Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman

by Walter M Miller Jr

  When dawn came, the water was still bloody in the little pools along the shore. Death by the knife is a messy, lingering business; some of the farmers still flopped like fish. Four of them were captive, uninjured except for the rawhide cord passed through their cheeks. They sat tethered in the shade of the food wagon, one whimpering, the others waiting stolidly for whatever awaited them.

  The Pontiff awakened to find his camp almost deserted. The Grasshopper warriors were gone; so were their horses and the dogs. “You said you were going to wait!” he complained, finding Eltür Bråm by his fire, eating breakfast.

  “They gave us no choice.” The war sharf shrugged. “They tried to steal our horses.”

  Brownpony kicked the fire. “They were only a few fools. You could have chased them off.”

  Eltür Bråm shrugged again. “The dogs followed them. My men had to follow the dogs. They are under orders not to burn the city, though.”

  Brownpony didn’t believe him. And before noon the smoke was rising over the wall of trees to the east, from the city he had never seen.

  The pig came in the morning, but the jailer didn’t. She stuck her snout between the cool bars and sat, staring down at Blacktooth, who was trying unsuccessfully to pray.

  As the morning dragged on, Blacktooth heard shots in the distance, shouts closer, the scuffling of feet in the narrow street outside. He still had six of the little pills but nothing to take them with. He was afraid of the warm water in the bucket by the door, so he took one with the last of his own spit. Toward noon, he drank the water.

  Already hungry when he was locked in the cell, he grew hungrier. It was hard to tell time because there was no sun and it was raining, a gentle shower that spattered onto the alleyway all day, muddling the footsteps of the occasional passerby, always a dog, never a human.

  The pig came again in the afternoon, or what seemed to be the afternoon.

  Blacktooth kept the pills in his cardinal hat, which his captors had allowed him to keep, along with his cross and rosary. The zucchetto kept the little brown pills dry. They seemed to work. The fever was gone, and Blacktooth didn’t miss the cramps and the runs that had kept him busy, especially in the mornings, for days. But he felt lonely without the visions of Ædrea and Amen, the companions who had walked by his side and accompanied him not only through his dreams but through the interminable waking dream that seemed, lately, to be his life.

  Blacktooth had never felt so alone. He remembered with a certain affection Brownpony and the prison-zoo in Hannegan City, when they had been spied on by the Wilddog prisoner and observed by the amused citizens. He remembered brooding, taciturn Wooshin. He remembered the insolent, chubby Aberlott, failed contemplative and lover of cities. He missed them all; he missed even Singing Cow. From his solitary basement cell, Blacktooth looked back on the life at the Abbey of Saint Leibowitz and wondered at the cunning and perfect mix of solitude and companionship that was the monastic life. Some men were made for solitude, but not most; and certainly not he. Specklebird had loved his solitude because he filled it with spirit. He was never alone. Ædrea’s solitude had been spook-solitude: accepted by none, scorned by all.

  Desired by one.

  The two of them in their solitude had kept Blacktooth company. But then, he thought, I don’t require much in the way of company. “Right?” he asked the pig when she stuck her head between the bars again. And like Ædrea, like Amen, she returned no answer.

  By afternoon no food had come and the rain had stopped. Was there to be no last meal? To die seemed bad enough, and to die hungry seemed the final, the ultimate insult. Would he then be hungry forever?

  Shocked at his own impiety, Blacktooth fell to his knees and prayed for forgiveness.

  The door was heavy wood, probably oak. It seemed more substantial than the black iron bars on the little high window. Blacktooth knocked on the door, then kicked it, timidly at first, then harder and harder. There was no response. He couldn’t tell if anyone was out there or not. And what was out there—a hallway? He couldn’t remember. It had been dark when he was brought in. That had been only a day ago—hadn’t it? Blacktooth wished now that he had made marks on the whitewashed stone walls, as the previous occupants had done.

