Chapter 11
“You’re quite right, of course,” she said.
Stunned is putting it mildly. “You what?”
“We’ve got to do it.” She’d spent the night on her knees beside Mother Krimhild’s bed, imploring the non-existent Invincible Sun for a miracle. “We’ve got to stop the schism. We can’t let that happen, can we?”
“No,” I said. “Look, have you thought this through? Really thought about it, I mean.”
“Spent all night doing just that,” she said.
“And you’re right. It’s got to be done. I don’t know why,” she added, with one of those savage bursts of anger you get when you’re trying to explain something, but you’ve got a splitting headache and you just can’t think.
“I just know, that’s all. I was praying, and I suddenly realised. ”
Oh dear, I thought. “There weren’t voices, were there?”
“Piss off. I realised,” she went on, “that that’s how the long game works. It shouldn’t, but it does. I mean, look at that man who died of a heart attack. He really didn’t expect that. So he must’ve been telling the truth.”
When I was a young novice, they tried very hard to teach me mathematics.
It was a lost cause, as it happens, but I learned a few very useful things.
Such as: there was this kid who always got the right answer, invariably.
He was infallible. But when the tutor asked him to show his working, he couldn’t, because he hadn’t done any.
He’d just looked at the problem and known the answer.
Needless to say he got no marks, and he was always being whipped for wilfully refusing to do as he was told – he must have done the calculations, they said, in order to get the sum right, so pretending he hadn’t was just wickedness.
Svangerd’s a bit like that kid (who ended up as a minor canon in some cathedral in the north-east, which probably served him right); she has this knack of going straight to the right answer without bothering with the steps in between, like a knight on a chessboard jumping over the enemy’s heads.
I could probably retrace her steps, like a man on the ground following a buzzard to a mountaintop, but why bother?
“So,” she went on, “we’re going to have to take it on trust, just like you said. They do want to stop the schism. So do we. So, if they reckon guzzling Vitimer’s the only way, I guess they’re probably right.”
“I’ve been thinking about it,” I said. “And now I’m not so sure. You’ve heard, haven’t you? Rotlaug killed Kotkel.”
“Who the hell is Rotlaug?”
“The hero,” I said, “from the Mesoge. He fought him last night and cut his head off.”
“Killed Kotkel.”
“That’s right.”
“Not your dad?”
“Not yet, no. But what’s that got to do with anything? We can forget about the walkers now. And if they can’t use them to blackmail us, we don’t have to do anything.”
“Unless we want to.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” I said, and I’m afraid I may have raised my voice a little. “You’re safe. You’re out of it. We can go home.”
She looked at me. “No we can’t,” she said. “Oh, come on. Last night, just for once in your life, you said something that was actually sensible and right and the right thing to do. Don’t spoil it now by being pathetic.”
Well, I thought. She’s right, of course. She always is. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll do it. Before this afternoon’s session, he said, or it’ll be too late.”
Her eyes were on me. “No,” she said. “You’re not doing anything. I’ll do it.”
“No.”
“Yes. It’s got to be done properly; we can’t afford to fuck it up. I’ll have to do it. You’re useless at this kind of thing.”
That was so unfair; moderately unfair. “But I’m the one with access to him,” I said. “I can walk straight in and ask to see him and they’ll let me.”
She shook her head. “Not so sure about that,” she said, “not any more. You were important when you were the only one in town who knew anything about the walkers. But you screwed up, and now there’s this Rat person.
If I was Vitimer, I wouldn’t be bothered with you any more.
But I can go and say I need to speak to him with a vitally important message from Mother Krimhild which could heal the schism, and I’d be in through the door so fast you wouldn’t know I was there.
It’s got to be me. It’s as simple as that. ”
“But the man in the library told me to do it.”
She frowned. “I can’t see how that matters.”
“Maybe not,” I said, “but it could. Maybe it’s vitally important that I do it. Don’t ask me why, I have no idea, but I have no idea why Vitimer’s got to die, either. Look, we do exactly as we’re told or we leave well alone. Otherwise—”
“Point taken,” she said. “Though personally I think he told you to do it because he reckoned he could blackmail you by threatening me, on account of you being soft in the head. We’ll do it together. How does that sound?”
Like a recipe for disaster. “Fine,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
But we didn’t. We were on our way to Vitimer’s chambers, which meant going past the council chamber.
