Tales of the Old World (104 page)

The priest took objection to this refusal to be ashamed. “Who mourns a
necromancer?” he asked bitterly. “It would be best if I were left to do this
sorry task alone.”

“I was his friend,” Kalispera said evenly. “I had known him since childhood.”

“Such a man forsakes all claims of friendship and amity when he delves into
forbidden lore,” the priest answered him. “This man has sought to deal
unnaturally with the dead, and should be shunned by the living—especially
those who deem themselves priests of Verena.”

“He himself has joined the ranks of the dead now,” Kalispera observed,
refusing to be stung by the insult. “He is but a memory to the living and, of
all the memories which I have of him, by far the greater number are happy ones.
I have come to say farewell to a man I have known all my life, and I will not
permit the fact that he has lately been abused by foolish and malicious men to
prevent me from doing so.”

“But you have come alone,” the priest replied sourly, gesturing about him.
“It seems that all the others who knew him when they were young have a keener
sense of duty to the cause of righteousness.”

Kalispera could not help but look around, though he did not expect to see any
others hurrying to the place. He sighed, but very quietly, for he did not want
the priest of Morr to know how disappointed he was. All but a few of the
magisters of the university had known Lanfranc Chazal for many years, and had
liked him well enough before the evil rumours had taken wing like a flock of
Morr’s dark ravens. He had thought that a few might be prepared to set aside the
vilifications and accusations, for the sake of remembrance of better times. But
the university was, as ever, a fever-pit of jealousies and intrigues, in which
reputations were considered very precious things, not to be risked on such a
chance as this.

Kalispera felt a moment of paradoxical gratitude for the fact that he was old
and far beyond the calls of ambition. It was all too probable that the next
Magister of Gisoreux to ride up the hill on the creaking death-cart would be
himself.

“Please proceed,” he said to the priest. “You will be glad to get it over, I
know.”

The priest frowned again, but consented to let the magister have the last
word. Sonorously, he began to intone the funeral rite, consigning the body of
unlucky Lanfranc Chazal to the care of his stern master.

But Morr’s officer was barely half way through the ceremony when there was a
sudden clatter of hooves in the gateway of the cemetery, and though propriety
demanded that neither of them should look up, both priest and magister glanced
sideways with astonishment.

A huge bay, liberally flecked with sweat, was reined in not thirty feet from
the grave. A man leapt down, patting the trembling horse upon the neck to offer
thanks for its unusual effort—it was obvious that it had ridden far and fast.
The newcomer was a man in his late twenties, plainly dressed, without livery or
ornament—but he strode to the graveside with the pride and grace of an
aristocrat. He favoured the priest with a single glance of haughty disapproval,
but looked at Kalispera longer and far more respectfully. In fact, he nodded to
the magister as if he knew him and expected to be recognised in turn, but
Kalispera could not immediately put a name to the face.

Who mourns a necromancer?
Kalispera thought, echoing the priest’s words
with a hint of ironic triumph. Two men at least, it seems, are not so cowardly
that they dare not show their faces here. I thank you, young sir, with all my
heart.

Before he bowed his head again, he favoured the younger man with a discreet
smile. The priest of Morr saw, and disapproved, but there was nothing he could
do save resume the ceremony with all due expedition.

As soon as it was all finished, though, the priest graced the newcomer with a
scowl more hateful than any he had previously contrived. Then he hurried off,
leaving the grave gaping like a fresh wound in the green hillside.

The sexton, who must have been almost as old as Alpheus Kalispera, and every
bit as feeble in wind and limb, shuffled from his hiding place to begin the work
of filling in the grave.

The need for a respectfully bowed head now gone, Kalispera looked long and
hard at the second mourner—and suddenly found the name which had momentarily
eluded him. “Cesar Barbier! As I live and breathe!” he said.

Barbier smiled, but thinly, as though he had not the heart for a proper
greeting. “Aye, Magister Kalispera,” he said. “You did well to remember me at
all, for it’s a fair while since I was a student here—and I have not been in
Gisoreux for some years, though I have not been far away.”

