Shroud of Shadow (23 page)

He pretended to turn away as though he were going to depart, then abruptly swung back and fixed her with his stare again. “Are you a good Christian, mistress?”

Natil knew that he expected her to answer in the affirmative, knew also that he would then return to his question about why she feared the Inquisition. But she would answer truthfully. “No, Brother Siegfried. I confess that I am a very poor Christian.”

He blinked, sat down. “Ah . . . why is that?”

“I am assailed, brother, by doubts. I am tormented by fear.” She saw Siegfried's personal doubts deepen. Feeling as though she had just seized a venomous serpent by the tail, she continued. “My soul feels empty. My heart is filled with dust.”

Open, direct, true . . . and square on the mark. Siegfried gazed, suddenly, beyond her. His lips moved, the words came whispered. “And yet . . . and yet . . .” But he shook his head as though to clear it. “Why?”

“There is so much wrong in the world. And so little that I can do about it.”

He leaned forward. “Do you believe that?”

“I do.”

A flutter of his office and his determination, then: “Do you not believe that God has a hand in the workings of the world? That He has given us the Church and her holy teachings to guide us toward happiness?”

Natil did not blench. She had to try to save Harold, but first she had to extricate herself from the web of accusation that Siegfried was trying to weave about her. “I believe,” she said, “that human beings are stubborn creatures who turn away from good and embrace that which wounds them.”

Nodding, pensive again, Siegfried missed her equivocation. “So I believe also,” he said, again looking past her. “It is sad. It is so terribly, terribly sad. And I so often wish that God would make His will a little more . . . manifest to us.” He sighed, interlaced his fingers, stared up at the crucifix as though beseeching it. Suddenly: “Do you also wish that, mistress?”

“I wish that the favor of the divine would be poured out upon the earth,” said the harper.

Siegfried seemed struck by the image. “It would be glorious,” he agreed. But the shadow about him deepened. “I suppose that, in the end, we are all poor Christians.”

“We are . . .” The word caught in Natil's throat, but she pried it out. The truth. “. . . human.”

“Errors,” murmured Siegfried. “Errors and lies. The truth is always concealed.” His melancholy was suddenly pierced by his office, like a dark cloud by a flash of lightning. “Have you come to defend Harold?”

“I am not so foolish,” said Natil softly. “I am come because I am his superior, and am therefore responsible for his well being. If he is indeed in your custody, I ask that he be treated fairly, that his moral weakness be considered—”

Siegfried pounced. “Moral weakness?”

Natil smiled softly, cleared her throat. “Brother Siegfried, he is a musician.”

Siegfried colored, but was suddenly suspicious. “Where did you get that honeyed tongue, woman?”

Natil stood up, harp in hand, showing not the slightest shred of fear. In fact, she had nothing to fear. Death or fading: it would at least be an end. “From life, Brother Siegfried.” She started for the door, halted a heartbeat (she knew) before Siegfried opened his mouth to call her back, turned. “Did you wish to accuse me formally?”

At the bald-faced, fearless question, Siegfried started. The Inquisitor was supposed to act, not react. “Of . . . of what?”

“Of heresy. I am a very poor Christian. This I admit freely.”

His opportunity flitted by like a hummingbird . . . and was gone. “Are . . .” He stumbled. “. . . are you trying to be . . . ah . . . better?”

Natil's reply was calm. She was far from her sources of peace, but she remembered what peace had felt like, and she drew upon that memory. “Always. As are you.”

Four and one half billion years had given Natil much time in which to try to be better, and Siegfried was unprepared for the emotion that buoyed up her words like a quiet sea. Again, the Dominican had been caught in a slender web of sympathy and compassion, and, for a moment, Natil saw a flicker in his dark eyes, a flicker that said that, yes, Siegfried was trying, too. Trying hard. But if Siegfried were a Michelangelo attempting to batter Pietà out of his stony soul, then he was a lame Michelangelo whose crippled arms and blunt chisels could do little against the adamantine hardness with which he was faced.

Natil watched the flicker kindle, swell, and die. She sighed.

“Get out,” said Siegfried, falling from sorrow into anger. “Get out. I will see that Harold is treated fairly—” He caught himself. “That is, if we have Harold. I do not know whether we have him here or not. And I might well call you in for questioning at a later date, Mistress . . . ah . . .”

