As his hands flashed in practiced motions over his chest, under his arms, and as far around his back as he could reach (he shuddered to think what his back must look like), his eyes swept the all-too-familiar cell. The short, thin slit of a window with its cracked wooden shutter. He had to spill water on it in the winter to ice it tight. The crude copy of the Three Lordly Ones’ badge above the pallet, its top clumsily carved off center. Across from the pallet was a small, wooden shrine covered with white cloth and topped with an earthenware singing cup and a fat candle. A small, three-legged stool beside a large wooden washing bowl and chamber pot completed Jerome’s meager holdings.
Again he drew a moment’s humor from his cleverness. All looked exactly as it should; it was the same as all the other cells that marched the east wall. Seemingly stoic and barren, it hid far more than anyone could suspect. The shrine, ah, the shrine, that was the real triumph.
Jerome allowed himself the brief luxury of stretching out on the pallet. The soft yielding of mildewed straw concealed its real contents. Now he had to twist his mouth into his shoulder to conceal his almost hysterical glee at the high priest’s vanity. The perfect peacock, so fastidious. Had he ever worn the same vestments twice? The smug fart would be astounded if he ever went back into those cedar chests he has stacked in the crypt. Beneath one layer of vestments was the straw from the pallet.
One vestment at a time, Jerome had smuggled the varicolored robes back to his cell. For weeks he’d had to hide his pin-pricked fingers, curled into his palms or thrust into his sleeves. Fortunately, saying the scratches on his fingers had their disguising effect, and it had contributed mightily to his pious reputation. But slowly and surely the tent had grown under his fumbling, thimbleless fingers, the tent that would rise above his masterpiece and attract all the rich and greedy simpletons at the fair. For nights he’d trembled with the fear of intrusion when its rainbow colors had been spread all over the cell, draped from ceiling to floor. His silver-hilted knife, the last remnant of his nobility, flashed through the costly fabrics, ready to be turned upon even an innocent visitor. He wished the tent was bigger, but it would be impressive enough with its precious threads, that was most important. His black velvet robes and conical cape, shaped from four vestments from the Eulogy for the Departure of the Three, would be wonderful dramatic contrast.
“Enough preening, clever devil, a morning’s work lies ahead.”
Crossing to the shrine, Jerome eased it away from the wall. Umm, it was getting heavy; there had to be fifty cubits of gold wire by now. Once he had angled it out, he paused to admire the carefully carved wooden Egg and wheel; its bulk filled two-thirds of the hollow shrine. Ah, ’twas his own little lordly Egg. Briefly he admired the curve of wheel and the Thotharian and Lordly Ones symbols that covered it. Sadmust and the high priest would shudder to see some of those signs, but Jerome knew they were only part of the larger sham that was all there was to life. Inadvertently, he’d once hummed one of the Songs of Shaping as he carved. Suddenly, the runes had seemed to crawl about the Egg. Fear prevented any further humming. Besides, it had surely been a trick of his tired eyes.
All those days wandering about his father’s estates, ignored as only a third son could be, had paid off. His once expansive and insatiable curiosity feeding as he watched the hands of the master carver, the smith, the weaver; those moments stolen in the library of the keep’s resident wizard as he read the old manuscripts; his fascination holding the indecipherable symbols in his mind. Recalling them for his Egg. “An idle woman’s fetish,” they had called his fascination with reading. His father’s and older brothers’ continual riding or sword clanking were the true manly arts.
Again a chuckle briefly escaped Jerome’s pursed lips. Even when he was with Dulcesans . . .
She had so delighted in the new things that you wanted so much to show
— Stop!
He still saw and remembered things. Little did any of them know the uses he would turn all of it to, little since the day he’d denied the position on the Ithkar Board of Trade his father had bought for him. What could they have ever suspected when he’d run, cursing and heartbroken, from their scorn, to be found weeks later half-starved and raving on the steps of the temple on the hill. What could the priests have known of the bosom serpent that they’d taken in and succored that night!