“In Oisillon, perhaps?” Kalispera said. “I remember that we thought you
destined to be a luminary of His Majesty’s court.”

Now the magister had the name, the rest was not too hard to remember. The
Barbiers were one of the great families of the region, more celebrated for
breeding soldiers than scholars. But Cesar had been a clever student, more
attentive than many to what his teachers had to tell him. Young men of his class
came to the university primarily to sow their wild oats at a safe distance from
home, and in truth Barbier had certainly done his share of that, but his
interests had eventually extended at least a little beyond wine, women and the
dance.

Barbier shook his head. “I have been in Rondeau,” he said, naming a small
town some miles to the south of the great city. Kalispera frowned, trying to
remember whether Rondeau was part of the Barbier estate—and, for that matter,
whether Cesar had yet succeeded to his father’s title. A good Bretonnian was
supposed to know such things, even if he were a high priest of Verena and a
magister of a university, devoted by vocation to more permanent kinds of wisdom.
Cesar Barbier certainly did not look like a Tilean nobleman, for he wore no
powder and no wig, and his clothes were honest leather—but if he had come to
Gisoreux on horseback he might easily have consigned his finery to a saddlebag.

“I am glad to see you here, my lord,” Kalispera said guardedly. He dared not
ask whether Barbier had really come to Gisoreux simply to attend the funeral—or, if so, why.

Barbier gave another slight smile when he heard the magister call him “my
lord”—an appellation to which custom had not entitled him while he was a
student. “And I am glad to see you, sir,” he replied in turn, “though I must
confess to a little disappointment that I find you alone. I came as soon as I
heard that Magister Chazal had died, but I fear that the news had made slow
progress in arriving at Rondeau. Still, it seems that I came in time.”

As he spoke he looked at the ancient sexton, who was shovelling earth as fast
as he possibly could, clearly no more anxious than any other to be too long in
the company of a corpse of such evil repute.

“Aye,” Kalispera said, “you came in time. But I doubt that you would have
come at all, had rumour of Lanfranc’s last years reached Rondeau before the news
of his death. I am alone because no other would come. It has been rumoured of
late that my friend was… was a necromancer, and I dare say that you know as well
as any other what damage such rumours can do. I am glad to see you, as I said—but perhaps I should rather be sorry that you have taken the trouble, if you
came in ignorance.”

“I did not come in ignorance, I assure you,” Barbier said solemnly. “I came
because I knew, far better than any other, what kind of man he really was.”

Kalispera felt tears rising to his eyes, and he bowed his head. “Thank you
for that,” he said.

“Oh no,” replied the other, reaching out to take the older and frailer man by
the arm. “It is for me to thank you on his behalf—for you stood by him when no
one else would.”

They stood together, silently, for two or three minutes more. When the sexton
was finished, Barbier gave him a suitable coin, which the old man accepted
without any word or gesture of thanks.

“Is there somewhere we can go?” the young nobleman asked gently. “I think we
both stand in need of the warmth of a fire and a cup of good wine.”

“Of course,” Kalispera said quietly. “I would be most honoured if you would
be my guest, and would share with me in the remembrance of my friend.”

“I will do it gladly,” Barbier assured him. The two went down the hill
together, quite oblivious to any inquisitive eyes which may have stared after
them.

Alpheus Kalispera took Cesar Barbier to the room where he worked and taught.
The sun had set by the time they arrived there, but the autumn twilight always
lingered in the room, because its latticed window faced the south-west.
Kalispera had always found it to be a good room for reading—and an excellent
place for deeper contemplation.

At Barbier’s request, Kalispera told him about the shadow which had been cast
over Lanfranc Chazal during the last years of his tenure at the university.

“No charge was brought against him in any court, sacred or secular,” he was
at pains to explain. “He was condemned exclusively by scurrilous gossip and
clandestine vilification. I have even heard it said that his death was a
manifestation of the wrath of Verena, delayed for so long only because Verena
was a calm and patient deity who loved her followers of wisdom just a little too
well. That was terrible, truly terrible.

