Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine…Quia viderunt oculi mei salutare…
Maybe it will twist clean loose this time, he thought almost hopefully. He wanted to summon Father Gault to hear his confession, but decided that it would be better to wait until the guests had gone. He stared at the edict again.
A knock at the door soon interrupted his agony.
“Can you come back later?”
“I’m afraid I won’t be here later,” answered a muffled voice from the corridor.
“Oh, Thon Taddeo — come in, then.” Dom Paulo straightened; he took a firm grip on pain, not trying to dismiss it but only to control it as he would an unruly servant.
The scholar entered and placed a folder of papers on the abbot’s desk. “I thought it only proper to leave you these,” he said.
“What do we have here?”
“The sketches of your fortifications. The ones the officers made. I suggest you burn them immediately.”
“Why have you done this?” Dom Paulo breathed. “After our words downstairs—”
“Don’t misunderstand,” Thon Taddeo interrupted. “I would have returned them in any event — as a matter of honor, not to let them take advantage of your hospitality for — but never mind. If I had returned the sketches any sooner, the officers would have had plenty of time and opportunity to draw up another set.”
The abbot arose slowly and reached for the scholar’s hand.
Thon Taddeo hesitated. “I promise no effort on your behalf—”
“I know.”
“ — because I think what you have here should be open to the world.”
“It is, it was, it always will be.”
They shook hands gingerly, but Dom Paulo knew that it was no token of any truce but only of mutual respect between foes. Perhaps it would never be more.
But why must it all be acted again?
The answer was near at hand; there was still the serpent whispering: For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as Gods. The old father of lies was clever at telling half-truths: How shall you “know” good and evil, until you shall have sampled a little? Taste and be as Gods. But neither infinite power nor infinite wisdom could bestow godhood upon men. For that there would have to be infinite love as well.
Dom Paulo summoned the younger priest. It was very nearly time to go. And soon it would be a new year.
That was the year of the unprecedented torrent of rain on the desert, causing seed long dry to burst into bloom.
That was the year that a vestige of civilization came to the nomads of the Plains, and even the people of Laredo began to murmur that it was possibly all for the best. Rome did not agree.
In that year a temporary agreement was formalized and broken between the states of Denver and Texarkana. It was the year that the Old Jew returned to his former vocation of Physician and Wanderer, the year that the monks of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz buried an abbot and bowed to a new one. There were bright hopes for tomorrow.
It was the year a king came riding out of the east, to subdue the land and own it. It was a year of Men.
23
It was unpleasantly hot beside the sunny that skirted the wooded hillside, and the heat had aggravated the Poet’s thirst. After a long time he dizzily lifted his head from the ground and tried to look around. The melee had ended; things were fairly quiet now, except for the cavalry officer. The buzzards were even gliding down to land.
There were several dead refugees, one dead horse, and the dying cavalry officer who was pinned under the horse. At intervals, the cavalryman awoke and faintly screamed. Now he screamed for Mother, and again he screamed for a priest. At times he awoke to scream for his horse. His screaming quieted the buzzards and further disgruntled the Poet, who was feeling peevish anyhow. He was a very dispirited Poet. He had never expected the world to act in a courteous, seemly, or even sensible manner, and the world had seldom done so; often he had taken heart in the consistency of its rudeness and stupidity. But never before had the world shot the Poet in the abdomen with a musket. This he found not heartening at all.
Even worse, he had not now the stupidity of the world to blame but only his own. The Poet himself had blundered. He had been minding his own business and bothering no one when he noticed the party of refugees galloping toward the hill from the east with a cavalry troop in close pursuit. To avoid the affray, he had hidden himself behind some scrub that grew from the lip of the embankment flanking the trail, a vantage point from which he could have seen the whole spectacle without being seen. It was not the Poet’s fight. He cared nothing whatever for the political and religious tastes of either the refugees or the cavalry troop. If slaughter had been fated, fate could have found no less disinterested a witness than the Poet. Whence, then, the blind impulse?
The impulse had sent him leaping from the embankment to tackle the cavalry officer in the saddle and stab the fellow three times with his own belt-knife before the two of them toppled to the ground. He could not understand why he had done it. Nothing had been accomplished. The officer’s men had shot him down before he ever climbed to his feet. The slaughter of refugees had continued. They had all ridden away then in pursuit of other fugitives, leaving the dead behind.
He could hear his abdomen growl. The futility, alas, of trying to digest a rifle ball. He had done the useless deed, he decided finally, because of the part with the dull saber. If the officer had merely hacked the woman out of the saddle with one clean stroke, and ridden on, the Poet would have overlooked the deed. But to keep hacking and hacking that way —
He refused to think about it again. He thought of water.
“O God — O God—” the officer kept complaining.
“Next time, sharpen your cutlery,” the Poet wheezed.
But there would be no next time.
The Poet could not remember ever fearing death, but he had often suspected Providence of plotting the worst for him as to the manner of his dying when the time came to go. He had expected to rot away, Slowly and not very fragrantly. Some poetic insight had warned him that he would surely die a blubbering leprous lump, cravenly penitential but impenitent. Never had be anticipated anything so blunt and final as a bullet in the stomach, and with not even an audience at hand to hear his dying quips. The last thing they had heard him say when they shot him was: “Oof !” — his testament for posterity. Ooof ! — a memorabile for you, Domnissime.
“Father? Father?” the officer moaned.
After a while the Poet mustered his strength and lifted his head again, blinked dirt out of his eye, and studied the officer for a few seconds. He was certain the officer was the same one he had tackled, even though the fellow by now had turned a chalky shade of green. His bleating for a priest that way began to annoy the Poet. At least three clergymen lay dead among the refugees, and yet the officer was not now being so particular about specifying his denominational persuasions. Maybe I’ll do, the Poet thought.
He began dragging himself slowly toward the cavalryman. The officer saw him coming and groped for a pistol. The Poet paused; he had not expected to be recognized. He prepared to roll for cover. The pistol was wavering in his direction He watched it waver for a moment, then decided to continue his advance. The officer pulled the trigger. The shot went wild by yards, worse luck.
The officer was trying to reload when the Poet took the gun away from him. He seemed delirious, and kept trying to cross himself.
“Go ahead,” the Poet grunted, finding the knife.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned—”
“Ego te absolvo, son,” said the Poet, and plunged the knife into his throat.
Afterward, he found the officer’s canteen and drank a little. The water was hot from the sun, but it seemed delicious. He lay with his head pillowed on the officer’s horse and waited for the shadow of the hill to creep over the road. Jesus, how it hurt! That last bit isn’t going to be as easy to explain, he thought; and me without my eyeball too. If there’s really anything to explain. He looked at the dead cavalryman.