The Chantry Guild

CHAPTER 17

Dawn through the uncurtained windows of the office woke them both. They dressed and found their way to the dining hall of the dormitory building they were in. They were seated across from each other at an end of one of the long picnic-style plank tables, having breakfast, when Amid joined them. "Someone told you we were here," said Amanda, as the old man sat down next to her. He looked more diminutive than ever side by side with Amanda, Hal noticed. It was as if the last year or so had shrunk him even further, only without harming him. He was a little kernel of a man, but hard and alive. "Quite right." He beamed at her. "I'd left word with those on kitchen duty in both buildings to let me know when you were up for breakfast."

He looked over at Hal. "I thought I'd take you out and see you started in the circle myself," he said. "Isn't that possibly going to mean a long wait for you?" asked Hal. "Ordinarily, yes," said Amid. "But it seems things are out of my hands. Word about a visitor here is already around, and those currently waiting have all volunteered to let you go first. We'll only have to wait until the first person to step out of the circle after we get there does so. Then you step in, Amanda and I go about our business."

"Your business?" Hal looked from Amid to Amanda. "Well, I about my business," said Amid. "I was merely using the expression. What Amanda's immediate plans are, I've no idea. I assumed you'd know." "I'm staying for a day or so," said Amanda, "so I can watch Hal at the start. I'll just wait around - unless you've got something I can do to help pay our way with you here? I know everyone on this ledge works at something or other." "You're our guest," said Amid. "That rule doesn't apply to you or Hal unless you want it to."

"As I told you," said Hal, "I'll do my share of whatever's to be done." "There you are," said Amanda. "That takes care of him. Now, what have you got that I can be useful at?" "Thank you, then," said Amid. "All right, you can drop by our infirmary, if you want to. We don't have much sickness here, but small accidents will happen. Old Man is walking right now, so we could use someone who knows something about acupressure for pain relief and such - the sort of thing you Dorsai all know." "A place like this, on an Exotic world," said Hal, "and you need the skills of a Dorsai for battlefield-style medical handling?" "Amanda radiates the will to recover more than most, as I imagine you know," said Amid. "We have one person here, as I just mentioned, who calls himself simply 'Old Man,' he does the same thing, but even he's not as good at it as Amanda."

"Oh?" said Hal. "I'd like to meet him." "You'll see him when you get out to the circle," said Amid. "He's got a sort of aura about him that seems to make people heal themselves faster and more comfortably. Actually, his name is Laoren, which, I gather, is Chinese in origin. But when he came here he asked us to simply call him by its translation in Basic, which is 'Old Man.' He's somewhat unusual, an Exotic from a family that had preserved their ethnic purity for more than a century and a half. You know how, on these two worlds of ours, we've always approved rather of mixing ethnic strains than keeping them separate." "I believe I saw him, as we came in," said Hal. He frowned with the memory of the sunlight flooding his eyes.

"It wouldn't be surprising if you had," said Amid. "He does rather stand out. Also, you probably noticed he wasn't repeating the Law aloud as he walked. That's another thing about him. He only speaks when he has to and we've gathered he appreciates people not trying to draw him into conversation. I don't mean to suggest he's withdrawn, socially. He's probably one of the most genuinely merry people I've met. But he just doesn't talk much."

Hal and Amanda finished their breakfast and they all went outside. In the fresh mountain air of the new day, Procyon beamed down at them out of a cloudless sky and the temperature was rising with that swiftness that promised a warm, if not hot, afternoon. "Come to think of it," said Amanda, with a glance at the sky, "have you had a solar radiation shot in the past three years, Hal? Because Procyon's not like Sol-- "I'm up to date," said Hal. He glanced at her exposed arms and legs, normally so pale, that were now a smooth, light tan. "How about yourself? You look as if you might be letting the local star get to you." "Oh, I'm up to date, too," said Amanda. "I wouldn't slip up on that. It's just that I'd stand out like a bright light among all these Exotics if I'd stayed my usual skin color. So I amended it, to help me fit in."

