After confession, which he wanted to forget as quickly as possible, Blacktooth went home first, but the air was foul with recent vomit. Someone had washed the floor near Jæsis’ bed, where the student lay moaning. He had lost a lot of weight. Once he opened his eyes and glared wildly at the monk, who asked if he wanted a Doctor to come. “Here this morning,” Jæsis croaked. “It does no good.”
Blacktooth brought a cold wet towel for his head, then went back to the Secretariat, where he spent the afternoon and much of the evening translating the cardinal’s mail to and from the Plains. He was very quickly learning about Nomad politics and the important personages among the hordes. He learned that Chür Høngan had now returned to the hogans and herds of his Little Bear grandmother, that Uncle Brokenfoot had been struck down by sudden illness, that an anti-Christian faction among the Bear Spirit men and the Weejus women of the Grasshopper Horde, some of whom feared Høngan’s candidacy, had suddenly rallied to the name of one Hultor Bråm, a mankiller of undoubted prowess, as the most fit war sharf to reunite the Three Hordes. Bråm interested Blacktooth exactly (and only) because he was Grasshopper, and might even be a distant relative. His partisans translated his name as Kindly Light, but in Jackrabbit hultor bråm meant a bad sunburn. He also learned that his master was not entirely displeased by this development, for Bråm was possessed by a savagery that made Høngan’s temperament seem mild in comparison, and the cardinal, although alarmed by the illness of Høngan’s father, believed the majority of the grandmothers would never propose for the highest office and bridegroom of the Fujæ Go a hothead after the pattern of Mad Bear, whose reckless chieftainship had lost the Jackrabbit territory in the south to Hannegan II, and cost the Grasshopper dearly in men and cattle. The Wilddog on the High Plains had suffered the least from that old conquest.
Brownpony always left notes to help the monk avoid political pitfalls in his translations, when the wrong wording might offend certain groups, or compromise his plans if his correspondence fell into the wrong hands. The cardinal received more and longer letters than he wrote, and Blacktooth was surprised to learn that he had so many literate allies on the Plains. He knew, or had been told, that Nomad literacy was about five percent. The writers mostly belonged, he realized now, to the Christian minorities within the hordes, and most of them from powerful families. Brownpony was obviously trying to keep these three minorities in close contact with each other. With the help of certain Weejus women, he was even playing marriage broker to forge alliances between Wilddog, Grasshopper, and Jackrabbit families.
Blacktooth came to suspect that an unfortunate marriage of Chür Høngan to a Grasshopper girl was one result of such efforts. He had been doing this since the days of Pope Linus VI, with the blessing of subsequent pontiffs. While examining these files, he inadvertently encountered material from the Weejus women that related to the cardinal personally. For years his friends had been searching among the Wilddog people for some trace of the family of Brownpony’s mother or for anyone who remembered her. The information from the Weejus was transmitted by e’Laiden Ombroz: “With the help of the Bearcub’s family, I have come to the end of the search. I can only conclude, Your Eminence, that there is not, and never was, a Wilddog motherline using the name ‘Brown Pony.’ If your mother’s people are among us, that is not their name. The sisters who told you the story must have been misinformed. Perhaps it is a Grasshopper or Jackrabbit name, or perhaps it was an assumed name. I regret that I have been of no help to you.”
Embarrassed, the monk returned the file to its place without reading the rest of it, and never mentioned it to Brownpony.
Blacktooth was humbly grateful that his master trusted him enough to let him learn about these matters, even by accident, but he also knew that a few messages to and from the Plains were in code, and these were attended to by Brownpony personally. Something dangerous to Brownpony himself, or to the reputation of the Secretariat, was going on, but he found no clue in the nonsecret correspondence as to the nature of the intrigue. He was not allowed to see the cardinal’s correspondence with Oregon and the west coast, but that, of course, was not written in Nomadic. A technical civilization rivaling that of Texark had been developing in the far west for nearly a century, although distance and the mountains kept them apart and not competitive.
The monk had been watching his master pore over his correspondence, wondering why the cardinal himself was rarely mentioned as a candidate for the papacy, when Brownpony whirled suddenly to confront him.
“Nimmy, I am weary of being the target of the corner of your eye, of being the addressee of all your unasked questions. What is it you want to know about me?”
“Nothing, my Lord! It is unseemly…”
“It is unseemly to lie to your patron. Ask me a question, an impertinent question, of course.”
After a silence, Blacktooth found a small voice: “How is it that you are not a priest, m’Lord?”
“Yes, that would be first question. Explain yourself to the sometime monk, Elia Brownpony. Tell him how you were married once, and now Pope Linus was going to make you a priest before he made you cardinal, but you refused, saying that Seruna might still be alive, although you knew she was dead. She was kidnapped by outlaw Nomads like those at Arch Hollow. They don’t keep kidnapped women alive long. Well, Blacktooth, there you have the waves. Do you want the Ocean as well?”
“I’m ashamed that I presumed to ask.”
“Don’t grovel. I was called to be a lawyer, not a priest, and that’s it. There are many priests who should have been lawyers instead, and a few lawyers who should have been priests. I say I have been called to practice law and settle disputes. I’m not so sure where calls come from. Practicing law and negotiating disputes, this is what I do well. Plus politics and controversy. I would not be a good priest, regular or secular. I have neither the charity nor the piety for it. I can serve the Church best as the shepherd’s dog, fighting for the flock, or snapping at the heels of the flock to keep the sheep together. There is no chance that Seruna is alive. I loved her in my way, but she was not happy. And if she were alive still, she would not come back to me. But I can’t prove she’s dead.”
“You had no children?”
“I have a son in Saint Maisie’s Seminary in New Rome.”
“And you are the Cardinal Deacon of—” Blacktooth stopped and put his hand over his mouth.
Brownpony laughed. “Deacon of Saint Maisie’s Church in New Rome, yes. Nepotism? Pope Linus made the appointment. Without asking me? Of course he asked me. Now what else do you want to know?”
“I’m sorry I pried.”
“You didn’t Looking at me curiously behind my back is not prying. You are a good fellow, Nimmy. You know your place, and you work hard. I raise your salary by half.”
“Fifty percent of—” Blacktooth stopped.
“—of nothing is nothing. All right, you may increase your living expenses by that much, and I’ll tell Jaron to pay them. Now get on with these letters to the east. I’m so busy trying to keep track of who’s here for the conclave and guess at their votes, I’ve no time for my proper affairs.”
When he was not working, the monk fell into moods close to despair. It was not that the sin itself with Ædrea was so terrible, but that he was out of control. His life was reconsecrated to God every day, but if he had kept God in his heart, he would never have climbed into the hay with her. It did not matter to him that what they did together would not make a baby. That it might not even be a sin, if hewere not promised to God, but to love her was to love God less, was it not? It was not the act that he despised, but the flaw in his character that permitted it.