Shroud of Shadow (38 page)

The leader hefted his sack. Yes, eloquently heavy. His eyes, bright, seemed suspended between eagerness and suspicion.

“Go ahead, man,” said Jacob. “Open it.”

He did. The florins poured into his hand with a shiny clink.

“Where's Natil?”

The guard looked up at Jacob as though trying to think of an acceptable answer. “Uh . . . why . . . I . . .”

Jacob leaned down, spectacles glinting. “Just
tell
me, man.”

“She cam this way two days ago,” said the guard, his eyes turning avaricious and his hand shutting firmly on the gold. “We were just about to close up for the night. The girl was wi' her, and . . .” He hesitated.

Jacob caught the potential dissemblance. “And
what
?” said the rich man.

“. . . uh . . . and then she went off into town. The girl looked sick. Crazy.”

“Sick?”

“Fevered. They went off. Really.”

“Sure they did,” said Jacob, glaring. “And then you went off, too, didn't you?”

“I . . .”

“Come on, out with it. Who's paying you now?”

“I . . .” But he could not seem to get the words out. “I . . .”

Jacob grimaced. “Never mind, idiot. You've told me everything.” Ignoring the toll basket—he had, after all, just given every one of the guards enough money for a house and a business of his own—he rode on into the city. Manarel and the Aldernacht soldiers followed.

The streets were narrow and pinched, and the faces Jacob saw were narrow and pinched, too. Most of the townsfolk went about their business as though their acts were dictated by the dust at their feet. A few, though, seemed to be watching everything in a way that reminded Jacob of the avarice that had so abruptly kindled in the gate guard's eyes.

Manarel trotted up beside Jacob. “Natil may well have left the city, master.”

“Oh, she's here,” said Jacob, glancing around. Furze suddenly looked as tawdry and sordid as his own house. What kind of vipers lived here? The same kind as lived under the motto
In the name of God and profit
. Furze was simply a little more honest in its display of poverty. “If that girl was sick, Natil was probably looking for help.”

He glanced at Manarel. The steward was looking down the street, his eyes narrowed.

“Out with it. I
already
pay you, Manarel.”

“I . . .” Manarel passed a hand across the stubble of his beard. “I didn't know Omelda very well. She worked in the kitchen, and I had other responsibilities. But I noticed that she was . . .” He hesitated, choosing his words. “. . . droopy. She never did look well. And then there was that other girl who went off without leave.”

Jacob was startled. “What other girl?”

“Kitchen wench,” said Manarel. “She'd been complaining about . . .” He flushed.

“Out with it, man.”

“About Edvard and Norman,” Manarel finished. “She'd been hurt,” she said. She left about two months ago. The boys made sure that no one made anything of it.” Manarel looked plainly uncomfortable. “I suspect that something was happening.”

Jacob suddenly comprehended. Jacob had his money, Francis had his tobacco, and Edvard and Norman had something else. And now Jacob knew exactly what that little whore had been doing in his room, who had brought her there, and why she had been so utterly terrified, just as he understood the meaning of the bloody footprints in Natil's room, and her sudden flight with Omelda.

The frost in his heart turned to ice, spread. Such was the stuff that had oozed from his loins.

“I'll settle them,” he said aloud. “I'll settle them. One way or another. I'll settle them all.” He looked up at Manarel. “Let's find Natil.”

The steward nodded. “Very good, master. But how? Furze is poor, but not small. Natil could be anywhere.”

“That's true, Manarel. But I've got money, and money can do anything. Particularly here.” Jacob gestured at the people in the street. “Look at them. Whoever buys their next meal, buys their souls. They'd sell their parents to the Turk slavers for a fraction of what I just gave away at the gate, and I've got plenty more with me. I'll find out where she is. But . . .”

He lifted his head. Not far up the street, the House of God lifted into the air a tower as stiff and hard, he thought, as a rapist's prick.
Elves
, Natil had said. But though it could not have had anything to do with Elves, her young face had been solemn, her blue eyes downcast.

The guard at the gate had said everything. Jacob shook his head. “But I'm afraid I already know.”

***

Veni Creator Spiritus, mentes tuorum visita
. . .