“Alas for poor Lanfranc, he had the misfortune to age less gracefully than he
might, and he came to suffer from a certain disfiguration of the features which
his enemies took to be evident proof of his dabbling with forbidden knowledge.
One expects to hear such folderol from common peasants, of course, but I had
thought better of Gisoreux and the university. If the men who call themselves
the wisest in the world can so easily fall prey to such silly suspicions, what
hope is there for the future of reason?

“Long before he was consigned to the grave where we saw him laid today,
Lanfranc had begun to take on the appearance of a dead man, with whited skin and
sunken eyes. I tried in vain to persuade our colleagues that it was merely an
illness of old age, with no dire implication, but my ideas on the subject had
always been considered unorthodox, and no one would listen to me. Even his
friends were content to accept his disfigurement as evidence of a secret
interest in the practice of necromancy. ‘All illness comes from the gods,’ they
said, ‘and is sent to educate us.’ Lanfranc Chazal never believed any such
thing, and neither do I, for we had seen too many sick men and women in our
time. Alas, we were the only two remaining who remembered the great plague of
forty years ago, and how dreadfully it used the magisters of the day. Now there
is only me.”

Kalispera realized that his tone had become very bitter, and stopped in
embarrassment. The twilight had faded while he spoke and the room was now as
gloomy as his mood, so he covered his embarrassment by looking about for the
tinderbox in order that he might light a candle. He had mislaid it, and was
forced to get up in order to conduct a scrupulous search.

Cesar Barbier did not say anything to him while he searched for the box,
found it and struck a light. But when the candle finally flared up, he saw that
the younger man was watching him very quizzically from his place by the
fireside.

Kalispera resumed his own seat, then smoothed his white beard with his right
hand as if to settle himself completely. “You are probably astonished to hear
all this,” he said.

“On the contrary,” Barbier replied with a guarded look. “There is nothing in
it which is news to me, but I am glad to hear your account of it. He would have
been very pleased and proud to know that his truest friend did not desert him,
even at the end.”

“You knew!” Kalispera exclaimed. “But you said that you have not been in
Gisoreux for some time. How could you know about Lanfranc’s illness, the changes
in his appearance?”

“He visited me in Rondeau,” the young nobleman said. “We have seen one
another frequently over the years. I always regarded him as my mentor—he was
ever the man to whom I turned for advice and help, and he never failed me. He
told me more than once how grateful he was for your amity, and I know that it
weighed upon his conscience that his claim upon your good opinion was not as
honest as he would have wished.”

Alpheus Kalispera started in his seat and his eyes grew suddenly wide. “What
are you saying?” he cried, angrily. “Do you mean to insult my grief?”

Barbier sat upright as well, but then leaned forward to reach out a soothing
hand. “No, magister!” he said. “Anything but! Lanfranc Chazal was the best and
noblest man I ever knew. I came here to share my grief, not to insult yours.”

Kalispera stared at him angrily for a moment, but then relaxed with a sigh.
“I do not know what you mean,” he said. “Lanfranc said nothing to me about
visiting you in Rondeau—nothing at all. And I cannot believe that he deceived
me, even in a matter as small as that.”

“Alas, sir,” Barbier said, “he did deceive you, even in matters much
weightier. I can assure you, though, that it was not because he doubted you that
he kept his darkest secrets from you, but only because he doubted himself.”

There was a long moment’s silence before Kalispera said in a horrified
whisper, “Do you mean to tell me that Lanfranc Chazal
was
a necromancer,
after all—and that you were party to his experiments?”

“That is what I mean to tell you,” the other confirmed, in a low voice. “But
I beg you not to condemn me—and certainly not to condemn Magister Chazal—until you have heard me out.”

Alpheus Kalispera felt that the features of his face were firmly set in a
mask of pain, and that his heart was unnaturally heavy in his breast.
Nevertheless, he made every effort to speak boldly. “Explain yourself, my lord,”
he said. Despite the title, it was the patronising command of the instructor,
not the humble request of the commoner.