“Just so. The white meat is dry. Try the dark.”
“Jesus is Mary’s lover.”
Cardinal Brownpony sighed with disgust and began using his drumstick to beat on the table.
“Why do you want to pick a quarrel with me? Do I say ugly things about Empty Sky, or your Wild Horse Woman?”
“You did so once. At a holy council fire. That’s why I’m talking to you this way. You tried to drive her away, and your Christian puppet killed her priests.”
Brownpony sighed. “So I haven’t lived that down, eh? Sunovtash An was nobody’s puppet. As for me, what I did was foolish. I know that now, and I regret it. But that happened in the farming areas, not on the eastern Plains.”
“No matter, the tribe was formerly Grasshopper. You must remove the sacrilege.”
“How can I do that?”
“We have discussed it. You must go to her.”
“Where? Back to the farming area?”
“No. In the navel of the Earth, she lives: the breeding pit for her wild horses. It is a place of deadly fires, called Meldown.”
“I have heard of it. Isn’t that where Mad Bear became Lord of the Hordes before the conquest?”
“The same. Anyone nominated for the sacral kinship had to be chosen by her in that place. After election, each had to spend the night in that place by the light of the full moon. It will be so again. A new Qæsach dri Vørdar will be chosen. One of the three of us. It is also the place where we try men charged with crimes, a place of ordeal. Many never come out alive. Many come out sick, and lose their hair. Few emerge in full health. You committed a crime in the eyes of our Weejus and our Bear Spirit, Brownpony.”
“And if I submit to the ordeal?”
“There will be an alliance, if you live. And peace with the Wild-dog.”
“No matter who is elected Lord?”
Bråm shook his head, seemed puzzled.
“As Qæsach dri Vørdar,” Blacktooth put in.
“Ah, no doubt about that! The old women know best. And the Høngin Fujæ Vurn.”
The cardinal spoke to Nimmy in Rockymount. “Explain carefully and politely to the sharf that His Holiness is the high priest of all Christendom, and that diplomatic immunity, which he has been practicing on me, does not cover the crimen laesae majestatis, so tell him to curb his tongue before the Pope.”
Hultor Bråm was a powerful Nomad about Chür Høngan’s size, but perhaps leaner. His body language had few words. The predominant accent was force, a force prepared to spring at you, either for a hearty hug or to kill. All his muscles seemed drawn up that way.
Nervously, Blacktooth translated Brownpony’s message.
For a moment, the sharf glowered at him. The body language said “kill the messenger,” but then he turned to the cardinal and nodded curtly. At that moment Ulad stooped to enter the doorway and crossed, as a crouching mass of muscle, toward the table. Brownpony sent Blacktooth away in Ulad’s wake. Ulad, the monk intuitively surmised, was to discuss matters not for his ears, for Brownpony needed an interpreter more than ever, because the genny giant spoke only Valley Ol’zark and a little Rockymount. Probably Ulad was there to discuss weapons with the Grasshopper sharf, and Brownpony would have to be interpreter for both of them. Temporarily dismissed, he headed home, accompanied by Aberlott, whom he had not seen since the election.
“Listen, I heard there is going to be schism, maybe even war. What about it?”
“Takes two to make a schism or a war. Who do you have in mind for the war? And why ask me?”
“You work for the Secretary.”
“Who probably couldn’t answer your question either. Why don’t you ask a Weejus woman?”
“I don’t know any, do you?”
“Not yet.”
“When? I hear your cardinal is thinking of leaving for Nomad country.”
Blacktooth shot him a suspicious look. Everybody seemed to know more about his employer’s doings than he did. “Where did you hear that?”
“From a man who came out of the inn just before you did.”
Blacktooth worried. Brownpony was careless enough to let his conversation with Hultor Bråm be overheard by another customer who understood Nomadic. But there had been no one else visible from their table.
“A secret’s out?” asked Aberlott after a moment.
“I don’t know. I have a feeling I’m going to be fired, sooner or later.”
“By the cardinal? For what?”
“Remember the person who gave you my rosary back?”
Blacktooth said no more than that, but his friend watched his face, saw a blush, and asked no further questions. He turned away to cover a laugh with his hand, then asked, “What will happen to you then, Nimmy?”
“I don’t know. I have a big debt to pay. What the hell are you doing out of school?”
“I take no courses during the summer. I like to travel.”
“Where do you plan to go?”
“Where the horse takes me. No reins, you know. You just kick the animal when he stops to graze too often.”
“Be sure and pick the right horse, you half-wit, or it will take you to its birthplace.” He waved east toward the flatlands. Aberlott laughed and walked on alone.
It was two days before Hultor Bråm was admitted to an audience with His Holiness. During Cardinal Brownpony’s absence from the Curia, the Pope announced a date for his return to New Rome. If the head of SEEC felt miffed about being left out of the decision process, he at least had an alibi for the bad decision. The Pope planned a very early departure. There had been no communication with Texark about the matter. The Pope used his interview with Hultor Bråm to send the Apostolic Benediction to the Grasshopper Weejus and Bear Spirit people, and to ask permission to cross Grasshopper lands on his way to New Rome. Graciously the war sharf promised that one hundred warriors would escort the Pope’s party once it emerged from Wilddog country. Brownpony listened in silence to this, but made it clear to all that he would not accompany the expedition, having urgent business both on the Plains and in Texark itself.
“It is my wish to make you Vicar Apostolic to the Three Hordes,” the old black Pope told the Red Deacon the next day.
Brownpony actually gasped, Nimmy noticed, and the few members of the Curia who were present exchanged frightened glances. There was a long silence, because what the Pope just said caused a mental avalanche. First thought: to make the territory of all three hordes a Vicariate Apostolic was to abolish the de facto status of the Jackrabbit Horde as missioners of the Texark Archdiocese. It would end the archbishop’s authority in the Province, and would force him to recall his missionary priests there or let them submit to a new authority. Second thought: it would infuriate Benefez, no matter who was appointed. But Brownpony? Third thought: before Brownpony could be appointed a Vicar Apostolic, he would have to be ordained and then consecrated as bishop of an extinct ancient diocese, for he would be the equivalent of a bishop in a missionary area not yet a diocese. Blacktooth remembered the cardinal’s own words: I was called to be a lawyer, not a priest, and that’s it.
“Well, Elia? Will you do it?”
“Holy Father, I don’t think I have a calling.”
“We are calling you. Right now.” It was the first time Blacktooth had ever heard Amen use the pontifical we except in formal Latin.
With great dignity, Brownpony prostrated himself before the old man, but still he said nothing. He stayed that way until the Pope interpreted it as consent, whereas it was, as it seemed to Blacktooth, merely submission.
“Get up, Elia. We’ll have you ordained, consecrated, and on your way by next week. If we do it quietly, you can go to the convention on the Plains before Benefez hears about it.”