The doors were shut, and there were soldiers guarding them.
What goes on, I asked someone. Hadn’t you heard?
The monster came back last night. Yes, I said, and the hero from the Mesoge got him.
Yes, but not before he smashed his way into the council chamber through the roof and defiled it.
Defiled? Sheep’s guts, mostly, and chicken feathers, and the body of some old woman off the streets dumped down on the patriarchal throne, with her head pulled off and a pig’s head substituted.
So the whole room’s got to be thoroughly cleaned and reconsecrated, which’ll take all today and half tomorrow, so all debates are on hold and they’re going to reschedule.
We walked on till we reached the west cloister. “Now what?” I said.
“What?”
“Don’t you see? This probably changes things.”
She frowned. “Really?”
“Almost certainly. It screws up the timings. Look, the man in the library said it’s got to be done before this afternoon’s debate.
But the debate schedule’s gone all to blazes.
So, maybe the reason Vitimer’s got to die is something that should happen or be said in a debate, only now that debate isn’t happening.
Or something like that; the point is, we don’t know. We need instructions.”
“Just a moment.” She had her headache face. “Kotkel did all that.”
“Before Rotlaug killed him.”
“Kotkel,” she repeated, “not your father. You know, I can’t help thinking there’s some significance in that.”
“Maybe there is. The point is, we don’t know. And Rule One clearly states, don’t go doing anything drastic unless you have a pretty clear idea of what’s going on. Which,” I added forcefully, “is no longer the case. We need to talk to that man, before we do anything.”
The look in her eyes said, that’s twice you’ve been right; just don’t go making a habit of it. “Probably,” she said. “All right, where do we find him?”
“I don’t know, do I? I’ve only met him once.”
She sat down on a stone bench. “Why would Kotkel desecrate the council chamber? Is that the sort of thing your walkers do?”
“Yes,” I said, “pretty much. Well, they seem to get a kick out of ripping up sheep and draping the bits off trees and things. Mischievous behaviour generally.”
“But this was the first time he’d done it.”
“Yes. Does it matter?”
“No idea. I’m just thinking out loud. The point being, did someone tell him to do it, or was it just something he felt like doing?”
“We need to talk to that man,” I said. “Otherwise we’re just going round in circles.”
“Fine,” she said. “What does he look like?”
“I told you.”
“Tell me again.”
Not as easy as it sounded. “Tall man,” I said, “frail-looking, white hair, he’s got this little tiny white moustache, like he’s just been sipping beer.” Come to think of it, I was having trouble picturing him in my mind. “Unmistakeable,” I said. “I’ll know him when I see him.”
With the debates cancelled and the miasma of schism heavy in the air, of course, there was nobody about; nobody in the quadrangles, courtyards or cloisters, no clusters of buzzing conversationalists lingering in the refectory or sunning themselves like seals on the portico steps.
The delegates to the ecumenical council had gone to ground.
I could picture them holed up in their rooms and cells, scribbling long letters home – pleas for instructions, frantic attempts to sound out opinions, rally support, call in favours, apply pressure to the recalcitrant: all the things you do when you know there’s going to be a war …
Or they’d be on their knees, in side-chapels or in front of a foldaway travelling triptych, imploring Someone who wasn’t actually there to save them from the time of trial.
Politics and religion, always to the fore when everything’s about to go all to hell; why is it, do you think, that humanity’s first instinct, when there’s a fire, is to try and put it out by dousing it in lamp oil?
Which meant there was no point in just cruising around the precincts hoping to bump into the man I needed to see.
So I went back to the library (not there), tried the basilica and all the chapels (no luck), the refectory and the gatehouse and the Gardens of Sulpicius; waste of time.
I even tried asking random strangers: have you seen an old man, yay high, little white tache like an eyebrow?
That got me nowhere, especially as I was starting to be recognised – the man from the Mesoge who fought the monster (no, not that one, the one who tried and failed); the man who just happened to find the box in a shop, and if you believe that, I have a wide selection of quality bridges you might be interested in buying …
I got the feeling that even if they knew, they weren’t about to tell me, of all people.
If I’d gone round with UP TO SOMETHING written on my back in two-inch-high illuminated capitals, I couldn’t have made more of an exhibition of myself. Counterproductive; stupid.