“Natil,” said the Elf, who now knew that there was nothing that she could do here, nothing that Jacob could do, nothing, in fact, that Siegfried could do, either.

The Dominican's glare deepened. “Natil what?”

“Just Natil.”

“Get out.”

As she passed through the door, she glanced back over her shoulder. Siegfried's elbows were on the wooden desk before him, and his face was in his hands. His black, Dominican mantle blended seamlessly with the aura of sadness about him.

Natil watched him for only a moment. For only a moment was it safe to watch. The stars were gone, and with them the shelter of prescience. But the compassion remained, and her inward sigh was gentle:

I am sorry, Siegfried. May you find what blessings you can.

***

Natil returned to the Aldernacht house slowly, reflecting that she, the last Elf, was perhaps the first of her kind ever to leave an interview with an Inquisitor in freedom. But was she, in fact, still an Elf at all? Elves had the stars and the Lady and the certainty of the web of patterns—the Dance—that went on about them. Natil had none of these.

But what did that say then about Hadden and Wheat? They had the stars, but where were the patterns? Where was the Lady? Natil had dreamed at least twice more since they had discovered the firmament within them, but there was still no sign of
Elthia
. Not a word, not a whisper, not a flicker of a Hand.

”You know,” said Wheat, half a world and five hundred years away, “the problem with most things like this is that they always end. You always have to go back to the grind. But I have the feeling that this isn't going to end. Even if we go back to the grind, it won't end. It'll be this way forever.”

“But . . .” Hadden was looking at the highway, his conflicts crumbling away in a wash of starlight. Not a man. What then? It was now more a question of wonder than of fear. “But everything has to end. People get old. People die. It has to end.”

“I wonder,” said Wheat.

And Natil, threading her way through the impoverished streets of Furze, passing hawkers with little to sell, housewives with unfilled baskets, wagons empty save for a barrel or two of the cheapest of wines, was crying. For herself, mainly. But she was crying also for Hadden and Wheat, for people who had not been born, for Elves who did not yet exist.

Forever? Without the Lady? Drifting, abandoned and immortal, through the eons? Drifting until the sun swelled and turned its planets to incinerated husks? Drifting until . . .

She shuddered, sat down on a bench in the bare plaza. Here were no trees, no fountains. Trees and fountains required money. Only the skeleton of Albrecht's aborted cathedral provided a glimpse of something that did not have to do with a desperate scramble for day-to-day bread.

“You must find Her,” she whispered to the unborn, the nonexistent, the future, the possible. “You have to find Her. To live . . . without . . .”

The tears overwhelmed her then, for she had lost Her, had lost everything. She could not even save a wencher of a musician from the claws of the Church. But would Hadden and Wheat be able to do anything more?

”I wonder,” said Wheat.

Natil's eyes were clenched, but for a moment, the unstarred darkness behind her lids was broken by a flicker, an image. Clouds, rain. A dark hillside. A tree, forked at just above ground level, and yellow light streaming through the fork, shimmering amid the falling water like sunlight through a curtain of glass.

Startled, she opened her eyes, sat up, blinked. A woman was standing before her, peering at her anxiously. “Are you a' right?”

Natil recognized her as the convicted heretic with the double crosses. She nodded, still wondering what she had seen. First, a 747, and now . . .

“I am well,” she said. “God bless you, madam.”

The woman nodded. “God bless you.” Another nod, more vigorous. “God bless you!”

Unsteadily, Natil rose, and made her way back to the Aldernacht house. A forked tree . . . and light. What . . . ?

Lost in thought, lost in wonder, she blundered through the door of the house and scuffed up the stairs to Jacob's room. Without noticing that there were a few more servants near the door—and a stranger among them—she knocked, and according to Jacob's standing orders, entered without waiting for any acknowledgment.

She came to her wits inside. Jacob had a visitor. Across the table from her master was a short man with a round face and gray hair. His soutane was piped in purple, and there was an amethyst ring on the middle finger of his right hand; but the soutane was threadbare, the ring was small, and there was a sense of shabbiness about him, as though he too were infected with the constant poverty that was Furze.

