Shroud of Shadow (15 page)

“Hate it,” he said. “Bunch of garbage. Bird farts. But I'm paying you, so I suppose I ought to get my money's worth.”

He seemed to enjoy Natil's discomfiture. Natil glanced at the sun. Two hours to terce. She thought of Omelda.

***

George awoke in Sally's bedroom, opened his eyes to a darkened ceiling.
I must have fallen asleep
, he thought.

They had left the diner with the dawn, and what Sally had wanted was to go home, to eat a breakfast that was, for her, dinner, to talk. And so they had gone to her little apartment, and she had eaten, and they had talked . . . and all the while, the spell had grown on them. Toward mid-afternoon, Sally had arisen to brew coffee, and George had stared, stricken dumb at the sight of the aura, as of silver, that had flickered across her bare arms and throat and face, adding an opalescent sheen to features that had already turned unutterably beautiful to his eyes.

And she, in turn, had come back to the tiny living room of her apartment only to stand in the doorway with the liquid in the cups trembling in the afternoon light . . . because her hands had been shaking . . . because she had been seeing the same thing in George.

It was mad. It was crazy. Things like this did not happen, and those who insisted otherwise were best confined, kept off the streets. But it
was
happening, and as George lay awake in the darkness of the bedroom with Sally a bare, sleeping presence at his side, he found himself torn between all the normalcy he had ever wanted—the normalcy he had left behind—and all the wonder of what lay ahead . . . if he would but accept it.

Perhaps he and Sally had both been searching for a little of that normalcy when they had made love, but the wonder had been there, too, inescapable, and it had abruptly taken them both beyond the common love of man and woman—love tainted with the questions of dominance and vulnerability so intrinsic to any mortal endeavor—into something that was a melding of spirit and soul, and then beyond even that into realms that had nothing to do with man or woman or even with anything human: a widening of the heart that had extended their expression of erotic esteem first to the land, then to the world, and then, sweeping them out to the edges of all that they could imagine, to the universe, until they had drifted in a profound silence, weeping at what had become of them . . . because it was so terrible, because it was so wonderful.

And afterward, as George, still trembling, had stared into Sally's very blue eyes, he had seen that they had been touched with a light like that of the stars, and it had occurred to him then—incongruously but appropriately—as it again occurred to him now, that
Sally
was a poor name for someone who had such light in her eyes, such breadth to her heart, who had seen the wheat as he had seen the mountains, who had taken those tossing golden fields into her soul.

“Wheat,” he said softly.

Beside him, she stirred. “Huh?”

“Wheat.” It seemed so obvious. “That's who you are. Wheat. That's your name.”

A low, sleepy laugh. The laugh of a woman who knew the truth when she heard it. “And what am I supposed to call you? Mountain?” Another laugh.

He lifted a hand, saw a flicker about it, realized suddenly that the dark ceiling was no longer quite so dark to him, that he was seeing it in soft shades of lavender and blue.

He caught his breath. His heart was suddenly throwing itself against the inside of his chest as though struggling back toward a former life. But that life was far away now. Even last night, when, stubble-faced and ripe with the odors of a man, he had driven through the mountains . . . even last night was far away.

“Mountain man,” she laughed. And then she choked. “Dear God. What's happening to us?”

When she lifted her head, he noticed that she looked younger. Her face had altered subtly, too: something about the cheekbones. This was Sally and yet not Sally. And then he realized that this was not Sally at all. Sally was gone. This was Wheat.

He was afraid. Afraid of what was coming. Afraid that he could not stop it. Afraid that he
could
stop it. Afraid to try either way.

But Wheat was staring at him in the darkness of the room that he knew was no darker to her eyes than to his. And he could guess a little of what she was seeing. “You've . . . changed . . .” she said.

“Yeah . . .” he said. “I guess so.”

Again, he lifted a hand. The shimmer about it was clear: a shadowed silver. Some of the roughness was gone from the fingers, some of the squareness from the palm. And when he closed his eyes to sigh softly with the air of a man confronted with the incomprehensible, he saw another shimmer, one that bordered on the familiar. Eyes closed, he stared at it for a moment, puzzling over yet another puzzle, then gave up.

