Ars Magica (13 page)

Hugh hesitated. His eyes met Gerbert's; he stiffened. “You may go.”

oOo

It was not a good parting. But Gerbert dared not stay to mend it. He was a practical man; he was not likely to murder a king outright, even for such provocation. His magic was another matter. It recked nothing of oaths or of prudence. It knew only that its master was betrayed.

He could not go to his house. He could not face the school, or the cathedral, or — before God — the archbishop's palace. Night had fallen while the king cast down all that he had worked for, and trampled on the shards. The cold seared his lungs; but he was warm to burning.

His servant did not take kindly to dismissal, but he knew Gerbert's mood, and feared it. He obeyed.

Walls were no bar to a mage; gates, even locked gates, yielded before him. Gerbert strode away from Rheims under stars like chips of ice, seeing and not seeing them, knowing and not knowing the road beneath his feet, the wind in his cloak, the city falling ever more swiftly behind him. His body was but the mount he rode; he spurred it without mercy.

At the river he checked. The bridge arched over the ice, clad in snow that glittered in starlight. His boots thudded on the hewn timbers. It was not true, what the tales said, that a wizard could not cross running water; but the magic turned strange over it or on it or in it: wanted to flow as water flowed, as in the presence of fire it burned the brighter. Magic was the fifth essence that was all the elements and none; that, without them, could not be.

He was not cooling from the fire of anger, to tell over old lessons. He was ruling the magic by sheer, grim will. It could blast the king, or the interloper, or the city itself. Or if he would not have that, turn subtle: sway minds to a new will. He was Adalberon's chosen successor, groomed for it, trained for it, meant for it. Who was Arnulf, to lay claim to it? Who was Hugh Capet, to take it from him?

On the empty road, amid the fields that rolled snow-whitened into the night, Gerbert flung out his arms and roared aloud.

oOo

Richer found him a little before dawn, crouched by a fire in a shepherd's hut. The shepherd had abandoned it in one of the last wars; its roof was half fallen in and one wall broken down, but the rest were solid enough.

Gerbert greeted his pupil with a glance and a grunt. In this place, in this light, he seemed to have shed his priestly dignity. He looked as if indeed he had been born in such a place, raised to till the earth, to tend the sheep.

But power knew power, and Richer knew his master. He tethered the mule he had ridden and the mule he had led, and approached the fire, saddlebag in hand. He had bread, cheese, ale; he had a napkinful of hazelnuts.

Gerbert did not refuse his share. Richer nearly wept with relief. They ate in silence, warmed by the fire, the only sound the cracking of nutshells. Gerbert watched one of the mules uncover a patch of grass and crop it. Richer watched Gerbert.

After a very long while Gerbert said, “That's the archbishop's mule.”

“She wanted to come,” said Richer.

Gerbert's glance was sharp.

“You know she detests Brother Goldilocks,” Richer said.

“That will be Archbishop Goldilocks to you, sir.”

“Will it?”

Richer braced for wrath. None came. Gerbert dropped a handful of nutshells into the fire and watched them flare and crackle, his brows knit, but not in anger. “Yes,” he said. “It will.”

Incredulity tangled Richer's tongue. “But he — you — the king — ”

“The king,” said Gerbert, “is the king. The choice of archbishop is his. He has chosen. I abide by his choice.”

Not easily. Not willingly: it showed in every line of him. “But it's
wrong
!” cried Richer.

“How do you know that? Arnulf brings something of great value to the kingdom: the ending of civil war. I can offer nothing but experience. It's not,” said Gerbert, “as if I had any fundamental right to the office. What I can do for it, I can continue to do in my present capacity.”

“Arnulf is a snake.”

“Arnulf is a king's son.”

Richer spat. “That for kings' sons. He's a bastard to the marrow. Do you know he's been wooing Rheims while he woos the king? The clergy have the illusion of election, after all. He's making sure he wins it.”

“He will. The king expects it.”