Ahead of them, the circle was moving as it had been the evening before, and Hal now particularly took note of the small cluster of men and women off to one side, who were obviously the waiters. There were no more than half a dozen or so of them. "Do those in the circle deliberately cut their time short, if they see a lot of people waiting?" Hal asked. "They could, of course," said Amid. "But I don't think it happens very often. Once in the circle and once in the proper frame of mind, you see what's going on around you but it doesn't seem to have much, if any, importance - I can tell you that from personal experience. I think we've got one or two in the waiting group there, though, that are just out here to see you. "

They had been walking toward the circle as they talked. "You're sure word of who I am hasn't been mentioned?" "I'd be the first one any of the people here would come and tell, if they thought you were who you are," said Amid. "Some may have seen a picture of you, but if so, since you haven't been announced, they're doing the polite thing and keeping it to themselves. " "A picture of me?" "Yes," said Amid. "It's been spread all over the Younger Worlds as part of the Others' propaganda against Earth. I don't mean they've published it separately. But there've been references, of course, to you, Ajela, Rukh and some other people, as charges against them were publicly made. Not you so far, Amanda, by the way." "Good," murmured Amanda. "I'd just as soon my picture wasn't too welI known." "Yes. But I'm afraid, in your case, Hal," said Amid, "there's a whole generation of children on the Younger Worlds growing up who're being taught to spit after saying your name. You're supposed to be the evil sorcerer crouched spiderlike in your lair in the Final Encyclopedia, cooking up evil things for good people on all the Younger Worlds."

They had joined the waiting group by the time Amid had finished saying this, all of the people in the group, with typical Exotic politeness, avoided looking directly at Hal and Amanda, or in any way appearing to attract the attention of the newcomers. As those walking passed, Hal had time to notice individuals. There was a drinking water fountain just beyond the far end of the circle, and three small buildings that were obviously personal waste-disposal units for the walkers. "Three?" Hal asked Amid, pointing at them. "Yes. Oh, I see what you mean," Amid laughed. "No, it's not that we've got three sexes around here, but you'll find when you get in the circle that you don't think of stopping for anything until something reminds you. Then you may be in a hurry. What we've found that tends to happen here is that someone will make a comfort stop and inadvertently set off what you might call a chain reaction. Jathed would have sneered at such niceties as drinking fountains and chemical waste-disposal units here, but my brother thought otherwise - by the way, there's Old Man turning the far corner, now."

Hal looked and saw the oriental-appearing walker who had attracted his attention when they had first arrived, the day before. As Amid had said, Old Man was just now coming around the far end of the circle, on its side that was closest to the waiters, so that he was now walking toward Hal and the rest of the waiting group.

True to what Hal had been told, the eyes of those in the circle - and Old Man was no exception - seemed to take in all that was visible before them, but show no particular interest in it. Old Man's eyes looked at and through Hal as he strode toward him. "Has he been walking all night?" Hal asked. "I believe so," said Amid. "You saw him in the circle when you came in?" "Yes," said Hal.

It was hard to believe Old Man had been at this for hours. He moved with a particularly light and springy step, as if he was about to leap into the air with the next stride, and Hal guessed that for all his long white beard and white mustaches, the other could run like a deer if he had to. In fact, in spite of his skinniness and the evidence of his age, there was an impression of power and youth about him. It was startling, for in appearance alone, he was almost frail. He was hardly taller or heavier than a twelve-year-old boy, except for the largeness of his hands and a surprising width of shoulders under the robe he wore, which Hal now saw figured with white blossoms upon a background of a red color so dark as to almost seem black. Old Man's hair was as white as his beard and so sparse that the skin of his round skull under it was visible in the sunlight. "He's in remarkable physical condition," Amid was saying, beside Hal. "He has a sword of sorts he brought here with him, and he exercises with it when he isn't otherwise occupied. It's very graceful. It looks as if he's dancing, when he does it."

They fell silent. There was something about the words, repeated and repeated in their ears, that not only made conversation unnecessary but drew their minds, if not their bodies, into the circle of those who moved before them. Hal found his thoughts running over the oriental schools of martial exercises with the sword that he could remember, He made a Mental note to watch Old Man at his exercises the first chance that made itself available.

