The
Pelerine
By the time we had finished eating, it was
beginning to get dark. We were always quieter then, not only
because we lacked strength, but because we knew that those wounded
who would die were more liable to do so after the sun set, and
particularly in the deep of the night. It was the time when past
battles called home their debts.
In other ways too, the night made us
more aware of the war. Sometimes—and on that night I remember them
particularly—the discharges of the great energy weapons blazed
across the sky like heat lightning. One heard the sentries marching
to their posts, so that the word watch,
which we so often used with no meaning beyond that of a tenth part
of the night, became an audible reality, an actuality of tramping
feet and unintelligible commands.
There came a moment when no one spoke,
that lengthened and lengthened, interrupted only by the murmurings
of the well—the Pelerines and their male slaves—who came to ask the
condition of this patient or that. One of the scarlet-clad
priestesses came and sat by my cot, and my mind was so slow, so
nearly sleeping, that it was some time before I realized that she
must have carried a stool with her.
“You are Severian,” she said, “the
friend of Miles?”
“Yes.”
“He has recalled his name. I thought
you would like to know.”
I asked her what it was.
“Why, Miles, of course. I told
you.”
“He will recall more than that, I
think, as time goes by.”
She nodded. She seemed to be a woman
past middle age, with a kindly, austere face. “I am sure he will.
His home and family.”
“If he has them.”
“Yes, some do not. Some lack even the
ability to make a home.”
“You’re referring to me.”
“No, not at all. Anyway, that lack is
not something the person can do something about. But it is much
better, particularly for men, if they have a home. Like the man
your friend talked about, most men think they make
their homes for their families, but the fact is that they make both
homes and families for themselves.” .
“You were listening to Hallvard,
then.”
“Several of us were. It was a good
story. A sister came and got me at the place where the patient’s
grandfather made his will. I heard all the rest. Do you know what
the trouble was with the bad uncle? With Gundulf?”
“I suppose that he was in
love.”
“No, that was what was right with him.
Every person, you see, is like a plant. There is a beautiful green
part, often with flowers or fruit, that grows upward toward the
sun, toward the Increate. There is also a dark part that grows away
from it, tunneling where no light comes.”
I said, “I have never studied the
writings of the initiates, but even I am aware of the existence of
good and evil in everyone.”
“Was I speaking of good and evil? It is
the roots that give the plant the strength to climb toward the sun,
though they know nothing of it. Suppose that some scythe, whistling
along the ground, should sever the stalk from its roots. The stalk
would fall and die, but the roots might put up a new
stalk.”
“You are saying that evil is
good.”
“No. I am saying that the things we
love in others and admire in ourselves spring from things we do not
see and seldom think about. Gundulf, like other men, had the
instinct to exercise authority. Its proper growth is the founding
of a family—and women, too, have a similar instinct. In Gundulf
that instinct had long been frustrated, as it is in so many of the
soldiers we see here. The officers have their commands, but the
soldiers who have no command suffer and do not know why they
suffer. Some, of course, form bonds with others in the ranks.
Sometimes several share a single woman, or a man who is like a
woman. Some make pets of animals, and some befriend children left
homeless by the struggle.”
Remembering Casdoe’s son, I said, “I
can see why you object to that.”
“We do not object—most certainly not to
that, and not to things vastly less natural. I am only speaking of
the instinct to exercise authority. In the bad uncle it made him
love a woman, and specifically one who already possessed a child,
so there would be a larger family for him as soon as there was a
family for him at all. In that way, you see, he would have regained
some part of the time he had lost.”
She paused, and I nodded.
“Too much time, however, had been lost
already; the instinct broke out in another way. He saw himself as
the rightful master of lands he only held in trust for one brother,
and the master of the life of the other. That vision was delusive,
was it not?”
“I suppose so.”
“Others can have visions equally
deluding, though less dangerous.” She smiled at me. “Do you regard
yourself as possessing any special authority?”
“I am a journeyman of the Seekers for
Truth and Penitence, but that position carries no authority. We of
the guild only do the will of judges.”
“I thought the torturers’ guild
abolished long ago. Has it become, then, a species of brotherhood
for lictors?”
“It still exists,” I told
her.
“No doubt, but some centuries ago it
was a true guild, like that of the silversmiths. At least so I have
read in certain histories preserved by our order.”
As I heard her, I felt a moment of wild
elation. It was not that I supposed her to be somehow correct. I
am, perhaps, mad in certain respects, but I know what those
respects are, and such self-deceptions are no part of them.
Nevertheless, it seemed wonderful to me—if only for that moment—to
exist in a world where such a belief was possible. I realized then,
really for the first time, that there were millions of people in
the Commonwealth who knew nothing of the higher forms of judicial
punishment and nothing of the circles within circles of intrigue
that ring the Autarch; and it was wine to me, or brandy rather, and
left me reeling with giddy joy.
