One of the armored figures shouted something incomprehensible and both rushed toward Harold and Emmett, moving much faster and far more easily than Harold would have thought possible for men burdened by such weights of steel.
“Did you hear him?” crowed Emmett, in delight, seemingly oblivious of the sharp-edged death bearing down upon him. “Did you hear him, Ken? That was Gaelic he was speaking, Scots Gaelic, and not really archaic, though somewhat slurred.”
Harold tried to shout, to tell Emmett to stun the two, but no word would come. Frantically, with palsied fingers, he fumbled out his belt stunner and tried to set it for maximum range. The coming killers were half the length of the room before he aimed and depressed the stud, shifting from one to the other, back and forth, horrified when they did not immediately crumple.
Crumple unconscious, they did not; stop, they did, briefly. A mighty stench of burning again filled the room—burning cloth, burning leather, burning flesh. Dropping their weapons, both men began to scream and tear at, tear off, helmets and portions of their armor. One man’s black surcoat smoldered, then burst into flames, flames which singed off his lank, greasy hair, his bushy eyebrows, even the stubble on his pockmarked face. Howling like moonmad hounds, leaving weapons and helmets behind, they raced out into the snowy night.
Harold turned to find Emmett doubled over in laughter, his green eyes streaming. “Oh, Ken! Ohhhho, Ken! You set …
Ohohohh, your stunner was set on heat. Those bastards must ve thought they were roasting alive, with all that steel super-heating around them.”
“Man, what a hotfoot,” commented Bass Foster “Hotfoot?” queried the Archbishop, raising his thick white eyebrows.
Briefly, not wishing to break the old man’s train of thought, Bass explained. Then he asked, “Well where were you Hal?”
Smiling Harold of York shrugged, “Where else, my boy, but Whyffler Hall?”
CHAPTER 10
“Of course, the Whyffler Hall of near two centuries ago was not the Hall in which we now sit, Bass. The old tower sat on a low hillock, most of which was leveled when the present hall was added fifty years later. There was no circuit wall then, only a timber stockade on a stone-and-earth ramp at the base of the hill, fronted by a dry ditch, with a few rude outbuildings between stockade and tower.
“As did you and your friends more recently, Emmett and I had arrived at a critical juncture. The Balderite Heresy was in its full flower and the entire Scots border was aflame.”
Now it was Foster’s turn to speak and ask, “Balderite Heresy, Hal?”
Harold steepled his fingers. “Your wife tells me you were born and reared a Roman Catholic, Bass. Have you not noticed something singular about the practice of Catholicism here?”
Bass chuckled. “How long a list do you want? A cardinal named Ahmed, knight-crusaders with names like Ibrahim, Riad, Sulimen, Murad and al-Asraf. I could go on forever.”
“No, Bass, something more basic. Think! In our history, Bass, yours and mine, the practice of Roman Catholicism was bound up inextricably with the Cult of the Virgin—the Earth Mother Cult, really, which had predated Christianity in many parts of Northwestern Europe and had been incorporated in northwestern European Christianity. In our history, the Council of Ephesus declared Mary theotokos—’Mother of God”—over the strong objections of the followers of Nestoriiis and many others, which fact served to fragment the Church. Here, in this world, that did not happen; the Council supported Nestorius.
“Now, true, the Virgin Mary is venerated, but more as I high-ranking saint than as an outright divinity. The Council of Ephesus took place in the early fifth century; two hundred and fifty years later, the Council of Whitby declared the Roman forms to be the only acceptable forms, and began the long struggle to bring the Cluniacs into line. After a while, it seemed that the Cult of the Virgin and the Cluniacs were both extinct, but then, more than a thousand years after the Council of Ephesus, the Balderites burst upon the world.
“No kingdom wishes to claim the first Balderites, naturally, but it is thought that they originated in western Scotland. A few were ordained priests; most were not, but they were powerful and persuasive orators, preachers, to a man. Their creed was a mixture of Cluniac Christianity, Virgin Cult-Earth Mother paganism, Druidic Naturalism, and, at least in the Scottish Highlands, a strong streak of Celtic nationalism. The Balderites spread out from their place of origin, and in less than three years’ time, all Scotland was in chaos and two of the Irish Kingdoms—centuries-old enemies—were marching against the High King, while a third kingdom was racked by civil war.