Jerome reached into the shrine; his hand curled around the familiar oiled handle of his most precious tool. The chisel had once been one of the prized possessions of Brother Hoosh, the carpenter; its fine metal gleamed in the candlelight despite the constant dampness. When the tip had been notched by an inept and presumptuous acolyte, Hoosh had thrown it in the corner in an impious rage. Only Jerome had remembered, and when his scheme had emerged on that fateful night almost five months ago, he had returned and found it.
Easing himself down on the low stool and pulling the colorless blanket from the pallet about his raw shoulders, he set the wash basin between his feet. Taking the soft gold Y-shaped rod, he began to push the chisel along its length. Fine gold curls rose from each stroke to fall into the basin with dull, repetitive thunks. Once a young acolyte had overheard the noises on his way to the scullery and fortunately had asked Jerome what they were. He’d remarked that they were probably his prayerful breast-beating. Another piece of the gossip surrounding the reclusive, devoted Jerome. . . . That dark chuckle slipped out again.
The Y-shaped rod, despite its branching, was easier than the singing cups. For the longest time, he had fretted over the jewels that had had to be scraped off and were useless to his plan. However, this year’s spring planting had solved that problem. He would be long gone by the time Sadmust noticed the gaps in his herb garden and longer still before some priest would think he’d turned up another Lordly Ones treasure come next spring.
Jerome’s hand and chisel moved in hypnotic regularity as he stroked the rod toward nothingness and as the basin filled with golden locks. Despite the rigid control and relished revenge that kept Dulcesans out of his mind amid the day-today tasks, his sour gut and the thoughtless monotony of his task allowed his mind to slip unguarded into the past, to harken to that deep, secret voice he so desperately tried to ignore.
It had been one of those crisp, sharp days that made autumn a season of clarity and cleansing. The harsh winds of winter that would blow through the unmortared seams between the stones of his father’s keep and move the tapestries as if wraiths hugged the walls were still in the distant future.
That morning he had learned from his mother of the position on the board of trade. It was to have been his father’s surprise at dinner, but his mother never could keep secrets from her youngest and most precious son. He had only one thought: to tell Dulcesans of his joy. Finally he would have a purpose, a place. She, widowed early and able to inherit her husband’s small wealth, property, and business, was one of the few, favored single women in Jerome’s world. Despite her youth, she had prospered in the small shop. Jerome had always been uneasy with her skill and presence, but his love shadowed that even when she spoke of things he didn’t understand. All he could do was offer support. He’d had to content himself with giving her the small figurines his clever hands shaped with a skill beyond his years, and she did joy and laugh in the stories he culled from the old books. Whenever they met, he always had a bag of something for her and one of his great pleasures was to watch her explore its confines for the little treasures he’d collected.
He’d sent her a missive the night before asking that she contact him today. He’d had no word, and despite his deep respect he tended to worry. She was the light of his small, trusting life and he feared for her living alone. Had he been more astute, less devoted, less mindlessly impassioned, Jerome would have been forewarned. More and more, his ardent attentions had been treated by Dulcesans as impositions, his messages unanswered, her promises of words and meetings unfulfilled. He had excused her with the stresses and preoccupations of the shop and her increasing devotion to matters mercantile.
Fool, half a man, fool,
the inner voice hissed.
But that day had too much blinding ecstasy for him to think of his forebodings. He danced more than ran. Bumping people on the street, his tabard flying about his head, he spun, he laughed till all thought him mad as he pirouetted his way through the narrow streets to the shop’s back door. Finally, he had something of his own to offer. They would go to the city; they would share all moments.
Had Jerome’s normally sharp eye not been consumed with tears of joy, he would have noticed. The brazier that burned outside the door with the remains of skewered meats was the same as the small, intimate feasts they had shared before, and he had hoped to have today.
Used fool.
The shrouded wagon, emblazoned with the sign of Compo, the guardian-wizard, should have told it all.
Worthless fool.
When she rushed out the door to meet him, to stand between him and the shop, he should have known. Her gaze was cold, chill for a stranger; a blouse he had bought for her on a rare trip to the city was shaped tight to her breasts.
Empty fool.
“I have news; I had expected word this morning,” Jerome offered, his heart dying as he finally took in the obvious signs about him.
“I never said when today. There is company. I will send word this afternoon.” There was no love in her voice. His insides iced further.