The Pelerine, seeing nothing of all
this, said, “Is there no other form of special authority that you
believe yourself to possess?”
I shook my head.
“Miles told me that you believe
yourself to possess the Claw of the Conciliator, and that you
showed him a small black claw, such as might perhaps have come from
an ocelot or a caracara, and that you told him you have raised many
from the dead by means of it.”
The time had come then; the time when I
would have to give it up. Ever since we had reached the lazaret, I
had known it must come soon, but I had hoped to delay it until I
was ready to depart. Now I took out the Claw, for the last time as
I thought, and pressed it into the Pelerine’s hand, saying, “With
this you can save many. I did not steal it, and I have sought
always to return it to your order.”
“And with it,” she asked gently, “you
have revived numbers of the dead?”
“I myself would have died months ago
without it,” I told her, and I began to recount the story of my
duel with Agilus.
“Wait,” she said. “You must keep it.”
And she returned the Claw to me. “I am not a young woman any
longer, as you see. Next year I will celebrate my thirtieth
anniversary as a full member of our order. At each of the five
superior feasts of the year, until this past spring, I saw the Claw
of the Conciliator when it was elevated for our adoration. It was a
great sapphire, as big around as an orichalk. It must have been
worth more than many villas, and no doubt it was for that reason
that the thieves took it.”
I tried to interrupt her, but she
silenced me with a gesture.
“As for its working miraculous cures
and even restoring life to the dead, do you think our order would
have any sick among us if it were so? We are few—far too few for
the work we have to do. But if none of us had died before last
spring, we would be much more numerous. Many whom I loved, my
teachers and my friends, would be among us still. Ignorant people
must
have their wonders, even if they must scrape the mud from some
epopt’s boots to swallow. If, as we hope, it still exists and has
not been cut to make smaller gems, the Claw of the Conciliator is
the last relic we possess of the greatest of good men, and we
treasured it because we still treasure his memory. If it had been
the sort of thing you believe yourself to have, it would have been
precious to everyone, and the autarchs would have wrested it from
us long ago.”
“It is a claw—” I began.
“That was only a flaw at the heart of
the jewel. The Conciliator was a man, Severian the Lictor, and not
a cat or a bird.” She stood up.
“It was dashed against the rocks when
the giant threw it from the parapet—”
“I had hoped to calm you, but I see
that I am only exciting you,” she said. Quite unexpectedly she
smiled, leaned forward, and kissed me. “We meet many here who
believe things that are not so. Not many have beliefs that do them
as much credit as yours do you. You and I shall talk of this again
some other time.”
I watched her small, scarlet-clad
figure until it was lost from sight in the darkness and silence of
the rows of cots. While we talked, most of the sick had fallen
asleep. A few groaned. Three slaves entered, two carrying a wounded
man on a litter while the third held up a lamp so they could see
their way. The light gleamed on their shaven heads, which were
covered with sweat. They put the wounded man on a cot, arranged his
limbs as though he were dead, and went away.
I looked at the Claw. It had been
lifelessly black when the Pelerine saw it, but now muted sparks of
white fire ran from its base to its point. I felt well—indeed, I
found myself wondering how I had endured lying all day upon the
narrow mattress; but when I tried to stand my legs would hardly
hold me. Afraid at every moment that I would fall on one of the
wounded, I staggered the twenty paces or so to the man I had just
seen carried in.
It was Emilian, whom I had known as a
gallant at the Autarch’s court. I was so startled to see him here
that I called him by name.
“Thecla,” he murmured. “Thecla
…”
“Yes. Thecla. You remember me, Emilian.
Now be well.” I touched him with the Claw.
He opened his eyes and
screamed.
I fled, but fell when I was halfway to
my own cot. I was so weak I don’t believe I could have crawled the
remaining distance then, but I managed to put away the Claw and
roll beneath Hallvard’s cot and so out of sight.
When the slaves came back, Emilian was
sitting up and able to speak—though they could not, I think, make
much sense of what he said. They gave him herbs, and one of them
remained with him while he chewed them, then left
silently.
I rolled from under the cot, and by
holding on to the edge was able to pull myself erect. All was still
again, but I knew that many of the wounded must have seen me before
I had fallen. Emilian was not asleep, as I had
supposed he would be, but he seemed dazed. “Thecla,” he murmured.
“I heard Thecla. They said she was dead. What voices are here from
the lands of the dead?”
“None now,” I told him. “You’ve been
ill, but you’ll be well soon.”
I held the Claw overhead and tried to
focus my thoughts on Melito and Foila as well as Emilian—on all the
sick in the lazaret. It flickered and was dark.