Slow Turns The World (21 page)

“Yes,” sighed His Lordship, “they are too bold.  Give the order, but only those casting stones.”

Moments later came the sound of screams and the panicking crowd dispersing.

“You may arrest those remaining that are alive,” said His Lordship.  He left shaking his head sadly, then glanced at Torrin who walked in silent thought beside him.

“Vasagi, why did God choose me for this task?”

“How can I say, Lordship? He is your God.”

It was the sleeping time. Orders had come from the tower that all guards and protectors should be especially vigilant, lest the heretical cult that had penetrated the Cloisters should seek another victim. Torrin paced the quiet house deep in thought.  He doubted that these assassins existed except in the imagination of the priests.   Fantasies of conspiracy were their delusion, their comfort even, for what was the reality that could not be countenanced?  That the church was feared and hated by its own congregations?  That the foundation of all, the ‘holy’ Text, was the product of another age, of a smaller world?  

Then there was a creak of weight pressing gently upon the staircase.  Torrin stood silent, listening with keen hunter's ears.  Another sound came; unmistakably a creeping footfall.  He stepped back into a shadow-filled doorway opposite His Lordship's chamber.  In the gloom of the shuttered house he strained his eyes and began to see a shape moving in slow cautious steps towards the chamber door.  He pressed himself back harder into the shadow and watched as the figure drew nearer.  A hooded cloak concealed the person that stood before His Lordship's chamber, who fumbled gently within its folds to draw out a dagger.  

The blade glimmered coldly in the dim light as the other hand reached for the door handle.  Torrin took the few paces between him and the hooded figure and grasped the hand that held the knife while with his other arm circled the neck and squeezed tight.  The wrist in his hand was thinner than a twig; a small body crumpled under his grip and could make no resistance.  He pulled back the hood and found Graselle looking back at him with tearful eyes.  Nothing was said; he took the knife and led her quickly away to his own tiny room. He sat her down and lit a candle, then looked at the knife, turning it over in his hands.

“What will you do with me?” she asked, head bowed.

“I do not know.”

“Will you tell him?”

“As his protector I should do so.  For next time you might fare better.”

Torrin sighed shaking his head and spoke to her again.

“You would not do this if you had been where I have, if you had seen the Cloisters of the Brothers; that is where they would take you.”

“They would have taken me nowhere.   I was going to kill myself, after him.”

“What an evil place this is,” said Torrin,  “to take young maidens, to enslave them, violate them.  I can understand your anger, why you would hate him.”

She looked at Torrin, showing surprise at his words, then began to speak.

“You understand less than you think…”

The door opened suddenly.  His Lordship had evidently heard the sounds of struggle and then of voices.  He looked at them both, and at the knife that Torrin held.  

“Leave us,” he said and motioned Torrin away.

Torrin paced the corridor again and heard the mumbling of voices from within the room.  The exchanges were quiet, conciliatory, and intimate.  After a while His Lordship and Graselle emerged and went together to his bedchamber.  Unusually, she stayed within for the whole time of sleeping, not emerging until the great bell had tolled.  Torrin realised that he had indeed misunderstood Graselle’s motives.  When His Lordship left for the tower he went to her as she walked alone in the garden.

“I thought I understood what you tried to do in the sleeping time,” he said, “but I was wrong.”

“You thought I hated him.”

“Aye, I thought that.”

“I love him.”

“And he loves you?”

“Loves me?  That is not possible; priests may not love, it is forbidden.  They have only a duty to take concubines and…and…”  She faltered, eyes dewy, lips trembling. “To take concubines... and to put them with child, so there will be more priests…  They took my baby…”

She cried wretchedly, tears streaming.  She choked the words out again, distraught, crushed, heartbroken.  A sense of loss so unbearable that it pierced Torrin like a cold blade.

“They took my baby…  They took him, just when he began to walk...”

“His Lordship let this happen?”

“He had no way to stop it.  It hurts him too.  They will do it again and I can't stand it.  I don't want to have another baby…”

“You are with child again?”

