“In earlier days, there dwelt there upon that grassland those cruel, piratical herdsmen with their woolly wild cattle, and they took delight in torture, and they flayed messengers alive and ate their organ meats, or made them slaves. Some of you who have just crossed the Plains in coming here, in relative safety, I might add—although I sympathize with the hardships you still endured—you have seen the descendants of those cannibals. And unless you encountered an outlaw band, you were not molested. But the forebears of these people were the reason for these extraordinary regulations I hold in my hand.
“Wild they are still, these herdsmen, and cruel, but they let you pass now without harassment. While the Church in the West has, we all admit, rendered fealty to the one true vicar of Christ who traditionally resides east of the Plains, it has always gone its independent way in matters of faith, morals, and doctrine, as we learn from the history of the Oregonians. I refer you to the works of Duren, if you have any doubts about this.”
Blacktooth looked suddenly at Abbot Jarad and regretted it immediately. His former ruler was watching him with a faint triumphant smile. Some cardinals in the abbot’s vicinity were also murmuring among themselves.
Aberlott noticed Blacktooth’s restlessness and turned toward him to whisper. “Nimmy, did you know the Oregonians used leavened bread at Easter Mass?”
“No, I didn’t,” Blacktooth whispered back. “Neither did Duren. Now hush.”
“Oh, yes. Instead of ‘Behold the Lamb of God,’ when the priest held up the bread, he would say, ‘Behold He is risen.’”
Blacktooth kicked his anklebone. His lips shaped an ooo.
“Transportation was simply too hard between the East and the West for the Pope to be in constant communication with all his flock and their bishops in those days,” the professor continued. “But now we have relative peace on the High Plains and the Prairie, except for outlaw bands. And in the South, for most of your venerable lifetimes it has been possible for a man to travel alone, or in a small unarmed party as some of you from the Southeast have just done, to come from east of the Great River here to mountains with no more danger than you might encounter on the roads in your home diocese. Why? Because the southern horde has been pacified, and the Province is well governed, and those north of the Province are, if not pacified, then at least aware that robbery, rape, and murder of us ‘grass-eaters’ will bring swift retribution. Thus with travel and communication restored, the imagined advantages to the west of a papacy here in exile are no longer real.”
Abbot Jarad had risen to his feet, but the speaker seemed not to notice at first.
“I am not a military man,” the professor continued, “but—” He stopped because the audience was looking to his right, and he glanced around to see Jarad standing. “Yes? Your Eminence?—”
“Perhaps the advantages of exile are imaginary, as you say. I pray for a return to New Rome, under the right conditions, for the exile is a scandal and an abomination. But I would remind the learned speaker that the Treaty of the Sacred Mare predates the conquest, that the military regulations which the learned speaker quotes predated that treaty, and that the treaty was negotiated peacefully with the Church as mediator, and that while crossing the High Plains is never without danger, Church messengers have been doing it for at least a century, with no help from the Texark military.” Jarad sat down, his face bright red, looking around for a murmur of approval. None came.
“Thank you. As I was saying, I am not a military man, but it has been explained to me that the mission of Texark troops which just happen to be in the vicinity of New Rome has nothing to do with New Rome or the papacy. They were sent there without any thought whatever of provoking or intimidating the Pope. The Hannegan of that time was as astonished by the Pope’s flight to Valana, as was the rest of the country. The troops were sent not to outflank the Holy City, but to protect the farmers settling in the timberlands between the Great River and the treeless prairie. The farms were threatened from the west and the north by the eastern horde, the one they call Grasshopper. The troops are there as a peacekeeping force only, as most inhabitants of New Rome now recognize. The herdsmen were penetrating the farmlands, stealing the stock, and kidnapping little boys.
“Nomads give birth to more girls than boys, you know. Something hereditary, I’m told. Anyway, the return of the papacy to New Rome would be protected, not threatened, by the troops in the—”
“Just a minute.” Cardinal Brownpony’s voice came over the room loud and clear. Blacktooth looked around, as did many others, but no one on the floor was standing. “Just a minute, if I may.”
Eyes followed the voice upward and to the rear. Brownpony was standing in the choir loft, with the Axe seated on one side and the Reverend Amen Specklebird, O.D.D., on the other. Blacktooth and Aberlott had been refused admittance to the gallery, but the guards had evidently opened it to latecomers to avoid people wandering down the main aisle after the meeting began.
“I am a descendant of these cannibals, as you call them. My mother, I was told by the sisters who raised me, bore the family name of ‘the Brown Pony.’ I never met her, but the family was Wilddog, the sisters said, and she was the young widow of a Jackrabbit husband who had escaped a Texark jail, but was killed by Texark bullets. She was raped by one of your Texark peacekeepers when she went south to visit her dead husband’s people. I am the child of that violent union. The sisters who raised me in your province let me keep the name she gave them.”
Blacktooth looked up at Wooshin with wide eyes, and his surprise was reflected by the warrior’s. Neither of them ever mentioned Brownpony’s origins to others, judging it a taboo subject. Now the Red Deacon was announcing his mysterious bastardy to the world, which already knew of it in whispers. And yet he himself knew little or nothing of it, according to the file the monk had seen at the Secretariat.
“And there is my secretary,” said Brownpony, looking down at Blacktooth. “His ancestors were Grasshopper refugees from your Texark pacification. They lost all their cattle to Hannegan’s diseased animals. His parents died without horses, farming another’s land. From him, I know something of the Grasshopper people and their history. For centuries they have pastured their animals on the land of which you speak, among their other lands. That region was called ‘Iowa’ on the ancient maps, I believe, but it is nearly treeless, and yet fertile enough for the farmers to covet it. And the Grasshopper has always gathered wood for poles, stakes, arrows, and spears from the thinly forested lands north and south of that area. If the farmers are there now, they’ve settled there since Hannegan’s slaughter. You paint the Texark forces as protectors. You want the Pope back in New Rome, in the midst of his protectors. I too want the Pope back in New Rome, in spite of his protectors, in the midst of his enemies, among whom you have just counted yourself. You have been sent here to draw fire away from your master. Now the Cardinal Archbishop of Texark, who we all know has sent you, must either underwrite your views, or denounce your slander against the people of the Plains.”
There was an astonished silence, followed by brief applause and cheering from two Westerners. Father General Corvany ominously lost his smile again, and came to his feet. The applause quickly subsided. Brownpony sat down smiling. Cardinals were looking over their shoulders at him. On the stage, Jarad’s jaw dropped. Brownpony was known as a diplomat, always courteous, a peacemaker who rarely took sides. His tone had been calm, but he had just declared war, and it had to be premeditated.