Prime. Prime in Furze, prime everywhere. In the monasteries and convents of Adria, as indeed in all of Europe, monks and nuns were filling their chapels and abbey churches with song. It was Whit Monday, only a day past Pentecost, and in countless naves and cells and cathedrals, hymns to the Holy Spirit, to reified divine love, floated up to heaven.

Imple superna gratia
. . .

And Omelda heard the hymns as she had always heard them, whether sleeping in fields or in the beds of strange men, whether eating or working or being systematically brutalized into sepsis by the attentions of Edvard and Norman. She had heard them in Shrinerock Abbey. She heard them now as she lay on a stone shelf in a dark cell in the House of God.

Tu septiformis munere
. . .

She had no idea where she was: that cognizance had fled before the slow fire of her inwardly rotting flesh. But though her knowledge was restricted to the fact that her surroundings were dark and quiet, her awareness registered that Natil had, once again, deserted her. In the swampy whirl of thoughts that was all that her fever had left to her, Omelda knew that she was alone.

Tu rite promissum Patris, sermone ditans guttura.

She was now as she had begun, as she had always been. Alone. Alone with her mind. Alone with the plainchant.

. . .
infirma nostri coporis virtute firmans perpeti
.

Nothing. Nothing and no one. Just herself and the chant.

Hostem repellas longius
. . .

Loneliness. Terrible loneliness. Cold loneliness. The loneliness of a mind isolated, forsaken.

And so, as she had once before—prod in her anus and teeth in her thigh—scraped out a little hollow of comfort in the impersonal lines of chant, so she now turned once again to the syllables and the tones,making of them a kind of a chill and yet strangely accepting refuge from present and past madness, crawling therein, surrendering what was left of her consciousness to the chill embrace of monody.

Deo Patri sit gloria . . .
It was all she had. . . .
et Filio, qui a mortuis . . .
It was all she had ever had. . . .
surrexit ac Paraclito . . .
Music, chant: the deliberate fusion of will and body and spirit into something that rose beyond mortal concerns . . . and into the infinite.

. . .
in saeculorum saecula. Amen.

***

Half-naked, in chains, Natil walked unassisted and unmolested from her cell to the door of the tribunal chamber. And though one of her guards could not resist a final shove and therefore put up his hands to thrust her into the room, the starlight warned Natil, and she turned.

“Honored sir,” she said politely, “pray do not disgrace yourself.”

Her eyes met his, and after a long moment, he lowered his gaze.

Natil passed through the door and into a large chamber that was lighted from the north by high windows. Behind the narrow tables that ran along the right and left walls were seated a scattering of secretaries and scribes and a few men whom she surmised were doctors of canon law. Before her, though, was a squat desk, and facing her across its three or four feet of dark wood was Siegfried of Madgeburg.

He remembered her. She was certain that he remembered her. His dark eyes fixed themselves upon her the moment she cross the threshold, and in their depths she caught an eagerness and an expectancy that told her that he had much more interest in this morning's tribunal than might normally be warranted by the heretical remarks of a fevered woman.

She did not have to guess why. It was not Natil the harper who was on trial at present: it was Jacob Aldernacht. The wool cooperative had been the beginning, Harold had been the middle, and now Siegfried expected her to be the end.

But Siegfried was wrong.

Without prompting, she advanced to the center of the room. The position—central and surrounded—was supposed to put her in dread of the power wielded by her accusers, but she closed her eyes, breathed the starlight that filled her inner firmament . . . and there was no place left for fear.

And Natil felt the warmth of sunlight in her face as she smiled at Siegfried, wished him a good morning and a God bless.

Siegfried was unmoved. Natil recalled their first meeting, recalled the strange emotions that had gripped him, wondered at the touch of shame that was now shadowing his face.

“State your name, woman,” he said.

“My name is Natil,” she answered.

“Is that all?”

“It is.”

Siegfried frowned. “Where are you from?”

“Most recently, I have come from Ypris.”

“Is that where you were born?”

“It is not,” she said.

“Don't equivocate, woman,” he snapped. “I want to know where you were born.”

“Then, Brother Siegfried,” she said, “please ask me what you wish to know. I will . . .” She looked at the sunlight that puddled the brown floor. So lovely. She would not see it for very much longer. In fact, she would not see the world for very much longer. The thought made her sad, and she realized that, though she had seen pain and trouble, and though she was now facing a lingering and tormented death, it was nonetheless a lovely world. “. . . I will be happy to tell you.”