Hal was still at this when one of the walkers left the circle. He was a younger man with close-cut reddish hair and reddish beard. He had been walking with all the appearance of normality, but after taking several steps away from the circle, he stumbled and his feet dragged, like those of someone exhausted, but still driving himself to move. One of those waiting was almost immediately at his side and helping him toward one of the nearer of the two dormitory buildings. "In you go, Hal," said Amid. "I'm waiting for Old Man to come around," said Hal. "I'd like to walk behind him." "If you like," said Amid.

Old Man came around and Hal stepped in behind him. The next walker in the circle fell back a little distance to give room. Hal followed Old Man and, opening his mouth, began to repeat the Law:

"The transient and the eternal are the same ."

Almost immediately the rhythm of the walking and the intoned phrase took him over. It was as if he had stepped on to the back of some powerful bird, which now took off with him. The words were like a living thing that lifted him and carried him away. The beating of his heart was in synchrony with the heartbeat of the bird, and a pressure he had not been conscious of feeling, but which had pressed down on him before, was suddenly released, so that he felt light and free.

He ascended within himself on the wings of the feeling that bore him, that had been outside him to begin with but which was now working itself inward on him, staining into him. He felt the words resonating in his throat and all through his body. He could not say what they meant, any more than he had understood more than their ordinary, everyday meaning before. But he felt something additional in them now, even though he could not reach through to something of deeper import yet - like a vast mountain in the distance, somewhere beyond him.

It was as Amid had said. He did not lose sight of, or touch with, his surroundings. He saw Amid and Amanda still standing, watching him for a little while before they turned and went off together, leaving only the small group of those who waited their turn in the circle. He saw and felt all that he ordinarily would have seen and felt, but it was irrelevant to what he was experiencing with his own movement and the repetition of the words.

The bird carrying him was his image and he let himself go with it. He felt the softness and warmth of the back feathers under him, felt the vibrations through them of the powerfully pumping wings, saw far distant on the horizon the triangular, mist-white shape of the Grandfathers of Dawn mountains that was his destination. The clean, thin air of the heights drew deep down into his lungs, searching out their very bottom crannies and corridors. And, without warning, he understood.

He understood that the weight that had dropped away temporarily from him as he stepped into the circle had been the weight of defeat. It had accumulated, layer by layer, day by day this last year, surrounding him, but held off from closing in on and crushing him by his strength of will, which grew and toughened like muscle in response to the demand placed upon it. So that his lack of success and his strength of will had increased together - until at last the limits even of his will were approached, and he had begun to give under the weight.

So despondency had finally begun to touch him. He had fought well and won, fought and won, again and again - and again and again victory had left him with the decisive encounter yet to be. Fear and its stepchildren, self-doubt and self-hatred, still tore and destroyed in the innermost parts of all human beings. He had conquered one wall only to find another, and another after that, and after that another, with his foe still alive and protected... until there seemed no end to the walls, and he felt the beginnings of an end to his strength.

He was aware that others had taken up this challenge in times before him, and all had failed in the end. But like each of those who had gone before, he had said, "we have come so far. We have won this much. Now, finally, we ought to be ready to reach the final battleground, and put an end to what plagues us."

Donal had won... and the final battle had turned out yet to be fought. Paul Formain had won... and the final battle still awaited. Hal Mayne had saved what must be saved of the human race, safe for a little while until the final battle could be fought - and the final battle was still beyond the horizon, still out of reach. There must be an end, as there must have been a beginning. For the first time he wondered about the moment of beginning of the historical forces that had brought him and the human race to this moment. He had used the Creative Universe for the first time, as Donal, to go back to where he thought he could set up the forces that would bring about a final encounter. As Paul Formain he had found them in the twenty-first century. But neither then nor now had he ever thought of trying to reach back and find the absolute beginning of that last battle in which he would be a solitary warrior.

He reached out, mentally, now, to find that moment of beginning, and it led him to a place and a time, to a scene in which he became an Englishman in armor at the lowest point of his own life's long battle. It was a day of victory for the Black Prince of England, the battle of Poitiers, and its sights, its sounds, its feel came to Hal not only through this knight who had been his unconscious forerunner in this centuries-long contest, but also from a dying soldier of the other side. Hal was both men, and looked through the eyes of each to see the face of the other.

