Gregory Maguire_Wicked Years_02 (34 page)

Sister Doctor yelled the message out the windows of the scriptorium. The Commander called back, “If you’re not harboring felons, why are your doors blocked?”

“Spring cleaning.”

“It’s early winter, Sister Thudhead.”

“We’re behind schedule. We’ve been dreadfully busy.”

“Busy harboring criminals?”

“I hate to be rude, but I’ve work to do. Good-bye.”

By late afternoon the thud of stones against the door had become intolerable, and the Superior Maunt herself came to the window. The armed contingent had to interrupt the attack in order to hear her quavery voice.

“It’s an inconvenient time to come calling,” she said. “For one thing, ladies in community tending to have their menses together, you find an entire household of terribly cross and uncompromising people. We’re not up to housing a garrison of soldiers, however rudely they pound on our doors. Please go away at once.”

“Mother Maunt,” said the Commander. “This household received its original charter from the Palace, and it is with the authority of the Palace that I come and demand access. Your studied resistance proves you are harboring criminals. We know they stayed at an inn last night, and they cannot have come much farther than here today.”

“Matters of authority are perplexing, I agree,” replied the old woman, “and I would love to stand here in the icy wind and discuss them fully, but my ancient lungs won’t stand it. Our original charter, by way of our motherchapel in the Emerald City, does comes from the Palace, I’ll concede. But I’ll remind you that the Palace in question was the Palace of the crown of Ozma, many generations back, and in any instance we have earned the right to self-governance.”

“The Palace of Ozma is long over, and it’s the Palace of the Emperor that comes calling now. He is favored by unionist acclaim, and by dint of his apostleship you are under his bidding.”

“He is a parvenu Emperor, and he does not speak for the Unnamed God to me,” she cried. “And unless he asked for it, no more would I speak of the Unnamed God to him. I reject his expedient and proprietary faith. We stand here on our own chilblained feet, without apology and without genuflection.”

“Is this an indication that the Mauntery of Saint Glinda has endorsed and even overseen the publication of recent treasonous broadsheets attacking the spiritual legitimacy of the Emperor?”

The Superior Maunt made a most uncharacteristic gesture.

“That’s hardly an answer the courts would recognize. Good Mother Maunt,” came the reply, “let us not distract ourselves with the luxury of theology—”

“For me it is no luxury, believe me—”

“I know the boy you are harboring. I met him when he was only a boy, at the castle of Kiamo Ko in the Kells. When fate brought him in my path again, not once but twice, I suspected he had the makings of a firebrand in him. I made it my business to convince him of the rightness of the Emerald City cause. He might have knowledge of Elphaba, or of her missing Grimmerie. I named him my secretary in Qhoyre. I promoted him. I fathered him as best I could. Now listen: he was not Elphaba’s match. He could not be her son—too docile and biddable. But he should give himself up regardless. He has kidnapped a soldier of the Emperor and destroyed the basilica of the army.”

“Commander,” replied the Superior Maunt, “you can save your breath. And you can put down those archaic crossbows or whatever you’re readying. We’ve got company that it would be unseemly for you to disturb.”

She turned and beckoned. A figure appeared at the window and lowered a shawl off her forehead. The glitter in the eyebrows stood out in the falling light. Commander Cherrystone made a gesture and the men dropped their weapons as the Superior Maunt intoned, “The widow of Lord Chuffrey, Oz’s former throne minister, making a religious retreat to the mauntery that bears the same name that she does. Lady Glinda.”

4

A
NOVICE OPENED THE DOOR
for Liir and pointed him into the simple paneled parlor, and closed the door behind him without a sound.

“I was told you were in the country,” said Liir.

“But I was,” answered Glinda. “I am. I had intended to travel from Mockbeggar Hall, our—well, my—country house to come make a bequest to this mauntery. Lord Chuffrey has left me quite wealthy, you know, and I thought it time to help the women in their good works.

“But when my under-butler arrived last night on horseback with news of the attack on the basilica, I decided to change my schedule and come here straightaway. I have a commitment to this house, and I wanted my new bequest registered before there was any move toward disestablishment.”