“Is everything all right?” Jerome hoped his honest concern would warm her. It didn’t.
Abruptly: “Until then.”
“Until.” No kiss, just a retreating back.
There was no word that afternoon. He waited without hope where he could see any messenger entering the keep. Later in the afternoon, when his loutish, oldest brother had made an offhand remark about Dulcesans’s long afternoon’s lingering with a guardian-wizard, it had been too much. Little remained in Jerome’s memory of what he screamed at his father, his family, of the spit that flew unbidden from his mouth, whipped by his frenzy across his chin.
Fool. Loon.
All that remained was the poison-without-balm that filled his stomach, and he began to stoop and moan as he ran from the keep.
He spent the first night curled in a stand of willows, too crippled to move, too stricken to will anything. Cursed with the taunting voice that became his constant companion:
Seed spilled upon emptiness. Void. Caring, dreams, tossed among the rotting vegetables. Love crushed, barren.
Some reason returned the second night. And his pearl ring, a gift from his mother, bought him a bath and a meal at a small inn on the trade road on the outskirts of town. The grease-spattered innkeeper thought himself a clever fellow to receive so much for so little. Jerome didn’t care. The ale and the bird did nothing for his pain. Nor did he notice the looks his soft moans and soiled finery drew from the other patrons.
Yet, in those who believe too truly to survive among people, hope and love are difficult to kill. As the evening moved on, Jerome began to distrust his own eyes and his brother’s words. She had told him just five nights before that she loved only him, that the future bound them together. They had been together so long, shared so much preciousness.
Simperer.
He crept back to her, woke her. He was greeted with a blast of hate and summoned ugliness that his basic good nature could not stand against.
Empty, riven fool.
“Don’t touch me!”
No one ever knew how much time passed from then until the priests found the wretched bundle curled about its stomach, failing moans rising from it.
Fool.
“Bong. Bong. Bong.”
Ah, she had done it again. Would the pain never kill the love? Jerome struggled toward waking, uncurling himself from the ball of his nightmare-ridden sleep.
“Bong. . . .”
Must, must, more gold for the stupid . . .
“Bong. ...”
Priests’ blood! The call to morning tasks! Must hide this stuff. The shrine . . .
“Jerome, Jerome, are you ill? Jerome, come to the door.”
That infernal meddler Sadmust. Jerome breathed deeply, trying to compose himself, hands over his head fighting down the ever-present nausea. “Yes, Sadmust, I am coming. Just lost in the tragedy of the sinful, the sick. I’ll be right out.”
“Ah, Jerome, we will lose you yet to your piety. Hurry, the pots and pans wait for no one.” Sadmust chuckled.
Jerome breathed deeply as he heard Sadmust’s footsteps fade away. He had no time to put the hair shirt back on, and by now it was so cut and curried for his special purposes that he hadn’t planned to wear it much longer. It was only moments later, the cell once again looking depressingly barren, that he noticed that he’d cut himself with the chisel while he’d slept. A thin stream of blood ran across his groin and down the inside of his thigh. Again that sardonic chuckle from deep within him:
Jerome, the True Believer.
* * *
As Jerome went out to the kitchen, he hoped that the yellowed square of linen would stop the bleeding of the small cut. What he really needed was a leech, but the gold dust on the chisel would be the best of all healing agents. He wanted to avoid Sadmust at all costs. He had begun to believe that the man was sincere in his concern despite his rejections of proper healing and alchemical lore. Probably hadn’t even read
The Ruby Tablets of Semreh the Thrice Mighty.
The man was beginning to appeal to Jerome. For his bitter purposes, he could afford no human emotion, no kindness. It weakened him. As he got closer to the smoking kitchen, he did reflect for a moment that the fellowship of the quiet, withdrawn priests had had its moments. Even the high priest’s usually inept attempts at humor had almost drawn laughter from Jerome. That discussion last night, that we were due for the kitchen to burn down again. What was it that he had said . . . ah, yes: “If a master goes down with his ship, shouldn’t the cook go up with his kitchen?” That look on poor Brother Hubert’s face. Surely their cook understood that wood construction, chimneys, and flying fat made kitchens very perishable. Why, every day a kitchen was burning somewhere.