The Syndic Read online

  III

  Charles Orsino squirmed in the chair. "Uncle--" he pleaded.

  "Yes," F. W. Taylor chuckled, "Old Amadeo and his colleagues were calledcriminals. They were called bootleggers when they got liquor to peoplewithout worrying about the public debt or excise taxes. They were calledsmugglers when they sold cheap butter in the south and cheap margerinein the north. They were called counterfeiters when they sold cheapcigarettes and transportation tickets. They were called high-jackerswhen they wrested goods from the normal inflation-ridden chain ofmiddlemen and delivered them at a reasonable price to the consumers.

  "They were criminals. Bankers were pillars of society.

  "Yet these bankers who dominated society, who were considered the voiceof eternal truth when they spoke, who thought it was insanity tochallenge their beliefs, started somewhere and perhaps they were thebest thing for their day and age that could be worked out...."

  * * * * *

  Father Ambrosius gnawed at a bit of salt herring, wiped his hands, dugthrough the litter in his chest and found a goose quill and a page ofparchment. He scrubbed vigorously with a vinegar-soaked sponge, at thewriting on the parchment and was pleased to see that it came off nicely,leaving him a clean surface to scribble his sermon notes on. He cut thequill and slit it while waiting for the parchment to dry, wondering idlywhat he had erased. (It happened to be the last surviving copy ofTacitus' _Annals_, VII. i-v.)

  To work then. The sermon was to be preached on Sexagesima Sunday, aprelude to the solemn season of Lent. Father Ambrosius' mind wandered insearch of a text. Lent ... salt herring ... penitence ... the capitalsins ... avarice ... usury ... delinquent pew rent ... fat-headed youngSir Baldwin in his tumbledown castle on the hill ... salt herring nowand _per saeculae saeculorum_ unless Sir Baldwin paid up his delinquentpew rent.

  At the moment, Sir Baldwin came swaggering into the cell. FatherAmbrosius rose courteously and said, with some insincerity: "_Paxvobiscum._"

  "Eh?" asked Sir Baldwin, his silly blue eyes popping as he looked overhis shoulder. "Oh, you meant me, padre. It don't do a bit of good tochatter at me in Latin, you know. The king's Norman is what I speak. Imean to say, if it's good enough for his majesty Richard, it's goodenough for me, what? Now, what can I do for you, padre?"

  Father Ambrosius reminded him faintly: "You came to see me, SirBaldwin."

  "Eh? Oh. So I did. I was huntin' stag, padre, and I lost him afterchasin' the whole morning, and what I want to know is, who's the rightsaint chap to ask for help in a pickle like that? I mean to say, Iwanted to show the chaps some good sport and we started this beast andhe got clean away. Don't misunderstand me, padre, they were good chapsand they didn't rot me about it, but that kind of talk gets about anddoesn't do one a bit of good, what? So you tell me like a good fellowwho's the right saint chap to put the matter in the best light for me?"

  Father Ambrosius repressed an urge to grind his teeth, took thought andsaid: "St. Hubert, I believe, is interested in the stag hunt."

  "Right-oh, padre! St. Hubert it is. Hubert, Hubert. I shan't forget itbecause I've a cousin named Hubert. Haven't seen him for years, poor oldchap. He had the fistula--lived on slops and couldn't sit his horse fora day's huntin'. Poor old chap. Well, I'm off--no, there's another thingI wanted. Suppose this Sunday you preach a howlin' strong sermon againstusury, what? That chap in the village, the goldsmith fellow, has theinfernal gall to tell me I've got to give him Fallowfield! Forty acres,and he has the infernal gall to tell me they aren't mine any more. Be agood chap, padre, and sort of glare at him from the pulpit a few timesto show him who you mean, what?"

  "Usury _is_ a sin," Father Ambrosius said cautiously, "but how doesFallowfield enter into it?"

  Sir Baldwin twiddled the drooping ends of his limp, blond mustache witha trace of embarrassment. "Fact is, I told the chap when I borrowed thetwenty marks that Fallowfield would stand as security. I ask you, padre,is it my fault that my tenants are a pack of lazy, thieving Saxon swineand I couldn't raise the money?"

