At the point at which I reached this conclusion I found myself with defenders after all. A group came who by the crosses embroidered on their clothing were plainly Christians. There were half a dozen of them and they remonstrated with the ones who were pelting me with rubbish. I could just make out the drift of their argument above the din. The stocks, they declared, were an evil custom at best, but on this, the day of the birth of their Lord, it was foul blasphemy to torture another living creature.
I did not know which Lord they spoke of—I had thought they recognized no human authority except their priests—but I welcomed the small relief from my tormentors. Small indeed; they did not waste time arguing but continued throwing. Then the Christians carried their folly further, walking out to form a screen in front of me. I felt less gratitude for this than contempt for their idiocy. No guard could stand by and tolerate such interference with an official punishment, especially one not only ordered by the Prince but asked for by the High Seers.
The Sergeant gave his orders. The Christians offered no resistance as the guard put them up also to be shied at. There was only room for three more in the stocks, so the rest were manacled hand and foot and left lying in the snow beside us. All this put the crowd in a thoroughly good humor, and with so many more targets I got off more lightly for the rest of my stay.
The Christians sang their chants all the while they were there. They were still singing when the guards released me and led me away.
• • •
It was Murphy who received me in the Seer’s House. He was cold and distant in the presence of the soldiers, but said when we were left alone:
“Well, Luke, I hope they did not give you too hard a time of it.”
I stared at him. I was covered with filth and my head throbbed. The cut beneath my eye was swelling. I said:
“Hard enough, sir. It is kind of you to inquire.”
“Listen,” he said, “you did a foolish thing in going out last night. You were caught, and punishment followed. It is something that must be accepted.”
“I was brought to you. You did not need to hand me back to them, to ask to have me put in the stocks.”
“No? I think we did. You are by your age plainly a trainee, too young to have taken vows and so lacking the protection of our cloth. It is essential for the common people to respect that cloth. Since you disgraced it in their eyes, it was necessary that those eyes should witness your thing. To be made sport of by the mob is another.”
I said: “There are things due to me also. My father was Prince of a greater city than this. Punishment is one thing. To be made sport of by the mob is another.”
“It offends your dignity?”
“I have been trained to fight,” I said, “to face wounding or death, even death by execution. But not to endure the mockery of curs. I saw polymufs grinning at me.”
“Your dignity is not important. That is something you have to learn.”
“But the dignity of the High Seers is?”
Murphy shook his head. “No. What is important is the restoration of human order and human knowledge. Everything must serve that.”
I looked at him angrily, in silence. He said:
“Remember that we made your father Prince and made you Prince in Waiting. We brought you from Winchester when there was a score of men eager to cut you down, confident that the new Prince, your brother, would thank them for it, and glad anyway to see one Perry the less. We have kept you in the Sanctuary and may yet restore you to this dignity which you prize so much.”
“Yet! In what time? Five years? Ten? Fifty, perhaps?”
“Sooner, I hope.” He relaxed and smiled. “How would you like to leave the Sanctuary and go back to Winchester, Luke?”
I shook my head. “Do not mock me, sir.”
“No mocking. I have a Christmas gift for you. Your brother seeks your return and pledges his word to your safety.”
I said, scarcely trusting myself to believe it: “This is not a joke?”
“News came this morning while you were in the stocks. Your brother is married to a Christian, as you know. The man they say was a god was born, they also say, on this day more than twenty-two centuries ago. Perhaps she asked it of your brother; the Christians’ ways are strange.”
I thought of the Christians putting themselves between me and the mob. I wondered if they were still in the stocks, and still chanting.
I said: “It is really true? When do I leave?”
“You are eager to be rid of us,” Murphy said. “We return to the Sanctuary tomorrow and you will leave a few days after that.”
I believed it now and forgot my anger and my bruises. I forgot even the filth with which I was smeared. It was Murphy who reminded me of it. Sniffing, he said:
“A more urgent need is that you have a bath and change into clean linen. Our somber black for a while still. But because of your disgrace you will not appear at any ceremonies, nor sit solemn at the banquet. That is another good thing you get from today’s misfortunes.”
TWO
TOASTS AT A BANQUET
EZZARD ACCOMPANIED ME ON MY return to Winchester. It was accepted by Peter that my life had been in danger in the days following our father’s murder and his own accession, and that the Seer had been right to take me away. That was the official story, but I imagined there was more to it. Though he had married a Christian Peter himself was a Spiritist, as far as he was anything, and so also were his Captains. It was not easy even for a strong Prince to defy the Seers for long.
We went on horseback, openly, Ezzard in Seer’s robes and I in clothes befitting my rank. I wore also a sword, a parting gift from the High Seers: the Sword of the Spirits which had been promised to me when they came to Winchester after the taking of Petersfield. Handing it to me, Murphy said:
“Steel, case-hardened in an induction furnace. You will find no metal to come near it, and no blade that will match it in strength and cutting edge. Look after it and it will serve you well.”
We called at various towns on our way. Everywhere Ezzard let it be known that I was returning on my brother’s invitation, thus binding his honor more firmly to my safety. The precaution, as he said, was probably unnecessary, but it was best to take no chances. So despite my impatience we did not hurry on the journey.
But at last, having spent the night as guests of its Prince, we left Andover in the morning and I had high hopes of reaching Winchester by night. The weather dashed these: a light fall of snow before midday turned, in the afternoon, into a driving blizzard. We had passed Headbourne Worthy, the nearest village north of the city, and had not much more than a mile to go. The distance was tantalizingly short but as the wind howled and the blinding snow drove into our faces, even I was forced to agree that we must seek shelter. We found it in a farm, where we were respectfully received and well looked after. They gave us tidings of the city, to which I listened greedily. The farmer and his wife had a son, a boy of twelve. He told me he had seen me win the Sword of Honor in the Contest, and recited a full account of it. His dream was to be a warrior, and I told him to come to me when he was of age and I would enlist him in my troop. He was deeply grateful for the promise, which I thought was likely to profit me also. He was a strong, capable lad, with the makings of a soldier. His mother was less pleased, since he was her only son, but she would reconcile herself to losing him: she must have known he was not the sort of boy to stay on a farm once he was grown.
I had feared, when we retired to bed with the blizzard still howling, that we might be immured in the farmhouse for days. The morning dawned clear, however, the sky gray but no longer threatening, and when the servants had cut a path through drifted snow to the stable we were able to leave. Our horses floundered at times where the snow was loosely packed but we made fair progress. I saw, even in this landscape blanketed in white, landmarks I knew: Wherry’s mill, a clump of fir trees that leaned in toward each other like conspirators, a rusty crumbling shaft that came from the ancient times and was shunned by children, being thought to harbor ghosts. And beyond these, so familiar and so dear, the walls of my native city. I was home again. Turning my head so that Ezzard would not see, I put up my sleeve and brushed the dampness from my eyes.