“She said it was like a dream,” Father Moo told him. “But she thinks somebody with a hammer, maybe the Devil—”
“Was she raped?”
“She didn’t say anything about it.”
“Let’s go. Did you tell Brother Pharmacist?”
“He is on his way.”
The pharmacist had already arrived when they entered the guesthouse. The door to Ædrea’s cell was open, and she was lying on her cot. As they started to enter, the pharmacist pushed them back outside, joining them and closing the door behind him.
“Her wounds?” the abbot whispered.
“The wounds of Christ,” the medic answered softly.
“What are you talking about?”
“The wounds of the nails. The wound of the spear.”
“The stigmata? You’re saying the female, the, uh, Sister, has the stigmata?”
“Yes, she does. The cut in her side is clean. The wounds in her hands and feet have bruised blue edges. She speaks of a hammer.”
“Devil!” It was as close as Olshuen ever came to swearing. He turned and walked out of the guesthouse with Singing Cow at his heels.
“Retaliation!” he spat. “Retribution!”
“Excuse me? What do you mean, Domne?”
“I forbade her to use healing powers. This is her answer.”
Singing Cow was silent for several moments as they walked toward the convent, then he shook his head. “Domne, I am leaving tomorrow for home.”
Abbot Olshuen stopped. “Without asking permission?”
“You already gave it, remember?”
“Of course.” The abbot turned on his heel and walked away, alone.
A few hours later, when Brother Wren St. Mary came to inquire about a change in the diet for the sick, he found Abiquiu Olshuen lying on the floor of his office. He could not move his right leg. When he tried to speak, he squawked.
Brother Pharmacist came directly to the infirmary where Wren had carried Olshuen.
“Is it a stroke, Brother?” Wren asked.
“Yes, I’m afraid it is.”
The abbey had its own prior again, and Father Devendy was immediately summoned, along with Singing Cow. Wren went back to the kitchen.
Prior Devendy turned to Prior Singing Cow. “Can you get the Sister who heals to come?”
“You know about her?”
“Dom Abiquiu told me what Mother Iridia told him. I know he was alarmed, but—he may die, you know.”
“I’ll go ask her. She was, uh, injured, you know. Did Brother Medic tell you?”
“No,” put in the pharmacist.
“Describe the wounds to Father Devendy,” Father Moo told him, “but don’t interpret them.”
“I understand. Make sure she wears shoes of some kind and doesn’t walk on the bandages.”
Singing Cow glanced at the abbot. Dom Abiquiu was shaking his head from side to side with his eyes closed. It meant nothing, Moo decided.
Cow found a small pair of sandals in the storeroom. They were very old and might once have belonged to him or to some other adolescent Nomad whose feet had not finished growing. He took them to Sister Clare and told her they might once have been Blacktooth’s. She said nothing to that, and put them on without protest.
“Where are we going, Father?”
“To see Dom Abiquiu. He needs you.”
Ædrea had become accustomed to obedience, and came without asking why she was needed. When she limped into the infirmary and approached the bed, Dom Abiquiu groaned mightily and shrank back from her, his eyes wide and his face a mask of dread. He used his left hand to shield his eyes from her. Ædrea stopped and stared.
“Oh, pigs!” she said abruptly, and crossed herself with a bandaged hand. “There is nothing I can do for him.”
“What do you mean?” asked Prior Devendy.
“I mean I can’t do it tonight. And he told me not to do it again anyway.” She turned and started to leave the room.
“Sister Clare, please, he may be dying,” said Singing Cow.
She crossed herself again, but walked on down the corridor without looking back.
The next day, she was missing from the guesthouse, and her small traveling bag was not in her cell. No one had seen her leave, but there was a note on her bed: I’m sorry about your abbot. Thank you for your hospitality. God bless.
No one knew where she had gone. On his way back to New Jerusalem, Singing Cow stopped in the village of Sanly Bowitts to ask about her. She had been seen going toward the Mesa of Last Resort. He followed the trail to the foot of the cliff. Once he found a spot of blood on a stone, but no other sign of her. She was with Benjamin, then. Father Moo was certain the old Jew would cure her of the Lord’s stigmata. Feeling a little guilty for abandoning her and Dom Abiquiu, he steered his mule toward the papal highway leading north. It was already September and he traveled by the dark of the moon.
CHAPTER 29
Just as there is an evil zeal of bitterness
which separates from God and leads to hell,
so there is a good zeal which separates
from vices and leads to God,
BLACKTOOTH CARDINAL ST. GEORGE, DEACON OF Saint Maisie’s, was on the hillside taking a long and painful dump, his first of many for the day, when he heard the pop pop pop of repeating guns. It was coming from the main encampment, in the wooded bend of a wide, shallow creek back over the hill.
Blacktooth couldn’t see the camp from where he was standing, or rather, squatting. For his morning ritual, which was the only one he found the leisure to perform in privacy, he preferred the western slope of the little bluff, a hill so small that it barely cleared the trees. Truth was, Blacktooth was homesick. Not for a particular place; he had never had anything even approximating a home except for Leibowitz Abbey, and while he sometimes (indeed, fairly often) missed the companionship of the Brothers and the security of the routine and the Rule, he never missed the abbey itself. He was homesick for the desert, the grasslands, the country of Empty Sky.
Even though he could see nothing to the west but more trees, Blacktooth knew there was open land beyond—rolling plains that went on and on, treeless and townless like Eternity itself. And the sky seemed definitely bigger to the west.
Unsmiling, unspeaking, unlimited.
From here I greet you, Empty Sky.
Pop pop pop.
Blacktooth stumbled as he stood up, hurriedly wiping himself with a wad of grass—then slowed, no longer alarmed, recognizing the sound. It was celebratory, ceremonial, not real; not a firefight. The Grasshopper sharf’s warriors, disciplined for firing the precious brass cartridges but bored by the lack of military action, had perfected the art of imitating the sound of the new repeating “Pope rifles.” As with everything the Nomads tried, they had quickly learned to do it well.
Blacktooth had first noticed it in the outriders returning from a scouting mission a few days before; he had remarked to his boss, Bitten Dog, that the warriors were mimicking the sound of the brass shell-firing guns from across the sea. “Imitate the sound of pots being scoured, Your Eminence,” Bitten Dog had growled.
The pop pop pop was joined by the sound of dogs. It was not barking but the alarming half-howl, half-growl of war dogs being brought up on leash. All this was coming from the camp of the Pope’s armies down at the edge of the trees, in the bend of the creek called Troublesome or Trouble Some. Attempting to shade his eyes from the early-morning, late-September sun, tying his habit back around him with his booklegger’s cord, Blacktooth crossed the crest of the hill and started down toward the camp. He took off his sandals and carried them, so that he could walk barefoot in the pleasantly wet grass. Through the trees, he could see horses milling and stomping, warily watching the dogs that circled them like a dust devil.