The Harp and the Blade (9 page)

“Call them off,” I said, “or I’ll jam this in you and turn it.”

The men, at least, were convinced I meant it and stopped abruptly. She merely stared at me with shocked disbelief, too astonished even to be scared. “You wouldn’t!” she challenged.

“Maybe I oughn’t to,” I admitted, “but it so happens that between my life and yours I’ll choose the former every time. What makes you think I’d be willing to die just because you’re in a bad humor?”

“Nobody said anything about dying,” she protested.

“No,” I snarled, indulging my anger a trifle now that the situation was somewhat under control. “You only wanted your bravos to bully me into apologizing for your rudeness. It so happens I wouldn’t have stood for it. I’d try to finish one with this,” here I exerted a little pressure on the spear, “and then they’d end me.”

She saw I was right, and I knew she merely hadn’t been thinking. Still she no more than myself liked to be menaced and scolded. She maintained a sullen silence, and I went on, more plaintively this time. “I’ve never seen such a country. Every second person I meet tries to kill me.”

“I don’t blame them!” she declared hotly.

“But I do,” I pointed out. “I blame them a lot, especially as all I’ve ever asked here is to be let alone while I go on through as fast as possible. Now shall we call the whole thing quits? I don’t want to hurt anybody, but I don’t want to be hurt, either.”

There was an uncomfortable moment of waiting while her men fidgeted in the background. I found myself noting abstractedly that her blue eyes and clean features rimmed with dark brown hair could make a very sweet picture were she less enraged. In the end she again looked through me.

“I was at fault for noticing a serf’s laugh. There will be no more of this scene.” Taking hold of my hand as if it were something slimy she removed my relaxed fingers from her belt and turned away, a tall, graceful girl. Not once had she shown any nervousness, and considering how nervous I had myself felt I admired her.

She rode away without looking back, but one of her escort lingered behind. “We’ll be around to look for you,” he said, and I knew that was what they would do. The rights and wrongs of the case were of no interest to them. They had not liked to see their charge threatened, the which was natural enough.

When they were out of sight, therefore, I sighed and headed for Thomas’ house, seeing clearly that it was time to be pushing on. Even if the girl’s bodyguards didn’t find me, there were other considerations. I was a half suspect figure and only not a prisoner because they thought I couldn’t get away, weak and horseless as I was. But if Conan died without exonerating me there was no telling what the attitude of his grieving friends would be. As likely as not I’d be not only suspect but convicted and hanged.

Thinking mournfully of the loss of the bay, I took my harp, sword and personal accessories down to the barge, together with a slab of venison and a bearskin. Then I cut both tethers and pushed off downstream. I hadn’t the energy for sculling, but the current was stiff; and unless there were other boats around of which I knew nothing they would have a hard time catching me.

As there were no rocks to worry about I soon sat back, exerting myself only when the barge caught on a jutting bank or low bough. At that time I was making several miles an hour, and the mode of travel was perfect for an invalid. I could generally relax to take leisurely stock of the ever-changing scene, and there was mild warmth with no glare. On the whole I congratulated myself that this trip had been forced upon me.

It wasn’t till the soft dusk had all but passed that I tied up and snuggled into the bear rug to watch the sky deepen richly. Not long after the stars had taken on their full lustre I dropped off, soothed by the faint motion of the boat and by the faint swirling of water around it.

Some animal, attracted, I judged, by the salt savor of human sweat, chewed through the rope, which I’d carelessly looped at too accessible a spot. I awoke during the night to find myself adrift, but I was much too sleepy to be willing to do anything about it. And when I opened my eyes on the day I saw that no obstacle, contrary to expectations, had acted as more than a temporary check. Now broadside to the current, now one end or the other first, downstream the barge went, and I went contentedly with it, making no effort to move until I thought the morning chill must have been thoroughly routed.

The creek was a bit wider, I discovered when I sat up; otherwise the general outlook hadn’t altered. The banks were still thickly wooded to give the impression that no place at all was at hand. Nevertheless, I knew because of the slowed current that the Loire could not be far away. Before the morning was half gone, indeed, I was swept around a bend to behold the bridge that yet carried the old Roman road over the stream.

