Warlock and Son (7 page)

Magnus thought that over, frowning. "Dost thou say no government, no society, can exist in isolation from others?"

"Well, it's possible," Rod admitted, "though interstellar travel and FTL communication have made sure
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that even the separate planets are affecting each other all the time, and very deeply, though that isn't always apparent. If it can happen anywhere, son, it'll be right here in the Forest Gellorn." Magnus looked up in surprise. "Why, how dost thou mean? Even that little village has a lord!"

"Yes, but it was right near the edge of the wildwood. As we go deeper in, I think we'll find villages set up by escaped peasants, outlaws, malcontents-or even just people who became lost. There'll be some traffic between them, but not a lot--this is a very big, thick forest, with lots of wild animals. . . ."

"Some of which may be quite strange," Magnus grunted, "due to witch-moss, and the projective esper who knoweth not what she-or he-may be."

"Or what effects he's having. But isn't that true of all of us? Anyway," Rod rushed on, "if there's any place on Gramarye where a pocket society can exist free of outside government, it'll be here. Shall we take a little detour to see what kinds of government we may find?"

"This whole excursion is a detour," Magnus pointed out, "and one government that the people welcome, but is not a democracy, will be enough to prove my case."

"So my holiday from marital obligations and daily routine becomes a quest. Why not? But for now, I'm tired, and we're far enough from that village so that I don't think they'll find us. Let's pitch camp, son. I could use some sleep."

They slept the clock around, woke at dawn, and broke their fasts. Feeling largely restored, they broke camp, drowned and buried the fire, and rode off into the morning. A few hours later they heard a bell tolling.

Rod frowned. "Kind of jarring, considering what a bright and peaceful morning it is."

"And somewhat late for Mass," Magnus agreed. "Of course, 'tis naught of our affair."

"Exactly. So we're going to go look, right?"

"Certes." Magnus smiled. "For what else have we come?" They rode down the path that led through the trees, since it seemed to be going in the right direction. Sure enough, the bell's tones became louder-then the forest ended abruptly, and they came out into a large cleared area, a square mile or so of land so flat they could see the thin dark line of trees on the other side. Strips of farmland lay all about in a crazyquilt pattern, divided by hedges. People had hewn themselves farms out of the midst of the forest. A hill rose at the eastern side of the clearing, and a village of wattle-and-daub houses clustered around it. Up near the top stood a fieldstone church-square and blocky, but with a recognizable steeple-and all about it, the grass was dotted with tombstones.

But the procession that threaded its way through the fields wasn't winding up toward that churchyard-it was coming toward Rod and Magnus, and a newly dug grave a hundred yards off to their left. The mourners didn't seem to see them-for mourners they were, peasant folk dressed in dark clothing, the first
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bearing a coffin on their shoulders, following a man in a black robe, wearing a bishop's mitre-a high, bulbous, pointed hat-and carrying a crozier, the ornate shepherd's crook. But he wasn't wearing a priest's chasuble, or even a cassock--only a long robe, like a memory of a baron's leisure clothing. Certainly the huge cross that adorned a priest's chasuble was missing.

Magnus scowled. "Why, how is this? There is only the Abbot of the Monastery in Gramarye, and the
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new abbot of the Runnymede chapter of the Order."

"Apparently neither of them has heard about his rival here," Rod noted. "Of course, you can't be a bishop if you don't have a priest or two under you-but he seems to have taken care of that." Behind the bishop came three acolytes in black robes with short white tunics over them-again, like distorted echoes of the garb of Catholic altar boys. One was a teenager, his face set and solemn; the other two were younger, perhaps eight and twelve, both looking rather scared. Behind them strode a priest, very young, also wearing a black robe, with two black-cloaked women behind him, their hair hidden under white bonnets. If they hadn't been with the clergy, Rod would have taken them for peasant wives-but their presence behind the priest made him wonder.

Then came the pallbearers, and the coffin; and behind it strode a short, stocky peasant, his square face lined with grief, his grizzled hair, his smock and leggings the color of old barn wood. Behind him came a few dozen people, young and old, parents and children, all but the babes in arms chanting a slow and mournful dirge.