Her glamour was all the more ridiculous and appealing in this setting. “It’s good to see a familiar face,” said Liir.

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to find
you
here. After all, Elphaba was here for a while, you know. It’s one of the reasons I like to support it.”

“I know she was.”

“She tended the dying.”

“And the living,” he said, remembering his dream of the basket. “I’m sorry about your husband.”

“Oh, well.” She waved her hand dismissively but then dabbed at her nostril with a scrap of lacy roundel. “We largely went our own ways; it was that kind of a marriage. Now he’s gone his own way for good. I miss him more than I would ever have let on while he was alive. I suppose I’ll get over it.”

She cheered up almost instantly. “Now tell me about you. Last I remember, you were marching off to Southstairs to find some little friend or other. I lost track of what happened. Well, there was the court to manage, and various putsches to suppress.” She regarded him. “No, I suppose it was ruthless of me to forget about you as soon as you left. I’ve never been good at keeping up with people. I’m sorry.”

Liir remembered that he had momentarily hoped for Glinda as a mother. He pushed the thought aside. “You know the Emperor,” he said. “None other than Shell. Elphaba’s younger brother.”

“Wouldn’t she be surprised to know her brother had succeeded the Wizard!” She looked rueful.

“Surprised,” said Liir. “That’s one way to put it.”

“Well, yes. She’d be outraged. Piety as the new political aphrodisiac. I suppose that’s what you mean.”

He shrugged. “What someone would feel after she’s dead—that notion means little to me. She doesn’t feel. All that’s left of her—shades and echoes, and fading by the hour.”

Glinda closed her breviary with a little slap. She hadn’t been attending closely to her devotions anyway. “That pesky slogan you see scrawled everywhere is right. She does live, you know. She does.”

Liir snapped at her. “I have no truck with that kind of sentiment. All butchers and simpletons ‘live’ in that sense.”

Glinda raised her chin. “No, Liir. She lives. People sing of her. You wouldn’t guess it, being you—but they do. There’s a musical noise around her name; there are things people remember, and pass on.”

“People can pass on lies and hopes as well as shards of memory.”

“You refuse to be consoled, don’t you? Well, that’s as much proof as
I
could ever need that you’re kin to her. She was the same way. The very same way.”

5

T
HE SITUATION,
the Superior Maunt concluded that evening, was decidedly unsettled. Scouting from the highest windows in all directions, the novices reported that several dozen armed horsemen showed signs of making camp in the Shale Shallows. They’d broken into the kitchen gardens and rooted about in the shed for squashes and such. “It seems unfeeling not to provide them with a meal,” said the Superior Maunt, “but I suppose that might give the wrong impression.”

Liir and Trism asked for an audience, and she sat with them on a bench at the base of a flight of steps. “We can’t have the house put in danger on our behalf,” said Liir. “Between Trism and me, while working in the Home Guard, we’ve been responsible for enough loss of life. We didn’t know the dragons would explode. We didn’t intend to bring down the basilica. We don’t know if there was human death in that catastrophe. We want to do no further damage, if we can help it. We shall give ourselves up to them.”

“Since it may ease your minds on that score, I will tell you that I heard of no loss of human life in the collapse of the basilica,” said the Superior Maunt. “It was midnight, after all. The place was deserted, even the side sheds and storerooms that escaped being crushed by falling debris. I suspect, however, your foes imagine the basilica was your real target, and the death of the dragons—how do they term it these days?—collateral damage. As to your suggestion that you should turn yourselves in, let me take it up in council before you make your decisions.”

“What is council?” asked Trism.

“I don’t know. I’m going to find out,” she replied.

T
HEY GATHERED IN THE CHAPEL,
the only room in the mauntery large enough to hold all inhabitants and guests. Evening devotions usually occurred on a basis of rotations, some maunts handling kitchen washup or geriatric babysitting while the rest sank into quiet prayer or early nap. Tonight the Superior Maunt requested the attendance of all, even those retired maunts like Mother Yackle who were on the edge of gaga.