Wheat sat up, looked at her hands, her arms. Slowly, she traced a finger along her softly luminous skin, felt her face. Another laugh, but nervous now. “I . . . I imagine we'll wake up tomorrow morning . . . and this will be ri—” She touched her face again. Familiar, and yet not. “—diculous.”

“You sure?”

“No.”

George nodded.

She was peering at him again. “What do you want me to call you?”

“Huh?”

She shrugged as though she had been caught playing a silly children's game, as though she did not give a damn that she had been caught. “I'm Wheat now. Who are you?”

He shrugged. “Who should I be?”

“Not George. Not anymore. Do you have a nickname?”

“In high school, they called me Lumpy.”

Her laughter was as a sound of bright bells, and she covered her face. “We'll have to try something else. What's your middle name?”

“Hadden.”

She lifted her face from her hands. “Oh . . . how lovely.”

Her language, he noticed, was changing. So was his. There was a lilt in their speech. But, yes, it was a lovely name. “It was my grandmother's maiden name.”

“It's you.”

He nodded. He knew that.

“OK, Hadden,” she said. “By the way: you're glowing.”

He took a deep breath. “I know.”

“Are you scared?”

“Shitless.”

Wheat passed a hand through her dark hair. Even the individual strands seemed to glisten now. “You know,” she said, “I have a feeling that if we really rejected this, if we really didn't want it, we could make it go away.”

A long silence. A truck passed, westbound, on distant I-70. In the kitchen, the refrigerator came on.

“Is that what you want?” Hadden said at last.

Another silence. Then: “No.”

“Same here.”

Arms about one another, then, they lay back down, kissed, and drifted back off into sleep with the certain knowledge that when they awoke, the last shreds of George and Sally would be gone, purged away by the light and the wonder. Frightening though that was, Hadden was looking forward to it, looking forward to a morning that could not be glorious when suffused with so much and such inner radiance.

Natil dreamed. Albrecht fretted.

There was only a little moonlight to break the deep darkness of midnight, and in it the columns of the unfinished and roofless cathedral stood like the fingers of pale hands that stretched up toward heaven, begging to be made complete. From the apse triforium—the only part of the gallery that existed—the bishop could see them glimmering, beseeching . . . incomplete. Terribly incomplete.

The apse and the choir, the columns, and no more than that. There was no glass for the few window apertures, no floor in the nave save earth, no west wall, not even a plan for a rose, not a trace of a tower.

For a time, Albrecht considered what he saw—and what he did not see—and then, with a sigh that told of sleeplessness and nocturnal melancholy, he sat down on the edge of the gallery (careful that his undependable knee did not suddenly pitch him headlong into empty air) and let his feet dangle. One hundred and twenty feet below him lay as much of the marble floor as had ever been laid, the legacy of Blessed Wenceslas, who, almost a century ago, had confronted the devastation left by the free companies and met it with the foundations of a cathedral.

But the money had not been there, and the beginnings had remained beginnings: the foundations, a few walls, some columns. Albrecht had added to them, had managed to push the apse and choir walls a little higher and top them with a gallery, but it was still only a beginning.

And so it would remain, it seemed, because . . . because of Siegfried . . .

Albrecht could not be certain—indeed, given the secrecy of the Inquisition, he could be certain of absolutely nothing—but he was beginning to suspect that Siegfried's unauthorized visitation at Shrinerock Abbey had been but the shilling in the armpit that indicated a great and deeply entrenched ill; and the ache that had begun gnawing at his stomach made him think that perhaps a shilling in the armpit might have been more reassuring. At least one did not have to live with plague for very long.

Unwilling as yet to confront the Inquisitor directly, Albrecht had asked questions where he could, and had rapidly discovered that no answers would be forthcoming. Casual visits with Siegfried's ministers and subordinates resulted only in casual conversations. Formal interviews yielded polite but firm reminders of the privacy and autonomy of the Inquisition and its immunity from local (local!) interference. Albrecht had even attempted to enter the House of God, but had not been admitted. Siegfried's orders, it seemed.