...Sir John Hawkwood had fought the long day's fight, and fought well - but none of rank or worth on his own side had been there where he had fought the best of the other side, to note what he did. He had taken a prisoner, but it was a prisoner who was a French knight of small holding, and the ransom would not make Sir John rich. As ransoms had made rich Sir Robert Knolles, and the notice of the Black Prince had made famous Sir John Chandos. He was weary and the anesthesia of the wine from the night before, and of the early morning before the battle, had long since worn off, leaving him weary and wasted inside. Aimlessly, on a battlefield on which the main action was over, he rode up one side of a little rise over the top of which, on the Jarther downslope, lay the tanner's son.

The tanner's son lay dying in the bright September sunlight. About him was the odor of crushed grass and the stink of the blood and the intestines of a horse who had been disemboweled and lay nearby. The tanner's son was a crossbowman from Lombardy. He wore leather hose and a leather smock of sorts to which chain links had been sewn. He was tall and lean, with a swarthy face and straight black hair. He was in his early twenties and still had most of his teeth. His mouth was wide and mobile. He had an English arrow completely through his right side under the ribs, and he had worn the feathers completely off its shaft, since he had gone out of his head unsuccessfully trying to draw it out the way it had entered. He had bled a great deal, but in spite of that he continued to lie supporting himself on one elbow with such a wild look on his face that none of the English archers or men at arms had paused to cut his throat. Besides, he lay off to one side himself where there were no wounded French knights or such worth taking prisoner, and the battle had gone away from him.

His eyes no longer focused on the field. Occasionally he would cry out weakly in the dialect of his native Genoa, forgetting he was now in the foreign fields of France. "Help! Help for the tanner's son!"

Beyond him, at some little distance, the bearded, blooddaubed English archers and other foot-soldiers hurried by, rooting among the dying and the dead for a prisoner worthy of ransom. There were slim pickings here, for the more adventurous of their fellows had already covered the ground, cutting throats with quick boarlike jerks of their knives, when a candidate proved worthless or too wounded to promise to live. The wild, calling crossbowman, with the lank black hair falling half over his face, they had passed by out of a sort of instinct-two or three had even crossed themselves in passing. For, by a trick if its entering angle, the arrow appeared to anyone from a distance to have driven squarely through the crossbowman's heart. It seemed that he must already be dead, but still propped up and calling, whereas he was actually only dying, like all the rest.

Beyond the unfocused eyes of the crossbowman was part of the field of Poitiers, in the midwest of France. Up a slope behind him was a rubble of hedges and new-dug mounds, considerably torn about and beaten down now, which had been the original Position of the English. Out beyond in the other direction was the little valley with the wood of St. Pierre to his left. In another part of the field, at the edge of that same wood, the banner of Edward of England, the Black Prince, was flying from a tall tree, to serve as a rallying signal for those English pursuing the French retreating to the moment of their slaughter below the prudently locked gates of the city of Poitiers. Below that flag, the tent of the Black Prince had been pitched, and in it, the Prince, Sir John Chandos and some others were drinking wine.

In a farther section of the field Geffroi de Charny had just been killed, and the banner of France, which he was holding, tottered to the ground. Behind him, King John of France, his dead lords about him, his fourteen-year-old son Philip beside him, felt his weary arms failing at the effort to lift and strike with his battle axe once again. The English were crowding close, eager to capture a King, shouting at him to surrender. He turned to one strong young man, pushing toward him, who had called out to him in good and understandable French. The moment of his capture was near.

Meanwhile, unknowing of all this, the crossbowman wept a little from his unseeing eyes, propping himself on his elbow, and called out to the great pain in his body and the sun, like a brilliant furnace at high noon over his head in the cloudless sky - "Help! Help for the tanner's son".

And so he cried - as he had cried for a long time without any response, but more weakly as time went on. Until, from somewhere he heard the approaching thudding of hooves that came to him, and stopped, and a following thud as two mailed feet came one after the other to earth beside him. For a moment nothing happened, and then a voice in all English the crossbowman could not have understood even before he got all arrow through his body, spoke above him. "Who's a tanner's son?"

