The Warlock Heretical (3 page)

"'Kids'? Oh, thou dost mean thy children. Nay, they as much aided me as I them. . . ."

"They would not have struck in their own defense had I not!" Geoffrey burst out. "Nay, not though they carried

staves and bucklers!"

Rod stared at him. "You jumped into the middle of a grownups' fight?" He pivoted to Magnus. "Why did you let

him?" Magnus spread his hands in exasperation. "Who could e'er stop him, Papa?"
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"There's some truth in that," Rod allowed. "Who tried to beat up on you, Father?" Father Boquilva shrugged. "Naught but a band of robbers who thought that men o' the cloth would be easy meat.

They did not think that we would have so little."

Gregory nodded. "Naught but the chalice, Papa, yet those nasty bandits stole even that!" Rod frowned at the monk. "So they were disappointed, and they were going to take it out on you with a beating?"

Reluctantly, the priest nodded. "Yet what are a few bruises when measured against eternity? I doubt me not

they'd have caused us pain, but little damage."

"They would not even have fought to ward off blows!" Geoffrey said.

"But that was up to them." Rod turned to scowl at his son. "You leave grown-ups to grown-ups." "Even though

we see good folk plundered!?" "You might have been justified in staying in hiding and using 'magic,'" Rod admitted, "but not in jumping into the fight physically!"

Geoffrey's jaw set.

"There is just too great a danger thou wilt be hurled, my jo," Gwen told him.

"We will not be hurted!"

"That'll make a great epitaph, some day," Rod sighed, "but I'd rather not see it while I'm alive. Let's say I'm the

one who's chicken, son, and I'm scared to have you mix in a grown-ups' fight."

"Oh, Papa!"

"Silly or not, it's the rule!" Rod took a step toward the boy, then realized his hands were hooking into claws. He

jammed them together behind his back and looked around at his brood. "And what's the punishment for breaking

that rule?"

Geoffrey glared back, but awareness of doom shadowed his face.

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Behind him Magnus stirred with a sigh. "Aye, Papa, we know. Come, my sibs—let us to it." Gregory turned to follow him, and so did Cordelia, but with a troubled glance backwards at Geoffrey. Rod fixed his glare on his second son, his anger warring with admiration for the boy's courage. Of course, he

didn't let it show, and Geoffrey just stared back, his chin like a rock. Gwen stepped up beside Rod, gazing

intently at Geoffrey. "Thou dost know thou didst break our rule, my son." "But it would have been wrong to let

them be beaten!" "Aye, yet we would not have thee be right but wounded, or worse. Therefore art thou not to

partake of adult quarrels—and to make thee mindful of that, thou wilt do thy punishment." Geoffrey glared at

her, but why should he be able to stand against the compulsion of her gaze when his father never had?

He

growled, but he turned away to follow Magnus.

As the door closed behind him, Gwen went limp. "Praise Heaven! I feared he might defy thee to rage!"

"Not this time, thanks to you." Rod let himself begin to relax. "Thanks for backing me, dear."

" 'Twas a rule we had both agreed on, my lord—and one well made, to my mind. I come near to believing he

doth think 'tis better to lose his life than a fight!"

"And better to lose either than to lose face. Oh, yes." Rod sighed, and turned back to the priest.

"Thou hast a worthy son," Boquilva noted.

"Yeah, we do, don't we?" Rod grinned. "Well, Father! Can we offer you a glass of wine?" Someone squalled behind the closed door, and the grownups paused in their chat. Muffled by oak came the cry,

"Mind thy mop handle, "Delia!"

"Only one in a room at a time," Rod called. "That's part of the punishment!" There, was silence behind the door, then footsteps receding and the splash of a mop in a bucket.
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"I have heard of many children's punishments," the monk said, "yet this was never one."

< Rod nodded. "They can do a lot more than most folks give them credit for, Father—but ordinarily they only

have to clean their own rooms."

