Walter Miller, Jr.: Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman

In the distance the street opened onto another, busier street, and Blacktooth could see people passing, carrying mysterious packages, or occasionally, guns. The ones with guns walked in twos and threes. Closer at hand, another dog sniffed at the stained steps in the alley, then trotted away.

“That’s where they execute.”

Blacktooth turned and saw that the door to his cell had opened silently; beyond it was an indeterminate darkness. For such a huge door it swung on silent hinges. An unfamiliar farmer/guard stood in the doorway with a bucket. Young, in his rude twenties; redheaded, a grass-eater. “You’re not supposed to be up there,” he said.

“I’m praying.”

“What about your hat?” The zucchetto was on the bed.

“We don’t wear the hat to pray.”

The guard crossed to the corner and picked up the bucket; he set it down again when he felt that it was empty. He carefully avoided looking into it.

“I’m supposed to empty this,” he said. It was a reproach.

“I suppose that means I’m supposed to fill it,” Blacktooth said. “But aren’t you supposed to bring me food? I had no supper, and now no breakfast.”

The farmer/guard shrugged. He wore leather pants and a canvas vest, probably taken from some soldier’s locker. Or body. His teeth were gone bad already. “They didn’t tell me anything about food. They only told me to empty this. And bring the water.”

“Are they going to—shoot me?” asked Blacktooth. He felt dizzy; he had to step down off the stool. When he looked up, feet on the cold stone floor, the guard was gone, almost as if he had been an apparition. The door closed, then a bolt slammed shut. Loudly.

“Bless you, my son,” said Blacktooth, making the sign of the cross. “I’ll go back to my prayers.” He stood back up on the stool and looked out at the world, or what little of it he could see from his tiny window. Prayers indeed. But what else was prayer but an attempt to look out of the tiny window of the soul? Perhaps he would try to pray later, as it got closer to the time for his execution.

Would it hurt? he wondered. It seemed to be the wrong question, but he couldn’t think of the right one.

Another dog came by and sniffed at the dark stain on the step— also praying? In the distance an old woman and a child poked through rubbish with a stick. When the woman turned up something, the child would lean down to get it. Blacktooth couldn’t tell what they were collecting.

There were more shots in the distance, then a strange and yet familiar wild smell. Even before Blacktooth realized what it was, his heart was pounding.

Smoke.

“You told your men to set the fires,” the Pope, Amen II, said to Eltür Bråm. Demon Light denied it but Brownpony knew better. The Grasshopper is always at war… I set fires… And what did it matter if he denied or affirmed it? It was done.

Brownpony and the sharf were sitting on the bed of a wagon, watching the returning warriors thunder across the creek. It was beginning to rain again. Brownpony couldn’t see the sky, but he knew from his Curia—half of whom were sick, and spent time at the secondary latrine halfway up the hill—that a curtain of smoke hung over the city a few hours’ ride to the east.

“Fires just happen,” said Eltür Bråm. “No man can prevent them. No man should.”

Dogs barked. Horses neighed. The Nomads were straggling back in twos and threes, calling to the women to prepare bandages and food, and replenish the firewood stacks. They were shouting triumphantly, but in truth they had had few encounters with the mysterious enemy. The few wounded had been injured when their horses had stumbled in the unfamiliar streets, or had burned themselves setting fires.

None knew, still, how many defenders the city had, or even if it was being defended at all. And Blacktooth had never returned. It was almost sunset. “Perhaps he has found the peace you robed ones always say you are looking for,” said Eltür Bråm.

“Perhaps,” replied Brownpony, choosing to ignore the Nomad’s sarcasm. But he doubted it.

Smoke. It was getting dark; or was it? The few people Blacktooth could see at the end of the street were running.

He got down from the window and banged on the oak door. He put his ear to the wood, but he couldn’t hear footsteps or voices. It was a strange place, this room at the end of Blacktooth’s life. It reversed normal life, which we go through always looking backward. Now it was the past that was the mystery. Blacktooth could see clearly into the future. Too clearly. He could smell it. It filled the air—like smoke.

He was afraid he would panic, and he did. It wasn’t the fear of fire, or even the fear of dying. It was just panic, pure animal panic. It filled him, rushing in unbidden, with no thought or emotion intervening. As sudden and as irresistible as lust (which he had grown to know so well), it both comforted and terrified him with its intensity. Like the faith he had searched for but never found, it replaced all doubt with certainty.

Blacktooth let it rage, kicking and beating on the door, shouting first “Fire!” then “Help!”; then, “For the love of God!”

It brought no peace. The pain of his bruised fist and his own screams brought him back to a different reality; a more monklike reality. He stopped screaming, surprised at how easy it was to stop, and knelt by the bed with his rosary. The smoke was thicker, but the air was still breathable. Blacktooth was no longer hungry. The water in the water bucket was dancing, and in the distance he could hear dull booms—buildings falling or bombs going off….

He must have fallen asleep. He sat up and saw that it was still dark outside the window. In the distance he could hear shooting. The farmer/guard was standing in the open door with the bucket. He wore a scarf over his face. For the smoke? It seemed to have diminished.

Blacktooth started coughing. “Excuse me,” he said when he had stopped. The guard/farmer still stood in the doorway. “What’s happening?” Blacktooth asked.

“They are fighting. Your Antipope is burning the city.”

“Ah.”

Then he was gone. He never returned. Whether he was killed or not, Blacktooth never knew. The shooting never got closer and it eventually faded away.

When dawn came it was a strange dawn that seemed to come from inside the cell, rather than outside, filling the tiny basement room with an eerie light. The city was on fire. The wind was scouring the alley, picking up bits of straw and grass and dust and scraps of ash and paper.

Blacktooth banged on the door, but he didn’t scream this time. He didn’t expect anyone to come and no one did. The fire seemed to be getting closer; the wind was hot, as if it were pulled through one fire on the way to feed another. Blacktooth stood as long as he could at the bars, and felt his face burning—then realized he had forgotten the pills. There were four left, folded in the hat. He took one and poured the last of his water over his head. Death by fire. He could smell fuel oil. He recognized the smell from when he was a novice, handling the abbey’s relics for the first and last time….

Beatus Leibowitz ora pro me!

He heard footsteps in the alley. “Help,” he called out, but no one came. Not even the pig, who had probably been eaten. Blacktooth said his rosary, then put on his zucchetto and lay down on the narrow plank bed, on top of the jail blanket. Better to just wait, he thought. Sooner or later the end will come. “A dewdrop, a flash of lightning,” Amen had said. “Ash, dust…”

He must have fallen asleep, for soon he was back at the waterfall with Ædrea. The water had stopped falling, though. It stood like a sheet in the sun. She was standing in it, in the sun, very wonderfully beautifully perfectly naked. “Hey,” she was shouting.