“Rosary back!” he whispered fiercely.
She giggled and nudged back, hard.
“I’ve often wondered about life in the Valley,” the Red Deacon was saying.
“There is more death than life there, m’Lord Cardinal,” Shard answered. “Few who live there want to risk giving birth. A normal birth is rare. Most die. Others are too feeble to want life. If it were not for the influx, the Watchitah would soon be empty.”
“Influx? From where?”
“You must know, m’Lord.”
Brownpony nodded. Many people in families of registered pedigree nonetheless had accursed offspring. Lest they lose their registration with the keepers of such records, families without fear of the Church killed their malformed babies. But often there were children whose deformities could be concealed for a time, and these were sent to the Valley at a later age by the pious. Monks and nuns often brought them. People who lived near the Watchitah hated and feared the inhabitants, especially the near-normal among them. Blacktooth noticed that everyone was glancing at Ædrea.
“Forgive me, daughter,” Brownpony murmured when she met his eyes.
“I don’t like admitting it,” Shard was saying, “but the patrols who guard the passes were as much our protectors as our jailers. But they did nothing to help us when famine came.”
“And the Church?” said the Red Deacon. “Too busy with its own schism to be of much help to anyone.”
“Well, of course we were cut off from papal protection, but the Archbishop of Texark did send in some supplies. I think he is not a cruel man, perhaps only powerless.”
“You cannot imagine how powerless is Cardinal Archbishop Benefez,” Father e’Laiden sighed.
Blacktooth glanced quickly at the priest, certain that he was being sardonic and meant the opposite of what he said. Benefez had behind him the power of the Hannegans. And e’Laiden spoke Texark like a native, which he probably was, although his command of Wild-dog Nomadic meant he had lived long on the High Plains.
“My rosary!” Blacktooth whispered angrily.
She winked at him and grinned. “I hid it in the barn. You can have it tomorrow.”
The way she looked at him brought on an eruption of horniness, and he felt his face turning red. Blacktooth feared her. Many deformities recurred, and many were genetically connected. Various writers had made lists. There was one mutation in which great physical beauty was coupled with a defect in the brain, the most notable symptom of which was the onset of criminal insanity a few years after puberty. He stole a glance at her, but she caught him at it, and flicked her tongue and smirked. She might not be crazy, but she was a she-devil. He wanted to go to the carriage and to bed, but he was ashamed to stand up at the moment. At last he prayed his erection away and mumbled good night to the others. Ædrea followed him outside, but he fled into the latrine, then climbed out the back window. He was immediately seized by the hunchback and another creature and dragged away toward another house with a lighted doorway. Nearly fainting with fright, he heard the hunchback whisper hoarsely that someone needed absolution.
“But I am not a priest!” he protested. In vain. They dragged him into the house of Shard’s neighbor.
The hunchback and his companion released Blacktooth after pushing him inside, and they stood blocking the door. The monk could only sit down on a stool pointed out to him, and from there await developments. There was firelight and a lantern. There was a wrinkled old man with a scraggly beard in the room, who said his name was Tempus. He pointed out the others. There was his wife. Irene, whose face was a permanent scar. There were Ululata, and Pustria, females both of portentous mien. The hunchback was called Cortus, and his companion Barlo. They were all siblings or cousins or half-siblings. Barlo had a terrible itch, especially in the genital area. Tempus shouted at him to stop masturbating, but the words had no effect on the creature.
God in His wisdom had given Ululata adeformed foot, although He had in all other ways given her the proportions of the divine image in His mind of God in mercy. But the foot was not something you would want to walk with. “God is thus,” said the father.
The father had given her crutches. To him, God had given seven fingers, which he displayed to the monk, a third useless eye, and four testicles with two healthy penes, all of which he exhibited. Pustria was Ululata’s half-sister, according to their faithful mother’s best memory of their conceptions under the weight of the same sire. Pustria was deformed only by blindness, and Mother Irene was partial to Pustria because Pustria could not see her mother’s face, a mask of scab of which Mother Irene was not proud. “God is thus, since the deluge of fire and ice,” said the father.
Barlo was in need of absolution, Tempus explained, in order to make him stop masturbating. Blacktooth explained that he could not absolve anybody, and that absolution would not have the effect that Tempus desired. Tempus was adamant. Blacktooth would not be allowed to leave until he performed.
“Will you let me go then, immediately?” he demanded.
Tempus nodded gravely and crossed his heart. Nimmy closed his eyes for a moment and tried to summon a little Latin.
“Labores semper tecum,” he said in the softest voice he could muster. “Igni etiam aqua interdictus tu. Semper super capitem tuum feces descendant avium.”
“Amen,” Tempus said in echo to this malediction.
Nimmy got up and left. At the moment, he was not particularly ashamed of wishing eternal suffering on the man, of pronouncing a dire sentence of exile, and calling down upon the head of Barlo a perpetual rain of birdshit; the glep who was still scratching his crotch followed him at a distance.
Chür Høngan was already asleep. Blacktooth had drawn lots with Wooshin and lost the third place indoors. He was relieved things had turned out so, especially after his escape from the clutches of the hunchback’s family. If he must sleep in the cold carriage, he preferred to sleep with the Nomad. Although, during his waking hours, he had lost his fear of the killer of hundreds, the Brother Axe still haunted his dreams. Sometimes he dreamed he himself was the executioner, chopping heads for Hannegan with a mighty sword, but that night in the carriage, he dreamed he was Pontius Pilate, and Wooshin the headsman stood beside him as Marcus the Centurion, confronted by a pretender to the Kingdom of God among the Nomads.
Kings of the Nomads were common in those days. He crucified not one but four of them during his lucrative career in south Texas-Judea. The first case was the hardest for him, and sad; Blacktooth-Pilate was like a boy killing his first deer. Because the pretender was harmless, the case was jinxed by the scruples of his wife. He had wanted to set the first one free. It was easier to kill the ones that followed, and certainly necessary to show that kings were made by Texark and not by tribal gods. He always asked them the same question. The first one could not or would not answer, and merely stood looking at him. The second to be crucified was more talkative.
“What is truth?” asked Blacktooth.
“Truth is the essence of all true statements,” said the second King of the Nomads. “Falsehood is the essence of all false statements. Without saying anything, there is neither true nor false. I offer Your Majesty my silence.”
“Crucify him,” said Pilate, “with prejudice. And get it right this time. Wrap his arms and legs around the cross. That’s the way it shows in the Texark Procurators’ Handbook. Of course, that’s not enough for you new recruits these days. You have to know why. Well, I’ll tell you why.
“Nailing the hands to the back of the cross is sound engineering principle and sound governmental policy because when you nail the hands in front the weight of the body hangs on the nails, they tear, unless you also nail the forearm; but when you wrap the arms across the top of the cross and nail them from behind, the weight of the body hangs from the arm on the crossbar, and the nail does nothing but keep the arm in place. That way, you can smash his bones better when it’s time to go home from work. Do it the Texark way, men; the Texark way is the eternal way. Let’s carry out the sentence with some snap this time.”