Hounds of God Page 28

  “Or so they would say.” Thea stood at Alf’s back, hands on his shoulders, eyes on the old man in the tall chair. “As they would say that any means is just if the end is holy. Perilous doctrine. It permits murder and rapine and black sorcery in the name of an Order’s furtherance, but it grants no mercy to those of us who try to live as the Church prescribes. The first of us who died was a child. He believed devoutly in God and the Gospels. He heard Mass every day. I never heard him speak ill of anyone, nor knew him to do harm to man or beast. And he died. If he had not been killed, if all had gone as our enemies intended, he would have been burned alive.”

  Honorius tore his gaze from her. She was not gentle; she was not quiet. She was afire with rage. And justly, said the cold judge within, if all was as he had heard. “What proof can you give?” he demanded of her. “How may I know that you tell the truth?”

  “Look yonder,” she answered.

  Another white habit, another grey cowl. Brother Paul stood dazed, torn from a black doze under the eyes of two monks and two mortal women and two witchborn children. “Brother Paul,” Thea said, “was the mind to Simon’s hand. His was the genius that found the mad boy and knew him for what he was, and made him the chief of God’s hunting Hounds.”

  “Not entirely.”

  Even she stared at Father Alberich. He had listened in silence, motionless but for the flicker of his eyes; he spoke as coolly as Alf had. “Brother Paul was given the power of finding, but not that of making. Such was my part. Like him I saw God’s hand in Simon’s coming among us; I saw the working of God’s will. Here was the sword we had prayed for, a keen weapon against the powers of the dark; here also was our shield and our fortress.”

  “You knew what he was. You accepted him; you used him. Are you any less culpable than the King of Rhiyana?”

  “It was God’s will.” Alberich’s words were like a gate shutting. “Your Holiness, if Brother Paul is to be punished, I beg leave to remind you that I am given full and sole jurisdiction over my wayward brethren.”

  Jehan stepped forward. “I claim episcopal exemption. This monk has committed grave crimes against a whole kingdom.”

  “Not yours, Bishop of Sarum,” drawled Brother Paul.

  “Mine for the duration of this embassy,” Jehan shot back, “under the forty-third capitulum of the Synod of Poictesme, which states—”

  Honorius smote his hands together. “Sirs, sirs! By no will of mine this has become a papal tribunal. It appears that we are trying the guilt of the Order of Saint Paul on a charge of murder and sorcery. Or is it that of Rhiyana’s King and certain of his nobility on a charge of sorcery alone? Or shall it be both?”

  “We do not deny either our possession or our use of power,” Alf said, “which men call magecraft and sorcery. We do deny that that power either stems from or serves the purposes of God’s Adversary. And we charge that our kingdom has been assaulted without reason or justice; that the guilt lies not with us but with the preachers of the Crusade. We have lived as best we could between the laws of the Church and the laws of our nature. In return we have been set upon with arms and with power; our children murdered or taken; our human folk condemned to suffer for us, for no better reason than that we live.”

  “You live,” Brother Paul echoed him. “There is the heart of it. You live. You do not die.”

  “Save by violence.”

  “Exactly.”

  Thea tossed her head. “There’s a dilemma for you, Lord Pope. God has made us, certainly, unless you subscribe to the doctrine that the Devil could have done so, and that is heresy; He made us immune to death by age or sickness. So if we are to die, we have only two choices. Murder or suicide. The latter is forbidden by the Church. So is the former, unless, of course, one calls it war. Or Crusade. Or destruction of a pestilence.”

  “You cannot live,” said Father Alberich dispassionately. “You are against nature. All things on earth fade and die. Only spirit is undying.”

  “Such fine ecclesiastical logic. It exists; it should not; deny it and destroy it. Are you absolutely certain, Father General, that your vision is clear? That you see what we are without an intervening cloud of envy?”

  “I see what you are. Beautiful; seductive. Deadly.”

  “Ah, but to what? To your sense of superiority?”

  “You are superior to no man.”

  She clapped her hands. “Bravo, Father! Truly, we are not. But neither are we inferior. We are another face of God’s creation, no more good or evil than our human cousins. Consider what sets us apart: our beauty, our power, our deathlessness. Have you nothing to counter these? Think, Father Alberich. Have you?”

