A Meeting at Corvallis (55 page)

“No criticism implied!” Nigel said, recognizing a defensive tone when he heard it, and a little surprised to hear it from a man who struck him on short acquaintance as stolidly self-sufficient.

But at least he isn't a burning-eyed fanatic for the Church Militant. I don't know what sort of commander he makes, but I think I like him as a man.

“Your pardon,” the abbot said, with a self-deprecating gesture. “I'm afraid it's a slightly sensitive subject. I was a soldier myself, before I made my profession as a monk here. Not that long before the Change, as it happens.”

Nigel grinned. “I suspected as much. But after all…Think of Bishop Odo on the field of Hastings—as it happens, some of my ancestors were there with him. And doesn't the Bible say:
Benedictus dominus deus meus qui docet manus meas ad proelium et digitos meos ad bellum!
”

The abbot laughed wholeheartedly, yet with a rueful note below it. “Be careful, Sir Nigel, or I'll start suspecting you're the devil who can quote Scripture! Yet I became a monk and a priest to pray, and to seek God, to find forgiveness for my sins, and to serve His servants, not to wage war, and certainly not to exercise secular authority. Priests advising and criticizing politicians is one thing, priests becoming rulers themselves is altogether another. There may be a worse form of government than theocracy in the long run, but offhand I can't think of any. Even the greatest popes of the Middle Ages weren't up to governing laymen with any credit to themselves or the Church, and I most certainly am not.”

The older monk shook his head at his superior. “
I'm
afraid our holy abbot is still a little resentful that we propelled him into that chair after the Change; and he bellowed like a bull when we insisted on his elevation to a bishopric. We had to nearly
drag
him to his consecration as bishop.”

“There's the example of St. Martin of Tours,” Dmwoski said dryly.

“And as his spiritual counselor I've told him several times not to confuse the virtue of humility with a sinful reluctance to take up one's cross. God obviously sent him to us just before the Change for a reason.”

The abbot shrugged. “Hopefully someday we can return to a life of prayer and labor…ordinary labor, that is. Now, with regard to your plan, Sir Nigel, we have the general outline—”

“It's actually the Clan Mackenzie's plan, Father,” Nigel corrected politely. “I'm one of the Chief's military advisors, no more. And of course the CORA contingent has agreed as well, and the Dúnedain Rangers.”

The abbot nodded. “I have every confidence in Lady Juniper's abilities…and in her advisors, and in Lady Astrid and in…what do they call them these days? The CORA-boys?” A broader smile. “Sam Aylward and I have gotten on very well over the years. We have some things in common.”

Nigel felt a small knot of tension relax in his chest; this was a man he could talk to, and probably persuade. “I realize this is a great risk to ask of you.”

Dmwoski spread his hands. “Much must be risked in war. Yes, we have an impregnable fortress here, but if the Protector's men conquer everything outside, we will eventually starve. Not soon, we've been storing up supplies since we started building the walls, but eventually. And precisely because these walls
are
impregnable, they can be held by a small force. Allowing all our troops to be pinned down here waiting would be foolish…
if
there are allies sufficient to give us some chance of using them decisively outside.”

“And if the Protector is very foolish, Father,” Astrid Larsson said unexpectedly.

The abbot's slightly shaggy eyebrows rose. “You think he will be, my child?”

“He's a wicked man, and an arrogant one,” Astrid said. “The two often make a smart man do stupid things. Oft evil will will evil mar.”

“True.” Dmwoski sighed. “But I have my flock to think of, their children, their lives, their homes and farms, all of which I risk by defying the Protectorate. For that reason, I considered taking his offer of full internal autonomy under his suzerainty, with only a modest tribute to pay—a generous offer, on the face of it.”

The outsiders tensed slightly. Dmwoski's lips quirked. “But only
considered,
and not very seriously. I decided to decline it for two reasons: first, the man's word is not good. Even if I could stomach sending back runaways from his justice, so-called, once he was supreme in these territories, how could I hold him to any of it? Second, I have the souls as well as the bodies of my people to consider; the offer included recognizing his puppet Pope. Bishop Rule was once a good man, and I would have sworn a holy one—”

Father Plank cut in, seeing Nigel's question: “Arminger's antipope. Bishop Landon Rule. Quite legitimately a bishop, and since he collected two more, some of their acts are canonically valid, even legal—bishops can ordain priests, and three bishops can licitly consecrate another, particularly in emergencies and
in partibus infidelorum
when contact with the larger Church is cut off. Claiming the Throne of St. Peter is of course vain and blasphemous presumption, not to mention the atrocities of his Inquisitors and his support of a brutal secular tyranny.”

Dmwoski nodded. “And to think that twelve years ago he ordained
me…
The most charitable interpretation of his actions over the last decade is that he was driven mad by what he suffered after the Change. So many were, of course…I understand that he was captured by Eaters, and freed by Protectorate soldiers. Norman Arminger is deeply wicked, a monster of lust and cruelty and power-hunger, yet his own selfishness and corruption put limits to the damage he can do. But when a good man turns with all his heart to evil, that is truly the nightmare of God. Rule has led many others astray, others who wished sincerely to return to the Faith, by falling in with Arminger's medievalist fantasies and resurrecting the worst evils to which the Church was prey before the modern era.”

Nigel kept his face carefully neutral, a mask of polite interest. He felt an impulse to kick his son in the shin when he heard a slight muffled snort from the younger man's chair.

The abbot shrugged. “Yes, I see your point, Mr. Loring, though your father is too polite to speak. There is an element of the kettle calling the pot black there. We have been deprived of certain things by what I believe to be veritable divine intervention, like that which halted the sun over Joshua or sent the Flood in Noah's time; accordingly we must conclude that those things were vanities, leading us astray, or that they threatened worse consequences than the Change itself.”