"We were abducted a year agone," Gwen added, "and 'twas two weeks ere we could win home. Then did we

learn what they'd done in our absence."

"By the end of the week the house shone." Rod's smile was brittle. "And they have to do it without using magic,

too." "Aye, there's the rub," Gwen agreed. "Not that I really mind their defeating evil wizards, Father," Rod

explained. "It's just that I nearly had a heart attack when I found out how much danger they'd put themselves

into."

Father Boquilva chuckled and regarded his wineglass. "Well, we did surmise that they were magic-workers." He

looked up at Gwen. "How dost thou contain them, milady?" "I have a few spells of mine own." Gwen dimpled

prettily. " Tis more a wonder that thou, and thy brothers, did survive their interference."

"Well, as to that, they may truly have aided us," the priest said. "We would certainly have sustained a harsh

beating, and we might have died had we not fought. There was some look to these bandits that minds me they

would not have been content with small cruelties—yet ere we'd have admitted such knowledge, belike we'd have

been too incapacitated to defend ourselves."

Gwen shuddered. "Beshrew me! But it horrifies me to think that some truly enjoy slaying others!" Rod nodded, face dark. "But what were you doing out in the middle of that meadow anyway, Father?

Why didn't

you just stay home, behind the walls of your monastery?"

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"Ah." Father Boquilva's face turned grim. "As to that—w< had come to some disagreement with our Lord

Abbot."

"Disagreement?" Gwen stared. "Yet didst thou not swear obedience to him when thou wast ordained?"

"Aye, and sin that we could no longer give such obedience with sound consciences, we thought it best to go apart

by ourselves."

"Hold it! Whoa!" Rod held up a flat, open hand. "Whan orders could your Abbot be giving that were so bad some

of his own monks couldn't obey them?" Then he paused, remember-' ing his new assignment and its cause. "It

wouldn't have anything to do with his wanting to declare the Church off Gramarye separate from the Church of

Rome, would it?"

Father Boquilva met his eyes with a long, steady gaze. "Thou has most excellent minstrels, to bring such news so

quickly."

Rod waved the remark away. "I have inside sources." "Aye." A shadow crossed Boquilva's face. "Thou art the

High Warlock, art thou not?"

Rod gave Gwen a quick glance of exasperation. "I keep telling the kids not to brag. But yes, Father, I am—and I

spoke with His Majesty this morning, about exactly this matter." Boquilva nodded, not taking his gaze from

Rod's. "Then events have proceeded more quickly than I had thought." "Oh. It was still only talk when you left?"

Boquilva nodded. "Yet that was a week agone—small enough time, when our Lord Abbot hath brooded six

years over the matter."

"Six years? Let's see ... of course, that was when the Abbot squared off against Tuan, and only backed down

because Father Al handed him a letter from the Pope telling him to do whatever Father Al said." Rod
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clasped his

head as a brief dizzy spell swept him. "My lord! Has it been that long already?"

"Nay, my lord." Gwen covered his hand with hers. " 'Tis simply that our children have grown so quickly."

"Thanks for the reassurance, dear." Rod let his other hand rest on hers and looked up at Father Boquilva. "And it

still bothers the Abbot?"

Father Boquilva nodded again. "He hath some strain of worldly vanity, I fear, and was greatly ashamed to be so

set

down, there before all of two armies. Yet 'tis only these last three months that he hath begun to speak of separation."

"Rather persuasively, too, I suspect." Rod frowned. "I heard the man preach once. He's almost as powerful an

orator as King Tuan."

Boquilva nodded. "Thou dost not undervalue him. In truth, some of the reasons he doth advance do hold merit,

great merit—that what authority the Pope may once have had over the Church here on this Isle of Gramarye, he

hath defaulted, through having so long ignored us. In truth, for all we heard from Rome, one might have thought

that His Holiness knew not of our existence."

"Well, be fair, though—Gramarye never sent any messages to Rome, either."