  He crossed himself deliberately, eyes averted from her shining face. To him she was doubly terrible, witch and woman both, and far too intelligent for a female creature. Demonically intelligent.

  “Demonically accurate,” she said. “Tell me what you have that we have not. Tell me why a good Christian faces worse punishment in long life than in early death. You have threescore years and ten, maybe more, very likely less. We have years uncounted, bound to earth apart from the face of God.”

  A soft cry escaped from Fra Giovanni. “I see. Oh, I see! He gives you the rest, the gifts men envy so bitterly, in recompense for that one great grief. Lady…Lady, how do you bear it?”

  “With ease.” Brother Paul’s hand swept out, taking her in, close as she was to her lover, one hand unconsciously stroking his hair. “Can you believe that they suffer? Look at them! No expectation of Heaven, maybe, but none of Hell, either. He can abandon priestly vows, sire bastards, sin with happy impunity. She can do exactly as her devils prompt her. And believe this. Holy Father. That lovely form is far from her favored one. Her nature and her instincts, whatever her likeness, are the nature and the instincts of a bitch in heat.”

  Alf surged up, breaking her strong grip with the ease of wrath. In spite of his courage—and he had a great deal of that, whatever his flaws—Brother Paul blanched. He was one of a rare few who had seen Alf enraged; and then as now, he had provoked it, and paid dearly after.

  Alf smiled with sweetness all the more deadly for the white fury in his eyes. “Brother, Brother,” he chided, “your language is most unsuitable in that habit and in this company. Will you make amends? Tell His Holiness a truth or two. Tell him why you made use of my poor brother who is dead.”

  “Whom you killed.”

  “He willed himself to death rather than wreak further destruction. Tell him, Joscelin.”

  The monk gripped Honorius’ knees. “I cry foul, Holiness! He compels me with sorcery.”

  Alf’s face set. He would not say it; he would not permit Thea to say it for him. It was Jehan who strode forward and lifted the man bodily, shaking him like a recalcitrant pup. “He does not. Do as he says, monk. A word will do it. Two. Power; jealousy. You had a weapon against the world, and a long-awaited chance to get revenge on the one who made your lover forget you. Worse—you thought him fair prey, and he had the temerity to best you.”

  Honorius startled them all; he startled himself. He smiled. As sternly as he might, he said, “Put him down, Jehan.”

  The Bishop obeyed. Paul’s glare promised murder—later, when there was no one to interfere.

  The Pope steepled his fingers and closed his eyes. Not for weariness, not any longer, but to think in peace without the distraction of those crowding faces; the two in particular that were so heartrendingly fair, so young and yet so anciently wise. In ignorance of them, with Father Alberich and his monks hammering out their denunciations, it had been grimly simple. A race of sorcerers had established itself in the outlands of Francia; one had dared to crown himself King over Christian folk, and dared then to hold his throne for years beyond the mortal span. However well he ruled, he could not alter the truth. He was a creature of darkness, a child of demon Lilith or of the beings of Scripture, the sons of God who came down unto mortal women and begot halflings upon them. For far too long had the Church suffered
his presence. The Canons and the safety of men’s souls left no space for doubt. He and all his kin must be driven from the earth.

  Now his kin had come to plead his case. And they were fully as perilous as Saint Paul’s disciples had warned; but not, exactly, in the way he had been led to expect. The woman was a fierce creature with a tongue like a razor’s edge, but she had a most disconcerting habit of speaking the truth. The man was worse yet. He was subtle. He was gentle; he was brilliant; he was so obviously a creature of God that it hurt to look at him, just as it hurt to look on Fra Giovanni. If he had been mortal, people would have said that he was not long for this world; God could not bear to leave his like among sinful men.

  He was not mortal. He was not human. He was steeped in sins of the flesh, that he had confessed without shame or repentance; nor, all too clearly, had he any intention of putting an end to them. And yet he belonged surely and utterly to his God.

  The Pope opened his eyes. They were looking at one another, Fra Giovanni and the enchanter; they were smiling the same faint unearthly smile. A mere man, even a man who was the Vicar of Christ, could only begin to guess what passed between them. If it was sorcery, it was divine sorcery: a communion of saints.