  There was nothing in his little cell but the bed, which was two boards laid over stone blocks, a coarse wool blanket, a stool, and two buckets: one by the door and one in a corner. The bucket of warm water by the door was still almost full; the bucket in the corner was still empty. The room had apparently been used as a prison by the Texarki before; the walls were filled with intricate but illiterate scratchings—faces, smiles and frowns, a sun, various interpretations of the male and female body. The wall looked to Blacktooth like the surface of a monk’s brain, the scratchings on the soul that a man learns to live with and, usually, hopefully, eventually, to ignore.

  He sat on the bed. He lay on the bed. He stood at the window. He stood on the stool and looked out the window. He saw a narrow deserted alley with a ruined step against a wall where there was no door. There were bloodstains on the wall above the step. While Blacktooth watched a dog came and sniffed at the stain, then walked away. Was this the end of it, then? The killing place? The stairs that went nowhere, the wall without a door…He shivered. He was very hungry.

  In the distance the street opened onto another, busier street, and Blacktooth could see people passing, carrying mysterious packages, or occasionally, guns. The ones with guns walked in twos and threes. Closer at hand, another dog sniffed at the stained steps in the alley, then trotted away.

  “That’s where they execute.”

  Blacktooth turned and saw that the door to his cell had opened silently; beyond it was an indeterminate darkness. For such a huge door it swung on silent hinges. An unfamiliar farmer/guard stood in the doorway with a bucket. Young, in his rude twenties; redheaded, a grass-eater. “You’re not supposed to be up there,” he said.

  “I’m praying.”

  “What about your hat?” The zucchetto was on the bed.

  “We don’t wear the hat to pray.”

  The guard crossed to the corner and picked up the bucket; he set it down again when he felt that it was empty. He carefully avoided looking into it.

  “I’m supposed to empty this,” he said. It was a reproach.

  “I suppose that means I’m supposed to fill it,” Blacktooth said. “But aren’t you supposed to bring me food? I had no supper, and now no breakfast.”

  The farmer/guard shrugged. He wore leather pants and a canvas vest, probably taken from some soldier’s locker. Or body. His teeth were gone bad already. “They didn’t tell me anything about food. They only told me to empty this. And bring the water.”

  “Are they going to—shoot me?” asked Blacktooth. He felt dizzy; he had to step down off the stool. When he looked up, feet on the cold stone floor, the guard was gone, almost as if he had been an apparition. The door closed, then a bolt slammed shut. Loudly.

  “Bless you, my son,” said Blacktooth, making the sign of the cross. “I’ll go back to my prayers.” He stood back up on the stool and looked out at the world, or what little of it he could see from his tiny window. Prayers indeed. But what else was prayer but an attempt to look out of the tiny window of the soul? Perhaps he would try to pray later, as it got closer to the time for his execution.

  Would it hurt? he wondered. It seemed to be the wrong question, but he couldn’t think of the right one.

  Another dog came by and sniffed at the dark stain on the step—also praying? In the distance an old woman and a child poked through rubbish with a stick. When the woman turned up something, the child would lean down to get it. Blacktooth couldn’t tell what they were collecting.

  There were more shots in the distance, then a strange and yet familiar wild smell. Even before Blacktooth realized what it was, his heart was pounding.

  Smoke.

  “You told your men to set the fires,” the Pope, Amen II, said to Eltür Bråm. Demon Light denied it but
Brownpony knew better. The Grasshopper is always at war…I set fires…And what did it matter if he denied or affirmed it? It was done.

  Brownpony and the sharf were sitting on the bed of a wagon, watching the returning warriors thunder across the creek. It was beginning to rain again. Brownpony couldn’t see the sky, but he knew from his Curia—half of whom were sick, and spent time at the secondary latrine halfway up the hill—that a curtain of smoke hung over the city a few hours’ ride to the east.

  “Fires just happen,” said Eltür Bråm. “No man can prevent them. No man should.”

  Dogs barked. Horses neighed. The Nomads were straggling back in twos and threes, calling to the women to prepare bandages and food, and replenish the firewood stacks. They were shouting triumphantly, but in truth they had had few encounters with the mysterious enemy. The few wounded had been injured when their horses had stumbled in the unfamiliar streets, or had burned themselves setting fires.

  None knew, still, how many defenders the city had, or even if it was being defended at all. And Blacktooth had never returned. It was almost sunset. “Perhaps he has found the peace you robed ones always say you are looking for,” said Eltür Bråm.

