The Harp and the Blade (4 page)

Impotent to take it out in any other way, I stood and howled my fury like a child. “You thieving night crawler! You bat’s louse!”

All I got in return was laughter and the valedictory retort, which undoubtedly gave him a great deal of satisfaction: “I didn’t think you’d care.”

It was an hour before I ceased mouthing oaths, as different aspects of the enormity that had been perpetrated upon me kept cropping up in my mind for wrathful consideration. Nobody but a priest could share a man’s hospitality, butt into his personal affairs, exact a penance that was to his own advantage, and leave with the additional pleasure of feeling self-righteous.

Thus I fretted out the nub of the night, growing more miserable as it waxed progressively cooler and the wine ebbed in me. Then with the first light I plodded through the cold, dew-soaked heather to find another unpleasant surprise. Some rodent had gnawed its way into my scrip and eaten my small stock of provisions. I looked at the dolmen and shook my fist. All that would be needed to make disaster complete would be the loss of my horse. Thoroughly disgusted with an ill-run world, I started to search for him.

A
LITTLE
scouting around showed me that the bay, whether or not he had been stampeded by wolves, had strayed north up the road. By that time I was so accustomed to bad chance that I would have suspected trickery if anything pleasant had happened. That wine-stealing Judas of a Pictish wizard was doubtless responsible for everything, and my only recourse was to get out of his domain. Feeling much put upon, I wrapped my saddle and smaller belongings in my cloak and slung the whole over my shoulder. My harp, which I usually so carried when afoot, I tucked under my arm.

Walking thus loaded didn’t help my hunger or my disposition, but it warmed me up in short order. My burdens were not too heavy, but they were awkward; and a long sword wasn’t designed for a pedestrian. In consequence, though the new sun was soon lighting a very fair day I wasn’t favorably impressed. I don’t suppose I’d gone more than three miles before I caught sight of the horse, but it seemed as if I’d been walking for a week.

When I called wheedingly the animal looked up from some young shoots it had been nibbling and trotted a ways further. Restraining the impulse to run in pursuit, I put down my things and commenced stalking. It teased me for more than a mile, but, finally perceiving that it was not going to be allowed to eat in peace, it yielded. It was laughing at me, having enjoyed the fun thoroughly, but I was so pleased I condoned its misplaced humor. The bay’s recapture marked the first good thing that had happened since finding the dolmen, and I hoped that my ill luck was ended.

After retrieving my gear, which had not, as I had half anticipated, been somehow stolen I pushed on at a stiff pace. With a horse under me my appetite no longer seemed likely to prove mortal, and I regained much of my lost good humor. Till well past noon I passed nothing of man’s save a couple of burned-down shacks, but that didn’t much matter. I was traveling in fine, new country on a fine, new day, and the road could be counted on to take me somewhere. Even the food problem wasn’t insoluble. As I told the bay with a cheerfulness he might have thought in bad taste, I could always eat horse meat.

The road had been dipping into and out of a series of small, shallow valleys, and from the top of one of the dividing hills I at last saw what looked to be an abbey. My surmise was correct. In another half hour or so I rode into a wide sweep of field under cultivation, with a monastery, possessing on closer inspection many of the aspects of a fortress, as its hub.

Whether the force came from piety or arms, strength was present. There was an air of settled prosperity rarely found; and the peasants didn’t run at the sight of me or even appear concerned beyond a natural curiosity.

As I approached the abbey gates I examined the place with interest. It was a genuine stronghold all right, and no doubt needed to be. There was a huge, iron knocker, but just as I was about to dismount and use it a long, raw-boned monk appeared on the top of the wall and looked me over leisurely. “Good afternoon,” he finally said. I liked the looks of his rugged, weather-beaten face, but his tone was not encouraging. “Have you business at St. Charles?”

He spoke in Latin, which proved that I had found a monastery where some tradition of learning was remembered. After turning my horse so that he could see my harp, I answered in kind, asking courteously for entertainment.

