Only the officers seemed to find the Poet’s remarks amusing. Apparently the expectation of humor was enough to produce the illusion of humor, and the comedian could elicit laughter with gesture and expression, regardless of what he said. Thon Taddeo wore a dry smirk, but it was the kind of look a man might give a clumsy performance by a trained animal.

“And so,” the Poet was continuing, “if you would but allow me to serve as your humble helper, m’Lord, you would never have to eat your own crow. As your Apologetic Advocate, for example, I might be delegated by you to offer contrition to important guests for the existence of bedbugs. And to bedbugs for the abrupt change of fare.”

The abbot glowered and resisted an impulse to grind the Poet’s bare toe with the heel of his sandal. He kicked the fellow’s ankle, but the fool persisted.

“I would assume all the blame for you, of course,” he said, noisily chewing white meat. “It’s a fine system, one which I was prepared to make available to you too, Most Eminent Scholar. I’m sure you would have found it convenient. I have been given to understand that systems of logic and methodology must be devised and perfected before science advances. And my system of negotiable and transferable apologetics would have been of particular value to you, Thon Taddeo.”

“Would have?”

“Yes. It’s a pity. Somebody stole my blue-headed goat.”

“Blue-headed goat?”

“He had a head as bald as Hannegan’s, Your Brilliance, and blue as the tip of Brother Armbruster’s nose. I meant to make you a present of the animal but some dastard filched him before you came”

The abbot clenched his teeth and held his heel poised over the Poet’s toe. Thon Taddeo was frowning slightly, but he seemed determined to untangle the Poet’s obscure skein of meaning.

“Do we need a blue-headed goat?” he asked his clerk.

“I can see no pressing urgency about it, sir,” said the clerk.

“But the need is obvious!” said the Poet. “They say you are writing equations that will one day remake the world. They say a new light is dawning. If there’s to be light, then somebody will have to be blamed for the darkness that’s past.”

“Ah, thence the goat.” Thon Taddeo glanced at the abbot. “A sickly jest. Is it the best he can do?”

“You’ll notice he’s unemployed. But let us talk of something sensib—”

“No, no, no, no!” objected the poet. “You mistake my meaning, Your Brilliance. The goat is to be enshrined and honored, not blamed! Crown him with the crown Saint Leibowitz sent you, and thank him for the light that’s rising. Then blame Leibowitz, and drive him into the desert. That way you won’t have to wear the second crown. The one with thorns. Responsibility, it’s called.”

The Poet’s hostility had broken out into the open, and he was no longer trying to seem humorous. The thon gazed at him icily. The abbot’s heel wavered again over the Poet’s toe, and again had reluctant mercy on it.

“And when,” said the Poet, “your patron’s army comes to seize this abbey, the goat can be placed in the courtyard and taught to bleat “There’s been nobody here but me, nobody here but me” whenever a stranger comes by.”

One of the officers started up from his stool with an angry grunt, his hand reaching reflexively for his saber. He broke the hilt dear of the scabbard, and six inches of steel glistened a warning at the Poet. The thon seized his wrist and tried to force the blade back in the sheath, but it was like tugging at the arm of a marble statue.

“Ah! A swordsman as well as a draftsman!” taunted the Poet, apparently unafraid of dying. “Your sketches of the abbey’s defenses show such promise of artistic—”

The officer barked an oath and the blade leaped clean of the scabbard. His comrades seized him, however, before he could lunge. An astonished rumble came from the congregation as the startled monks came to their feet. The Poet was still smiling blandly.

“ — artistic growth,” he continued. “I predict that one day your drawing of the underwall tunnels will be hung in a museum of fine—”

A dull chunk! came from under the table. The Poet paused in mid-bite, lowered the wishbone from his mouth, and turned slowly white. He munched, swallowed, and continued to lose color. He gazed abstractly upward.

“You’re grinding it off,” he muttered out of the side of his mouth.

“Through talking?” the abbot asked, and continued to grind.

“I think I have a bone in my throat,” the Poet admitted.

“You wish to be excused?”

“I am afraid I must.”

“A pity. We shall miss you.” Paulo gave the toe one last grind for good measure. “You may go then.”

The Poet exhaled gustily, blotted his mouth, and arose. He drained his wine cup and inverted it in the center of the tray. Something in his manner compelled them to watch him. He pulled down his eyelid with one thumb, bent his head over his cupped palm and pressed. The eyeball popped out into his palm, bringing a choking sound from the Texarkanans who were apparently unaware of the Poet’s artificial orb.

“Watch him carefully,” said the Poet to the glass eye, and then deposited it on the upturned base of his wine cup where it stared balefully at Thon Taddeo. “Good evening, m’Lords,” he said cheerfully to the group, and marched away.

The angry officer muttered a curse and struggled to free himself from the grasp of his comrades.

“Take him back to his quarters and sit on him till he cools off,” the thon told them. “And better see that he doesn’t get a chance at that lunatic.”

“I’m mortified,” he said to the abbot, when the livid guardsman was hauled away. “They aren’t my servants, and I can’t give them orders. But I can promise you he will grovel for this. And if he refuses to apologize and leave immediately, he’ll have to match that hasty sword against mine before noon tomorrow.”

“No bloodshed!” begged the priest. “It was nothing. Let’s all forget it.” His hands were trembling, his countenance gray.

“He will make apology and go,” Thon Taddeo insisted, “or I shall offer to kill him. Don’t worry, he doesn’t dare fight me because if he won, Hannegan would have him impaled on the public stake while they forced his wife to — but never mind that. He’ll grovel and go. Just the same, I’m deeply ashamed that such a thing could have come about.”

“I should have had the Poet thrown out as soon as he showed up. He provoked the whole thing, and I failed to stop it. The provocation was dear.”

“Provocation? By the fanciful lie of a vagrant fool? Josard reacted as if the Poet’s charges were true.”

“Then you don’t know that they are preparing a comprehensive report on the military value of our abbey as a fortress?”

The scholar’s jaw fell. He stared from one priest to the other in apparent unbelief.

“Can this be true?” he asked after a long silence.

The abbot nodded.

“And you’ve permitted us to stay.”

“We keep no secrets. Your companions are welcome to make such a study if they wish. I would not presume to ask why they want the information. The Poet’s assumption, of course, was merest fantasy.”

“Of course,” the thon said weakly, not looking at his host.

“Surely your prince has no aggressive ambitions in this region, as the Poet hinted.”

“Surely not.”

“And even if he did, I’m sure he would have the wisdom at least the wise counselors to lead him — to understand that our abbey’s value as a storehouse of ancient wisdom is many times greater than its value as a citadel.”

The thon caught the note of pleading, the undercurrent of supplication for help, in the priest’s voice, and he seemed to brood on it, picking lightly at his food and saying nothing for a time.

“We’ll speak of this matter again before I return to the collegium,” he promised quietly.

A pall had fallen on the banquet, but it began to lift during the group singing in the courtyard after the meal, and it vanished entirely when the time came for the scholar’s lecture in the Great Hall. Embarrassment seemed at an end, and the group had resumed a surface cordiality.