  “Perhaps,” replied Brownpony, choosing to ignore the Nomad’s sarcasm. But he doubted it.

  Smoke. It was getting dark; or was it? The few people Blacktooth could see at the end of the street were running.

  He got down from the window and banged on the oak door. He put his ear to the wood, but he couldn’t hear footsteps or voices. It was a strange place, this room at the end of Blacktooth’s life. It reversed normal life, which we go through always looking backward. Now it was the past that was the mystery. Blacktooth could see clearly into the future. Too clearly. He could smell it. It filled the air—like smoke.

  He was afraid he would panic, and he did. It wasn’t the fear of fire, or even the fear of dying. It was just panic, pure animal panic. It filled him, rushing in unbidden, with no thought or emotion intervening. As sudden and as irresistible as lust (which he had grown to know so well), it both comforted and terrified him with its intensity. Like the faith he had searched for but never found, it replaced all doubt with certainty.

  Blacktooth let it rage, kicking and beating on the door, shouting first “Fire!” then “Help!”; then, “For the love of God!”

  It brought no peace. The pain of his bruised fist and his own screams brought him back to a different reality; a more monklike reality. He stopped screaming, surprised at how easy it was to stop, and knelt by the bed with his rosary. The smoke was thicker, but the air was still breathable. Blacktooth was no longer hungry. The water in the water bucket was dancing, and in the distance he could hear dull booms—buildings falling or bombs going off…

  He must have fallen asleep. He sat up and saw that it was still dark outside the window. In the distance he could hear shooting. The farmer/guard was standing in the open door with the bucket. He wore a scarf over his face. For the smoke? It seemed to have diminished.

  Blacktooth started coughing. “Excuse me,” he said when he had stopped. The guard/farmer still stood in the doorway. “What’s happening?” Blacktooth asked.

  “They are fighting. Your Antipope is burning the city.”

  “Ah.”

  Then he was gone. He never returned. Whether he was killed or not, Blacktooth never knew. The shooting never got closer and it eventually faded away.

  When dawn came it was a strange dawn that seemed to come from inside the cell, rather than outside, filling the tiny basement room with an eerie light. The city was on fire. The wind was scouring the alley, picking up bits of straw and grass and dust and scraps of ash and paper.

  Blacktooth banged on the door, but he didn’t scream this time. He didn’t expect anyone to come and no one did. The fire seemed to be getting closer; the wind was hot, as if it were pulled through one fire on the way to feed another. Blacktooth stood as long as he could at the bars, and felt his face burning—then realized he had forgotten the pills. There were four left, folded in the hat. He took one and poured the last of his water over his head. Death by fire. He could smell fuel oil. He recognized the smell from when he was a novice, handling the abbey’s relics for the first and last time…

  Beatus Leibowitz ora pro me!

  He heard footsteps in the alley. “Help,” he called out, but no one came. Not even the pig, who had probably been eaten. Blacktooth said his rosary, then put on his zucchetto and lay down on the narrow plank bed, on top of the jail blanket. Better to just wait, he thought. Sooner or later the end will come. “A dewdrop, a flash of lightning,” Amen had said. “Ash, dust…”

  He must have fallen asleep, for soon he was back at the waterfall with Ædrea. The water had stopped falling, though. It stood like a sheet in the sun. She was standing in it, in the sun, very wonderfully beautifully perfectly naked. “Hey,” she was shouting.

  “Hey!”

  Blacktooth sat up. Someone was at the bars. He thought at first it was the pig, but it was a woman with a child.

  “Are you a priest?”

  No.

  “So what’s the hat?” It was the old woman he had seen with the stick, going through the trash piles.

  “I’m a cardinal,” he said, taking it off.

  “What’s a carnidal?” she asked, reversing the syllables as simple people sometimes did. “Is that like a priest?”

  “Sort of,” Blacktooth said. “Help me out of here. I’m afraid I got myself trapped.”

  “I can’t do that,” the old woman said. “Will you baptize my son?”