“Another minstrel,” he said without inflection.

“No,” I corrected him with a touch of pride, “a maker.” Then, as that did not appear to impress him sufficiently, I added: “And a scholar.”

“You don’t look like a priest,” he pointed out.

Several comments occurred to me, but I refrained from giving voice to them. “All cannot be fathers of the Church,” I answered instead. “Some of us have to content ourselves with being merely sons.”

He grinned at that, and I began to hope that we might get on. “That’s a remarkably long sword for a poet.” He hesitated just long enough. “And a scholar.”

I understood his attitude. Every petty faction had its spies and secret agents, so every stranger was automatically suspect. “Alas!” I droned, “a peaceful man and a Christian meets many who are not either these days and must protect the life God gave him as best he may.”

“H-m-m. Where are you from, Christian?”

“I’m an Irishman and don’t care what wolves eat what part of the Empire. Now speaking of eating, that’s something I haven’t done all day.” While making this remark, I took the precaution of shifting my wallet so that the coins in it clinked musically.

His face became broodingly solemn. “You will be welcome to the hospice, my son,” he said after a fitting pause for consideration.

Once I was inside he pointed out the guest house to me, then led me across the court to the stables. But things were not to my mind yet. The meager food of the hospice would serve in a pinch, but the monks were a hearty, well-fed crew. Their table, I judged, would be worthy of an appetite such as mine.

“What’s your name, Father?” I asked my guide, who was appraising the bay with an expert’s eye.

“Clovis.”

“I’m Finnian and, as I’ve told you, a bard. When the fathers gather at the refectory couldn’t I show my gratitude for the abbey’s hospitality—in addition, of course, to my contribution for the poor—by reciting for them?”

He gave the horse a final, approving pat. “Have you poems worthy of these holy premises?”

“Oh no, not worthy,” I said cautiously, “but possibly acceptable.”

He rubbed his chin, and the sleeve of his gown fell back to show a big scar, not long healed. If that hadn’t been made by a sword there would have been no use in his telling me so, for I wouldn’t have believed him. “I haven’t the authority to give you permission, even though I think gratitude is a very fine thing.” That man and I understood each other perfectly. “But if you should come to the refectory when the bell rings,” he suggested, “you could make your request to the Prior. Father Walter, our abbot, is not expected until somewhat later.”

I caught a little sleep but made sure to be ready when the fathers filed in to dine. Father Clovis was friendly enough not only to present me but to state my purpose to the Prior, a small, alert, old man, who looked at me with some dubiety. “What had you in mind to offer us, my son?” he inquired. The monks were a noisy, cheerful lot; and they had reason to be. My mouth watered at sight of what was being set before them. “I know poems of all sorts, the works of others as well as my own poor efforts.” I hesitated, then threw out a feeler. “The tale of a holy martyr might be too discouraging to weaker servants of God.”

“That’s sometimes true, my son.”

The brothers, I observed, were not confining their talk to religious matters. “But good counsel,” I pursued, “can be contained in other things as well as in sermons.”

“An interesting observation,” the Prior commented, looking more cheerful.

I knew them then, “I will give you,” I said boldly, “a shocking song about the fate of a monk at St. Sulpice.”

Poking libelous fun at the inmates of another abbey is one of the oldest and most reliable tricks in the book, provided one is certain of one’s audience. All that’s necessary is to pick out a rival monastery, preferably one in the vicinity, and make the necessary trifling alterations in the rhyme scheme. The Prior’s eyes gleamed, but his face did not otherwise change. “We are willing to profit by the mistakes of those at St. Sulpice. Proceed, my son.”

He rapped for silence, and I saw that the monks quieted instantly. There was discipline here for all the general air of rough and ready casualness. While I announced my intention I was fitting the name “St. Sulpice” into the poem. Then I struck a couple of jaunty chords on my harp and began:

A sacristan at St. Sulpice

Admired his virtue without surcease,

And, being mentally undersized,

He shortly was self-canonized;

But he did not come To Halidome,

A fact at which he is still surprised.