  The parish priest bristled unnoticeably. He was pure Saxon himself. "Ishall do what I can," he said. "And Sir Baldwin, before you go--"

  The young man stopped in the doorway and turned.

  "Before you go, may I ask when we'll see your pew rent, to say nothingof the tithe?"

  Sir Baldwin dismissed it with an airish wave of the hand. "I thought Ijust told you, padre. I haven't a farthing to my name and here's thischap in the village telling me to clear out of Fallowfield that I gotfrom my father and his father before him. So how the devil--excuseme--can I pay rent and tithes and Peters pence and all the other thingsyou priest chaps expect from a man, what?" He held up his gauntletedhand as Father Ambrosius started to speak. "No, padre, not another wordabout it. I know you'd love to tell me I won't go to heaven if I actthis way. I don't doubt you're learned and all that, but I can stilltell you a thing or two, what? The fact is, I _will_ go to Heaven. Yousee, padre, God's a gentleman and he wouldn't bar another gentleman overa trifle of money trouble that could happen to any gentleman, now wouldhe?"

  The fatuous beam was more than Father Ambrosius could bear; his eyesfell.

  "Right-oh," Sir Baldwin chirped. "And that saint chap's name was St.Hubert. I didn't forget, see? Not quite the fool some people think Iam." And he was gone, whistling a recheat.

  Father Ambrosius sat down again and glared at the parchment. Preach asermon on usury for that popinjay. Well, usury _was_ a sin. Christianswere supposed to lend to one another in need and not count the cost orthe days. But who had ever heard of Sir Baldwin ever lending anything?Of course, he was lord of the manor and protected you against invasion,but there didn't seem to be any invasions anymore....

  Wearily, the parish priest dipped his pen and scratched on theparchment: RON. XIII ii, viii, XV i. "Whosoever resisteth the powerresisteth the ordinance of God ... owe no man any thing ... we that arestrong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak...." A triple-platedtext, which, reinforced by a brow of thunder from the pulpit should makethe village goldsmith think twice before pressing his demand on SirBaldwin. Usury _was_ a sin.

  There was a different knock on the door frame.

  The goldsmith, a leather-aproned fellow named John, stood there twistinghis cap in his big, burn scarred hands.

  "Yes, my son? Come in." But he scowled at the fellow involuntarily. Heshould know better than to succumb to the capital sin of avarice. "Well,what is it?"

  "Father," the fellow said, "I've come to give you this." He passed asoft leather purse to the priest. It clinked.

  Father Ambrosius emptied it on his desk and stirred the broad silvercoins wonderingly with his finger. Five marks and eleven silver pennies.No more salt herring until Lent! Silver forwarded to his bishop in anamount that would do credit to the parish! A gilding job for the imageof the Blessed Virgin! Perhaps glass panes in one or two of the churchwindows!

  And then he stiffened and swept the money back into the purse. "You gotthis by sin," he said flatly. "The sin of avarice worked in your heartand you practiced the sin of usury on your fellow Christians. Don't givethis money to the Church; give it back to your victims."

  "Father," the fellow said, nearly blubbering, "excuse me but you don'tunderstand! They come to me and come to me. They say it's all right withthem, that they're hiring the money the way you'd hire a horse. Doesn'tthat make sense? Do you think I _wanted_ to become a moneylender? No! Iwas an honest goldsmith and an honest goldsmith can't help himself. Allthe money in the village drifts somehow into his hands. One leaves amark with you for safekeeping and pays you a penny the year to guard it.Another brings you silver coins to make into a basin, and you get tokeep whatever coins are left over. And then others come to you and say'Let me have soandso's mark to use for a year and then I'll pay it backand with it another mark'. Father, they beg me! They say they'll beruined if I don't lend to them, their old parents will die if they can'tfee the leech, or their dead will roast forever unless they can pay f
ormasses and what's a man to _do_?"

  "Sin no more," the priest answered simply. It was no problem.