It was hardly more than two weeks before that I had ridden over that bridge, a whole man who regarded himself as a peaceful wayfarer. Since that day, I reflected moodily, I had scarcely met either man or beast, ranging from pretty girls to wolves, who hadn’t proved actively hostile. So after all I had been through I was back where I started, without a horse, badly hacked, and averaging one enemy
per diem.

Not much beyond the bridge the creek joined the Loire, and directly across from where it did so there stood a monastery. Though some of it was in ruins it was obviously inhabited, and I nodded to myself. Here was where I would finish recuperating.

I was a good half a mile below it before I managed to work myself across. Leaving the barge for who would have it, I hobbled along a narrow road back to the abbey and knocked with the hilt of my sword. I had to repeat the summons, but eventually I heard somebody fumbling with the shot window.

Mean, little eyes set in a flabby face peered out at me. “What do you want?” the porter asked with an abruptness that annoyed me.

“Entry first of all,” I answered.

He continued surveying me, and I was conscious that my clothes, though clean, had had to be liberally patched after the stand with Conan. “Why should I let you in?” he wanted to know.

This was not a man to talk to like Father Clovis. Reaching into my wallet, I extracted a couple of coins and waved them before his widening eyes. “Because I’m a distinguished scholar,” I told him with an abruptness to match his own.

“Oh,” he said. “Come in.” He opened the door and held out his hand; but I brushed past him, closing my own fist on the money.

“This goes to the hospice,” I declared, determined to get credit for my donation where it would do me some good. “I shall give it with the stipulation that some later and less learned guest,” and here I chinked the money under his nose, “shall be entertained for the asking.”

He was both disappointed and miffed, but there was nothing that he could do then. Turning without a word, he led me across the court, which I noticed was paved almost as much with grass as with flagstones. In transit we passed a stout monk with a fringe of gray around his freckled dome. Noticing that he had stopped to stare after me, I looked back. “Aren’t you an Irishman?” he asked in Gaelic.

He was a benevolent-looking old man. I smiled at him. “Yes, Father: like yourself truly ex-isle,” I punned.

He wasn’t interested in my sword or my war-torn raiment. His eyes went to my harp. “You are a bard, my son?”

He was hoping, I could see, that I was not just a minstrel, “I like to think so, Father,” I answered.

He came toward me eagerly. “Have you been trained in the schools? Are you a scholar? “

“No, Father, just a lover.”

“That’s all any of us are.” He was almost afraid to ask the next question. “Have you any books with you?”

“A few,” I replied, pleased to be able to make his eyes light up.

“Could I see them?” he cried, but before I could oblige him he put his hand on my arm. “I am sorry, my son. I see that Father Paul was about to conduct you to the hospice. You’re probably tired and hungry.”

“Having recently slept and eaten well, I am neither, Father.”

His face grew eager again. “Could you spare me a few minutes to show me what you have?”

Considering my plans concerning the monastery that was a trifling request. “Gladly, Father.”

Taking me by the arm, he bustled back whence he had come, asking questions about schools and scholars in Ireland which I answered as best I could. His study, a small room on the second floor, was cluttered with scrolls and sheaves of parchment and vellum. “Nobody else here cares to read,” he confided in me, “so I just moved into the library.”

“I’ll take pleasure in looking over your collection,” I told him. I meant it, too, for he had the look of a man who might possess items I had never seen before.

“Splendid!” he beamed. “Does that mean you’re going to remain with us for a while?”

“If I may, Father?”

“Of course, you may. You see, the Abbot’s gone to Rome to try to get money for us to rebuild; and I’m Prior, so if I say you can stay it’s all right.” He looked at me anxiously as if he wasn’t sure I’d believe he held such a position of importance.

“That’s fine,” I applauded.

“I’m not a very good prior, I fear, because I spend too much time with the books. But somebody has to. Nobody else cares,” he said again.

Opening my scrip, I drew forth the tiny collection I carried with me: the
Georgics,
a miscellany of Latin poems and songs, Horace’s
Ars Poetica
, two tales of Finn, a lay of Walter, a ballad of Roland, and assorted pieces of my own. With the exception of the latter he was familiar with almost all that I had to offer, but just to be able to handle them and to talk them over with someone who was interested was ecstasy for him.