  Saint Paul’s brethren watched them. Honorius thought of Paul the Apostle while he was Saul the persecutor, watching the stoning of the martyr while the cloaks of the Jews lay heaped about his feet. He had had the law and the prophets behind him. So too did they. One proclaimed with malice, one with regret, both with honest conviction: The Church must not suffer these witches to live. Scripture, canon law, plain human expedience, all forbade it.

  Innocent, Honorius thought, I would give this tiara that was yours and is now mine, to pass this cup and this dilemma to you.

  If they had only been less beautiful. He could have thought more clearly then. Beauty seduced, yet it also repelled. One wanted to trust it; one dared not; then one distrusted one’s own distrust, because yes, no man with eyes could help but envy that perfection of form and feature. And what if all his doubts were in truth the warring of his will against their enchantments?

  He shook himself hard. More of this circling and he would go mad. No wonder Brother Simon had; between what he was and what he believed, his whole existence had been a contradiction.

  The Pope’s eyes opened upon Alf’s face. There was one who had not taken leave of his sanity, a miracle as surely as any in the Gospels. What had been in the water’s mind when it realized it was wine?

  “Surprise,” Alf answered softly. “Denial. Fear. Revulsion. But at last, at great price, acceptance.”

  Honorius shook his head in reproof. “My son, can you not grant me the privacy of my own thoughts?”

  “Holy Father, you persist in invading mine. I have none of your inborn defenses; I must labor to shield against you.”

  The Pope could see the words as Alf spoke them. Men armored and immune like knights in battle; enchanters naked to every darting thought. “But not defenseless,” Honorius said swiftly. “Far from that. Our weapons are few and feeble against the bitter keenness of yours.”

  The Paulines approved his words, if not in great comfort. They could see that the Pope was wavering; they dared not speak lest they cast him into the enemy’s camp. So always had it been with the sorcerers. With their beauty they seduced; with their magic they bound men’s souls. Not even the successor of Peter could be proof against them.

  Behind Brother Paul’s eyes, Joscelin de Beaumarchais stood up and cried revolt. He had lost this battle once. He would not lose it again. The witches were intent on the Pope and on one another. He was all but forgotten.

  He would have only one chance. He launched himself, joined hands a club with all his weight behind them, his target the back of Alf’s neck.

  The damned sorcerer sensed something. He half turned, his throat a better target still. So had Simon died. So.

  Fanged horror lunged between them, bore Paul down, closed its jaws upon his throat.

  Gently, gently. The beast’s breath was searingly hot, its jaws a vise held just short of closing. He could not even struggle.

  Of all the faces that had reeled past as he fell, he saw only Father Alberich’s. The reproach in it was worse even than his failure. He had unmasked the were-bitch, but he had convinced the Pope. God’s Hounds knew no reason nor justice. Their hate was blind, and in extremity, murderous. They were proved to be as the witches had proclaimed.

  How he hated that beautiful voice, half boy, half man, all Christianly compassionate. “Let him go, my lady. He’ll do no harm now.”

  Small comfort that his sweetness cloyed on her too. She reared up into woman-form, with the decency at least to witch herself into her dress as she did it; her response was blistering, and ingenious. Even Saint Alfred flinched a little, although his angelic perfection restored itself in an eyeblink. “Thea Damaskena,” he rebuked her, “this is no place for—”

  “You could have been killed!” she shouted at him.

  The silence was thunderous. No one had the will or the wits to break it. Paul dared at last to sit up, to glares from the witch and the bishop and the deaf-mute boy, but none prevented him. Maybe, just maybe, there was a little hope left. Canon law was canon law, and it was most strict regarding sorcery. With which both witches had been blatantly free.

  Honorius looked old and worn, beaten down by the weight of law and truth and the grim need to judge both fairly and in accordance with his office. His curse; he could not yield to plain expedience, nor force himself into Alberich’s simple and immovable conviction.

  “Holy Father.” Fra Giovanni’s voice was faint but not timid; excitement, not fear, had taken his breath away. “Holy Father, there is a way out of this tangle. My lord named it himself. When their kingdom is safe, he said, they will all go away. They’ve made a place for themselves; they’ll take it out of the world. Isn’t that what everyone wants? They can’t bear us any more easily than we can bear them; this way they’re gone and safe, and we’re free of the stain of their murder.”

