were unloaded, they were returned to New Jerusalem for more supplies. Regular convoys were planned to supply his men with food, ammunition, and other necessities of military life. They would sleep in tents, at first, but within four days, a permanent log structure was built, with a basement beneath it, to store ammunition and to reload brass cartridges. The reloading machines were simple and portable, so that they might follow an army in battle.

  Seeking information about Ædrea, Nimmy had approached the gate of the newly constructed fort in the hope of obtaining an interview with the Magister, who was now in the role of commanding general. He was told politely to wait, and a guard left for the armory. He struck up a conversation with the other guards.

  Blacktooth noticed that their rifles were similar to the pistols in having revolving cylinders, with six chambers instead of five. A guard showed him that the ammunition was of the same caliber as the handguns, and used the same brass; only the weight of the bullets and the weight of the powder charge differed. The pistol ammunition might be fired with safety from the rifles, with a lesser range, but it was unsafe to shoot the more powerful loads from the handguns. With copper being so scarce, it was essential that empty brass be saved after firing, even in battle.

  After three hours of waiting, the guard returned. Nimmy was given a polite excuse from Magister Dion and turned away. He returned to the Red Deacon’s own private mansion outside the city, where all of them were temporarily living.

  Brownpony had obtained a list of new cardinals created by Pope Amen during their absence. He gave a copy of it to Blacktooth for his own information, along with two copies of a summons for all incoming cardinals to register at the Papal Palace with a clerk of the Secretariat of State, which again had been placed in the hands of Hilan Cardinal Bleze by Pope Amen after the interregnum. He told Nimmy to post one copy of the summons in John-in-Exile Square, then to hire a town crier immediately to shout aloud the text of the second copy at every intersection in Valana.

  When he had finished these chores, Nimmy returned to his old residence, where he was rather mournfully greeted by Aberlott, who had fallen in love with the younger sister of the late Jæsis.

  “It seems to me,” said Aberlott with unusual gravity, “that those people in those mountains are just as intolerant of outsiders, as the outsiders have always been of spooks. They actually look down on us.”

  “Ædrea never did.”

  “I know. And s
he’s under arrest.”

  “Oh my God! Did you see her?”

  “No, I was not allowed.”

  “What are the charges?”

  “She left without permission some months ago. That’s all I know.”

  Through his employer’s intervention, Blacktooth obtained an interview with Magister Dion. Dion listened politely to Nimmy’s account of Ædrea’s trip to Leibowitz Abbey, and thence to the Mesa of Last Resort, where she had given birth.

  “And then she went home to her father’s place,” he finished. “That’s all she did.”

  “And her father beat her and brought her to me. We can’t have people leaving without permission.”

  “But she always had permission to come to Valana!”

  “No, she had orders.”

  “But her father would have killed her babies.”

  “Babies?”

  “Twins, old Benjamin said.”

  “Well, what you think you know, you got by hearsay. I’ll consider it, but she will remain in custody for the time being. Think of it as protection from her own family. You are never going to see her again. Neither your cardinal nor I will allow it.”

  Blacktooth left the camp, fuming with anger at both the Mayor and Brownpony. On the way home, he meant to stop at the hillside home of Amen Specklebird and ask for his intervention, but there were at least forty people in a queue outside the door, many of them cardinals, and the Red Deacon himself was tenth in line. So he pretended not to see him, and went instead to a nearby Church to pray his anger away.

  On the first day of May—normally a Nomad holy day—in response to Brownpony’s call to a war council, Chür Høngan, his half-nephew Oxsho, Father Ombroz, and Demon Light with one of his lieutenants rode into town together. Brownpony was surprised to learn that Oxsho, in spite of his youth, had been chosen Wilddog sharf after Holy Madness was made judge and leader of all three hordes. The Wilddog leaders bowed and kissed the cardinal’s ring. Eltür the Demon Light refrained, but offered a Nomad military salute.

