Blacktooth wondered who had suggested to Brownpony the motto he had inscribed upon his new coat of arms as Amen II. It said like hell you will in ancient English, instead of the usual Latin. He understood it, but he wondered if the Pope really did. When Brownpony’s coach overtook Eltür Bråm’s coach one day, Jopo Cardinal Ombroz was the only member of the College who knew enough ancient English to laugh at the juxtaposition of their mottos.
It was to celebrate Ombroz’s ascension to the Sacred College that Önmu Kun had traveled north with Father Steps-on-Snake and a party of thirty Jackrabbit warriors. They arrived well before the event, and brought with them disease, although none fell ill until days after their arrival. Blacktooth, already ill, was one of the first to get sick after Önmu came up from the south to meet the train; he heard talk of epidemic in the Province. At first they blamed the water, but a week later three of the warriors and several Grasshopper children fell ill, and then Blacktooth St. George, who already had the runs.
As Önmu explained it, the crusaders in the south at first attributed the affliction to poisoned wells left by retreating Texark forces, but the cattle that drank from the wells were not so afflicted. And the disease seemed to spread from the men who had drunk of the wells to men who had not. So far, the enemy was not affected by the plague, if such it was. The disease, whose symptoms were something like those suffered in Valana before the election of Pope Amen I, was not yet epidemic. To contain it, certain fighting units were quarantined.
Blacktooth did not attend the Mass of a Sovereign Pontiff or Father Ombroz’s consecration, but watched from a distant hilltop while squatting in the grass, taking a long painful dump. Blacktooth had given himself over to the Devil. He had stopped praying the Divine Office, except when it came to him in snatches. He listened to himself fart and said amen. He had ceased to meditate, except for an occasional rosary in honor of the Virgin—but then his mind dwelled on Ædrea in the role of God’s mother.
He assumed that he would never see her again, for she was now a nun. He had not, and would not, ask Brownpony for assurance that he had done what he had said he would do as soon as they were gone from New Jerusalem, that is, commute her sentence from permanent exile. He had no evidence for believing that the Pope had remembered or kept the promise, and he could not ask. He knew he was going mad; the origin of his cosmic madness was his inflamed bowel, which was caused by his guilt, which was driving him crazy during this summer of the Year of Our Lord 3246, the year of the Reconquest, not the previous year when he had killed a pitiful, drafted glep, for that had not been a year of diarrhea and fever.
His days of madness made him reclusive. Only the responsibility he felt for Librada, the duty to return her to the country of her birth, kept him from abandoning all hope and fleeing. Father Steps-on-Snake was available to him, but he did not confess. The idea of confession seemed to make his diarrhea worse. He had made himself a stranger to his master by his insolence. The journey was misery, and every few days he had a day of delirium and uncontrollable behavior.
But it was on such a bad day that the dead Pope Amen came to comfort him.
“Your Christ is the true man of no identity,” Amen Specklebird told him while he took a dump at sundown, “the one not wearing a mask; he comes and goes through your face, where your mask is. He comes and goes as he likes, fore and aft, and your mask sees him not.
A mask sees self only in a mirror. But the true Jesus without a mask is alive and well; austere he sits in solitude under the bridge where the Christ sleeps, and takes a dump.”
“Are not all sins, in themselves, their own punishment?” Blacktooth asked, impertinently. He thought he remembered Specklebird saying something like that during the nine days of prayer they had shared.
“Punishment like your congress with old Shard’s daughter?” the Pope replied with a grin, and disappeared before Nimmy could say that was not a mortal sin.
Besides his illness of body and spirit, another factor discouraged flight. Just out of sight beyond the southern horizon another train was traveling eastward on a parallel course, and another might be coming behind it. There was too much chance of being caught. Dust from the other train was usually visible by day, and the glow of its wagoners’ fires by night. A rare glimpse of the wagons and riders occurred when the train mounted a low hill in the distance. Some of the wagons flashed in the sunlight as if they were covered with metal, but with the heat and the distance even the hills seemed to be made of red-hot metal in the late light. The Nomad riders stayed clear of the mysterious train; they had been so ordered. No one to whom the monk talked knew much about it, except that it had departed from New Jerusalem after the Pope’s train, and that someone who knew someone who knew Wooshin said that it carried secret weapons, and that it was under the command of Magister Dion.
A few days later, Blacktooth became aware that they had penetrated into tall-grass country. He knew it without looking up from where he lay on the feed sacks in the back of the bouncing hoodlum wagon. He knew because the bands of incoming warriors were beginning to speak the dialect of the Grasshopper, and their animals began to include dogs. The dogs were not immediately friendly to Wilddog Nomads, and were noisily hostile toward Churchmen and New Jerusalemites. Because of the dogs, Blacktooth began sleeping inside the cramped hoodlum wagon instead of under it.
Pursued by a pack of the wolfish beasts, a screaming man leaped upon the tailgate of the hoodlum wagon one morning, and Blacktooth helped haul him inside. A snarling dog refused to let go of his shin. Librada shrieked. Cat and monk lunged for the dog at the same time. The man’s shin was well wrapped in military leggings, but he kept screaming until Blacktooth beat the dog off with a fagot and restrained the cat.
“Thank God! And thank you, Nimmy. I didn’t know you were with us.”
“Aberlott! What in hell are you doing here?”
“I’m just here for the crusade. Wooshin let me join the team. Damn, it’s bleeding. Your cat did that.”
“You’ve been on the train all along?”
“Sure, but this is the first day I’ve had free.”
Blacktooth thought for a moment. When the Pope’s party of Churchmen had left New Jerusalem, they brought with them seventeen wagons and an “elite” fighting team from the Suckamints, men whose only loyalty to the Pope was guaranteed by their frightened respect for Wooshin, their sergeant general—a rank created for the occasion by the reigning Pontiff in a moment of whimsy. The wizened old warrior wore gold chevrons and a star on his plaid tunic, which Amen II had given him. That he had accepted Aberlott among his so-called crack troops strained Nimmy’s credulity, but the student swore it was true. Blacktooth was glad for the company, at least for a day.
“Are you ready to run away again?” the student asked. “Like last year?”
Nimmy snorted. “Last year, one mad cardinal was leading a crowd of amateurs. This year, the Vicar of Christ is leading three hordes of warriors and two small armies.”
“Two? Where’s army number two?”
“It’s moving south of us.”
“Oh, you mean the tanks. That’s different. That’s something I’m not supposed to talk about, if I know anything, which I don’t”
“Tanks? Secret weapons?”
“Water tanks for all I know. We’ll need a lot of water.”
While they marched across Grasshopper country and the Pope watched the sky, the Burregun flew over the procession so often that it became a Nomad joke. During this time, Pope Amen I appeared to Blacktooth more than once, and warned him against continuing his rebellion against his master. When he answered the old black cougar, Bitten Dog the hood accused him of talking to himself, and he sent a message to Wooshin saying that the monk needed a witch doctor. The doctor who came turned out to be the Pope’s personal physician, although the patient had never seen him before, and was unable to guess to which of several schools of medicine the doctor belonged. He wore Nomad leathers and he swore Nomad oaths under his breath, but he carried a black bag full of pipes, needles, pincers, and charms, like a member of the ancient and mystical school of allopaths.