The Harp and the Blade

  The Abbot accepted the tribute with a gesture. “Chilbert, though I don’t say he deserved better fortune, surely had a right to count on it. I thought for a while we’d be lucky to get off with a draw.”

  “He was a capable bastard,” I said, and we let that stand for his epitaph.

  We looked around. All of the enemy who could manage it were out of sight, together with most of our men, although some of the latter had hung back from the pursuit to round up riderless mounts. The people who’d been left in the monastery were out finding what of the men left on the field had enough life to make salvaging possible. The Abbot sighed.

  “Before we have to find out how much in the way of friends and man power this victory has cost us— “

  “And how many women we’ll have to tell that they’d better start looking for another man,” Conan took him up soberly.

  “Yes, before that, too, and so while our only positive knowledge is of good, let us go over to that tree,” he pointed to an isolated oak, “and sit quietly to think of this new power we have.”

  With those words he was no longer a comrade in arms but an older man and a priest. “A good idea, Father,” I said, using the term of respect for the first time since he had shown us Clovis’ head.

  We dismounted to let our horses graze where they would. It wasn’t a far walk to the abbey, and they had earned their leisure. We stretched out in the shade, only then appraised of how worn we were. All of us had sundry nicks, scratches, and cuts of varying length and depth; but in view of what we had come through they didn’t seem worth a great deal of thought.

  In a moment or so, however, the Abbot sat up, unbuckled his sword, and threw it from him. “It’s a futile hope in times like ours, but I trust I’ll never have to use that again. In any case I won’t have to use it as much from now on. There will be respites, and I can build as I have never had time to do before. The abbey will start to house scholars instead of soldiers as soon as I can find the men to teach.”

  I raised up on one elbow. “I know the man for you!” I said excitedly, and launched into an enthusiastic description of Father Michael. “He’s the one to teach your teachers,” I concluded. “I’ve met scholars in my time but never one to touch him. And he’s wasted there, breaking his heart among louts who don’t know a poem from a papal bull.”

  He eyed me with paternal indulgence. “There are more things to scholarship than poetry.”

  I shrugged. He was a churchman, and in any event he had a right to his own opinion. I even had the caution to refrain from telling him that Father Michael did not think so. “But he’s your man,” I said earnestly. “You’ll never find a better.”

  “I’ll send to see if he will come,” he promised. “What will you take from our success, Conan? Will you seize Chilbert’s land? The abbey wants none of it.”

  “Nor do I, Father,” my friend said. He rolled over on his stomach, selected a piece of grass, and started chewing it.“I’ll offer alliance and what protection I can give to any man who wants to hold from me, but I’m not a conqueror. I have land, and there’s room enough for my friends to live uncrowded now that the master landgrabber has been done away with.

  “Like yourself I know I’ll have to fight again, but I’m stronger now. It’ll take a great army to take that fort of mine, and nobody can stay long in my country who cannot take it. I’ll have my friends build of stone, too, and in the shadow of those stone forts our people will be safe, assured that when they marry the roof will stay above the heads of their wives and children.” His clenched hand hit the ground. “I’m only a chief because I can give them that thing as other men cannot or will not.”

  “Excellent, my son,” the Abbot nodded, turning his attention to me. “And what will you do now, Finnian?” His eyes twinkled. “I recall that on the occasion of our first meeting you would have none of us. Will you find a place here to suit your requirements?”

  Having no such claims in the direction of constructive benevolence as they, I was a little embarrassed, but Conan saved me. “Of course, Father. We’ll find him a place off in the woods where everybody will be safe from hearing his harp and songs.”

  The prelate smiled in recognition of the intent rather than in appreciation of the jest. “And now,” he said, shifting to a kneeling position, “as men who have been granted good fortune by God today, let us offer a prayer.”

  We followed the Latin with him until he became largely silent with more personal communication, only a mumbled word or so conveying the general tenor. From similar murmurings I knew that Conan was also praying. I thought of Marie instead, which perhaps came to the same thing, involving as it did contemplation of the summum bonum.