“How can you be so saints-be-blessed calm?”

Gerbert almost smiled. Perhaps it was only a trick of the firelight. “Practice. And practicality. And a long cold night to think in. Maybe I'm simply not meant to hold higher office than this. A schoolmaster I am, and a schoolmaster I remain. Others will take the great titles.

“But I,” he said with some satisfaction, “still keep a little of the power. That's where a mage belongs, Richer. In the shadows, shaping what passes in the light.”

Richer did not want to believe it. “You've been cheated. You should rise up and fight it.”

“And add another war to this one which Arnulf has promised to stop? No. I grit my teeth and swallow it.”

“Go away, then. Take your school somewhere that appreciates you. Leave Arnulf to do his own drudgework.”

“I admit,” said Gerbert, “I've considered it. But I have my pride. I won't run like a whipped dog. Nor will I let that puppy ruin my work here. I'll outlast him, Brother.”

“Or die trying.” Richer glared at the fire until it cowered in terror. “My family has served the Carolings since they were servants themselves, bowing at the feet of the long-haired kings. But now, I tell you, I could wish to God that all of them were dead.”

“As long as you don't do more than wish,” Gerbert said. “Sore though the temptation may be. I'm no worse off than I ever was. I'm simply...disappointed. Men have been disappointed before. They haven't died of it.”

“Haven't they?” muttered Richer. He was, oddly and unexpectedly, comforted. No less angry; no less outraged. Yet Gerbert was proving himself master of this adversity as of every other.

Gerbert rose, stretching. “Look: the dawn. We have a day to face, and a city. And a new archbishop.”

He sounded almost cheerful. Richer shook his head, rising with considerably less grace, gathering up his bag and his bottle and the remnants of bread and cheese and nuts. Gerbert had taken a crust for tribute to the white mule.

Richer's smile took on an edge of malice. Whatever else Arnulf might have taken, Alba at least he would not get. She had made her feelings known, emphatically. His new excellency would not be sitting down in any great comfort for a day or six.

Richer did not even have to feel guilty. Alba had let fly entirely of her own accord. With Gerbert, now: with Gerbert she was her dignified self, accepting tribute, allowing him to mount. She knew who was her rightful master.

10.

Arnulf was not so ungracious as to gloat over his victory. “You know what you do best,” he said to Gerbert when it was over. The election, without Gerbert's rivalry to slow it, had been a simple thing; less simple the task of transforming a clerk into an archbishop. He was still rubbing his new tonsure when he spoke to Gerbert, ruefully, for as a clerk he had not been as scrupulous in maintaining it as a priest and an archbishop must be; and he had been vain of his yellow curls. “What you've done, by all means, go on doing. I'll not meddle except as I must.”

Nor had he, as spring bloomed into summer, and as the king's war with Charles showed no sign of abating for any of Arnulf's doing. Little as he could do, with an archdiocese to settle. He was not doing badly, Gerbert judged, though he was learning that wide blue eyes and an air of invincible innocence were of little use in contending with fractious underlings.

Now they were all here in the mellow gold of harvest time, gathered in council by their archbishop's command. Gerbert, absorbed in the complexities of housing, feeding, and entertaining all the bishops and half the lords of the see, hardly noticed that Arnulf was making himself scarce. He did notice that the inner school had gone rather abruptly out of session.

“The archbishop ordered it.” Richer was still there, but clearly that was his own choice. “What with the council and the uproar and the scarcity of lodgings, his excellency has given us all a holiday.”

Gerbert had thought that his anger was long since cooled. It startled him with sudden, searing heat. “His excellency? His excellency, was it? Who is the master of this school? He or I?”

Richer was quite unfrightened. If anything, he looked as if he was enjoying himself. “He said that you were occupied completely in setting up the council; you didn't need to fret yourself with other matters, when he could take them so well in hand.”

Gerbert half rose from his worktable. But behind the flare of temper was cold logic, and cold logic reminded him that Arnulf was, after all, archbishop. There would be time enough later to teach him where not to trespass.

