The Pop’s Rhinoceros (22 page)

A thin cry reached him across the water. “Where are you
going?”
It came again, the same shout of distress. Bernardo’s voice. He pulled hard on the oars, one, two, one, two … Gerhardt had clapped him on the back when the four of them had made it down the slope. Hanno and Georg had not looked at him; had avoided his gaze, in fact.

Where!
One, two, one, two …

Steadily, gradually, the shouts, the land, both fell away until he was alone in the boat in the sea and, beyond the plash of brine, the dull knocks of the oars in the row-locks, the suck and gasp of his breath, there was silence. The sky was birdless and the air hung in cold columns that parted before him. The smudged coast inched past to his left. Above, a great flat plate of cloud extended almost to the horizon, where a knife edge of light reddened, and pinkened, and then the sun fell through, a deep orange, and the clouds darkened to heavy blues. Soon it would be night. He pulled harder.

Pewter and bread. Excrement pooling in his bed. This is how we die, thought HansJürgen.

Two times Florian had taken the sacrament from the pyx. Twice he had coaxed it down the Abbot’s throat, and twice the Abbot had vomited it out. Two times Florian had eaten the vomited sacrament.

Before dawn, Gerhardt and his men had hammered on the door. They had repelled them by shouting dire warnings and by prayer. Hanno had shouted that they would be back.

Hours later, when the sun rose finally and threw a short-lived ray of light into the cell, the Abbot writhed like a blindworm uncovered in the damp earth beneath its stone. The light seemed to stir the dead air about them. Florian had been in prayer. He himself had been waiting, perhaps for the old man to die, perhaps for this very eruption. Jörg had said nothing for hours when Gerhardt’s men returned.

“State your business here, Brother,” Jörg said mildly, his body blocking the doorway from Gerhardt’s men, Georg, Hanno, others filling the passage outside. For a moment HansJürgen thought they would barge past their Prior, simply knock him aside, and he saw Jörg’s body stiffen as though he had read this thought in Gerhardt’s face. That point was not far away now. Again, it was Hanno who shouted, furiously, madly, barking that they were killing their Abbot before
Gerhardt turned on his heel and strode off. The noise and the brothers’ animosity, naked now, sapped him of something. His head fell into his hands. When had he last slept?

The Abbot grew more peaceful with the hours, seeming to sleep for a few minutes at a time, then retching and coming awake, falling back exhausted. Florian tried again to administer the host by crumbling it into the chalice of wine. The Abbot would not take it.

“It is correct enough that he should look upon the sacrament if he cannot swallow,” said Jörg. He seemed unperturbed by Gerhardt’s intrusion. “Count Albert received it through a wound in his side which healed before he died. I read of it once.”

Florian nodded.

“The host is the most precious of our miracles,” Father Jörg continued. “The company of angels, immunity from death. … I believe in these, though the process is more complex.”

HansJürgen looked up wearily, feeling his patience stretch and at last snap. “You must face them,” he said. “You must show yourself, at least. Next time, they will break in. …”

“Saint Giles did not absolve Charlemagne of his incest, it was the host. The host did that. When I was a novice, I believed I saw the infant once. He was newborn and crying, though I could not hear him. He was in the wafer, just before it was broken. Then he disappeared.”

“Do you even hear me, Father? There is no more
time. “
HansJürgen took Jörg by the shoulder. “You must act now.”

“Where are our guests?” asked Jörg, looking at him as if the thought had just struck him. The question took him by surprise, Florian, too, turning from the bedside to look up, puzzled, bewildered.

“Guests? The heathens? I do not know. In their quarters, I imagine. But why should—”

“You must find them, Brother, and when you have found them, take them to my cell. Hide them there. Quickly, HansJürgen. I need them safe if…”

“If what?”

“I need them, that is all.”

The cold air outside shocked him after the cloying fug of the cell. Even filtered through a covering of cloud, the light was dazzling. He felt weightless, light-headed. He had barely entered the cloister before the monks’ faces were in his own, huge red faces, yellow teeth, questions, and more questions. In the end he barged through them blindly, stumbling out past the dorter and into a paddock one side of which ran along the cliff edge. There he found Bernardo seated on a large stone.

“Where is your companion?” he demanded. The giant seemed gloomy and perturbed in some way. Without looking up, he pointed out to sea.

“Brüggeman’s boat?” asked HansJürgen.

“He left me on my own,” Bernardo said bitterly. “Again.”

“Come with me,” HansJürgen said, and the giant rose obediently, towering over him. He had not counted on this, on Salvestro choosing this day amongst all others. But he had known, of course. Salvestro himself had told him.

“Come with me,” he said again. They stood there together. Salvestro was important somehow in the game that Gerhardt and Jörg were playing, had some significance that he was unable to see.

“Where are we going?” asked Bernardo after a minute’s silence had passed. Where? echoed HansJürgen to himself, remembering the islanders seen on his walks. Here they come, arms up in greeting, stumbling over the clods. Ott, others. It was Gerhardt, of course, Gerhardt toward whom these swaggering approaches were directed. He was so tired. It was almost sunset. And then the words remembered from the chapter-house: “Our Prior has not been honest with you about them” and “The islanders know more than they would readily tell, about the smaller one. …”

The smaller one was Salvestro; and then, “I have spoken with the islanders. …” Of course he had. HansJürgen imagined him tramping the island through the winter, homestead to homestead, hovel to hovel. For what purpose? “They know what must be done even if we ourselves cannot…” What must be done. He needed food in his stomach, sustenance of some kind, a splash of water. But the islanders did not know “what must be done,” did they? So they had been told. By Gerhardt. It was afoot, happening now, the key to it in Jörg’s “I
need
them,” which somehow Gerhardt had guessed or deduced. How exactly did they fit together, these fragments? What was the act they formed, the precise nature of the dance so carefully choreographed?