  From the south on the following day came Önmu Kun, cold sober, and wearing a leather helmet with his family badge. He introduced himself as Jackrabbit Sharf. Knowing of Önmu’s reputation, the others demanded documentation. He presented a roll of soft deerskin with Weejus beadwork depicting a manlike figure with the ears of a Jackrabbit. From his saddlebags, he produced a crest of buzzard feathers, also of obvious Weejus design; the sacred talisman was to be worn on the helmet of the sharf only in battle. After brief discussion, and some shaking of heads, his credentials were accepted by the others. Brownpony, who wished to honor them all, consulted with others of the Curia, then had the Nomad leadership housed in the Papal Palace, since the Pope had retired to his remodeled hillside cave and refused to return.

  A military conference was scheduled for Thursday the 4th, at SEEC, and an invitation was sent to Commander Dion to come and bring his senior officers. Then a great embarrassment rode into town on the night of the third, and by the light of the full moon rode on through town and up to Brownpony’s private estate, where he made a great clatter at the main entrance. Wooshin and Woosoh-Loh immediately rushed from the dining room to investigate the visitor, but then called for Blacktooth.

  Nimmy stared out at the spectacle standing there in the moonlight. Three hundred pounds of muscle and black hair confronted them with folded arms and an angry glare. He uttered obscenities in bad Grasshopper and demanded to see “the Christian shaman who boasted to my men that he was married to the Burregun, and then called me a coward.”

  Blacktooth swallowed hard and went back to the dinner table. “There seems to be a motherless one at the door who wishes to speak to Your Eminence.”

  “Who?”

  “I think they called him ‘Mounts-Everybody.’ Remember the outlaws you released? They spoke of their leader—”

  The cardinal blotted gravy from his lips, got up, and strode to the entrance.

  “Where is my horse?” he demanded of the burly outlaw.

  “Tied to the gate, you damn grass-eater.”

  “Then come in and eat beef with us, you damn thief.”

  The man came in, surrounded by suspicious warriors with short swords in hand. Because of a foul odor about him, the cardinal had him seated at the foot of the table. Most of the others had finished eating. A servant carved him a few slices of roast beef and fetched him a hot baked potato and roasted onions from the kitchen. It was too early in the season for anything the Nomad would call “grass,” but he grunted a few complaints about the lack of “inner meats” to go with the beef. Nimmy knew that Nomads usually ate virtually the whole animal, except for the hide, horns, hooves, and bones. It was the basis for the Venerable Boedullus’s prescription for radiation sickness. The outlaw ate with his hands, wrapping slices of beef around bits of potato. The cardinal spoke.

  “I thank you for returning my horse. But do you know that all the sharfs of the hordes and the Qæsach dri Vørdar himself are here in the city?”

  Mounts-Everybody stopped eating and glowered. “You invited me here. They are enemies. You intend to have me killed?”

  “No, all I wanted was my horse.”

  “You spoke to my men of fighting farmers. For money.”

  “I asked them questions.”

  “Which farmers are your enemies? Those nearby?”

  “No, those are under the protection of the Bishop of Denver.”

  Blacktooth put in a word here. “His Eminence is trying to use your word for ‘citizens,’ and he means specifically the subjects of the Hannegan, and even more specifically the armed forces of Texark. He does not mean peaceful people who work the soil and grow crops. Many of them were formerly Nomads, including my own family.”

  “Thank you, Nimmy,” said Brownpony with a trace of irritation, then to Mounts-Everybody: “Just how many fighting men could you muster, if you were inclined to do so.”

  Mounts-Everybody seemed to be doing mental arithmetic. “That depends on the pay. For gold, not many. We need good horses. The families kill us when we take wild ones. Offer us two good horses and a woman for every man, and you get a small army.”

  “Horses, yes, but no women. How small an army?”

  “Maybe four hundred warriors. But the Grasshopper is at war against the farmers in the east. We cannot fight beside them.”

  “I realize that. What about the Jackrabbit?”