She nodded, tears falling upon her feet.

An uneasy calm settled upon the city over the next moon.   Graselle spent most of the sleeping time in His Lordship's chamber but her melancholy seemed to grow with the swelling of her belly.  Valhad worked enthusiastically in the garden and was warmly regarded by the other servants.   Torrin too, seemed at last to find acceptance as the household came to understand that he was not like other protectors.  Sometimes His Lordship would be summoned to council that extended into the resting time and he would not return until the great bell sounded its signal that sleep should begin.  On one such occasion, Torrin walked into the city to fill some time.  He passed the gate from the citadel, scrutinised as always by the vigilant guards, and walked with no particular destination through the meandering alleys.   The traders’ stalls were closed, and few people passed by, as Torrin let the walkways guide his feet wherever they chose.  Then he saw ahead three familiar figures; Alasam, Marasil and Valhad.  Before he could call out to them they slipped into a side alley.  He followed in time to see them take another turn and hurried after them.  

“Ho! Valhad,” he called and all three turned.

“Torrin,” said Valhad beaming, “So are you invited too?”

Marasil and Alasam shuffled uneasily, looking this way and that.

“We should not talk of this here,” said Alasam, casting anxious glances around them.

“We are to meet some others,” said Marasil quietly.  “It is not where His Lordship's protector should be.”

“Let me judge that for myself,” said Torrin.

“Very well,” said Alasam, sighing, “follow us now.”

They turned into another shadowy alley and stopped before a narrow door with a peephole.  After Alasam had knocked, bolts were heard sliding back before the door swung inwards.  They were admitted to a chamber that had been used as a storeroom in times past; a few rotting sacks remained and the air was dank.  Gathered in the broad chamber, lit by candlelight, were more than thirty people.  They stood in semi-circle around a bearded, wrinkled elderly man who returned their gaze with twinkling and intelligent eyes.

“Welcome friends, old and new,” he said as they joined the gathering.

“Many times I am asked,” said the speaker, “if change can come to Etoradom without bloodshed, and how this will be accomplished.  I say that change has happened, is happening even as we speak.  Has not the Emperor instructed the Synod that new interpretations of the Text may be formally presented for consideration?  Here on the summit of creation our city has stood for two hundred turns of the world.  What is the source of that constancy? It is our covenant with God that sets us above all others, His hand that protects us.  I believe that God speaks to the Emperor, that change will come to the priesthood, perhaps not in our lifetimes for we are but flowers that bloom and are gone.  Etoradom is eternal, and with…”

“Tell us then, Draigar…” Interruption came from a younger man who stood forward from the listeners.  “Tell us this; are there not great cities in the south?  Cities that prosper, where men speak freely, where sisters and daughters are not stolen and raped?”

“Yes.  There are such places.”

“And what gods are worshipped there?”

“False gods.  They have not yet the blessing of the Text.”

“False gods.  And yet they live freely under laws that are more just than our own.  I say this to you Draigar, I say it to all of you, that if men can live good lives under false gods then they can lead good lives without God at all.    Where is God?  Where has the God of the Text gone?   The God who would smite down enemies, brings plagues of retribution upon His own peoples, or speak in booming tones from the clouds above?  Why is He now so quiet?  Shall I tell you?  Because there is no God, and if ever there was then He has gone and now it is our world.  We must make our own judgments of what is right and wrong.”

“And on what laws will you found the new world?” asked Draigar angrily.   “What creed will you invent?  The worship of wealth?  The worship of power?  All our laws are taken from the Text, all our values are found within, what will your Godless world be like?”

The young man drew breath and was about to respond when a new voice spoke out strongly.

“How wrong you both are.”  The crowd turned to see who had spoken and Valhad stepped forward.

“Listen to them,” said Valhad looking around at the many faces. “Listen to the oldest questions men have asked; what is God?  Is there a God?  There must be an answer to such a question, surely?  An absolute yes, or no.   One must be right and one must be wrong.  Either there is a God or there is not?”