  She pushed a face to the window. The boy looked too young to be her son, and too old at the same time. He was bald and his wrinkled forehead was blue. A glep.

  “I can’t do that,” Blacktooth said. “I’m not a real priest.”

  “He’s not my real son,” the old woman cackled. “I bought him.”

  “Bought me!” said the glep boy. “I commensurate the deception. Am.”

  “What?” A bell was ringing somewhere, faster and faster. Then Blacktooth heard the spray of shots. It was being rung with bullets.

  “He’s very strong,” said the woman.

  “Strong,” said the glep. “Accurate am I the exception.”

  “He says all you have to do is move this brick.”

  “What brick?”

  The woman stood up and made a scraping noise with her stick. With a fierce demented grin, the boy pulled a bar loose, then another. “Strong!” He threw both bars into the cell at Blacktooth, who ducked. They rang on the floor with the sound of bells.

  “Hey!”

  Blacktooth flattened himself against the wall. Had the bars been loose all along? The jail was like the abbey; all he had to do was walk out and he was free.

  He waited until he was sure the old woman and the glep boy were gone; then he pushed his zucchetto and the jail blanket through the bars, and climbed after them into the alley.

  The air was thick with smoke, and he held his sleeve over his nose. It had been easier to breathe in the basement jail. At one end of the street he saw the woman and the boy, poking through garbage unconcernedly, as if the world were not on fire. They seemed to have forgotten him. “Bless you, my son,” he whispered—and walked quickly the other way.

  CHAPTER 31

  On the day they return, let them lie prostrate on the floor of the oratory and beg the prayers of all on account of any faults that may have surprised them on the road.

  —Saint Benedict’s Rule, Chapter 67

  LACKTOOTH HAD SEEN ONLY TWO CITIES IN HIS day: Valana, built of wood and stone, and Hannegan City, made of wood and mud. The Holy City, New Rome, was a city built of old pieces of old cities; it was a mixture of old and new, more like an abbey than a city, with piles of brick and stone built upon piles of brick and stone, all mixed and leavened with wood and grass and straw. All flammable, all tinder, and, it seemed to Blacktooth, all burning.

  He was on a wide, straight street with mounds
of rubble and stumps of towers, the “great houses,” on both sides. At first he was alone, but as he walked farther east, into the rising sun and away from the fire, the street became more and more crowded with frightened, silent people. Blacktooth felt an unexpected, unwanted kinship with these frightened grass-eaters who were suddenly emerging from basements and the stumps of buildings (just as he had), dragging their pitiful rags and remnants and pots and animals and children with them. Everyone was leaving the city.

  In the distance behind him, he heard shots, rare and ragged. If there were any fighting Nomads in the city, they didn’t show themselves. No fighting horses, only mules and old nags. Only stray dogs.

  The fleeing people were weirdly silent. Shouts or cries would have been welcome, but Blacktooth heard neither; it was as if the window from his basement cell had led him into a world where only children cried or complained. The adults were glumly silent, stumbling forward. Perhaps they thought their accents would give them away, or perhaps there was just nothing left to say.

  New Rome was burning.

  Blacktooth had prepared himself for execution, and now even his hunger was gone. A hand plucked at his sleeve—a child’s hand—and he found himself, through some process he neither understood nor fully noted, part of a small group dragging a frightened mule up the steps from a basement room. How it had gotten there, who it belonged to, and who wanted it—these were questions that belonged to another reality. All that was present was the need to help coax the terrified, braying beast up the narrow steps.

  Then it was gone into the gathering, streaming crowd, its owner—and the child—chasing it; and Blacktooth was half walking, half running after them. The wind had risen and now there was a wall of flame directly behind, to the west.

  Four men and four women, all naked and holding hands, snaked through the crowd, singing hysterically. Blacktooth tried to look away from the women’s breasts but couldn’t. It wasn’t desire he felt but some other, almost forgotten feeling: hunger, or hope. Two men in uniform with repeating rifles ran past, then two more, all running in step. It was almost comical. Blacktooth pulled off his zucchetto and hid it under his habit. A fallen mule in the traces of a cart was screaming pitifully, trying to rise. One haunch was smeared with blood.