Benjamin had given him the old woman’s name. He found her old adobe house without difficulty, and counted seven children playing in the yard. He suddenly realized this was the “orphanage” the abbey had always supported in the town. The woman was sullen. She seemed to know who he was and why he was here, but considered him an outcast and a scoundrel. “Why did you not come for them ten days ago? They have been taken away for adoption.”
“By whom?”
“Three sisters.”
“Where were they taken?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
When Blacktooth showed signs of anger, she called him a scoundrel, a libertine, a false monk. She ordered him to leave at once, and retired to the old adobe building.
“Where did the mother go?” he yelled after her, to no effect. So he marched in gloom back to the abbey.
The shooting began while the monks were in the convent’s refectory for lunch on the following day. Atop the parapet wall, Father Levion, now Prior, was fasting when the first distant boom! occurred. He was praying, as he often did, toward the grandeur of the broken desert horizon and to the God who made it. The first explosion scarcely distracted him from prayer, although his eyes scanned the open country for a sign of smoke. After the second boom! Önmu Kun came running out of the refectory and across the courtyard. He saw Levion on the wall and raced up the stairs to join him.
“Where?” he asked breathlessly.
“I don’t know. I didn’t see anything.”
Boom! The interval between explosions was about a minute and a half.
“It sounds like it’s coming from over there,” said Levion, pointing down the valley.
“The crosswind makes it sound that way,” Önmu replied, looking straight at the Mesa of Last Resort.
After the fourth boom!, he pointed at the Mesa. There was indeed a tiny wisp of smoke up there.
On the fifth boom!, a plume of dust shot up from a spot about two hundred paces from the abbey.
“Damn! He’s getting our range!” cried the smuggler.
On the sixth boom!, a cannonball hit the center of the road m front of the abbey, bounced through the open gates, caromed off the stone curb around the rose bed, and went on bouncing directly into the convent and through the refectory doors. Screaming was heard, and monks came pouring out of the building.
“Take cover!” yelled the Jackrabbit. “He’s got two balls left.”
There were no more shots, and while the monks at their meager Lenten lunch were badly frightened, the only damage was in the kitchen; but Önmu had indicted himself by knowing too much. The cannonball was found, and although it had been deformed and somewhat flattened, there appeared to be a few characters in Hebrew scratched upon it. An expert was summoned. The legible part of the inscription said, “…maketh bread to spring forth from the Earth.” It was a blessing over food. “Apt enough, considering the target,” said the translator. There was an immediate conference in the abbot’s office. Blacktooth was called in, and appointed interrogator, since he knew the man as well as anyone, and spoke his dialect best.
They met in the guesthouse.
“By what right are you staying here, good simpleton?”
“I was invited,” said the Jackrabbit.
“By whom?”
“By Abbot Olshuen, who else?”
“At the cardinal’s insistence?”
“Probably.”
“The abbot knows what you do?”
“I don’t know. But even if he knows, I would not, I could not, bring my merchandise here. I never have.”
“So you bury it in the desert here until you’re ready to travel again. Then you dig it up.”
“This time, the old man dug it up. My bad luck. I thought he never came down, and never had visitors. It’s the first time I used that spot. I didn’t expect him to desecrate a grave.”
“He’s a little crazy, but not stupid. He knew it was no grave. So he dug up your cannon, and sent us a message with it.”
“He must have exceeded the maximum load to reach this far. And pointed it up about forty degrees.”
“And he’s shooting from about five hundred feet above us.”
“Was he trying to kill someone?”
“Old Benjamin? No. He was telling the abbot about you.”
“I’d better leave.”
“What was in the other grave?”
“Rifles.”
“If you’re going to try to reclaim your merchandise, someone is going to go with you. There are six of us. Any one of us can manage you.”
“Even you?” The Jackrabbit laughed.
Blacktooth knocked the wind out of him and threw him in the corner. Önmu looked up in surprise, gasping for breath, but without anger.
“Why did you do that, Brother St. George?”
“To show you, if you get into a quarrel with the old man over your guns, you’re going to lose.”
“But they are my guns! They are for the Grasshopper, and I am Sharf.”
“You know that’s a lie. You told me yourself you get a commission.”
“Sure, if I sell them. If I lose them, they’re mine.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I have to pay for them. Who do you think owns them, Cardinal Brownpony?”
“I don’t know, but I doubt it. Mayor Dion, probably. But whoever sells them, you’re only the broker.”
“I am also Sharf! Secretly, of course.”
Önmu Kun disappeared from the abbey that night, never to return. Being related to the royal tribe was prerequisite to election as sharf of a horde, and Nimmy doubted that any Nomad north of the Nady Ann would recognize his claim. Gai-See was sent galloping toward Last Resort on the abbot’s horse to protect the old Jew, and if possible to negotiate the surrender of the weapons. He returned the following day dragging one cannon, and reported two empty graves, also reported that Benjamin had not opened the second grave. Evidently Kun had recovered his rifles and moved on. But so it was that Leibowitz Abbey came into possession of modern ordnance, but as yet no ammunition. Abiquiu Olshuen locked the cannon in the basement room with the rusty weapons from earlier centuries.
Novices reported another loud argument between the cardinal and the abbot behind closed doors. This time it was about guns. Brownpony emerged angry and humiliated; he told Blacktooth that Olshuen felt the abbey’s hospitality had been abused.
“He knows now that the Jackrabbit is being armed,” he told Nimmy. “He’s afraid for the monastery, if the Hannegan suspects his monks are involved. He wants Jing’s men to leave.”
“But they have nothing to do with it!”
“No, but the concept of warrior monks is alien to Dom Abiquiu’s idea of Christianity. To him it’s a scandal. We should leave here soon.”
“Did the Jackrabbit grandmothers really choose Önmu Kun as Sharf, as he claims?”
“Everything is secretive in Jackrabbit country, Nimmy. With them, the test is not legal but practical. If the men follow him in battle, he is Sharf. If they don’t, he is not, no matter what the Weejus say.”
Well into Lent, a messenger from Hannegan City brought a petition addressed to all bishops and signed by Urion Benefez and seven other cardinals. It announced a General Council of the Church to be held in New Rome six weeks after Easter, and all bishops and abbots able to travel must attend. The purpose of the Council would be to draft new legislation concerning conclaves.
“Only a sovereign Pontiff can summon a General Council,” said Brownpony, and refused to sign. Olshuen also refused. The messenger shrugged and rode on.
Wooshin arrived the following day with the expected summons to a conclave in Valana. He was warmly greeted by Brownpony, Blacktooth, and the Yellow Guard, but the summons he brought was rather strange. Apparently the Curia knew of the petition for a General Council, for the tone of the summons was angry, and the last paragraph threatened excommunication to any cardinal who attended a rump session in New Rome “where schismatics and heretics will try to install a known sodomite to sit on the throne of Peter the Apostle.” The document was signed by Amen, Episcopus Romae, servus servorum Dei, but Brownpony was suspicious of the signature, and the language was certainly not Specklebird’s.