The two men looked up from laughing at some joke. Natil bowed, murmured an apology, and was about to withdraw when Jacob waved her in. “Bishop Albrecht, I'll have you meet my harper, Natil. A pretty little find, even for a man who hates music.”

Albrecht smiled. “I like music, Mister Jacob.”

“But I don't,” said Jacob. “Natil, this is Bishop Albrecht.”

Natil, flustered, set down her harp and bowed deeply in the manner of the Elves, touching her forehead and spreading her hands wide. “God bless you, Excellency.”

She suddenly recalled that a curtsy would have been more appropriate for a woman—a human woman—but it was too late now. Albrecht, though, did not appear to notice the irregularity, and to Natil's relief, he did not offer his ring for her to kiss.

“And God bless you, too, Natil!” he said. His voice was dry but hearty, and despite the furrows in his brow, there were laugh lines around his eyes. “God bless you, indeed! We have very little money in Furze, but I always point out that Christ was poor, so perhaps we're that much closer to heaven!”

Natil wondered whether Albrecht realized that, in some circles, his words would put him into prison . . . or into flames.

“Well,” said Jacob, “if that's the case, then I'm good and damned.”

“Oh, dear!” said the bishop. “I pray not!”

But Jacob, though he laughed, sent a knowing look in Natil's direction.
Harold?

The harper sighed, nodded. Her reply was obvious.
They have him. I could do no more.

Jacob's hand clenched on the tabletop, the knuckles turning white, but, outwardly, he was still cheerful. “I was just telling His Excellency here about you, Natil. A world traveler, a talented harper, and a free woman . . . save that at present she happens to be owned by the Aldernachts.”

Unsure of how to answer, still puzzling over the forked tree, Natil only smiled, nodded.

Albrecht was musing. “Natil. A curious name.”

Natil still smiled. “It is my name, Excellency.”

“Ah . . . just so,” said the bishop. “It's still curious though. I was just struck by the fact that I know of another Natil.”

Natil allowed herself to look inquiring.

“Blessed Wenceslas wrote about her in his diary, which the Benedictines of Furze Monastery kindly allowed me to read.” Albrecht coughed, smiled wryly. “Making sure, of course, that I understood what a privilege they were granting me.”

Jacob refilled the bishop's cup with raisin wine. “Haughty bunch, are they?”

“Well,” admitted Albrecht, “they perhaps have some cause. They've had a monastery down south of here for as long as there has been an Adria. Proud, yes, but they're good men. Real men. They believe in what they do, and they hold to Benedict's rule.” He lifted the cup of wine, sipped. “Really, I've utterly no quarrel with them. Poverty, chastity, obedience . . . perhaps a little pride . . .” He sipped again. “But who isn't proud?”

Jacob frowned. “Poverty? The Benedictines?”

“Oh, yes,” said the bishop. “They have some good revenues. But they give most of it away to the poor.” He leaned toward Jacob. “Just between the two of us—and your harper—they're the reason that Furze has survived as long as it has. The nuns up at Shrinerock try, but they're as poor as mice. It's the brothers who have been the real help, though you can be sure they'll never admit it.” He sighed. “It must be nice out there in Furze Monastery, Mister Jacob. But God has called me to Furze itself . . . and to the world.”

There was a wistful light in Jacob's eyes, but his mouth was crooked. “And do they help with the Inquisition, too, Excellency?”

Albrecht came out of his reverie. “Help? Who?”

“The brothers.”

Albrecht's face fell. “Not at all.” For a moment, he brooded on his cup. “The Inquisition doesn't need any help, I'm afraid.”

There was more to his words than mere statement of fact. Standing near the door, still wondering about the vision that had been vouchsafed her, Natil decided that what she was hearing was deep concern and shaken belief.

“Do you not like the Inquisition, Excellency?” she said politely.

Albrecht plainly was torn between speech and silence. While Natil and Jacob looked on, he struggled, debated, and finally chose speech. “A year ago, Mistress Harper, perhaps even a month ago, I would have said that, in its place, the Inquisition was a godly institution. Now, though, I've been thinking about it a great deal . . .” His eyes turned shadowed. “. . . perhaps too much, and I fear I must say that the Inquisition has most assuredly gotten out of its place. It oversteps its proper bounds, makes liars out of the truthful, heretics out of loyal Christians . . .”