During his dementia, the cougar Librada ran away.
CHAPTER 28
In time of famine, when the garden fails,
when the brothers are eating yucca roots,
cactus paddles, chaparral cocks, snakes,
and the laying hens, and yet are near to starving,
let the Abbot pray for Saint Benedict’s blessing
and allow them to eat the four-footed livestock,
unless there be able hunters among them
to stalk the wild blue-head goats.
ABBOTS WERE NOT ALL ALIKE. JEROME OF Pecos, abbot before the Conquest in the time of Pope Benedict XXII and Mayor Hannegan II, had thrown open the monastery gates to the world, and had allowed his sons to listen to natural philosophy lectures by practical atheists and play with electricity machines in the basement. What had happened to the religious vocation in that time, Abbot Olshuen could only wonder. The monks of Leibowitz Abbey under his guidance had kept themselves as unaware as possible of the changing world, including the controversial pontificates of the two Amens. Without offending the Pope, such isolation had not been possible under Abbot Jarad, who was also a cardinal, but Dom Abiquiu had discontinued Jarad’s policy of letting the monks know about Church affairs outside the monastery. Always conservative in his interpretation of the Rule of Saint Leibowitz, the abbot withheld most news, including ecclesiastical news, of the outside world from his cloistered flock; the only monks he had told about the bull Scitote Tyrannum were the abbey’s business manager and those Brothers native to Texark or the Province whose families were in the path of war, and these were told to keep silent.
But Amen II, when he marched out of New Jerusalem to conquer New Rome, sent Olshuen two letters. The first told him that he, the Servant of the Servants of God, was undertaking a Crusade to correct the errors of his beloved son, the Emperor, and that the S.o.S.o.G. needed the prayers of all the monks of Leibowitz to support this holy cause. The second letter ordered him to grant sanctuary at the abbey to a certain Sister Clare-of-Assisi in case she chose to avail herself of the Pope’s clemency and return from her exile at the Monastery of the Nuns of Our Lady of San Pancho Villa of Cockroach Mountain south of the Brave River. Brownpony did not mention that Sister Clare was formerly Blacktooth’s lover, but the abbot knew this anyway. Iridia Cardinal Silentia had visited Leibowitz Abbey on her way south. Olshuen had been startled to observe that the young Sister accompanying her was the same girl who had impudently flashed herself at him from the roadway the previous season before she followed the old Jew to the Mesa. He stirred unhappily at the memory, but the command to grant her a temporary refuge was the Pope’s.
Olshuen was strict in matters of the rule, but he was neither a rebel nor an especially brave man. If he must lead his congregation in prayers for the Pope’s intentions, he felt he must tell them about the Crusade. And if he must grant sanctuary anytime soon to a barefoot whore in an O.D.D. habit, he must begin construction immediately of a special extra cell.
The messenger who brought the Pope’s letters to Olshuen had ridden as fast as possible to Leibowitz Abbey from New Jerusalem, and the next day he had to ride on south as fast as possible to San Pancho Villa Nunnery, evidently with a message of clemency for the girl.
Upon receipt of the Pope’s letters, the abbot immediately sent a message of his own to New Jerusalem summoning Singing Cow home from his priory. This too was irregular. But the abbot needed to know how the departure of the Pope from his Suckamint Mountain sanctuary might affect the relations between the government of New Jerusalem and the monks of the Priory of Saint Leibowitz-in-the-Cottonwoods, a mission of the Order.
The special extra cell was a lean-to against the north wall of the guesthouse, but there was no door between them. Compared with the monks’ cells, the whore-hut (as Olshuen thought of it) was luxurious, having its own running water, a charcoal stove for cooking or heating, a wooden tub for bathing, and an adjacent one-hole privy only three paces from a side door. Like the monks’ cells, it had a cot with a straw mattress, one chair, one table for writing or eating, one prie-dieu for praying, and one crucifix before which to pray. A missal, a psalter, and a copy of the Rule of Saint Leibowitz were on the bookshelf. If the cook brought her food, the trollop would not need to leave the guest accommodations even for meals, unless she came to Mass, which the abbot considered unlikely.
The abbey had two guests already. One was Snow Ghost, a younger brother of Sharf Oxsho, who wanted to become a postulant. The other was Thon Elmofier Santalot, Sc.D., Vaq. Ord., who, besides being an associate professor at the Texark university, was a major in the Reserve Cavalry. His unit had been called to active duty, but he was on a leave to pursue his studies at the abbey, where he spent all his time in the vaults and the clerestory reading room, joining the monks only at meals and at Sunday’s Mass. No one, not even the abbot, knew the purpose of his study at the abbey. Seventy-two years ago, Abbot Jerome would have begged him to tell them all. Now Dom Abiquiu begged him not to discuss anything with the monks.
Snow Ghost spoke no Ol’zark. Santalot spoke no Wilddog, although he had learned a little Jackrabbit while serving in the Province. Both of them knew a little Churchspeak. They had trouble communicating, but since they were enemies, this was just as well. Snow Ghost was already attending Mass and chanting the hours with the other monks in choir, although his habit was still being tailored for him. The abbot had warned him sternly against discussing politics with the Texark scholar, but the warning proved unnecessary. Snow Ghost seemed thoroughly afraid of the man.
Thon Santalot, whose life seemed to be driven by curiosity, became curious at this time as to why the extra cell was being built when the guesthouse was nearly empty. Snow Ghost could tell him nothing; Brother Carpenter said it was for a special visitor, and that was all he knew.
The expected trollop was never to occupy the extra cell, however. In late June, the old Jew who never died came out of the east and collapsed outside the gates. The abbot ordered him carried to the guesthouse, but when he began raving in Hebrew, Thon Santalot became frightened of him, and so Dom Abiquiu housed him in the whore-hut and fed him bread and boiled goat’s milk.
Brother Medic was unable to diagnose the ancient hermit’s illness, which seemed to abate on the day following his arrival. He insisted on going back to his mesa, but on the fourth day, before he got under way, he went wild again and had to be restrained. When he recovered temporarily from his fever, he insisted to Olshuen that he was a danger to the community, and exacted a promise of sanitary measures. He said he had caught the disease while traveling behind the lines in the Province, where he had sold military weather to both sides. He insisted that to prevent spreading the contagion, the doors and windows of his cell were to be covered with cloth to exclude insects. Knowing that old Benjamin had medical experience, the abbot readily consented.
When Elmofire Santalot heard of the nature of old Benjamin’s illness, and where he caught it, the scholar went straight to the abbot’s office. The abbot was out, so he gave the abbot’s secretary a bottle of pills, explaining that he had needed them to avoid catching Hilbert’s disease from the troops in the Province. The scholar was having a late breakfast in the refectory the following morning when Dom Abiquiu sat down beside him, placing the bottle of pills on the oak table.