Chapter 6 #5
Where Kotkel learned it, I have no idea, because he never went anywhere we didn’t go or met anyone we didn’t meet.
I very much doubt that he made it up for himself, because it’s a proper tune and the words both rhyme and scan.
Mostly I think he sang it to annoy me, but I guess he liked it too, because he sang, hummed and whistled it incessantly, until one day Dad kicked him clear across the barn because it was getting on his nerves.
A high point in my childhood, needless to say.
The point being, I’d never heard anyone else sing it, ever.
I hurtled down the cloister just as he turned left through the arch that leads to the little courtyard with the fountain, and then there’s another arch that leads to the refectory.
No sign of anyone. I tried the refectory door, but it was bolted from the inside.
People don’t just vanish into thin air. Like pulling rabbits out of a hat or the existence of a supreme being, it’s just not possible. I looked round for a hidden space large enough to hide a man, but there wasn’t one. I looked in the fountain, which is six inches deep.
Fine, I thought. Just showing off, that’s all.
Someone had been to all the trouble of going to the Mesoge, while Kotkel was still alive, and carefully memorising his favourite song.
To me that made no sense, but what do I know about anything?
Then it occurred to me that it was a bit odd, Kotkel dying so young.
Of course, people die young in the Mesoge every day.
It’s a hard, cruel place, and it uses people up faster than marching on roads wears out army boots.
But what if Kotkel would still be alive if someone hadn’t wanted him for something; for playing stupid games with me, for example?
You reach a point where you’re past caring.
I never liked Kotkel much anyway. Revenge and blood feuds have always been the ruin of the Mesoge, more so than the climate or the soil or the landlords; it’s something we do to ourselves and it’s all our fault.
Accordingly, the last thing I needed was an atavistic craving for blood-vengeance.
I’m a civilised man, I don’t live there any more, I don’t do that sort of thing. Really.
Maybe it wasn’t just Kotkel. Maybe they’d killed Dad as well.
She hadn’t gone to the council session. She thinks Friedmund is a dangerous heretic who ought to be burned on a bonfire of his own books.
Instead, she told me, she intended to go and pray for her soul, on her knees in the Mercy Chapel.
Fine, I said, whatever floats your boat.
That got me a glare that should have shrivelled me like a dead leaf, if I’d had a scrap of decency left in me. But I don’t, so it didn’t.
The Mercy Chapel isn’t far from the courtyard with the fountain.
Actually, it’s one of the bleaker bits of the basilica, comparatively speaking.
Once, according to the books, it was a glorious thing, every square inch of wall and ceiling decorated with post-Mannerist frescoes by the likes of Athelwulf the Elder and Poscinnius.
But it was completely gutted during Iconoclasm in the late empire, scraped down to the bare stone; when the iconoclasts were thrown out, it was decided that the redecoration of the chapel should be something really special, to mark the utter discrediting of the iconoclast heresy, and a committee was formed to decide on how to go about it.
That was nine hundred years ago, and I understand they’re promising an interim report any day now.
In the meantime, the walls and ceiling are plain whitewash, with a few icons that someone found in storage hung up to give people something to look at during the drearier parts of the services; these include a Lutbrand Ascension, three Desert Masters and a Revelation by Segipert the Eremite, one of only three still known to exist. Just something someone turned up at the bottom of some old box. That’s Choris.
I found her in front of the altar, crouched on her knees and elbows; a bit extreme, even for her. When I spoke to her she didn’t look up. “Go away,” she said.
“Svangerd? What’s the matter?”
“Go away.”
I knew that tone of voice. The last time I’d heard it, she was telling a visiting archdeacon to leave her alone.
I recognised the danger signs and managed to get between them in time, so the archdeacon got away with nothing worse than concussion and a couple of missing teeth; the tricky part came later, covering the whole thing up.
In the end I had to swear a deposition that His Holiness had been possessed by a demon, who caused him to make inappropriate advances to a Holy Sister and then threw him down a staircase.
Wonderfully useful creatures, demons. They cover a multitude of sins.
Anyway, it was that tone of voice, so I took a long step back. “What’s happened? Something bad.”