  We had finished, and the Abbot was retrieving his sword in sign that he was ready to leave when I noticed Conan’s foot soldiers, already emerged from the forest and marching sturdily toward the abbey. A knot of horsemen led them, and I could make out Jean at their head. I nudged Conan, and we stretched out again, chuckling.

  “Jean!” Conan bawled.

  He located us after peering, halted his men, and trotted across fields. The Abbot, seeing that we were not for immediate going, saluted us and strode off. We watched him approvingly, then grinned lazily up at Jean, who reined in to stare, nonplused. “Hello, Jean; what are you doing in these parts?” I wondered.

  He scratched his head, knowing that something was going on but not sure what. “Where’s the war?” he asked finally.

  Conan and I looked at each other. “Did you hear of any wars around here, Finnian?” my friend asked curiously.

  “No,” I yawned. “Somebody must have given him the wrong directions.”

  “Sure,” Jean said, pointing to a corpse about a hundred yards away, “and I suppose he’s just a landmark.”

  “Oh,” Conan drawled, “you mean that war. Hell, that war’s all over!”

  Jean gulped and goggled at us, unable to assimilate this. “It is?”

  “It is.”

  “You mean to say I had to yahoo those poor devils afoot all through a moonless night,” Jean, a harried man who had had no sleep, was angry now, “and you couldn’t even wait till we got here before you finished up the war?”

  Conan choked at the bathos delivered thus seriously. “I’m sorry Jean,” I apologized. “We just didn’t know our own strength.”

  That and the look on his face finished us. We turned over on our stomachs and writhed in a great joy of laughter. Then after another indignant second his own usually ready guffaw resounded to swell the chorus. It was well, for we needed that laugh. Soon we rose to attend to the bitter business of seeing who was lost, crippled for life, or maimed in some lesser degree.

  Chapter

  Twenty-three

  IT WAS over another week before we turned home again. The military rout was complete, but to insure against combines of chiefs who might try later reprisals we visited the more important ones. To the amenable we promised protection and alliance, to the sullen we pointed out that they had got off easily but wouldn’t next time.

  True to his word, Conan seized no occupied land, but all empty and doubtful country contiguous to his borders he preempted. His purpose was to settle it, establishing a fortified buffer to give pause to later aggressors. He did not even confiscate any of Chilbert’s mobile property as indemnity, though we did raze his fortress as an object lesson. Then we made sure that his land was partitioned among five men, so guaranteeing that none would fall heir to dangerously heady wealth.

  The endless conferences were a bore, but a necessary bore. By showing men the dirt we could rub their noses in while never doing it, or even mentioning the dirt except in allegorical terms, we made, if not friends, resigned enemies who congratulated themselves that things were no worse. Some might be friends later, others not; but all were impressed. Our power was a byword, and it would take some outsider to rally local men against us.

  Such an antagonist might and would eventually materialize, but in the interim our mig
ht would be increased. There’s nothing like proof that one can gut a man to inspire him with consideration for one. Only the few like courtesy for its own sake.

  Notwithstanding the swank, heavy politics, and monotony, I wasn’t unhappy. Indeed, though I did my part reasonably well, I believe, I was in a trance of anticipation the whole time.

  I functioned by rote, and my life was elsewhere. Conan noticed and gibed me about it, though he, too, was chafing with impatience to get home.

  Then the great moment came when we actually started for the fort. And brutes we were about it, pushing tired men to the limit of their endurance and almost beyond, nagging and cursing everyone’s slowness. We were as weary as anyone, but we didn’t care.

  The end of our patience came during a rest on the march not ten miles from the fort. The men were supine, exhausted. I followed their example for a moment, then sat up restlessly. “Let’s ride,” I said to Conan. “We can’t wait for these turtles till Christ comes again!”