I played a little running tune before the next strophe while I looked around. They were encouragingly attentive.

He lived on weeds and cockroach soup

And roomed with a he-goat with the croup,

Then celebrated these foolish facts

With vilely worded, mile-long tracts

Whose vomitous cant

Showed just how scant

Piety is in a show-off’s acts.

At St. Sulpice, though, wits are dim:

They loved this prig and boasted of him.

No one could equal him, they agreed,

At saving sinners by word and deed—

The Devil, they claimed Could be so tamed

By that old ass that he’d say the Creed!

When Satan heard these words he laughed

And came to challenge the mad monk’s craft;

But he, too witless to be afraid,

Produced the latest tract he’d made,

And the Devil winced

At grammar minced

And words strung out in a fool’s parade.

Satan whistled and shook his head.

“Well, St. Sulpice is the first, ” he said,

“Abbey in which I’ve ever been—
”

I had counted on that line for a laugh, and I got it.

“The rest have never asked me in
—

But I’ve never yet,

Wherever met,

Failed to detect a cardinal sin.

“Pride,” said Satan, “is what you’ve got,

An excellent sin: it tops the lot.

And I’ll take all your tracts, what’s more

For though I’ve tortures by the score

I never had known,

Till just now shown

By you, the agony of a bore.”

That sacristan of St. Sulpice

Is frying now in his own thin grease,

While Hell’s most stubbornly hardened souls,

Who’d scorned to notice white-hot coals,

All writhe and sigh

And, unmanned, cry

At having read his monstrous scrolls!

Their applause was generous but not in itself nourishing or thirst-quenching. I managed to catch Father Clovis’ eye and raised my brows pointedly. He winked and rose to the occasion. “Perhaps, Father,” he addressed the Prior, “the learned poet would consent to share our small meal and entertain us again after dinner.”

“If he so wishes, he is welcome,” the other answered, and after thanking them I made dignified haste to occupy one of a number of vacant places. It was grand food in unlimited quantities, and I had just the appetite to cope with it. Having completed a manful job, I filled my glass with their white wine, which I had found especially good, and sat back to hold up my end of the conversation.

It promised to be a pleasant evening, for if, to judge from their discourse, the fathers did not run to profundity of scholarship, they were good fellows of reasonable education. The complexion of affairs changed in a minute, however. A priest followed by six other monks entered, and we all rose in greeting.

It was then that I saw what gave the place its air of having a backbone. The first monk was the Abbot, a broad-shouldered man with a strong, calm face. He himself said little, falling heartily to eating, but the turn of the talk was more businesslike after his arrival. It was evident from the words of the other newcomers that they had been on a scouting and skirmishing expedition. I had been right in appraising the place as one-part fort to one-part house of God.

A local faction, meaningless to me, was the chief subject of discussion so I kept silent and drank contentedly enough. The longer they sat and talked the more wine I’d have time to get under my skin. I was eventually conscious, though, that the Abbot had finished and was looking at me with his keen, wide-set eyes. “Who are you, my son?” he asked bluntly when I met his gaze.

“Finnian, Father. An Irish bard.”

They were all looking at me now, Father Clovis sardonically, the rest with curiosity or suspicion. The monastery was off the main ways, although most likely it could be reached by more traveled roads than the one which had led me there. Still it was a time when all strangers must account for their presence plausibly. “I landed at Nantes a few days ago. My plan was to go to Tours,” I told him.

His sonorous voice grew deeper. “You are sadly off your path then.”

I held his eyes steadily. “I had to change my plans, Father.”

“Why?”

It was chancy, for I couldn’t know what alliances anybody around there had, but I decided there’d be a larger percentage of risk in evasion. “There’s a man south of here called Chilbert who doesn’t like me. I’m trying to skirt around his territory.”

I had said something then, for the monks stared at me or whispered asides to each other. The Abbot thought it over and rose abruptly. “Come with me, my son. I’d like to talk to you.”