  Father Alberich nodded. “There is wisdom in what you say, Brother. Yet gone is not dead. And what if they choose to put it off? When their kingdom is safe, the sorcerer promises, they will depart. How do they reckon safety? Their King was King for fourscore years, and very many of those were years of stainless peace, yet he clung to his throne. Now that war and Interdict have wrought their havoc, must we wait another fourscore years for the land to be healed? How long can they prolong their presence in the world of men?”

  “Not one more year.” Alf measured each word with equal, leaden force. The face he turned to them all was as white as bleached bone, and old; so old that only deathless youth could embody it. He raised his hands. They were empty; they were laden with power. “I said that I must labor to hold up my shields against mortal thoughts. I have labored thus for every day of my life, every day of every year of fourscore and ten. And I am weary. Were I a man I would find rest in death. Since I am not a man, I can only dream of a place apart, among my own people, where all have power and none can die, and no fear or hate or human pity can come to torment me.”

  He flexed his fingers; he closed them; he caught the Pope’s eyes and held them. “Holiness, when I was young, before I knew I would not die, I used to dream sometimes of a text I loved. ‘Come to me, all ye that labour and are laden, and I will give you rest.’ Can you know—can you imagine—what it did to me to grow into the knowledge that my dream was a lie? For men, yes, there was an end. For me there was none.”

  The Father General spoke almost sharply, cutting across the Pope’s response. “If the tale you have told is true, this new tale is a lie. You cannot die, but you can be killed, and on the other side of death is peace. Were you in truth so desperate for it, you would not fight this battle for your life.”

  “What will content you?” Alf demanded. “Would my death suffice to gain the lives of my kin? If I give myself to you and your fire, will you consent to see my people
depart behind the walls of Broceliande?”

  “If I knew you could be trusted not to wriggle away—”

  “Enough!” thundered the Pope. They all gaped. None would have dreamed that he had such power in him. Much more quietly he said, “There will be no bargains struck except as I strike them. You, Lord Chancellor, have the disposition of a martyr, self-sacrificing to the point of parody. You on the other hand, Father General, would serve admirably in the part of the unregenerate Saul of Tarsus. Beware lest your road to Damascus become the road to Broceliande.”

  He left his chair, which suddenly was a throne; he drew himself to his full height. “You promise to depart. Lord Alfred, but in this much Father Alberich speaks the truth. You do not bind yourself. Your weariness may pass when you see what is to be done in Rhiyana; and I forbid you to linger. It is Lent now. If by Pentecost you are not gone, you and all your people, I will hand you over to my Hounds. Then indeed, and justly, shall you burn.”

  Alf paused. Thea was silent, walled in stillness. Jehan had started forward, then stopped, face set and grey. Only Nikki who had been but a pair of eyes through all of this, who had kept silence of mind as well as body, ventured to raise a hand, to widen his eyes. Protest, assent, part and part.

  Alf sank to one knee. His head bowed. His voice came slow yet strong. “Let it be done according to your will.”

  Honorius said nothing, did nothing. Paul’s thwarted rage, Alberich’s reluctant acceptance, rang like shouts in Alf’s mind. From the Pope came only blankness. Alf looked up under his brows. Honorius gazed down in deep and somewhat painful thought; but Alf could not read it. Sometimes humans could do that. They could think sidewise, and evade easy reading. Nikki, with power behind him, had perfected the art; unless he wished it, he could not be read at all, or even sensed.

  When at length the Pope spoke, it was to the Paulines. “Father Alberich, Brother Paul, what you have done is beyond forgiving. You have deceived me with lies and half-truths, you have abused your vows and your offices, you have proved yourselves not merely false witnesses but hypocrites. Your weapon is broken and your plot unveiled; your Order should be scoured from the earth. But I have some wisdom left. The great mass of your Brothers are innocent of your wrongdoing; many possess a true and laudable zeal for their calling, which is to preserve the Church’s orthodoxy against the attacks of heretics. For their sakes, and indeed for your own—for however blind and misguided, you remain my spiritual sons—I shall be merciful. You are not suspended from your vows. You are not removed from your Order. But you are bidden to leave the world for a time. Brief or long, I do not know, nor do I prescribe; only that you wake to full knowledge of what you have done.”