Gilbert was there to catch her by the arm. "Stand still a moment; let your limbs grow used to keeping you upright again."
"They do!" She stared, amazed. "I knew confession was good for the soul - but for the body, too?" Then she realized what she had said and turned to me. " 'Twas you, was it not? You healed my body as he healed my soul!"
"Not this time", I said, and gestured toward Frisson. "This is the man you want to thank."
"I do, oh, I do!" She threw herself at Frisson's feet. "Thank you a thousand times, good master, a thousand thousand! You have given me back my life; you have given me a chance to atone!"
"I ... I rejoice," Frisson stammered, "yet 'twas done at his behest!" He pointed to me. "I would never have thought of the manner of it by myself! Praise Master Saul!"
"I shall, I shall!" She swiveled to me, salaaming, and I had to move fast to get my boot out of kissing range. "I cannot thank you enough, nor praise you enough! Oh, how can I ever repay you?"
"By helping other people," I said automatically. "Go through the countryside as long as you can, and look for poor people to help."
"But I have no magic to aid them with! Ah, would that I did!"
"No magic, no," I said, "but you may find that simple labor is enough. Certainly you can listen to people's troubles and try to comfort them. And if you meet any other witches, you might mention how much better you feel for abjuring witchcraft."
The former witch looked up in surprise, then stood slowly, her face firming with resolution. "Even so, then. While life and breath remain, I shall do what little I may. Farewell, physician! Every night and morn, I shall praise you in prayer!"
She turned away, moving off down the road, standing much straighter than she had, and seeming to gain strength with every step. Friar Ignatius stepped up beside me, watching her go. "That was well done, Master Saul. You have wrought well this day."
I shrugged. "I just don't like seeing somebody in pain, if I can do something about it, Reverend. But you seem to have done pretty well, too."
"Only the duties of my office." Friar Ignatius folded his stole and put it away, shaking his head. "It was the fear of damnation that brought her to me. Like so many, she had never really thought of the tortures of Hell, never let them seem real to her, until she was nigh death."
"Whereupon she came to me to prolong her life, to stave off Hell."
"Aye, but once having thought of Hell as real, she knew the fear would never leave her, for she would come to the flames and demons someday." He shook his head. " 'Tis not the best of reasons for abjuring Satan and witchcraft, but 'twill serve."
"You'd rather she wanted to confess out of sheer remorse, eh?"
"Aye - so I was at pains to remind her that Purgatory is just like Hell. The fire is the same the agony is the same but the soul in Purgatory will one day be freed and rise to Heaven, whereas the soul in Hell will never have an end to his tortures. There is no hope in Hell."
That reminded me of Dante's Hellmouth, with the slogan over the door, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here" - but it also reminded me of Dante's version of Purgatory, which was much less drastic than Friar Ignatius'. Either way, though, was better than torture that never, never ended.
"I could understand why a witch would definitely prefer Purgatory," I said, "no matter how long she had to stay there."
"A witch, or any sinner." Friar Ignatius nodded. "And all those who govern this land, and all those who are their underlings, are either witches or sinners."
I winced at the thought of all the people I would be sending to Hell in the process of trying to stay alive myself. "All of a sudden, I hope you become very busy, Reverend."
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I changed my mind the next day. The bureaucrat witches and warlocks started coming out of the hedgerows, quaking with the terror of Hellfire and calling to Friar Ignatius to shrive them. Most of them were sick, too, so I suggested gently that we handle it methodically - he took them in for confession, then sent them on to me for healing. Frisson quickly built up a catalog of verses; all I had to do was describe the visible symptoms, and the shaken but joyful penitent would describe the invisible ones, and Frisson would flip through his booklet of verses, finding the Symptoms and handing me the appropriate poems. Some of them were very odd, but they all worked.
"It's amazing that you can keep coming up with so many verses that exactly fit the situation," I told him during a lull. He shrugged. "When the inspiration seizes me, Master Saul, I write what it will have me scribble; I do not think of its use. Natheless, I cannot help but think that this must be very poor poetry, if it comes so readily, and is so utilitarian."
"You've been listening to the critics too much," I grumbled. "Take a look at your impact instead."
And we started out on the road again, with me wondering who was the really important person in this party.
They came in groups of four and five, and by the second day, they were showing up every four hours or so. In spite of anything Gilbert or I might say, Friar Ignatius always insisted on stopping to hear confession. "Aught else," he told me, "would be to forswear my vows. I must not turn away a single sinner; 'tis a part of my vocation to reconcile them with God."
"My vocation is staying alive, and it's definitely a part of that to dethrone the queen," I retorted. "In the long run, that will save a great number more souls! The more often you stop, the longer it will take us to get to her capital, and the longer she'll have to gather her forces and fortify her castle - not to mention preparing an ambush with overwhelming power!"
Friar Ignatius shook his head serenely. "You still think in terms of this world, Master Saul, and fail to see that this battle will most truly be won in the domain of the spirit."
"That may be, Reverend, but a hail of spears and arrows in this world can very effectively prevent us from joining battle in the next."
"It shall not," he assured me, with amazing authority, "for the strength that underlies those spears and arrows is the power of evil. If we counter that fell force, the spears will never be thrown." I would have argued, but the man had so confounded much charisma that for the life of me, I couldn't think of a comeback. I thought one up ten minutes later, of course, but it didn't do much good then. I saved it for our next argument, but he had a comeback for my comeback, and hit me with one more argument that I couldn't think up an answer to just then. That was the way our exchanges went, all the way to the capital-I was always one answer behind him.
And it was driving me crazy, because our progress was slowing to ten miles a day.
"Is it my mistake," I asked Frisson, "or are we running into the whole harvest of the Gremlin's epidemic of witch diseases?"
"It may be," Frisson said slowly, "or it may be simply that those who are ill and in terror of death and Hellfire have begun to hear of you and have come to seek you out. Those who fell ill would never have thought to attempt to survive, if they had not heard of your work; they would have died in despair, forgetting that they could repent. " I stared. "Come on! Word can't have spread that fast!"