They came to the grave; the bishop turned and gestured, and the pallbearers lowered the coffin to the rope slings, then down into the grave. At another gesture, the congregation ceased its chant.

"He lies here in sin!" the bishop cried. "In the one sin that cannot be shriven, for when a young man dies by his own hand, he condemns himself to hellfire eternal! When the spirit leaves the body, 'tis too late for remorse; the dead cannot confess! We may only hope and pray that ere the light of consciousness faded, he knew the wrong he had done, and repented of it-for even in the moment of our death, God can forgive!"

"Praise be to God," the priest and-were they nuns?murmured.

"Yet we must knock upon the door if it is to be opened to us!" the bishop cried. "We must confess if we are to be forgiven! Ranulf did not!"

"This isn't going to be a whole great help to his family," Rod growled.

"He must say what is true," Magnus murmured. "Only if he's asked."

"He must warn the others of his flock away from the road to Hell."

"Now is neither the time nor the place. Is he doing this for their good, or to buttress his own power?" Magnus turned to him, frowning. "Why, how would this increase his power?"

"They have to do what he tells them to," Rod explained, "or they rot in Hell."

"Ranulf died alone," the bishop orated, "without a priest nearby! Let us pray that God will have mercy upon his soul-but since we cannot know that, we must believe he died in mortal sin, and cannot therefore be buried in consecrated ground. He will lie here, hard by the wilderness that was in his soul."

"So be it," the crowd murmured.

"So be it indeed!" the bishop cried. "Yet for the father who reared him to discontent and intemperance, to irreverance and impiety, for the misbegotten parent who encouraged his endless, impertinent,
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blasphemous questioning, the penance must be great, and lifelong!" The stocky gray man lifted his eyes to the bishop, eyes stony, face impassive.

"Down on thy knees, recreant!" the bishop thundered, suddenly red-faced. "Pray for forgiveness to the God who made thee, forgiveness for having led astray the soul He entrusted to thy care!"

"This is consolation?" Rod murmured, aghast.

Slowly, the father shook his head. "It was not I who led him astray, but they who preach humility, yet practice arrogance."

"Sinner! Recreant!" the bishop bellowed. "How darest thou speak so against those who give their lives to the service of others! Purge the Devil who doth lurk in thy soul, till thou hast learned the very humility of which thou dost speak!" He turned back to the congregation at large. "Henceforth let none in our village of Wealdbinde speak to this man Roble, under pain of sin! Let all shun him, let all turn away from him, lest he spread this contagion of faithlessness among us all!" The people muttered and backed away from Ranulf's father.

"Let him walk in silence, till he doth learn the error of his ways!" the bishop cried. "If he should seek to speak with you, turn a deaf ear! If he should ask thine aid, turn away thine eyes, see him not! In his pride, he doth set himself apart from God...."

"Not from God!" the father roared. "Thou liest, rogue, and dost know thine own lie!"

"Smite him to silence!" the bishop howled, and a peasant near the father leaped to pin his hands while another struck him across the mouth.

"Never speak again!" the bishop bellowed, finger spearing out at Roble. "For if thou dost, none shall hear thy words of seduction and temptation! Begone, to thy living death!" He turned to the congregation.

"Dearly beloved, let us resume our daily life, resolved never to let one soul of this village of Wealdbinde stray as this Ranulf has strayed! Let our compassion be shown by exhorting and admonishing our weaker bretheren! Let us return now to our homes and our fields, resolved to keep them secure against the assaults of the Devil!" And he strode away toward the village, taking up the dirge again. The altar boys, priest, and nuns hurried to follow him, and the congregation turned to fall in line. They strode away quickly, leaving the grim-faced father standing alone by the mound of broken earth that hid what was left of his son. The sound of the chanting faded and died away.

Magnus started to speak, but Rod silenced him with a touch on the arm. The gray man stood alone with no consolation but the wind, gazing at the grave, speaking softly at first, then louder.