Torrin watched as Valhad stepped into the centre of the circle.  He had never heard his friend speak with such a passion, such a stern wisdom.   The blue eyes burned and seemed to stare at every watcher.    

“I am not of your faith,” said Valhad, raising a hand now, beginning to make slow gestures with the sweep of his hand, and the touching together of fingertips.  

“I come from a land farther away than you could imagine,” he said, voice descending almost to a whisper, and then rising again, “but I have read your Text.   I've read about your God, about His extermination of your enemies, who too are his own children, about His requirement for your homage, sacrifice and worship.  Do you know what you have done?  Do you?”

He waited for a moment, let the question hang upon the air, and then continued.

“You have taken something bigger, vaster than you can begin to imagine, and you have made it small.  You have diminished it to this little word of three letters.”  

Valhad sighed and paused.  There was no interruption.  All around stood transfixed and waited.

“Who are we?” asked Valhad, “who are we to know of God?   Can you tell the blind man of the rainbow? The deaf man of birdsong?   God is more than you have made him, more than the jealous judge and lawmaker.  He does not need our worship, can you not see that?   We are made free.  Whatever God is, whether we believe in God or not, it does not matter; we must make our own lives.”

There was silence in the chamber as every listener pondered the words that Valhad had spoken.  Then the man called Draigar spoke.

“How can we know right and wrong without God’s wisdom?” he asked.

“We can,” said Valhad, “because within us we have a sense of what is right and what is wrong.  I do not know if God gave us this, and it does not matter.  But there is just enough goodness, just enough, spread between us to keep the world from darkness.”

“So why are the priests as they are?” asked a bitter voice in the crowd.

“Because when men who will not listen to their hearts, or men not blessed with goodness, when such men exclude all but their own kind then evil will command.   We have the power to know goodness in other men; we know who we would choose to govern us.  So it is with my people. So it is with the Vasagi.”

“So what of the Text? Should we not be rid of it forever? Should not everyone be burnt?”

“No,” said Valhad shaking his head slowly, “your Text may say little that is true of God but is has much to say of men.  There is much to learn of their failings, and their strengths.   The Text may teach you that at least.”

The crowd was murmuring now and many questions were asked of Valhad.  They gathered around him as he listened patiently to their concerns, and then all were silent as he answered.  A bell tolled distantly.

“We must go.  His Lordship will return soon,” said Alasam.

They managed to extract Valhad from the many who were eager to hear his words.

“Teacher, will you speak to us again?” asked one of the gathering, as they left the room.

They hurried back through the alleys.  

“I am not happy with what I have seen,” said Torrin to Marasil as they led the way.

“You should not be, for our master's duty is to suppress such meetings.  It would not be a good place for any of us to be found.”

“Aye, true enough, but that is not my main concern. Valhad is what troubles me.  He has no sense to know when he should be silent.  Do not take him there again, for his own sake.”

“I do not know if I can stop him, or even if I should.  He has a wisdom unlike any other I have known.” As Marasil spoke she glanced back at Valhad, eyes full of fascination and concern.

“It will be the death of him yet,” said Torrin bitterly.

They passed back into the inner citadel, past the suspicious and wary guards at the gate, and returned to the villa.  They had barely entered when hooves and carriage wheels sounded outside, heralding the return of His Lordship.

“We did not expect you back this soon, Lord,” said Alasam, bowing in greeting.

“ Cardinal Saloxe, may God preserve him, had other pressing business.  I shall retire now, you may send Graselle to me.”

“Yes, Lord.  Marasil, where is Graselle?”

Marasil went to the servants’ quarters calling for her but no reply came.  Then she let out a scream that brought all the household running.  In the ornamental pool behind the villa the body of Graselle floated face down.  Marasil waded in crying and sobbing.  She rolled the lifeless body over and held her, kneeling in the water, clutching her in her arms.  The face was pale and waxy; all could see that she was dead.  His Lordship stood blank faced, only the slightest trembling of his lips and the misting of his eyes, betraying his shock and pain.  Torrin and Valhad rushed past together to lift her from the pool and lay her down upon the paved courtyard.