Hounds of God (36 page)

For an instant his lungs labored, crying that there was no
air. He gasped, struggling for quiet. Thea was already a horse-length away. He
stretched to catch her.

If San Girolamo had made Nikki desperate for freedom, San
Paolo Apostolo won from him a heartfelt vow. Never again, not even as a guest,
would he shut himself up within the walls of a monastery. He would find his God
under the sky, or if he must, in churches where the doors were never shut. Not in
these prisons of the body that closed all too often into prisons of the soul.

Thea seemed unmoved, walking without stealth through cold
halls and cold courts, up lamplit stairs, past the darkened cells of monks and
the dormitories crowded with novices, to that arm of the stronghold from which
the Father General commanded his Order. All was quiet there as elsewhere, even
the clerks and secretaries sleeping, and no guards to challenge the invaders.

Such arrogance, to trust in high walls and in the Pope’s
favor. Nikki’s scorn almost made him forget his panic-hatred of the
place.

The Pope’s favor
is no small thing.
Thea opened a door like a dozen others along the
passage, upon a cell as bare as a penitent’s. It had not even a bed, only
a crucifix upon the wall, and under it, stretched out like one crucified, a man
of no great height or girth, remarkable for neither his beauty nor his
ugliness. His face bore the ravages of pox, ill hidden by a sparse brown beard;
his body was thin in the white habit, his feet bare and gnarled and not overly
clean. Yet upon his face and in his mind blazed a white light.

Nikki’s head shook from side to side. This man prayed
exactly as Alf prayed, with a purity of concentration, in an ecstasy of
communion. But what he prayed for and what he stood for, those were inimical to
all Alf was.

“Father Alberich,” Thea said. Her voice tolled
like a bell. “Father Alberich von Hildesheim, you are summoned.”

The outstretched arms folded inward. The still features woke
to life; the eyes opened, grey-green, kindling as they fell upon her face.

Their brilliance was like a blow. Yet far worse was their
awful gentleness. Even Thea dimmed a little in the face of it.

She raised her chin; she put aside mantle and hood. Beneath
them she was arrayed in splendid simplicity, gown and overgown of deep green,
her hair bound with a fillet of gold. “One of your Brothers is dead,”
she said, “and one is a prisoner. You are summoned to defend them.”

Father Alberich rose. “Who summons me?”

“Justice.”

“And if I cannot come?”

“You will come.”

He smiled. He knew no fear that Nikki could see, and if any
hatred touched him, it was lost amid his wonder at her beauty. “Ah, Lady,”
he said sighing, “it is a very great pity that you are of the Devil’s
children. Such loveliness should be consecrated to God.”

“How so? My hair cut off, my body sheathed in sacking
and ravaged with penitence?”

“Of course not, for then you would not be so
beautiful. Though it could be argued that your soul’s beauty would more
than make up for your body’s lack.”

“Except,” she said, “that in your
philosophy I have no soul to beautify. But that may be as ridiculously wrong as
all the rest of it. Your sorcerer monk is dead. I’m no authority, but one
was there who can testify that he went to something other than oblivion.”

“Sorcerer monk. Lady? We of all Orders can have had
none such.”

Nikki snorted. Thea laughed short and fierce. “Don’t
lie to yourself, Father General. You know what Brother Simon was. You always
knew, however you chose to disguise it. Saint and worker of miracles, mystic,
child of God—he was of my own kin.”

With perfect serenity Father Alberich conceded, “Perhaps
he was. I grieve that he is dead. He was a great warrior of God.”

“He was mad and he was tormented. Your fault, Father General,
as much as that of the low creature who ruled him. You did nothing to break
that bond; you kept it strong, you left them free to work what harm they could.
We owe you a debt, we of Rhiyana. Now we will pay it.”

“If I die, our work will continue. Rhiyana is ours; it
has returned to the hand of God. No sorcery can rob us of it.”

“Rhiyana indeed is yours, if yours are war and hatred,
death and destruction and the spreading of wasteland where once was peace and
plenty.”

His eyes were sad, his voice soft with sorrow. “War is
always terrible, and the war for souls is worst of all. But a desert can grow
green again, if men’s souls are freed from darkness.”

“And if there never was darkness? What then, priest of
God?”

