“May I now release this false Troubadour?” the Grand Musician asked.

“No. He must die upon the wall. Let him suffer for his lies. Let him hang where everyone may know the nature of his ugly melodies of desecration. Hang him on the great machine of death.”

“Yes! Yes!” they cried in fevered chanting. “Yes! Yes! thou Great Musician! Yes! Hang him on the great machine of death.”

XIX

Institutions have a poor safety record. The guillotines of orthodoxy keep a clean blade that is always honed for heresy. And somewhere near the place where witches die an unseen sign is posted whose invisible letters clearly read:

WE ARE PROUD TO REPORT 0 WORKING DAYS LOST TO INJURY OR ACCIDENT.

—THE MANAGEMENT

Let us pray.

The sentinels returned the Madman to the grove. He followed them without a struggle. He walked along in the stupefaction of his disbelief. In his former madness he would have crushed the wardens in the foment of his rage. He could scarcely understand that in a single day he had been granted both a new mind and an injured heart.

The day’s proceedings had been too much for him. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the mallet of the executioner again: The splintering of tendons, the wincing of the Singer, the facial blows the priest had given him: all these made his mind a horror chamber.

Somewhere in his reverie of agony they reached the wall. The attendants locked him in the irons, while he stared vacantly away. They brought him bread and water, which he never saw.

He only wept. A tremor shook his giant frame.

The darkness came. The Madman cried. While somewhere higher on the wall the Singer died.

It was good the Madman could not behold his suffering. He could not have borne it. A trinity of other lovers came, all three absorbed in one great hurt. The little girl sat down between the older women.

“I am his mother,” said the oldest.

“I am the demonstration of his power,” said the little girl.

“I am only a friend,” said the other woman.

“I gave him life,” said his mother.

“I gave him twisted feet,” said the little girl.

“I gave him shame,” said the friend.

“He taught me obedience to the Father-Spirit,” said the mother.

“He taught me running.”

“He taught me love.”

They sat beneath the great machine of death. It was a trebled pietà of stone and still it wept.

“I feel very old today,” said the mother as she placed her arm around the shoulder of the little girl.

“I feel as though I soon must watch the Father-Spirit die.” The girl sobbed into the bosom of the Singer’s mother.

The Friendship Seller was a world away. She said, “I am ashamed of being human. It is the very shame I felt the first time that I …” She could not bring herself to tell her ugly fall before the grieving child. “The moment that I saw the Keeper of the Ancient Ways who was chief accuser, I knew he bore some vague familiarity. He was no priest …”