She pulled herself up off the floor onto her knees. “Yes,” she said. “Very bad.”
“What?”
“Not in here.”
Fair enough. We went outside into the cloister. “I saw someone I used to know,” she said. “In the old days.”
Oh. “Did he see you?”
She nodded.
“I don’t see the problem,” I said. “Look, your past history isn’t exactly a secret. You confessed; you did penance; you were absolved. All over and done with.”
She looked at me. “I don’t think it works quite like that,” she said.
“No, maybe not. But if this character – how did you know him, exactly?”
“Professionally.”
“Well, then. He’s hardly going to stand up in public and admit to gross fornication, just to get you in trouble. Well, is he?”
She sighed. “It’s different for men,” she said. “Wicked women seduce weak but essentially right-minded men; everybody knows that. Come on, you know the score as well as I do.”
“But you’ve been forgiven. You’ve got a piece of paper to prove it.”
She shook her head. “I saw him and he saw me. If I hang around, instead of going straight home immediately, I’ll be to blame for reminding him of his going astray, which is bad for his mental and spiritual well-being.
They don’t exactly spell it out at the reformatory, but it’s pretty obvious what you’re supposed to do in these circumstances.
If I stay here, I’m committing a sin and it casts doubt on the sincerity of my repentance.
I’ve got to leave – I don’t have a choice. ”
I thought about that. “And he just happens to show up, right at this precise moment. Gosh.”
She shrugged. “Maybe it’s a fix, maybe it’s a coincidence. I don’t know. But I can’t stay here. They could throw me out of the order. I couldn’t bear that.”
There are times when I reckon she has a much lower opinion of her God than I do.
I merely maintain that He doesn’t exist. She, by contrast, is prepared to attribute to Him a degree of petty-mindedness that would be deplorable in a human being, let alone the Divine.
Svangerd honestly thinks that if they boot her out of the order, her redemption will lapse and she’ll go to hell.
O, ye of little faith, I said to her once, which led to a very fraught day and a half before she forgave me.
“Fine,” I said. “Then you’d better go. It’s all right. I can look after myself.”
I didn’t even try to say it like I meant it. “Yes,” she said, “you can. And there’s not really anything I can do, is there? I’d only get in the way.”
She didn’t mean it either. So much for the truth setting you free.
Mind you, truth is the most overrated commodity in history, with the possible exception of truffles.
“I’ll go and see about finding you a ship,” I said.
“And you’ll be able to report back and let them know what’s going on.
Who knows, they might even have some bright idea we haven’t thought of for solving this mess. Anything’s possible.”
The earliest ship going the right way that the harbourmaster knew about was the day after tomorrow. He said something technical about winds and tides and that sort of garbage; in one ear, out the other. I found the captain and gave him some money. Job done.
“What the hell am I supposed to do in the meanwhile?” she demanded. “I daren’t show my face outside of this room. I can’t even go to the chapel and pray, in case I run into him.”
“So stay here,” I said. “It’s only for a couple of days.”
That, of course, was the most unreasonable thing she’d ever heard in her entire life.
I left her to it and went to listen to the evening debate.
It was rather a good one – a fairly low-key affair, but none the worse for that after all the high drama we’d been having lately, in one form or another.
Nenzimer of Antecyrene was arguing that the time had come to revisit the anathema pronounced on the sixth book of Cartimanduus’ Meditations.
Eight hundred years had passed since the original decision, he pointed out, during which time we’d all had a chance to reflect on the ambiguities surrounding the various issues; furthermore, the last known copy of the work in question had perished when the archduke’s library burned down a few years ago, so the point was very likely moot.
In practical terms, however, the ban meant that it was extremely difficult to access Odovacar’s Sermons, since, although they themselves were recognised as flawlessly orthodox, a number of passages from Meditations 6 were quoted (for the purposes of vigorous refutation); accordingly, no copies of Odovacar had been made for several hundred years, since it was illegal to copy them out because they contained anathematised material, which meant that anyone wishing to read the Sermons had to travel a long way to the remote monasteries who possessed the existing copies, which were in grave danger of falling to pieces through over-use.