“You must excuse my friend,” Duncan told those huddled at the fire. “He is not one to accept defeat with any grace.”
Just beyond the fire a figure moved furtively out of the trees, stood there for a moment, then scuttled back again.
Duncan hurried in his direction and stopped at the edge of the grove from which the figure had emerged.
He called softly, “Andrew, where are you? What is wrong with you?”
“What do you want with me?” asked Andrew in a pettish voice.
“I want to talk with you. You’ve been acting like a spoiled child. We have to get to the bottom of it.”
Duncan walked a few steps into the grove. Andrew moved out from behind a tree. Duncan came up to him, stood facing him.
“Out with it,” he said. “What is chewing on you?”
“You know what’s chewing on me.”
“Yes, I think I may. Let us talk about it.”
The firelight did not reach the spot where they stood, and all that Duncan could see of the hermit was the white blob of his face, but in the faintness of the light he could read no expression.
“You remember that night we talked in my cell,” said Andrew. “I told you how I had tried hard to be a hermit.
About how I tried to read the early fathers of the Church. About how for hours on end I sat staring at a candle flame, and how none of it seemed to be of any use at all. I think I told you I was a failure as a hermit, that my early hope to be at least a slightly holy man had come to nothing. I probably told you that I was poor timber for a hermit, that I was not cut out to be a holy man. I am sure I told you all of this and perhaps a great deal more. For I was sore of heart and had been for some time. It is no easy matter for a man to spend the greater part of his life at his profession and in the end to know that he has failed, that all his time and effort have gone for naught, that all his hopes and dreams have vanished with the wind.”
“Yes, I remember some of it,” said Duncan. “I think, in telling it now, you have embellished it a bit. I think that having felt yourself a failure as a hermit, you then jumped at the slightest chance to become a soldier of the Lord. And if that is what you really are, although I’m not too sure of the proper definition, you have done rather well at it. You have no occasion to be out here now sulking in the brambles.”
“But you do not understand.”
“Please enlighten me,” said Duncan dryly.
“Don’t you see that all the staring at the candles paid off in the end? The candle business, and perhaps some of the other things I did. Perhaps the fact that I willingly took the road as a soldier of the Lord. I’m not sure that I am a holy man — I would not be so brash as to claim I am. It might be sacrilegious to even hint I am. But I do have powers I did not have before, powers that I had no suspicion that I had. My staff…”
“So that is it,” said Duncan. “Your staff broke the demon’s chain. Broke it after a full blow of my sword did nothing but strike a shower of sparks from it.”
“You know, if you’ll but admit it,” Andrew said, “that the staff itself could not have fazed the chain. You know that the answer must be either that the staff itself suddenly has acquired a magic, or that the man who wielded it…”
“Yes, I do agree,” said Duncan. “You must have certain holy powers for the staff to accomplish what it did. But, for God’s sake, man, you should be glad you have.”
“But don’t you see?” wailed Andrew. “Don’t you truly see my predicament?”
“I’m afraid this entire thing escapes me.”
“The first manifestation of my power resulted in the freeing of a demon. Can’t you understand how that tears me up inside? That I, a holy man, if a holy man I am, should use this power, for the first time, mind you, to free a mortal enemy of Holy Mother Church?”
“I don’t know about that,” said Duncan. “Scratch does not appear to be a bad sort. A demon, sure, but a most unsuccessful demon, unable to perform even the simple tasks of an apprentice imp. Because of that he ran away from Hell. And to demonstrate how little he was missed, what a poor stick of a demon he had turned out to be, the Devil and his minions did not turn a hand to haul him back to his tasks in Hell.”
“You have tried to put a good face on it, my lord,” said Andrew, “and I thank you for your consideration. You’re an uncommon kindly man. But the fact remains that a black mark has been inscribed against me.”
“There are no black marks,” said Duncan with some irritation. “This is about as silly an idea as I have ever heard.
There’s no one sitting somewhere, inscribing black marks against you or anyone else.”
“Upon my soul,” said Andrew, “there is such a mark. No one else may know, but I know. There is no way for me to wipe it out. There is no eraser that will obliterate it. I’ll carry it to my death and, mayhaps, beyond my death.”
“Tell me one thing,” said Duncan. “It has puzzled me. Why, seeing that the sword had failed, did you wield the staff? Did you have some sort of premonition, some sort of inner light…”
“No, I did not,” said Andrew. “I was carried away, is all. Somehow or other, I don’t know why, I wanted to get into the act. You and Conrad were doing what you could and I felt, I suppose, although at the time I was not aware of it, that I should do what I could.”
“You mean that when you dealt such a mighty blow with that staff of yours that you were trying to help the demon?”
“I don’t know,” said Andrew. “I never thought of it in that way. But I suppose I was trying to help him. And, realizing that, my soul is wrung the harder. Why should I try to help a demon? Why should I lift a finger for him?”
Duncan put out a hand and grasped the hermit’s scrawny shoulder, squeezed it hard. “You are a good man, Andrew. Better than you know.”
“How is that?” asked Andrew. “How does helping a demon make me a good man? I would have thought it made me worse. That’s the entire trouble. I gave aid to a minion out of Hell, with the reek of sulphur still upon him.”
“One,” said Duncan, “that had forsaken Hell. That turned his back upon it, renouncing it. Perhaps for the wrong reasons, but still renouncing it. Even as you and I renounce it. He is on our side. Don’t you understand that? He stands now with us. One with the mark of evil still upon him, but now he stands with us.”
“I don’t know,” said Andrew doubtfully. “I’d have to think on that. I’d have to work it out.”
“Come back to the fire with me,” said Duncan. “Sit by the fire and be comfortable while you work at it. Get some warmth into those shivering bones of yours, some food into your belly.”
“Come to think of it,” said Andrew, “I am hungry. Meg was cooking up a mess of sauerkraut and pig’s knuckles. I could taste them, just thinking of them. It has been years since I have eaten kraut and knuckles.”
“The Little Folk can’t offer you kraut and knuckles, but there is a venison stew that is monstrous good. There’s enough of it left, I’m sure, to more than fill your gut.”
“If you think it would be all right,” said Andrew. “If they’d make room for me.”
“They’ll welcome you,” Duncan assured him. “They’ve been asking after you.” Which was not exactly true, but it was a small untruth and it could do no harm. “So come along.” Duncan put an arm around the hermit’s shoulder and together they walked back to the fire.
“I’m not yet clear in mind,” warned Andrew, stubborn to the last. “There is much to puzzle out.”
“Take your time,” said Duncan. “You’ll get it straightened out. You’ll have the time to mull it over.”
Duncan escorted him across the cleared area around the fire at which he’d talked with Snoopy. Diane and Nan were sitting together and he took him over to them.
“Here’s a hungry man,” he said to Nan. “Could there still remain a bowl of stew?”
“More than a bowl,” said the banshee. “More than even he can eat, hungry as he looks.” She said to Andrew, “Sit down close to the blaze. I will get it for you.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Andrew.
Duncan swung about and looked for Conrad, but was unable to locate him. Nor could he find Snoopy among the scattered Little People.
The moon had moved well up in the sky. It must be almost midnight, Duncan told himself. Within a short time