A great calm, subtle but potent, had come back into her voice along with the starlight, and Siegfried blinked. But his office caught up with him in a moment. “Do you know why you have been brought before me?”

It was the old question, asked according to form, according to the advice of old Bernard Gui. Natil sighed. “I do.”

She was, she knew, supposed to profess ignorance, and then she was supposed to protest her innocence when Siegfried advised her that she stood accused of heresy against Holy Church. But Natil was not interested in proper form or in the fanaticism of a long-dead Dominican: she was here to speak as an Elf.

The secretaries' pens scratched her answer onto white paper. A crow cried out harshly somewhere outside. Natil waited before the man who would kill her, reminded herself that everything that happened, happened as it should, happened when it should.

Difficult advice, she admitted. It took an Elf to believe it.

“You are accused of heresy,” said Siegfried, continuing with his half of the formula. “You are accused of believing and teaching otherwise than Holy Church believes and teaches.”

“I am not a heretic.”

“But you would not be here were you not a heretic,” Siegfried's gaze, boring out at her, met an impenetrable wall of starlight. “Are you saying that the Inquisition arrests the innocent?”

Natil sighed, shook her head. Sad. Sadness everywhere. “Indeed,” she said, looking into his face. “I am saying just that.”

He was angry now. But it was a calculated anger. Everyone knew that Inquisitors could do anything, everyone knew how dangerous and absolutely idiotic it was to make them angry: he was trying to frighten her. “Explain yourself,” he said, thumping his fist on the table, expecting her to quail.

She did not quail. “I am not a heretic against your Church, Brother Siegfried, because I am not now, nor have I ever been, a Christian.”

“You are an idolater!”

The pens scratched on, the feathers of dead birds meeting the pulp of dead trees.

“And you yourself know,” Natil continued, ignoring his derogation, “—or if you do not, you should—that countless scores of the innocent have met death at your hands.”

Siegfried was momentarily speechless at her brazen statement, and the doctors of canon law were suddenly busy conferring in agitated whispers.

“Do you not know?” Natil went on. “Have you not seen it in their faces?”

Siegfried found his voice. “Are you questioning the authority and the integrity of the Inquisition?”

“I am.” No disrespect, no defiance tainted her voice. She was stating unequivocal fact, and Siegfried knew it.

His anger now genuine, he was on his feet, hands braced on the table, leaning toward her and about to shout when he appeared to come to himself. He looked around, then, his face pale, and Natil saw it: integrity. That was it. She suddenly understood his shame.

Siegfried sat down. “Where were you born, Natil?”

“I was not born, sir. I was made.”

Dead silence in the room. Shock had stilled even the scratch of the pens. Siegfried tore himself away from his surprise, glared at the secretaries. “Write that!” he snapped. “Write that down!”

Haltingly, the pens resumed their work.

Siegfried could not meet her eyes. “Who . . . who made you?”

“In the tongue of my people She is called
Elthia Calasiuove
, which means, roughly, in your language,
Bright Lady Shining with Clear Radiance.
” Natil's words were calm, even, and—as she knew Siegfried recognized because he had become obsessed with his own lack of inner veracity—the absolute truth. “By Her hand was I called up out of nothingness, given form and name and consciousness, granted power and concomitant responsibility to all life.”

“What . . .” Siegfried struggled with shock and words both. The pens scratched frantically, as though their holders were torn between duty and rapt listening. “What are you telling me, woman?”

“I am telling you the truth, beloved. I told you when we first met that I was a very poor Christian. I am, in fact, no Christian at all. And therefore I cannot be a heretic. Torture me or burn me as you will, I have told you the truth, and therefore you know that you have no claim upon me.”

“You are—” Siegfried cut himself short. No, not at all according to form. His hand, blotting his forehead, was shaking. “You are an ignorant savage, harper,” he said with an effort. “You come before the Holy Inquisition with barnyard tales fabricated out of legends and myths. Doubtless, you will next seek to confound us with the old stories that baffled Aloysius Cranby years ago.” Siegfried laughed, but Natil heard the hollowness. Integrity. His integrity was gone.