Only in the miscellany did he find a couple of items that were new to him, and those he promptly scooped into his mind. As to my own compositions, though I warned him with an unwonted humility that he might find nothing in them to interest so informed a person, he protested his anxiety to read them also.

“Virgil was not born with the
Aeneid
in his hand,” he told me. “Nor was it famous till men had read it.” He put my poems in a compartment of his cabinet. “I’ll read these when I have the time to give them a considered perusal.”

To see that devotee handling my work with the same loving carefulness with which he touched the books of the provedly great moved me a great deal. “Father,” I said, “as a token of my appreciation of your courtesy in permitting me to stay here, I hope you’ll accept the Latin anthology for your library.”

“Oh, thank you very much my son, but—” I saw him resolve to refuse my gift and saw the resolution break down: A new book didn’t come his way every day, and the thought of one swelled his heart.

My spontaneous offer won him, just as he had already won me by his passion. From then on we talked in the knowledge that a friendship we would both enjoy was taking on stature while we spoke. Then a bell sounded, and he rose regretfully. “I have other duties to attend to, but you can stay here and read if you like.” He paused at the door. “I hope you’ll eat with us at the refectory, though perhaps you’d really prefer the hospice where you can have silent meditation during the meal.”

“Oh no,” I assured him, “I think it would be sinful pride to feed on my own thoughts when I could be sharing those of one so much wiser.”

He blushed. “I’ll see you at the table then, my son.”

He left, and I stretched contentedly before picking up a scroll. I was home.

T
HE
Monastery of St. Lucien was very different from the last one I had visited. It had been looted and burnt by the Danes twice within the past thirty years, and since the last attack it had never been fully rebuilt. Nor had it regained more than half its original complement of monks, and this remnant was an ill-organized body without impulse toward either religious or social achievement. The disorderly times had cut them off from the inspirational nourishment that could come from the sense of being a unit of the Pope’s great organization; and they lacked the man to make the abbey strong by itself.

As for the monks, most of them had been frightened out of the world into a life which called for a mysticism they had not. It was a definite place to be in a land that offered them no other comfortable one, but though a few took to the life the rest remained in a state of relieved puzzlement. They had a way of living that in general was less harried than that of other men, but they didn’t know quite what they were supposed to be doing.

Discipline was not there to supply some sort of substitute for feeling, and ritual itself had inevitably become debased in the hands of men who didn’t understand it. Only a handful could read better than haltingly, and an untrained mind cannot be expected to grasp the philosophic rewards of self-denial. In consequence they were neither citizens of the world nor dignified exiles from it. They were just slovens of life.

There was one in particular, on the other hand, who made himself an exception by the hardy practicality with which he viewed the monastery and ascetic vows. Not bad company when it was too hot to want to think, he was an ardent fisherman, and I often joined him. Drowsy with repletion, I’d dangle a line from the bank or lounge to troll from a drifting boat. The heavy heat of midsummer made me disgruntled when fish caused me the effort necessary to haul them up, but to do them general justice accidents of that kind were rare.

Father Gaimar, however, was a highly successful angler, although he never allowed even fishing to interrupt for long his inexhaustible flow of narrative. The pole star of his wit was concupiscence, and his reminiscences, too, were salty to a degree. Even making allowance for the heroic lying symptomatic of the promiscuous he must have been a man of varied experience.

A fish nibbled, and I made a dutiful effort to hook it. I failed, smiled contentedly, and yawned. “What’s a whoremonger like you doing in a monastery?” I asked.

“Keeping out of trouble. You don’t got to marry ‘em, and you don’t got the temptation of telling ‘em you’re going to. They know what the set-up is, so everything is fair like it should be.” He was quite serious, for once, a man who had found the ideal existence and was giving the key to a friend. I had an enchanting vision of the whole mighty structure of the Church being created through the centuries by the martyred saints so that Gaimar could fornicate with a clear conscience, but he couldn’t see why I laughed.