The words brought a new pall over the room. Dom Paulo’s hopes sank, for the prophecy gave form to the scholar’s probable outlook. Thon Taddeo knew the military ambitions of his monarch. He had a choice: to approve of them, to disapprove of them, or to regard them as impersonal phenomena beyond his control like a flood, famine, or whirlwind.
Evidently, then, he accepted them as inevitable — to avoid having to make a moral judgment. Let there be blood, iron and weeping…
How could such a man thus evade his own conscience and disavow his responsibility — and so easily! the abbot stormed to himself.
But then the words came back to him. For in those days, the Lord God had suffered the wise men to know the means by which the world itself might be destroyed…
He also suffered them to know how it might be saved, and, as always, let them choose for themselves. And perhaps they had chosen as Thon Taddeo chooses. To wash their hands before the multitude. Look you to it. Lest they themselves be crucified.
And they had been crucified anyhow. Without dignity. Always for anybody anyhow is to get nailed on it and hang on it and if you drop off they beat…
There was sudden silence. The scholar had stopped talking.
The abbot blinked around the hall. Half the community was staring toward the entrance. At first his eyes could make out nothing.
“What is it?” he whispered to Gault.
“An old man with a beard and shawl,” hissed Gault. “It looks like — No, he wouldn’t—”
Dom Paulo arose and moved to the front of the dais to stare at the faintly defined shape in the shadows. Then he called out to it softly.
“Benjamin?”
The figure stirred. It drew its shawl tighter about spindly shoulders and hobbled slowly into the light. It stopped again, muttering to itself as it looked around the room; then its eyes found the scholar at the lectern.
Leaning on a crooked staff, the old apparition hobbled slowly toward the lectern, never taking its eyes from the man who stood behindit. thon taddeo looked humorously perplexed at first, but when no one stirred or spoke, he seemed to lose color as the decrepit vision came near him The face of the bearded antiquity blazed with hopeful ferocity of some compelling passion that burned more furiously in him than the life principle long since due to depart.
He came close to the lectern, paused. His eyes twitched over the startled speaker. His mouth quivered. He smiled. He reached out one trembling hand toward the scholar. The thon drew back with a snort of revulsion.
The hermit was agile. He vaulted to the dais, dodged the lectern, and seized the scholar’s arm.
“What madness—”
Benjamin kneaded the arm while he stared hopefully into the scholar’s eyes.
His face clouded. The glow died. He dropped the arm. A great keening sigh came from the dry old lungs as hope vanished. The eternally knowing smirk of the Old Jew of the Mountain returned to his face. He turned to the community, spread his hands, shrugged eloquently.
“It’s still not Him,” he told them sourly, then hobbled away.
Afterwards, there was little formality.
21
It was during the tenth week of Thon Taddeo’s visit that the messenger brought the black news. The head of the ruling dynasty of Laredo had demanded that Texarkanan troops be evacuated forthwith from the realm. The King died of poison that night, and a state of war was proclaimed between the states of Laredo and Texarkana. The war would be short-lived. It could with assurance be assumed that the war had ended the day alter it had begun, and that Hannegan now controlled all lands and peoples from the Red River to the Rio Grande.
That much had been expected, but not the accompanying news.
Hannegan II, by Grace of God Mayor, Viceroy of Texarkana, Defender of the Faith, and Vaquero Supreme of the Plains, had, after finding Monsignor Marcus Apollo to be guilty of “treason” and espionage, caused the papal nuncio to he hanged, and then, while still alive to be cut down, drawn, quartered, and flayed, as an example to anyone else who might try to undermine the Mayor’s state. In pieces, the priest’s carcass had been thrown to the dogs.
The messenger hardly needed to add that Texarkana was under absolute interdict by a papal decree which contained certain vague but ominous allusions to Regnans in Excelsis, a sixteenth century bull ordering a monarch deposed. There was no news of Hannegan’s countermeasures, as yet.
On the Plains, the Laredan forces would now have to fight their way back home through the nomad tribes, only to lay down their arms at their own borders, for their nation and their kin were hostage.
“A tragic affair!” said Thon Taddeo, with an apparent degree of sincerity. “Because of my nationality, I offer to leave at once.”
“Why?” Dom Paulo asked. “You don’t approve of Hannegan’s actions, do you?”
The scholar hesitated, then shook his head. He looked around to make certain no one overheard them. “Personally, I condemn them. But in public—” He shrugged. “There is the collegium to think of. If it were only a question of my own neck, well—”
“I understand.”
“May I venture an opinion in confidence?”
“Of course.”
“Then someone ought to warn New Rome against making idle threats. Hannegan’s not above crucifying several dozen Marcus Apollos.”
“Then some new martyrs will attain Heaven; New Rome doesn’t make idle threats.”
The thon sighed. “I supposed that you’d look at it that way, but I renew my offer to leave.”
“Nonsense. Whatever your nationality, your common humanity makes you welcome.”
But a rift had appeared. The scholar kept his own company afterward, seldom conversing with the monks. His relationship with Brother Kornhoer became noticeably formal, although the inventor spent an hour or two each day in servicing and inspecting the dynamo and the lamp, and keeping himself informed concerning the progress of the thon’s work, which was now proceeding with unusual haste. The officers seldom ventured outside the guesthouse.
There were hints of an exodus from the region. Disturbing rumors kept coming from the Plains. In the village of Sanly Bowitts, people began discovering reasons to depart suddenly on pilgrimages or to visit in other lands. Even the beggars and vagrants were getting out of town. As always, the merchants and artisans were faced with the unpleasant choice of abandoning their property to burglars and looters or staying with it to see it looted.
A citizens’ committee headed by the mayor of the village visited the abbey to request sanctuary for the townspeople in the event of invasion. “My final offer,” said the abbot, after several hours of argument, “is this: we will take in all the women, children, invalids, and aged, without question. But as for men capable of bearing arms, we’ll consider each ease individually, and we may turn some of them away.”
“Why?” the mayor demanded.
“What should be obvious, even to you!” Dom Paulo said sharply. “We may come under attack ourselves, but unless we’re directly attacked, we’re going to stay out of it. I’ll not let this place be used by anybody as a garrison from which to launch a counterattack if the only attack is on the village itself. So in case of males able to bear arms, we’ll have to insist on a pledge — to defend the abbey under our orders. And we’ll decide in individual cases whether a pledge is trustworthy or not.”
“It’s unfair!” howled a committeeman. “You’ll discriminate—”
“Only against those who can’t be trusted. What’s the matter? Were you hoping to hide a reserve force here? Well, it won’t be allowed. You’re not going to plant any part of a town militia out here. That’s final.”