A couple of iron-sheathed knees came to earth beside the crossbowman. The crossbowman felt the weight of his upper body lifted off the supporting elbow. Through the delirium of his pain, a feeling of being rescued penetrated to him. He stopped crying out and made a great effort to focus his eyes.

A circular shape peaked at the top steadied and unblurred before his eyes. He looked from a distance of inches up into a lean, rectangular-jawed face, unshaven and surmounted by all iron skullcap with a cloth skullcap showing dark-blue and rather ragged edges underneath the metal edge. The face of John Hawkwood had a deep-set nose, fine blue eyes under straight brown eyebrows, and a straight, angular nose that had never been broken. The face had the clear, even color of naturally blond skin tanned and dried by the sun until its surface had gone into tiny, premature wrinkles around the corners of the eyes and indented deeply around the mouth. The mouth itself was thinlipped but level of expression, the nostrils thin and from them came a strong exhalation of breath laden with the odor of wine gone stale. "Who's a tanner's son?" repeated the lips, this time in the mixed argot of the military camps. But the crossbowman now comprehended nothing but the dialect of his childhood. He understood only that someone had come to his aid, and because the man who held him was clean-shaven he thought, not of a knight who might need to breathe unencumbered inside his clumsy headpot of a helm, but that the one who held him was a priest. He thought the priest was speaking to him in latin and exhorting him to confess. "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned ." he whispered.

The man who held him had been able to make out the business of the tanner's son, but this further whisper in the Genoese dialect left him at a loss. Vaguely, he caught the sense of the word "sinned" but that was all. "What the hell,'' he said, in the camp argot, a little thickly, we're all sinners. But we aren't all tanner's sons." He sat back on his heels and lowered the head of the crossbowman on to his knees. He lifted the cloth and metal skullcaps of the bassinet off his head together and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. "I'm a tanner's son, myself. "

He broke off and looked down, for the crossbowman had begun to speak again, and the rhythm of the phrases of the confessional were familiar. "Well, " he said in English, "I can do that much for you. One Christian to another, eh?"

He put the bassinet back on his head and listened, though what the other said was all but incomprehensible. The crossbowman was trying to remember his sins, but he confused the pain in his body with the pain of disease, which he associated with the evilnesses of his relations with women. To describe these, he had of necessity to use words more common and understandable to the man whose knees he rested on - and who nodded, hearing the words. "That's it," said the man. "That's it. Not much like that in Hedingham Sibil, in Essex where I was a tanner's son - or wherever you had from, I suppose. But enough here." He listened awhile longer. He noticed the lips of the crossbowman were darkened and dried. "Use a little wine, here,'' he muttered. "None with wine though, damn it. Go on, go on..."

But the crossbowman had finished his confession, and now he had begun to weep once more. He had thought that, having confessed himself, he would find himself forgiven and the pain taken away. But it was still with him. He plucked the now smooth end of the arrow. "Help!" he husked, once more, in a barely audible voice. ''Help, for the tanner's son..." "Damn you."' swore the man holding him, blinking his own eyes suddenly and pulling the plucking hand from the unmoving arrow's nocked end. ''What do you want me to do for you that's no good."

The crossbowman wept. His mind had wandered again, and now he imagined he was a boy again and the pain was because he was being punished for something. "You made your peace, " growled the man holding him. ''Get on with your dying. " He looked at the arrow. ''A hard way out is it."" He blinked again. "Poor filth. All right, then. ''

He reached down and drew a short, heavy-hilted dagger from a scabbard on his swordbelt. "Misericord, '' he said. ''God forgive this wretched sinner, and give him quick relief from payment for his sins, amen."

He leaned over with his lips close to the crossbowman's right ear, thinking perhaps it would give the sinner the good feeling of a little pride before his death. "A knight kills you, man."

But the crossbowman did not in any way understand the words. A deeper understanding had come to him. He had finally understood that he was dying. His mind had fled back to imagining he was with a priest again, and when he saw the insubstantial, glittering shape of the misericord lied up before his eyes, he thought it was the Cross being given him to kiss, and he felt a holy joy. "I am ready to die, Lord, " he thought he prayed. ''Only let it be fast. "

It was fast.