Richer poked his long nose into the letter which Gerbert had been reading. Gerbert forbore to snatch it away. “So,” the monk said. “You've still got friends at the imperial court.”

“To little enough purpose,” Gerbert muttered.

“Yet.” Richer picked through the books on the table. “Will the empress offer you a place in her following, do you think?”

“Why should she? She has troubles enough of her own, without fretting over a single very minor servant who happens to have fallen into a trap of his own making.”

Gerbert made little effort to hide his bitterness. Richer stopped fidgeting and regarded him steadily. “You could leave.”

“No,” said Gerbert. “I'll go only if I go to something better. Arnulf hasn't meddled with me before this; I'm not so wretched as you might think.”

“I never thought you were.” Richer paused. “Is it true, what they say of her? That she's mastered the Greek magic?”

“Mastered it,” Gerbert said, “no. She married too young; she centered too much of herself on being queen. But she has magic, and some little wisdom in its ways. Once it seemed that she might want to learn from me. Now... who knows? An empire is as demanding a master as any on this earth.”

“As demanding as you?”

Gerbert glared; then, unwillingly, he laughed. “Almost. Do you have something useful to do here, or are you trying to waste my time?”

The boy did not even trouble to blush. “I'm wasting your time, of course. You forgot dinner again, did you know that?”

“Bruno remembered,” said Gerbert, rising. “Since you have time on your hands, you can spare a little of it, surely, in aid of your education. When did you last trouble your head with astronomy?”

Richer managed to look both eager and dismayed. Music and medicine were his first loves. Astronomy, he had no great talent for. He tended to fall asleep. Still, he said, “I haven't forgotten too much of it.”

“Good,” said Gerbert. “You can do my calculations for me.”

oOo

By a shielded lantern, on the roof, while Gerbert compared the sky to his charts and added new figures to his old ones. Richer did not mind. He had the abacus to play with, that miracle of the Moors which Gerbert had brought back with him from Spain. The stars were singing their high cold song. The roofs of Rheims spread below, and beyond them the walls, and the darkness of field and river and wood. It was a fine warm night. Almost too warm for a woolen habit. Richer rolled up the sleeves and bared his knobby knees and an inch or so of linen trews, letting the soft air cool him.

Gerbert seemed not to notice. He was never anything but properly covered, winter or summer. The students liked to wonder what was under it. Maybe he had a tail, like an Englishman; or a cloven hoof. Though Richer had seen his feet in sandals, and they were perfectly ordinary feet.

“Asleep already?” Gerbert asked a little sharply.

He started, blushing fiercely in the dark. “No! My mind was wandering.”

“So it was,” said Gerbert. “There, now. Where did you leave off?”

Richer began to tell him, paused.

Gerbert was on his feet. The city, the wall, the field: all lay wrapped in night. On the field, something glittered; something rang, far and faint. Like metal on metal.

Like a gate opened that should have been locked fast; like armed men let into the sleeping city. Like — very like treachery.

Gerbert's face in the starlight was white and shocked. Not that it had happened. That he had had no warning at all.

Richer rifled his memory for an idea, a spell, anything. He found only emptiness.

Armed feet rang on the stone of the stair. The trapdoor was open in all good faith; it belched forth helmets, armor, drawn swords. Gerbert made no sound as they seized him. Richer fought, and got a drubbing for his pains. Gerbert was wiser. The one man who raised a fist against him, met his eyes and drew back muttering.

oOo

They were all penned in the archbishop's hall: a fine catch of notables in every stage of dress and undress. One young lord was as naked as he was born, and loudly furious. A lissome figure clung to him, darting glances through a veil of hair. If she was frightened, she had it well in hand, and her lover with it, and the cloak that slipped just far enough to bare a white curve of shoulder. Richer would remember that afterward: the bold brown eyes, the soft white skin amid the bobbing tonsures.