But no, there we go again. Face it, Paulo: it’s not the food for the belly that does it; it’s the food for the brain. Something up there is not digesting.

“But what?”

The wooden saint gave him no ready answer. Pap. Sifting out chaff. Sometimes his mind worked in snatches. It was better to let it work that way when the cramps came and the world weighed heavily upon him. What did the world weigh? It weighs, but is not weighed. Sometimes its scales are crooked. It weighs life and labor in the balance against silver and gold. That’ll never balance. But fast and ruthless, it keeps on weighing. It spills a lot of life that way, and some times a little gold. And blindfolded, a king comes riding across the desert, with a set of crooked scales, a pair of loaded dice. .And upon the flags emblazoned — Vexilla regis…

“No!” the abbot grunted, suppressing the vision.

But of course! the saint’s wooden smile seemed to insist.

Dom Paulo averted his eyes from the image with a slight shudder. Sometimes he felt that the saint was laughing at him. Do they laugh at us in Heaven? he wondered. Saint Maisie of York herself — remember her, old man — she died of a laughing fit. That’s different. She died laughing at herself.

No, that’s at s not so different either. Ulp! The silent belch again. Tuesday’s Saint Maisie’s feast day, forsooth. Choir laughs reverently at the Alleluia of her Mass. “Alleluia ha ha! Alleluia ho ho!”

“Sancta Maisie, interride pro me.”

And the king was coming to weigh books in the basement with his pair of crooked scales. How “crooked,” Paulo? And what makes you think the Memorabilia is completely free of pap? Even the gifted and Venerable Boedullus once remarked scornfully that about half of it should be called the Inscrutabilia. Treasured fragments of a dead civilization there were indeed — but how much of it has been reduced to gibberish, embellished with olive leaves and cherubims, by forty generations of us monastic ignoramuses, children of dark centuries, many, entrusted by adults with an incomprehensible message, to be memorized and delivered to other adults.

I made him travel all the way from Texarkana through dangerous country, thought Paulo. Now I’m just worrying that what we’ve got may prove worthless to him, that’s all.

But no, that wasn’t all. He glanced at the smiling saint again. And again: Vexilla regis inferni prodeunt… Forth come the banners of the King of Hell, whispered a memory of that perverted line from an ancient commedia. It nagged like an unwanted tune in his thought.

The fist clenched tighter. He dropped the fan and breathed through his teeth. He avoided looking at the saint again. The ruthless angel ambushed him with a hot burst at his corporeal core. He leaned over the desk. That one had felt like a hot wire breaking. His hard breathing swept a clean spot in the film of desert dust on the desktop. The smell of the dust was choking. The room went pink, swarmed with black gnats. I don’t dare belch, might shake something loose — but Holy Saint and Patron I’ve got to. Pain is. Ergo sum. Lord Christ God accept this token.

He belched, tasted salt, let his head fall onto the desk.

Does the chalice have to be now right this very minute Lord or can I wait awhile? But crucifixion is always now. Now ever since before Abraham even is always now. Before Pfardentrott even, now. Always for everybody anyhow is to get nailed on it and then to hang on it and if you drop off they beat you to death with a shovel so do it with dignity old man. If you can belch with dignity you may get to Heaven if you re sorry enough about messing up the rug…He felt very apologetic.

He waited a long time. Some of the gnats died and the room lost its blush but went hazy and gray.

Well, Paulo, are we going to hemorrhage now, or are we just going to fool around about it?

He probed the haze and found the face of the saint again. It was such a small grin — sad, understanding and, something else. Laughing at the hangman? No, laughing for the hangman. Laughing at the Stultus Maximus, at Satan himself. It was the first time he had seen it dearly. In the last chalice, there could be a chuckle of triumph. Haec commixtio…

He was suddenly very sleepy; the saint’s face grayed over, but the abbot continued to grin weakly in response.

Prior Gault found him slumped over the desk shortly before None. Blood showed between his teeth. The young priest quickly felt for a pulse. Dom Paulo awakened at once, straightened in his chair, and, as if still in a dream, he pontificated imperiously: “I tell you, it’s all supremely ridiculous. It’s absolutely idiotic. Nothing could be more absurd,”

“What’s absurd, Domne?”

The abbot shook his head, blinked several times. “What?”

“I’ll get Brother Andrew at once.”

“Oh? That’s absurd. Come back here. What did you want?”

“Nothing, Father Abbot. I’ll be back as soon as I get Brother—”

“Oh, bother the medic! You didn’t come in here for nothing. My door was closed. Close it again, sit down, say what you wanted.”

“The test was successful. Brother Kornhoer’s lamp, Imean.”

“All right, let’s hear about it. Sit down, start talking, tell me all lll about it.” He straightened his habit and blotted his mouth with a bit of linen. He was still dizzy, but the fist in his belly had come unclenched. He could not have cared lass about the prior’s account of the test, but he tried his best to appear attentive. Got to keep him here until I’m awake enough to think. Can’t let him go for the medic — not yet; the news would get out: The old man is finished. Got to decide whether it’s a safe time to be finished or not.

15

Hongan Os was essentially a just and kindly man. When he saw a party of his warriors making sport of the Laredan captives, he paused to watch; but when they tied three Laredans by their ankles between horses and whipped the horses into frenzied flight, Hongan Os decided to intervene. He ordered that the warriors be flogged on the spot, for Hongan Os — Mad Bear — was known to be a merciful chieftain. He had never mistreated a horse.

“Killing captives is woman’s work,” he growled scornfully at the whipped culprits. “Cleanse yourselves lest you be squawmarked, and withdraw from camp until the New Moon, for you are banished twelve days.” And, answering their moans of protest: “Suppose the horses had dragged one of them through camp? The grass-eater chieflings are our guests, and it is known that they are easily frightened by blood. Especially the blood of their own kind. Take heed.”

“But these are grass-eaters from the South,” a warrior objected, gesturing toward the mutilated captives. “Our guests are grass-eaters from the East. Is there not a pact between us real people and the East to make war upon the South.”

“If you speak of it again, your tongue shall be cut out and fed to the dogs!” Mad Bear warned. “Forget that you heard such things.”

“Will the herb-men be among us for many days, O Son of the Mighty?”

“Who can know what the farmer-things plan?” Mad Bear asked crossly. “Their thought is not as our thought. They say that some of their numbers will depart from here to pass on across the Dry Lands — to a place of the grass-eater priests, a place of the dark-robed ones. The others will stay here to talk — but that is not for your ears. Now go, and be ashamed twelve days.”

He turned his back that they might slink away without feeling his gaze pour upon them. Discipline was becoming lax of late. The clans were restless. It had become known among the people of the Plains that he, Hongan Os, had clasped arms across a treaty-fire with a messenger from Texarkana, and that a shaman had clipped hair and fingernails from each of them to make a good-faith doll as a defense against treachery by either party. It was known that an agreement had been made, and any agreement between people and grass-eaters was regarded by the tribes as a cause for shame. Mad Bear had felt the veiled scorn of the younger warriors, but there was no explaining to them until the right time came.