“Night is Satan’s day and darkness his light.
You tempt me, beautiful demon, and I may yet succumb, but the Order has won
this battle in its long war. Nothing that you do can alter it.”

“Can it not?” She held out her hand as to a
wayward child. “Come to judgment, Father Alberich.”

oOo

For one who had seen Constantinople before its fall, walked
the length of the Middle Way and looked on the splendor of the imperial
palaces, the dwelling of the Pope seemed an echo and a defiance of that royal
glory. Its guardians were the images of old Rome, that some said carried still
an antique magic: the she-wolf of the empire; the head and the hand of some
forgotten giant, whether Samson or Apollo or the Emperor Constantine, his
fingers clasping the orb of the world; and mounted on a stallion of bronze,
right hand upraised in warning or in command, the image that pilgrims called
Marcus or Theodoric and the Romans Constantine, who could have been any or
none, but whose pride was the pride of the Pope of Rome. Behind the haughty
back rose a tower of bronze like the ChalkÍ of Constantinopolis, the great gate
and tower that had stood between the sacred Emperors and the world; and beyond
the tower, the palace of the Lateran.

It stood in a city within and apart from the city of Rome,
built on the slopes and summit of the Caelian Hill near the eastern walls. East
of it lay fields and farms and the walls themselves; empty lands stretched
westward to come at length to the Colosseum and the borders of the living city.
There Romans and pilgrims preferred to stay, the former by the banks of the
Tiber among their own kind, the latter gathered about the basilica of Saint
Peter in the Leonine City.

“Pope Innocent had sense,” Jehan had said to Alf
once when they had leisure to talk of trifles. “He built a castle up on
the Vatican Hill in the Borgo San Pierro, ample enough for a palace and strong
enough for a siege. More will come of that, I think. It was never a wise choice
to try to build a new city of God so far away from what was left of Rome and
its Romans, not with Saint Peter staking his own claim out past Sant’
Angelo.”

But Saint John of the Lateran clung to his honors, and where
the Pope was and had been for nigh a thousand years, there was the Curia and
the heart of the Church. A heart of minted silver, many would say, but the
truth remained. Saint Peter’s could call itself foremost of all churches,
omnium ecclesiarum caput.
Saint John’s
was
caput mundi
, foremost of all the
world.

Jehan stood with Alf well within the gates of the Lateran, a
shadow among the many shadows of the Pope’s bedchamber. Unseen and
unheard, they could hear with ease what passed in the workroom without.

Cencio Savelli, Pope Honorius, was little like the vigorous
young man who had ruled before him. He was old, his hair thin and grey round
the tonsure; he had been tall for a Roman, but years and care had bowed him. He
looked too frail by far for the burden of his rank, holy paradox that it was,
prince of the princes of the Church, servant of the servants of God. And yet he
had outlived all Innocent’s youth and brilliance; when that had burned to
ash in its own splendor, he had risen in his turn to the Chair of Peter.
Neither young nor brilliant, one no longer, one never, in his quiet careful way
he continued as Innocent had begun.

“No,” he said, gentle but immovable. “No, Brother,
you may not. We need you here.”

The other was equally gentle, equally obstinate. “God
needs me among His poor.” He was kneeling at the Pope’s feet; he
raised bandaged hands, the bandages rather cleaner than the rest of him. “Holiness,
I have dreamed. I have had sendings. I know what I must do, and that is not to
be a hanger-on, however honored, of your Curia.”

“Cencio’s tame saint.” Honorius smiled a
little sadly. “Fra Giovanni, I too have my dreams and my duties, however
much they may be clouded by this eminence. Not all destitution of spirit dwells
in hovels; much of it has settled among the princes of the Church.”

“Have I no Brothers to teach them by word and by
example? May I not at least return to my own Assisi and minister to God’s
poor there, if only for a little while?”

“That,” the Pope said slowly, “I may
consider.” Hope had leaped in the wide brown eyes; he laid his hands on
the ill-barbered head. “My son, my son, we all have such need of you, and
yet your remedy for our hurts is much too strong to be taken all at once. All
the world at peace in the faith and the poverty of the Apostles—a vision worthy
of Our Lord, but not so simple to accomplish.”

“It will come,” Giovanni whispered. “God
has promised. It will come.”

