"You could haunt the church," suggested Andrew. "In life you were closely connected with the church."
"But never in it," said Ghost. "Outside of it. Sitting on the steps, begging alms. And I tell you, Hermit, that it was not, all in all, as good a life as I had thought it might be. The people in the village were a stingy lot."
"They were poor," said Andrew.
"Miserly as well. Few of them so poor they could not spare a copper. There were days on end when there were no coppers, not a single one."
"So your lot is hard," Andrew said unfeelingly. "All of our lots are hard."
"There is one recompense," said Ghost. "Being a ghost is not as bad as being dead, especially if, being dead, one should go to Hell. There are many poor souls alive this very moment who know that once they die they will go straight to Hell."
"And you?"
"Again I do not know. I was not a vicious man, only a lazy one."
"But things are looking up for you. You are going with these people to Oxenford. You may like Oxenford."
"They say there is no way in which they can stop me going, an attitude I take to be ungracious of them. But, anyhow, I'm going."
"So am I," said Andrew. "If they will have me, that is. I have longed all my life to be a soldier of the Lord. That was what I thought I was doing when I took up hermiting. A holy zeal burned, perhaps not too brightly, in my breast, but at least it burned. I tried many things to prove my devotion. For years I sat staring at a candle flame, taking time only to find and consume food and take care of my bodily needs. I slept only when I could no longer stay awake. At times I nodded and singed my eyebrows on the candle's flame. And it was expensive. I was at times hard put to keep in candles. And I got nowhere. The candle-watching never accomplished a thing for me. I didn't even feel good about it. I stared at the candle flame, I told myself, so that I might become one of those who were one with the fall of the leaf, the song of bird, the subtle color of the sunset, the intricate web spun by a spider, in this wise becoming one with the universe-and none of this happened. A fall of a leaf meant nothing to me; I could not care less for birds or the songs they sang. I lacked something or the idea went all wrong or those who had claimed success before were only bald-faced liars. After a time I came to know that I was a fraud.
"Now, however, I have a chance to be a real soldier of the Lord. Craven I may be, and with no more strength than a reed, but with my staff I trust that I can strike a lusty blow or two if need be. I'll do my best not to run away, as I did today when danger threatened."
"You were not the only one today to run away," Duncan said sourly. "The Lady Diane, battle axe and all, also ran away."
"But not until it all was over," Conrad said.
"I thought you told me…"
"You misunderstood my words," said Conrad. "When the battle started, she was dismounted, but she mounted again and she and the griffin fought. She with her axe, the griffin with his claws and beak. Only when the hairless ones broke and ran did she fly away."
"That makes me feel better," Duncan said. "She had not seemed to be one who would run away. I was the only shirker, then."
"You caught an unlucky throw of a club," said Conrad. "I stood over you to fight off those who came at you. Most of the damage done to the hairless ones was by my lady and the dragon."
"Griffin," Duncan said.
"That is right, m'lord. A griffin. I confuse the two."
Duncan stood up.
"We should go to the church," he said, "and see if we can find the lady. There still is daylight left."
"How is your head?" asked Conrad.
"It has an outsize goose egg on it, and it hurts. But I am all right."
8
The church was not large, but it was a more impressive structure than would have been expected in such a village. Over the centuries pious villagers had labored to erect it, quarrying and dressing the stone, hoisting it into place, laying the heavy slabs that made up the floor, carving the pews and altar and all the other furniture out of native oak, weaving the tapestries to decorate its walls. There was about it, Duncan told himself, a rude simplicity that made for a charm too seldom found in other much larger and more elaborate buildings.
The tapestries had been pulled down from the walls and lay on the flagstones, crumpled and trampled. Some of them had been set afire, but had failed to burn. The pews and other furniture had been smashed, the altar demolished.
Diane and the griffin were not there, although there were signs that once they had been. Griffin dung spotted the stones of the floor; they found the chapel that the woman had used as a sleeping room-sheepskins upon the floor to make a bed, a small, rudely built cooking pit fashioned of stone, and half a dozen cooking utensils.
In the second chapel stood a long table, miraculously still intact. Upon it were spread piles of parchment sheets. An inkpot and a quill pen, fixed to its stand, stood among the litter.
Duncan picked up one of the parchments. It crinkled at his touch. The writing was crabbed, the words misspelled, bordering on the illiterate. Someone had been born, someone had died, a couple had been married, a mysterious murrain had killed a dozen sheep, the wolves had been bad that year, an early frost had shriveled the gardens, but snow had held off almost until Christmas.
He picked up other sheets. They were all the same. The records of years of village nothingness. Births, deaths, marriages, minor local catastrophes. The gossip of old wives, the small fears, the small triumphs-an eclipse of the moon and the terror in its wake, the time of falling stars and the wonder of it, the early bloom of forest flowers, the violent summer thunderstorm, the feasts and their celebrations, the good crops and the bad-all the local historical trivia, the records of a village pastor so immersed in village happenings that he had no other interests.
"She searched all these records," Duncan said to Andrew. "She was looking for some mention of Wulfert, some clue as to where a trace of him might be found. Apparently she found nothing."
"But she must have known that by this time he would be dead."
"Not him," said Duncan. "Not the man himself. That was not what she was looking for. The relic, don't you understand. To her the relic-or, if you insist, the infernal machine-was what was important."
"But I do not understand."
"You are blinded," Duncan said, "by your candle flame, by all your piety. Or was it piety?"
"I do not know," said Andrew. "I had always thought so. My lord, I am a sincere hermit, or I try to be."
"You cannot see beyond your own nose," Duncan told him. "You cannot accept that what you call an infernal machine may have validity and value. You will not give a wizard his due. There are many lands, as Christian as this one, where wizards, however uncomfortable the thought of them may be, are held in high regard."
"There is about them the stink of paganism."
"Old truths," said Duncan. "Old ideas, old solutions, old methods and procedures. You cannot afford to reject them because they antecede Christianity. My lady wanted what the wizard had."
"There is one thing you do not realize," said Andrew, speaking softly. "One thing you have not thought about. She herself may be a wizard."
"An enchantress, you mean. A sophisticated witch."
"I suppose so," Andrew said. "But whatever the correct designation, you had never thought of that."
"I had not thought of it," said Duncan. "It may well be true."
Shafts of late afternoon sunlight came through the tall, narrow windows, looking very much like those shafts of glory that biblical artists delighted in depicting as shining upon saints. The windows were of tinted glass-those that still had glass in them, for many had been broken by thrown rocks. Looking at the few remaining tinted windows, Duncan wondered how the village, in all its piety and devotion, could have afforded that much tinted glass. Perhaps the few affluent residents, of which there certainly would have been very few, had banded together to pay for its fabrication and installation, thereby buying themselves certain dispensations or absolutions, buttressing their certainty of Heaven.