Convinced, as he had always been, that his work lay invariably with souls, and that bureaucracy and politics were, just as invariably, impediments to that work, Albrecht had, he now realized, allowed the episcopal power in Furze to slip away from him. Away from him . . . and toward Siegfried. Even the cathedral chapter—the chapter to whom it was but a mere technicality that no cathedral actually existed—seemed much more concerned about the Inquisitor's opinions and plans than about Albrecht's. And, worse, the treasurer of the fabric fund had been unwilling even to discuss the moneys that, penny by trickling penny, had been building up since construction on the cathedral had tottered to a halt five years before.

Albrecht put his face in his hands, stared down between his fingers. The marble floor was a pale blankness some twenty fathoms below.

Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. Albrecht did not normally consider matters of money save as they involved the worship of God or the bare essentials of his office, but he had suddenly begun to wonder how Siegfried was managing to pay all the ministers, officers, beadles, secretaries, notaries, and (the bishop mentally crossed himself) torturers he employed. The money and property confiscated from heretics counted for something, to be sure, but Furze was a poor town: even the heretics were poor. Siegfried's expenses were great. The fabric fund had grown by mites into something that might raise the west wall someday, but the treasurer did not want to talk about it.

And that meant . . .

Albrecht did not want to think about it.

. . . that meant that . . .

The bishop was struggling in vain with his suspicions when the sound of footsteps came from the stairway up to the arcade. It was very dark, and not until the visitor spoke did Albrecht know him.

“A fine evening, Excellency.”

“Oh! Hello, Mattias. What are you doing up here?”

The clerk's smile was evident in his voice. “Watching over my superior, Excellency. I heard you got out, and when you did not return, I thought I might find you here.”

“Well,” said Albrecht, “you were right. Come, Mattias: sit. I can use the company. Let's talk about . . . about . . .”

“Cathedrals?” said Mattias, coming closer.

“No,” said Albrecht quickly. “About . . . say . . . Furze. Jacob Aldernacht will be arriving in the city shortly. What news is there?”

Mattias settled himself cross-legged on the floor . . . a good ten feet from the edge over which Albrecht was still dangling his feet. “Well,” he said, “there certainly has been discussion in the cooperative. Paul and James were in favor of a splendid display upon Jacob's arrival. But our good Simon, with characteristic Hebrew wisdom, counseled that such diversions would convince our guest that his services—and his money—might not be as desperately needed as he thought.

Albrecht laughed. “What will it be, then?”

“The wisdom of the Jew, and the welcome of peasants,” said Mattias. “Good food made by wifely hands, and backslaps all around.”

“Jacob Aldernacht will like that,” said Albrecht. “He prides himself on being a businessman. A peasant. I've heard that he just turned down a patent of nobility from the king of France.”

“Ummm . . .” said Mattias. “That might well have been pride. Or pure economics. The king wanted to borrow money for the Italian Wars and offered the grant as full payment.”

Money. There it was again. But was that not the way it was these days? Money, money, and more money. Albrecht covered his face again. Mattias was suddenly solicitous. “Would Your Excellency like to be helped back to bed?”

“It would be a waste of time,” said Albrecht. He was tempted to add
and of money
, but he did not.

Mattias said nothing, but Albrecht thought he detected a nod of understanding from the shadow that was the clerk.

“You've seen the world, Mattias,” he said after a time. “What do . . .” But, no, he did not want to hear what Mattias might say about the fabric fund. His chief clerk had a sophisticated and unprovincial mind: he might speak the truth . . . and Albrecht did not want to hear the truth. So, instead: “What do you think of Siegfried of Madgeburg?”

The bishop felt Mattias's glance as though the clerk had tapped him on the shoulder. “I believe he is a very ambitious man.”

Not at all what Albrecht wanted to hear. “Ambitious?” he said, still trying to deny his own suspicions. “Why do you say ambitious, Mattias? Siegfried is a holy man.”

Again, there was a smile behind Mattias's words. “Ah, Excellency, there are all kinds of ambition, even among holy men. In the years before Saint Benedict gave his rule to the monastic life, hermits often vied with one another in the severity of their practice. They would mortify their flesh in ever-harsher ways, attempting to demonstrate their holiness to one another. In that, they were ambitious. I think that Siegfried, though he may not know it, is ambitious in much the same way.”