  Mounts-Everybody was suddenly suspicious. “Wormy-Face told me you threatened to drive us south of the Nady Ann into Texark lands.”

  “Gai-See, fetch one of the new rifles.”

  The small warrior stepped into the adjacent room and returned with one of the west-coast weapons.

  “Load it and take him outside for a demonstration.”

  Brownpony and Blacktooth remained sitting at the dinner table while a servant cleaned up after the meal. There were six loud shots in as many seconds, followed by a frightened whinny and hoofbeats in the roadway.

  Wooshin came back inside with the outlaw, who was holding the empty rifle and staring at it in awe. “I’m sorry. Your horse ran away,” said the Axe.

  “When they find him, give him to the sharf of the outlaws here, and also the rifle.”

  The burly guest stared at Brownpony in amazement. “I made you no promises!”

  “I know. And you won’t get the gifts until you do.”

  “No promises!”

  “Well, all I want you to do is stay here all night, and most of tomorrow. You can’t come to the meeting tomorrow, because I’m afraid someone would kill you. On your way into town, did you observe the fortress on the hilltop?”

  “Yes. It is new.”

  “Tomorrow night, you will go to the fort and talk to Magister Dion and the Jackrabbit Önmu Kun. Any men you recruit will be under their command, as will you, and you will not be driven south of the Nady Ann. You will go there well armed and with other forces.”

  “I will think about it.”

  The cardinal l
ooked away. “Axe, see that he takes a bath, cuts his hair and beard, and dress him as a mountain man. He can stay here until moonrise tomorrow.”

  Mounts-Everybody growled angrily and started to his feet, but six half-drawn swords had a calming effect. He allowed himself to be led away.

  Brownpony looked questioningly at Blacktooth.

  “M’Lord, those men live by murder and plunder.”

  “And that is war, is it not?”

  Nimmy prayed earnestly for peace that night, but he feared the Virgin would not listen. If the cardinal came to be elected Pope, he would make the Virgin a commanding general of the hordes.

  CHAPTER 21

  Whenever any important business has to be done in the monastery, let the Abbot call together the whole community and state the matter to be acted upon…The reason we have said that all should be called for counsel is that the Lord often reveals to the younger what is best.

  —Saint Benedict’s Rule, Chapter 3

  IMMY SLEPT BADLY THAT NIGHT, AND AROSE twice from nightmares to pray before the crucifix. Once he had a visitor. Moonlight shining through the window fell on white bedsheets and he could see a dark figure in the doorway. By its bulk, he knew it could only be Mounts-Everybody. He came quickly to his feet, prepared to fight if the outlaw tried to live up to his name. But the hulk merely grunted and moved on. A few seconds later, another dark figure stole down the corridor behind the motherless one. That would be one of the Yellow Guard, shadowing him. Probably he was only looking for a place to urinate.

  Nimmy went back to bed. He dreaded the morrow, for he saw clearly the direction of recent events, and how Brownpony was moving them. It was not as if the Red Deacon had drawn a map of the future, but he was bent toward one goal; whatever happened he examined it to see if it might be useful as a means toward that goal. Nimmy was not opposed to the destruction of the Empire, or the reduction of its power and the restoration of the New Roman papacy. That was Brownpony’s end. The means, in part, he might deem legitimate. There was such a thing as a just war; he did not doubt the ancient teaching. But Leibowitz had been a man of peace, had he not?—after a warlike youth—and he was still the Saint’s willing follower, although a half-unwilling member of the Saint’s present Order under abbots like Jarad and Olshuen. He had renounced the world, just as the abbots and his brethren had renounced it, but now he was in the midst of the world, and the renunciation seemed meaningless. He lay awake most of the night, remembering his devotion to Leibowitz and the Holy Virgin. When he did fall briefly asleep, he dreamed of Ædrea, woke up with an erection, and fought an urge to masturbate because it was dawn and people were moving in the hallway.