  His eyes were red from lack of sleep, as no doubt were my own. Yet he scrambled to his feet on the instant. “Right!” he said. “They can find their way home!”

  Knowing how much I prized it, he had given me the great bay; and he himself had confiscated an excellent horse to replace the one Chilbert had killed. Worn too, they still had enough more vitality than most of the other mounts to save us a good hour or so.

  We were happy men as we rode, proud of achievement, glad of life, liking the future. We sang in spite of our dusty mouths, and each laughed at everything the other said, whether he had listened to it or not. Conscious as we were of our pleasure in each other’s company, our minds were ahead of us. We’d done a good job, and we wanted to tell our women about it.

  Naturally messengers had brought the general good news to the fort, but that wouldn’t spoil the personal conferences we were anticipating. When at last I saw the walls of the stronghold I drew in my breath like a child at sight of a honeycomb. I had dreamed of it, and here it was. Before an hour had passed, I swore, I’d ask my girl to share my well-earned winnings.

  The watchers had marked us, and everybody in the place crowded around us, asking questions. Conan kissed Ann and then bellowed at them, grinning. “Can’t a tired man get any privacy with his own wife? We’ll talk it over in the morning, but let me alone now.”

  In spite of his good humor he made his point sharp enough, and they left us. I looked around, feeling cheated and terrifically disappointed. “Where’s Marie?” I asked.

  Ann looked at Conan and received no more help than a fatuous smile. Her eyes seemed very serious. “Why, she’s in the hall, Finnian.”

  “Anything the matter with her?” I inquired anxiously.

  “No. She wants to see you, but not with other people around. She has something to say to you.”

  Private talk with her was what I myself earnestly desired. “That’s fine!” I said, brightening. “I’ve got some things to say to her.” I winked at Conan, and he laughed gaily.

  Ann suddenly broke from her husband’s arms. “Go over there,” she called over her shoulder, pointing to a deserted corner of the court. “I’ll send her out to you.”

  Conan slapped me on the back. “Good luck, brother! Marie’s a fine girl.” It was the first time her name had been used between us.

  So I limped stiffly across the court and leaned against the wall. I wouldn’t look at her as she came up to greet me. I’d wait to see what her spontaneous words of salutation would be. In a minute I heard a step, but not a woman’s. I turned my head, annoyed. Raymond was approaching.

  I was feeling too pleased with the world to be angry, but if there was anything I didn’t want around then it was another man. “Glad to see you up and about,” I told him, “but I’ll tell you more about that later. I’m waiting here for somebody now.”

  He drew a breath and braced his legs. “I’ve got to tell you myself,” he said in a flat voice. “You want that girl, and so do I—but she wants me, not you.” He spread his arms. “Hit me! Kill me, if you think you’ve got the right! But it won’t change that.”

  I stared at him, feeling stunned and battered. My intense fatigue didn’t let me react very fast, and the preconception I’d lived with so long was not easily displaced. But even though I didn’t grasp the full import, I knew, thinking back. It was this of which Ann had tried to warn me.

  I couldn’t say anything, so he went on. It must have been hard work for him, but I only appreciated that later. “You wouldn’t have done it to me, maybe. I didn’t want to do it to you. It just happened.” His mouth worked. “I knew you wanted her, and you’ve been my friend and more than that. You’re my chief! But she and I—after the first week or so we knew.” He drew himself up, quivering. “What are you going to say? What are you going to do?”

  I looked at him dully, feeling all my weariness then with a vengeance. Well, if it was so, it was so; but I didn’t want to talk about it any more. “It’s all right,” I said. 7 He broke the skin on his knuckles hitting the wall. “It isn’t all right, but—”

  I smiled, though not much. “But you’ll do what you’re going to do, as everybody else does. And why shouldn’t you? God knows I don’t want a woman who doesn’t want me.” I touched his arm lightly. “You’re friend still, but let’s drop the subject.”