Alleyne made a skeptical sound. “Your pardon, Father, but
divine intervention
is a bit of an antiseptic term to describe the worst disaster in human history. And I fail to see how anything could be worse.”

Dmwoski smiled, invincibly courteous. “God's lessons sometimes appear harsh, to our fallible perspective; consider Noah. Or consider what our Lord himself suffered at Gethsemane; without shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin. I always thought that the Flood was a metaphor, but after the Change, who knows? Without the Change, we might have destroyed ourselves altogether, or used genetic engineering and other forms of meddling to abolish genuine humanity from within, perhaps removing death itself, until there was no limit to the cruel empires of pride and lust that we could erect. God knows; I do not. And how will the Change be seen many generations hence? This particular space of years does not gain any special significance because our lives happen to occupy it, remember.”

“That's more or less what many another preacher you hear these days says, some of them—no offense—quite cracked. It's also what Pope Leo proclaims,” Nigel observed.

Dmwoski nodded. “However, Martin Luther—an intemperate and hasty man, but far from a fool—once remarked that humanity is like a drunken peasant trying to ride a horse. We mount, fall off on one side, remount, and fall off on the other. God was undoubtedly telling us something when He sent the Change, but I doubt that His intent was that Holy Church should repeat all the many sins and errors we so painfully repented. We are called, I think, to revive the
best
of our long tradition.”

Alleyne spoke up again, a smile in his voice: “I gather you won't be telling anyone
Slay them all, God will know his own,
then, Father. That's reassuring.”

The churchman raised a hand, acknowledging the point with a rueful lift of an eyebrow. “The Albigensian Crusade was, I will admit, not the Church's high point.”

“Or burning any witches,” Astrid added dryly.

Dmwoski pointed an admonishing finger at her. “No. Mind you, my daughter, your remarkably young Old Religion is patently false, erroneous, conducive to sin in some respects, and—frankly—rather childish.”

Eilir stuck out her tongue, put her thumb to her nose and waggled her fingers defiantly: the two monks chuckled. Plank spoke:

“Yet if mistaken and childish, not altogether evil or utterly damnable…as Rule's twisting of holy things is. A truth perverted is more terrible than any simple mistake, for such evil draws power from the good it warps, and discredits it by association.”

“Exactly,” Dmwoski said grimly. He hesitated, then went on: “I gather you can tell us definitely that the Holy Father did not survive? Rule has been spreading various tales purportedly from the Tasmanian ship that brought you here from England.”

“No, I'm afraid he died in the Vatican, when it was overrun and burned about a month after the Change,” Nigel said. “I led a mission to Italy four years ago on King Charles' orders, primarily to remove works of art or store them safely—a gesture, and a frustrating gesture, since there was so much…In any event, there are groups of civilized survivors in Italy, not just the scattering of neo-savages you find in France or Spain. Some small enclaves in the Alps, a clump of towns and villages in Umbria, and a somewhat bigger clump in Sicily around Enna. Several hundred thousand altogether. They all agree that Pope John Paul refused to leave Rome himself, although he ordered some others out of the city just before the final collapse; the Swiss Guard escorted them. Cut their way to safety, rather.”

The clerics sighed and crossed themselves. “He is with the saints now. There is still some organized presence of the Church there in Italy, then?”

“Yes; at least one cardinal…what was his name, Alleyne? We met him briefly in Magione.”

“A German name, Father Dmwoski…Yes, Cardinal Ratzinger; he was in charge, and had regular links with the other parts of Italy and southern Switzerland.”

“Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger?” Father Plank said, giving Alleyne a keen look as the younger Loring nodded.

Nigel went on: “There was talk of a general Council once regular sea-travel resumes farther afield, to discuss the implications of the Change. Talk of reunion with the Church of England, too. And about eighteen months before we left, we heard that the College had been summoned, though it was expected to take some time—the largest surviving group of Catholics is in South America, of course, and conditions there are chaotic at best and a nightmare at worst. So you gentlemen should have a new pope by now, probably the cardinal we met, though God alone knows when we here will have regular communications with Europe again. I'm sorry we can't give you more details, but we had other priorities.”

Both the clerics looked pleased; the abbot nearly rubbed his hands, and Plank went on:

“Cardinal Ratzinger is an extremely sound man, a theologian of note, with a special devotion to our own St. Benedict. Mother Church is in good hands, then. That's very good news indeed, Sir Nigel, and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.”

My oath, though, that was a strange visit,
Nigel thought as he inclined his head in polite acknowledgment.

He'd always liked Italy before the Change; friends of his had lived in Tuscany, or Chiantishire as it was sometimes called, although he'd found their playing at peasants in the over-restored farmhouses that had once housed real ones rather tiresome. And after the Change, the empty parts of the peninsula were simply more of the all-too-familiar dangerous wilderness, the ruined cities an old story by then. The living Umbrian towns, though…

It was very strange to see the Switzer pikemen under the walls of the Badia…that gave me a bit of a chill. I half expected Sir John Hawkwood and the White Company to come over the hill next, or at least Sigismondo Malatesta and a troop of condottieri.

“The Church spanned the world before air travel,” Dmwoski said stoutly. “Before telegraphs and steamships, for that matter. We have free bishoprics in Corvallis and Ashland and here at Mount Angel, and others within reach—Boise, and the Free Cities in the Yakima country. We Benedictines have carried the torch through a Dark Age before.
Succisa Virescit
—‘pruned, it grows again.' We will knit the threads once more, here and all over the world; the more reason to resist the damnable pretensions of the antipope in Portland.”