Lady Glinda, though a benefactress, refused a seat on the dais up front, and she had removed her trademark diamond strutted collar for a quieter linen ruff. Liir and Trism, unfamiliar with these traditions, stayed standing. The older maunts were escorted in, in wheeled chairs when necessary; the novices took their places on their knees until the Superior Maunt indicated they should sit. “This is not prayer,” she said. “Something like it, but not prayer, precisely.”

She sat herself down, with difficulty. After a short silence, Sister Hymnody offered a provocatory in plaintone, though her sweet bell-like voice quavered. They were all on edge.

“Sisters, mothers, friends, and family. I shall be brief. Our tradition of charity, reinforced by our vows, brings us this evening into a conflict none of us has anticipated or experienced before. However generous the tithe of Lady Glinda, I doubt it will rebuild this house should the army of the Emperor sack it.

“We are a small house, a mission post on the road halfway between our motherchapel in the Emerald City and the rest of the world. Our isolation has been the cause of loneliness, at times, but also promoted peace and protection. Perhaps even provocation—but I pass over that. Tonight we are neither isolated nor peaceful. It is a truth we must accept.

“I am an old woman. I was raised as a novice in the venerable practice of obedience. Under the rubric of our order I followed instruction, including the one that required me, years ago, to take charge of this mauntery and govern it until death.

“I still believe in obedience. Even while soldiers camp outside our walls, and quite likely call for reinforcements, I must be obedient to the wishes of the powers that placed me here.

“As I speak these words, my dear friends, I hear in them an echo of the Emperor’s remarks. He professes subservience to the highest aims and intentions of the Unnamed God. God is the mouthpiece and the Emperor is his striking arm. The First Spear.

“I have not met the Emperor, and I will not. I should decline an invitation were one offered. The Emperor has hijacked the great force of faith and diverted it to further the prosperity and dominance of the City. Who can argue with a man who has the voice of the Unnamed God speaking exclusively in his ear? Not I. I have never heard such a voice. I have only heard the echo that still reverberates, once the Unnamed God stopped speaking and the world took up with itself.

“In our house, we profess to believe that the Unnamed God has made us in its likeness and its image, and this should have enlarged us to be like the Unnamed God. I fear in the Emerald City, they have remade the Unnamed God in their image, and that has belittled and betrayed the deity. Can the Unnamed God be belittled, you ask. No, of course not. But the deity can go unrecognized, and return to mystery.”

The sisters shifted. Many of the novices were ignorant of the Emperor’s apostasy, and the shoals of theocracy were beyond their ability to navigate. The Superior Maunt noticed.

She stood. “Bring me two other chairs, one at my right and one at my left,” she said. This was done.

“The Unnamed God retreats into mystery, and is not especially localized in my heart, my dears. Nor in the Emperor’s. The mystery is as equally in your heart as in mine, and in…the spirit of the trees and the…the music of water. That sort of thing. In the memory of our elders. In the hope for the newborn.

“I break with the tradition of our house tonight, as the decisions now to be made involve your lives as well as mine. I am old; happily I would go to my sweet reward this evening were it provided me by a literal spear of the Emperor. I cannot ask the same of you. Therefore it is my wish that henceforth the mauntery—even if our residency here lasts only till dawn—shall be governed not by a single voice, but by a troika of voices. Were the disagreeables not outside our walls, I should invite your opinions and call for a ballot. Time prevents me from allowing that. In extremis, our family of maunts shall accept the leadership of three. Sister Doctor, will you rise to the chair?”

Sister Doctor gaped. She grasped Sister Apothecaire’s hand briefly, and moved forward. Sister Apothecaire trembled and moved to the edge of her seat, perching for approach.

“I shall take the second seat,” said the Superior Maunt. “I may be old, but I’m not dead.”

The room was so still that the sounds of horses whinnying and stamping outside carried through the cold.

“The third chair I am reserving for the novice known as Candle,” declared the Superior Maunt. “I have a notion we shall see her again. For how long, I don’t know. But we need the wisdom of age, the strength of the fit, and the initiative of the young. From this moment forward, my absolute command over this establishment is dissolved. I shall enter it so in the Log of the House before I retire. Now, let us see how we get on.”

Sister Apothecaire bit her lip and tried to feel more humble than humiliated.