  The fellow was getting angry. "Very well for you to sit there and sayso, father. But what do you think paid for the masses you said for therepose of Goodie Howat's soul? And how did Tom the Thatcher buy hiswagon so he could sell his beer in Glastonbury at a better price? Andhow did Farmer Major hire the men from Wealing to get in his hay beforethe great storm could ruin it? And a hundred things more. I tell you,this parish would be a worse place without John Goldsmith and he doesn'tpropose to be pointed at any longer as a black sinner! I didn't want tofall into usury but I did, and _when_ I did, I found out that those whohoist their noses highest at the moneylender when they pass him in theroad are the same ones who beg the hardest when they come to his shopfor a loan!"

  The priest was stunned by the outburst. John seemed honest, the factswere the facts--can good come out of evil? And there were stories thatHis Holiness the Pope himself had certain dealings with theLongobards--benchers, or bankers or whatever they called themselves....

  "I must think on this, my son," he said. "Perhaps I was over hasty.Perhaps in the days of St. Paul usury was another thing entirely.Perhaps what you practice is not _really_ usury but merely somethingthat resembles it. You may leave this silver with me."

  When John left, Father Ambrosius squeezed his eyes tight shut andpressed the knuckles of both hands to his forehead. Things _did_ change.Under the dispensation of the Old Testament, men had more wives thanone. That was sinful now, but surely Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were inheaven? Paul wrote his epistles to little islands of Christianssurrounded by seas of pagans. Surely in those days it was necessary forChristians to be bound closely together against the common enemy,whereas in these modern times, the ties could be safely relaxed atrifle? How could sinning have paid for the repose of Goodie Howat'ssoul, got a better price for brewer Thatcher's ale and saved the villagehay crop? The Devil was tricky, but not _that_ tricky, surely. A fewmore such tricks and the parish would resemble the paradise terrestrial!

  Father Ambrosius dashed from his study to the altar of the little stonechurch and began furiously to turn the pages of the huge metal-boundlectern Bible.

  "_For the love of money is the root of all evil--_"

  It burst on Father Ambrosius with a great light that the words of Paulwere in reference not to _John Goldsmith's_ love of money but to _SirBaldwin's_ love of money.

  He dashed back to his study and his pen began to squeak over theparchment, obliterating the last dim trace of Tacitus' _Annals_, VIIIi.v. The sermon would be a scorcher, all right, but it wouldn't scorchJohn Goldsmith. It would scorch Sir Baldwin for ruthlessly and againstthe laws of God and man refusing to turn Fallowfield over to themoneylender. There would be growls of approval in the church thatSunday, and many black looks directed against Sir Baldwin for hisattempt to bilk the parish's friend and benefactor, the moneylender.

  * * * * *

  "And that," F. W. Taylor concluded, chuckling, "is how power passes fromone pair of hands to another, and how public acceptance of the changefollows on its heels. A strange thing--people always think that eachexchange of power is the last that will ever take place."

  He seemed to be finished.

  "Uncle," Orsino said, "somebody tried to kill me."

  Taylor stared at him for a long minute, speechless. "What happened?" hefinally asked.

  "I went formal to the theater, with five bodyguards. The chief guard,name of Halloran, took a shot at me. One of my boys got in the way. Hewas killed."

  Taylor's fingers began to play a tattoo on his annunciator board. Facesleaped into existence on its various screens as he fired orders."Charles Orsino's chief bodyguard for tonight--Halloran. Trace him. Theworks. He tried to kill Orsino."

  He clicked off the board switches and turned grimly to Orsino. "Nowyou," he said. "What have _you_ been up to?"

  "Just doing my job, uncle," Orsino said uneasily.

  "Still bagman at the 101st?"

  "Yes."

  "Fooling with any women?"

  "Nothing special, uncle. Nothing intense."

  "Disciplined or downgraded anybody lately?"

  "Certainly not. The precinct runs like a watch. I'll match their moraleagainst any outfit east of the Mississippi. Why are you taking this soheavy?"

  "Because you're the third. The other two--your cousin Thomas McGurn andyour uncle Robert Orsino--didn't have guards to get in the way. Oneother question."

  "Yes, uncle."

  "My boy, _why_ didn't you tell me about this when you first came in?"