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

Barely audible snorts and giggles caused Jarad to frown.

“As a way of showing that I am not an enemy of the Empire, I shall cross the Bay Ghost and take the route through the Province. But I m going to reschedule tomorrow’s Mass. It’s a ferial day anyway, so we’ll sing the old Mass for the Removal of Schism before I go.”

He spread his arms as if to embrace the throng, traced a great cross in the air over them, came down from the lectern, and left the hall.

Blacktooth became wildly anxious. He sought permission to speak to Dom Jarad before the abbot’s departure, but permission was denied. In near panic, he found Prior Olshuen before dawn in the cloister on his way to Matins, and he plucked at the sleeve of the prior’s robe.

“Who is it?” Olshuen asked irritably. “We’re already late.” He stopped between the shadows cast from the columns by a single torch. “Oh, Brother Blacktooth, it’s you. Speak up then, what is it?”

“Dom Jarad said he’d hear me when I finish Boedullus. I’m almost finished, but now he’s leaving.”

“He said he’d hear you? If you don’t lower your voice, he’ll hear you now. Hear you about what?”

“About changing jobs. Or about leaving the Order. And now he’ll be gone for months and months.”

“You don’t know that. Anyway, what can I do about it? And what do you mean, leave the Order?”

“Before he goes, would you remind him about me?”

“Remind him of what about you?”

“I can’t go on this way.”

“I won’t even ask. ‘What way?’ We’re late.” He began walking toward the Church with Blacktooth tagging at his side. “If Dom Jarad has a free moment this morning, and if I mention your obvious agitation, will he know what it’s all about?”

“Oh, I’m sure he will, I’m sure!”

“Now what was that about leaving the Order? Never mind, we’re holding up Matins. Come by my office in a day or two, if you like. Or I’ll send for you. Now calm down. He won’t be gone for long.”

Abbot Jarad, after he offered the Mass for the Removal of Schism, announced from the pulpit his wish that they sing a votive Mass for the election of a pope on the day appointed for the opening of the conclave, and another such Mass on the first day after any news came to the abbey from Valana, unless that news proclaimed a new pope. Afterward, he departed toward the Bay Ghost.

Two dozen or more monks, including Blacktooth and Torrildo, lined the parapet of the eastern wall and watched the plume of dust until it dwindled on the eastern horizon.

“To prove he’s no enemy of the Empire, he’s taking the way through the Province,” Blacktooth sourly echoed his master’s words. “But he takes armed guards. Why armed guards?”

“That makes you bitter?” asked Torrildo, who usually concerned himself with Blacktooth’s feelings, rarely with his thoughts.

“If he were an enemy of the Empire, things might be different for me, Torrildo.”

“How?”

“Things might be different for everybody, if nobody here had ever compromised. And he dared talk to me about pearls before swine.”

“I don’t understand you, Brother.”

“I don’t expect you would. If my own cousins Wren and Singing Cow don’t understand, how could you?” He placed his hand reassuringly over Torrildo’s where it lay on the parapet. “It’s enough that you care.”

“I care, I really do.” The postulant was looking at him with those gray-green eyes that so reminded him of his mother’s soft and searching gaze. There was something feminine about it. Embarrassed by the intensity of the moment, Blacktooth removed his hand.

“Of course you do. Let’s forget it. How is it with you and that difficult Memorabilium?”

“Maxwell’s equations, they’re called. I can say them forward and backward, but I don’t know what they are or what they mean.”

“Neither do I, but you’re not supposed to know. I can tell you this, though: their meaning has been penetrated during the past century. They’re supposed to be among the notes Thon Taddeo Pfardentrott took back to Texark with him about seventy years ago. Maxwell’s equations are among the very great Memorabilia, so I’ve heard.”

“Pfardentrott? Didn’t he invent the telegraph? And dynamite?”

“I think so.”

“Well, if the meaning has already been penetrated, why do I have to keep it memorized?”

“Tradition, I guess. No, it’s more than that. Just keep running the words through your mind, as a prayer. Keep it up long enough, and God will enlighten you, so the old-timers say.”

“If somebody’s penetrated the meaning, maybe I could find out.”

“That might spoil it for you, Brother. But you can try, if you want to. You can read what Brother Kornhoer wrote about the subject after Pfardentrott left, but I don’t think you’ll understand him.”

“Brother who?”

“Kornhoer. He invented that old electricity machine down in the vaults.”

“Which doesn’t work.”

“Oh, it worked when he built it, but it wasn’t very practical here; and for some reason, his abbot would never let him teach anyone to fix it. Have you ever seen an electric light?”

“No.”

“Neither have I, but the Palace of the Hannegans in Texark is full of them. And they’ve got some at the university there. Brother Kornhoer and Pfardentrott became friends, as I recall, but the Abbot Jerome didn’t approve. Say, why don’t you read that placard that hangs over Kornhoer’s machine?”

“I’ve seen it, but I never read it. The machine is a nuisance to keep clean. So many cracks and crannies for dust.” Torrildo was an underground janitor and warehouse clerk. “You never told me about your Memorabilium, Blacktooth.”

“Well, it’s a religious one. I don’t think it has any secret scientific value. They call it ‘Saint Leibowitz’s Grocery List.’” He tried to suppress the flush of pride he felt at being given the Founder’s Memorabilium, but Torrildo did not notice.

“Does anything special happen when you say it?”

“I wouldn’t say yes, I wouldn’t say no. Maybe I never worked at it hard enough. As Saint Leibowitz himself used to say, ‘What you see is what you get, Wysiwyg.’”

“Where is that saying recorded? What does it mean?”

Blacktooth, who loved the cryptic “Sayings of Saint Leibowitz,” was spared answering as the bell rang the hour of Sext, marking the resumption of the rule of silence, which the abbot had suspended for the morning of his departure. The monks on the parapet wall began to leave.

“Come see me in the basement, if you get a chance,” Torrildo whispered in violation of the rule.

Blacktooth’s Nomadic ancestors had always placed a high value on ecstatic magical or religious experience, and this heritage, while pagan, was not incongruent with the traditional mystical quest which he had found so attractive and natural in the life of the monastery. But as his feeling of unity with his professed brethren gradually waned, he found himself less captivated by the formal worship of the community. Processions and the chanting of psalms no longer elevated his spirits and sent them soaring. Even the reception of the Eucharist during Mass failed to entrance his heart. He felt this as a distinct loss, in spite of his doubts about his vocation to the Order. He tried to recover by his solitary devotional practice what he was losing in the public worship.

A monk’s time alone in his cell was limited to seven hours a night, of which at least an hour and a half was to be spent in meditative, affective, or contemplative prayer. Some of this prayer time was devoted to the reading of those parts of the divine office which his daily work at the abbey prevented him from singing in choir at the regular hours, but Blacktooth rarely needed more than twenty minutes to finish his breviary, and the rest of the time he gave to Jesus and Mary. In his sleep, however, his dreams were often colored by the myths of his childhood and of the Wild Horse Woman whom he had seen.