"Here ye lie, my son, hard by the wilderness to which thou didst long to go-if for naught but to be away from them, with their everlasting questioning and searching of thy life, their blaming and their harrowing. They're all done now, lad, and they can't hurt thee anymore. They're all done, and they've mangled what's left of the memory of thee, and made it a caution for children-but never thought it should be a caution to themselves. Nay, they're all done now, and thy suffering's done, too, and thy torment is ended." For a moment, anger showed. "May His Grace, the good bishop, be hanged! For if that's what goodness is, I'd liefer be evil! To torment the young with visions of hellfire, to bind them fast within rules of his own devising, to roar at them and and tell 'em they were born evil, and must strap every last bit o'

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life out o' themselves, then turn and preach to 'em of the virtues of charity! To tell them that Faith is a gift, then condemn 'em for not having it yet! To tell 'em nothing can be good except what he tells 'em to do!

Nay, surely I ought not have let 'em do it to thee! Surely I should have stood against thy mother, taken thee, and fled to the forest! Surely I should have taken thee from the nuns ere they beat out of thee thy regard for thyself, afore they ground thy soul down, making thee to think thyself vile for being male! Nay, and surely, when the priest did thunder at thee that thou must needs take a wife and rear up bairns, whether any lass did suit thee or no, then surely I should have ta'en thee and gone, the two of us together

'gainst the wild beasts of the forestfor better the wolves of the greenwood than the jackals in black robes, who prey upon souls!" Tears glistened on his cheeks. "Nay, they can't hurt thee anymore, lad, though God knows I'll miss thee shrewdly! At the least, thy suffering's done! Nay, I did wrong to marry me! I did wrong to father thee!"

That was too much; Rod winced and took Magnus's arm, turning him away and back to the horses.

"We're eavesdropping on something intensely personal. Let the poor man alone in his grief." Magnus gave him a peculiar look, but turned away and mounted, then brought his horse alongside Rod's, riding beside him-but from the abstracted look on his face, and his conspicuous silence, Rod suspected he was still listening mentally to the bereaved father. He was about to rebuke his son when he remembered that Magnus was a man grown now, presumably with a fully formed conscience. Either that conscience was lacking, in which case it was too late for Rod to do anything about it, or that conscience was sound, in which case Magnus had detected something in the man's thoughts that Rod hadn't been aware of.

Such as wanting everyone to know what he felt the priests had done to his son?

Then why not have shouted it aloud at the funeral? Because he was afraid. Afraid? Of priests and nuns? Of people devoted to goodness and charity?

It seemed highly unlikely, but Rod remembered the Spanish Inquisition, the crusade against the Albigenses, and the fires of Smithfield. He reserved judgement. Then, too, these clergy had a distinctly homemade look about them; there was no guarantee that their dogma bore any resemblance to his own. Now that he thought of it, he hadn't heard the "bishop" mention the name of Christ at all. Of course, there would have been no point in Roble's shouting charges to the faithful, who were unshakeable in their beliefs.

But to outsiders?

Rod glanced up at his son's faraway gaze, and decided not to interrupt.

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Rod reined in with a sigh. "I don't think we'll ever agree on that one, son," he said, finally breaking the silence.

"But they do have the right to be governed as they wish!" Magnus exclaimed. "And if they desire to have a tyrant like that priest bellow and rail at them, if they wish to have him enforce their will with ostracism, who are we to tell them nay?"

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"The sane ones, that's who."

Magnus started to say something, then caught himselfbut Rod had intercepted the split-second burst of thought that gave rise to the words, and reddened. "I'm a fine one to talk, is that it? If you'll excuse me, son, I think I'd better ride apart for a while. You don't need me to chaperone you, after all."

"I did not mean. . ." Magnus began, but broke off, seeing his father disappear off the trail and into the woods. Resentment burgeoned within him at his father's rejection. Then he smiled, as he realized he could agree with Rod on one thing-he didn't need a parent watching over him like a hawk. Savoring that thought, he turned away-but he still felt a little guilty at having offended his father.