“Wait here,” he told Bernardo, and strode back toward the monastery, a conviction growing, trying to remember Gerhardt’s amongst the whirl of faces pressed against his own. Where was Gerhardt? He gained the cloister. Hanno, yes. Georg, yes. But Gerhardt was nowhere to be seen. He turned away, ignored now by the herd of them. Bernardo again: gloomy, perturbed, anxious, on a stone both broad and flat. Gerhardt and the islanders together, adding them up to produce. … Then he knew: the conviction freezing in his stomach. What must be done. What must be done. …

“What?” Bernardo’s voice broke in on his thoughts. “What must be done?”

Had he been thinking aloud? He was tired, emptied. The giant’s face was tilted up at his, mildly curious.

“They mean to kill him,” he said.

It was odd, the way his old friend drank. Ewald had served them both mugs of small beer, flat and warm, delicious after his exertions. Nearing the beach after
two hours or more afloat, he had seen Ewald standing there, waving him ashore. He had strung his boots about his neck, and then the two of them had lugged the monster up the beach, shouting directions to one another as the water foamed about their thighs, finally flopping down in a sweat, thirsty. They had guzzled water from the butt, splashed a bit on their necks, then gone inside for beer. No sign of Mathilde or the children. Their hoses steamed in front of the fire now.

Salvestro lifted his mug, slurped, sat it down, then waited to see if Ewald would do it again. After a few seconds, Ewald started. He glanced quickly across at Salvestro’s mug, then down at his own. Grasping it in both hands, he raised it to his lips and gulped at the contents. As before, a little spilled down his chin. He had drunk three mugs so far to Salvestro’s one. He twitched and looked about as if someone were moving behind him. He had done this throughout Salvestro’s chatter.

“Bit of a shock, me and Bernardo turning up like that, eh, Ewald?”

Ewald stared at him for a second. “Well, it has been so many years. …”

” I meant, thinking I was dead.”

“Well, I was told afterward. That’s what I was told.” He paused. “I was only a child. There’s no need to bring up all that, is there?”

“No, no, no. No need at all. I was just thinking back, that’s all.”

He drank again, and again Ewald gulped. The beer was weak, but having touched nothing stronger than cold water through the winter, he found that it was going to his head. He asked if there were more. Ewald drained his own and refilled them both from the keg, his bare white legs a little unsteady. The room ballooned about him.

The two men drank on. Salvestro began to tell Ewald about his time with the Christian Free Company. Ewald said nothing, merely nodding when that seemed to be required, his eyes drifting again and again toward the door. Three times already he had got up to open it and peer briefly outside. It was quite dark now.

“Is something the matter, Ewald?” he asked finally. The other shook his head. Salvestro went on with his story. Soon, he and Bernardo were rowing across the Achter-Wasser.

“So what did you think, when you opened the door and there we were?” Salvestro persisted.

“I was … surprised,” said Ewald.

“I’ll bet!” roared Salvestro. The beer was excellent stuff. More, gulp. “Now, tell me …” He leaned forward. “Why do you think I came back, eh?”

It was fun, making Ewald squirm. He was like a younger brother, really. Tickle him till he wet himself. Put an eel in his bed. … But there was something in the question that snagged him, something in that white face behind the woman’s, in the doorway. He wanted Ewald to tell him what he had been thinking. It was simple.

“Come now, Nico—” Ewald began.

“I’m not called that anymore,” Salvestro broke in, a little belligerent now. “I haven’t been called that for a long, long time.” He leaned back in his chair. “So tell me, why? Why did I come back?”

“You know why you came back,” replied Ewald. His eyes would not meet Salvestro’s.

“Of course
I
know.” He was badgering, moving his head about to intercept Ewald’s gaze, which drifted evasively over the walls and up to the lathes of the roof. “But what did
you
think?”

“Nothing.” Ewald gulped quickly at his beer, draining the mug again. The fire spluttered. Salvestro picked a log from the pile by the hearth and placed it on the embers. A small yellow flame popped up. His hose was dry, or dry enough. He struggled in, more drunk than he thought. He remembered pulling his clothes out of the underbrush after the first attempt at teaching his friend to swim. One of his secrets. Years ago. Now Ewald reached for his own hose, and soon his toes were tangled in one leg. He fell over. Salvestro straddled him, then sat down quickly, twisted an arm behind his back. Ewald twisted violently, but to no effect. They were boys again, swimming, mucking about, wrestling on the floor of the woods. He pulled Ewald’s head up by the hair, then bent forward to whisper in his ear, “I came back for you, Ewald.”

Instead of exclaiming “Get
off,”
in the bored-irritated tone he had adopted for such events as a boy, Ewald remained silent.

“And now I’m going to slit your throat. …”

Salvestro peered down at his adversary’s face. It was the color of ashes. He looked at Ewald’s eyes. Ewald’s eyes bulged. Salvestro jumped up quickly.

“Ewald! It was only in play!”

Ewald was stumbling to his feet, marching to the back of the room, talking to himself in a mumble, rooting about back there. He turned and there was an iron hook in his hand, its shank as long as his arm. “Calm down, Ewald,” he said, but Ewald seemed not to hear.