“But not too soon,” said Honorius, half in
foresight, half in warning.

There was a silence. The Pope pondered. Giovanni,
undismissed, bent his head in prayer.

Suddenly he lifted it. He looked toward the inner door with
clear and seeing eyes. “Holy Father, do you believe in angels?”

Honorius started out of his reverie. “Angels, Fra Giovanni?
Of course.” He said it as if to quiet a very young child. “They are
in Scripture. But what—”

“One has come to speak with you. How generous of
Heaven’s messenger to wait upon another and much lesser petitioner.”

“No creature of Heaven, I,” Alf said. He had
entered as no mortal might, through the closed door, bearing his own faint
silver light. He was all in grey, rather like a Minorite, but no poor brother
of Christ would have worn wool so soft, or belted and brooched it with silver.
He went down in obeisance before the silent staring Pope, and remained kneeling
as still Fra Giovanni knelt. “Earth bore me and earth keeps me; I have
never been a messenger of God.”

“No, brother?” murmured Giovanni.

He neither expected nor received a reply. The Pope looked
from Alf’s lifted face to that of the man who, recovered at last from the
shock of Alf’s vanishing, entered in more human fashion. Recognition
sparked; bewilderment lessened. “Jehan de Sevigny, did I never give you
leave to claim your see of Sarum?”

Jehan, prevented by the Pope’s impatient gesture from
kneeling with the others, stood straight and found his voice. “You gave
it, Holiness. I’ve been detained.”

“So it seems.” Honorius” eyes returned to
Alf. The wonder in them was untainted by either fear or hate, although he knew
well what knelt so meekly at his feet. “It would also seem that both
these men know you. May I share the honor?”

“Alfred of Saint Ruan’s,” Jehan said
before Alf could speak, “Lord Chancellor of Rhiyana and emissary of its
King.”

Honorius rose from his chair. His gaze never left the fair
strange face. “The White Chancellor. We have heard of you, great lord. We
have heard it said that you were once one of ours. Impossible if you were a
mortal man; disturbing if you are the being of the tales.”

“If the Devil may quote Scripture,” Alf said, “it
follows that the Devil’s minion may become a master of theology.
Particularly if he be very young and rather too proud of his erudition.”

“Yet orthodox,” mused the Pope. “Most
orthodox. My predecessor knew the truth of you, I think. He loved to read the
Gloria Dei
, so perfect it was, so
succinct, so divinely inspired. But he would always smile when he spoke of its
author.”

“And you. Holy Father? Do you smile? Or do you gnash
your teeth?”

“I have not Innocent’s love for paradoxes. He
was a great man; I am merely a man. I can do no more than guide myself by the
Church’s teachings.”

“Even if they stem not from God but from human fear?”

“So speaks heresy. Lord Chancellor.”

“Or so speaks wisdom,” Fra Giovanni said with
rare force. “Holy Father, hear the tale he has to tell. Any living thing
deserves that much of you.”

Pope Honorius paused, caught between wrath and strict
justice. He had been invaded by what could be nothing but witchery, with
boldness mitigated not at all by the enchanter’s evident humility. And
now the first of the Friars Minor, that gentle thorn in the Church’s
side, had arrayed himself with the enemy.

Honorius lowered himself again into his chair, making no
effort to conceal his weariness. “Tell your tale, sir,” he said, “but
tell it swiftly.”

Alf bowed his head in assent. As he raised it, the air
shifted and shimmered. Thea walked out of it with Nikephoros, leading the
Father General of Saint Paul.

That brave man wasted no time in either astonishment or
panic; he went down on his knees before the Pope. Now three knelt and three
stood, a tableau almost menacing in its symmetry.

Father Alberich’s presence lent no comfort. He had the
look of a martyr at the stake, white and exalted.

Honorius wondered briefly what his own face betrayed. Alf’s
eye caught his; he shivered. It was not a human eye, yet it was very, very
calm. Serene. As well it might be. Saint Peter’s throne offered little
protection against such power as this creature wielded.

Alf shook his head slowly. “While my kind dwells in
this world, it must admit the power of your office. Consider how very few we
are, how very many the people over whose souls you rule.

The Pope shivered. Not even his thoughts were his own
tonight. “If you chose, you would rule them all.”