  With one last hang-dog look he left me, and I gazed out through the open gate and across the dropped drawbridge, symbols of the new peace in the land. The burn of the pain would come after a while; now I was merely getting used to the knowledge that preceded it. The vision I had been living with and on for the past few weeks had been all imagination. No, not entirely that, either. She had had it in her mind also, but only, humiliatingly enough, because there had been nobody else around. Then along had come this one lad, and he had really proved sib.

  I wanted to sit down, but there was no place unless I walked for it, so I just stood there. There would be no woman, no son, no hall. Somebody else was drawing near, and I looked around with sodden irritability. It was Marie herself, the last person I wanted to see.

  “Raymond told me.” Then I said to her what I had said to him. “It’s all right.”

  But she wouldn’t go away. “I’m sorry, Finnian,” she informed me.

  My nerves were jumping, but I tried not to raise my voice. “It’s over,” I said. “Words are good for nothing now.”

  Her face was drawn with effort, but she continued to face me. Women fight for what they want with as much courage as men, and with more specific knowledge of their needs; and she wanted something of me. “There’s something we’ve got to talk about,” she said desperately.

  I felt like a sick man without strength enough to strike at a hovering gadfly. “What?” I asked.

  “You’ll be going away now, won’t you?” she remarked rather than inquired.

  Glancing through the gate again at the road beyond, I realized what had been on my mind since Raymond had spoken. Yes, I would be going away. There would be no use remaining, seeing that I had nothing more to do there. I would be welcome to stay with Conan, but even in my lost state of mind I shied at the picture of myself as the favored and indulged hanger-on, growing more purposeless by the month.

  No, the whole bright concept of existence there had depended on Marie, and it had shattered because of her. And she knew that, as well as what I would do about it. Abstractedly I wondered how she could know that much about me and still feel alien. But she did. Remembering, I saw that she had always liked me, yet been repelled.

  “You’ll be going away?” she repeated to force an answer. “Sure,” I said. “Now won’t you go away yourself? I don’t feel like conversation.”

  Her next words, however, intrigued my distraught attention. “But if you stayed you could have all the land you wanted. Conan would give you anything.”

  I looked at her curiously before I nodded. “Yes, he’d give me anything except Ann and his half of the bottle.”

  She moistened her li
ps. “We need that land, Raymond and I. Conan would never give us any, because he’ll hold us responsible for driving you away. But if you’re not using your land, there’s no reason why we can’t.”

  “I haven’t got any land,” I said brusquely. “It’s all Conan’s.”

  “Yes, but Conan owes you something, owes you a lot!” She reached out her hand. “Ask him for land! Raymond’s your man, and you can tell Conan that he’ll hold it in your name. Look, Finnian! Conan needs chiefs. I’ve heard him say so myself. And Raymond would make a good one.”

  She wasn’t just praising her lover. She was telling the truth. I would be doing no disservice to my friend by sponsoring this lad’s promotion. He would, I was convinced, do a good job. Marie was leaning toward me, peering to read my mind. “Finnian!” she cried urgently. “You must!”

  I glowered at her. A bargain that would favor all parties and wouldn’t harm me waited but my word. If I failed to give it I’d feel small and mean about it the rest of my life; and of that she was keenly aware. I tried frantically to find some excuse, but there was none. She had me cornered.

  “I’ll speak to Conan,” I told her, still somehow keeping my voice quiet.

  “Oh, Finnian!” The wealth of emotion in her tone soured me yet further, because I knew it was really meant for another man. Nevertheless, she persisted in remaining.

  “I—we have been good friends, Finnian,” she said “and—”

  “Well what do you want now?”

  “You’ve meant much in my life, and right now may be the last time we’ll really talk together.” She drew a step nearer, so that our bodies were almost touching. “I’d like to kiss you good-by, Finnian.”

  A vein started throbbing in my temple, then at last my anger broke. “Kiss you, you conniving brat!” I roared at her. “I’d rather break your damned neck! Now get the hell out of my sight and stay there.”