"How could we? For that is milord Abbot's next point—that the Pope is so far distant from Gramarye that he

cannot possibly know what doth occur here. Even doth he hear report, he can have no sense of the tensions of

power, as milord Abbot hath. Then beyond this, there is such a maze of matters theological, of hairsplitting over

the authority of Peter and his passing on of that power—and of the tightness of the Church of Rome today—that

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we cannot know what it doth or doth not I hold to be a sin."

"Sounds a little weak."

Father Boquilva agreed. "It doth in truth. For look you, milord Abbot's whole upbringing hath instilled in him the

belief that the Pope is the heir of Peter, the rightful head of the Church, and that he doth hold from God Himself

the power to declare what is right and wrong. Yet an upbringing alone were not enough, there is all of milord's

schooling for the priesthood, and his priestly vows themselves, to tell him to obey the Holy See." Rod said, "But it's hard to accept religious authority greater than his own when, all his life, he has thought that if

he could rise to Abbot, he'd be the supreme spiritual power in Gramarye, second only to the King."

"Aye, yet that 'second' doth gall him."

"Oh, yes! That's what the whole fight was about six years ago—whether the King should take orders from the

Abbot, or the other way around. Yes, the thought of power must be tempting."

"Aye, and some of us were agreed that, despite what he

knew to be right in his heart of hearts, milord Abbot, did but devise excuses to justify a break with Rome and a

regaining of his full power."

"Where I come from, we call that kind of excuse a rationalization—and once a man has found enough of them,

he's capable of doing anything. Yes, I can see why you'd be wary."

"Wary indeed—and unsure whether our vows of obedience to our Lord Abbot might not be superseded by

obedience to our Holy Father the Pope. Thus we sought to place ourselves apart from the dilemma by coming

away from the Monastery of St. Vidicon and journeying here to Runnymede, to begin our own chapter house."

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"Wisely done," Gwen agreed. "Yet doth this not, in itself, violate thy vow of obedience?"

"It would, had we been commanded to stay—yet we were not."

"Of course not." Rod smiled, amused. "In fact, the Abbot didn't even know you were leaving, did he?" Father Boquilva had the grace to look abashed. "I own he did not—and nay, further, that we did not seek his

permission, as any monk is obliged to by the rule of our order. Yet we were resolved to go, whether it broke our

vow to our Lord Abbot or not, for we feared greater peril of sin than that."

"Ah, then." Owen's eye glinted. "Thou didst come away at night, and most quietly?"

"Like thieves." Father Boquilva gave her a guilty glance. "In truth, we did steal away. Yet if I cannot feel completely right in my heart therefore, I would have felt more wrong still had I stayed." Rod nodded. "Wise decision, I'd say. But isn't the Abbot apt to try to make you come back?"

"He may indeed—and 'tis therefore that we have come to

Runnymede, to Their Royal Majesties' personal demesne."

"Ah." Rod sat up straighten "A prudent move, Father—

putting yourselves under the King's accidental protection, so to

speak."

Father Boquilva replied, "I do not think milord Abbot will wish to make too great a stir so close to Their Majesties, for fear King Tuan will notice that the Order of St. Vidicon is not wholly of one mind on the issue."

Rod was still nodding. "Yeah, it makes good sense. The

Abbot doesn't want to make that much of a fuss where the King might notice. But it might be a little wiser,

Father, to let Their Majesties know you're here; they might wish to be a little more open about their protection."

Father Boquilva shook his head. "I had liefer not; we have too great a sense of betraying our order even now. I do

not think milord Abbot would stoop to foul means to bring us home."
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"I wish I had your rosy view of human nature. But if he does send a war party?"

"Nay," Father Boquilva protested. "He is a good man, Lord Warlock!"

"Yes, but not a terribly strong one—and priests can be tempted, too. So just for the sake of argument, what would

you do if he sent an attack squad?"

Father Boquilva said slowly, "Why, I would heed thine advice, and appeal to the Crown for protection."