“How was your journey?Didyou trade off all our wool?”
“Yes, and next year’sshearing too, if we’ll weave it ourselves for themarket.”
“Good boy, good boy.”Theoleapt the last four steps in one and strode to greet them, handsextended.“Let me bless you.Leof, you too, though I did see youonly an hour ago.”
Cai hitched up his cassock hem anddropped to his knees on the turf, Leof mirroring his action at hisside.Never in his life had Cai knelt to any man, or any god, untilhe came to Fara.Here, though, in the pure sweet air, the gesturehad been stripped of shame for him.He bowed his head and waitedfor his abbot’s benediction.
“Blessed be the travellerswho come safely home,” Theo pronounced, resting his hands on theirskulls.
“Praise be to God,” theychorused back.They had all three switched into Church Latin, theironly common tongue, Leof and Cai dropping the homely dialect of thenorthern shores.The transition was a reflex for Cai by now.He’dstruggled at first, but a two-year immersion in the language ofBible and churchmen the world over had had its effect, and he’ddiscovered to his surprise that Broccus had prepared his mind forsome of it, with the bawdy old chants handed down to him from hisRoman forebears.
The benediction over, Theodosiusruffled their hair, first Cai’s dark mop and then Leof’s fair one.“I should tonsure you,” he said worriedly.“I know I should.Youtwo and all the others.”
Cai smiled up at him, pushing to hisfeet.He’d gathered from his trading trips that certain aspects ofmonastic life were different here than in other communities.Therewere no astronomy lessons for the brotherhoods down south—whyshould there be, when God had fixed the Earth at the centre ofcreation, leaving nothing new to know?—and Cai had learned to raisehis hood when dealing with the monks of Tyne, or risk a storm ofdisapprobation for his unshorn head.
“I’ve been thinking aboutthat,” he said, setting off with Leof and Theo up the steps.“Don’tyou think there ought to be some kind of dispensation?For brethrenlike ourselves, I mean, who tend the fires of faith this far to thenorth.After all, the bulk of our bodies’ heat loss occurs throughthe top of the skull, I’ve observed.”
“Does it?”Theo glancedover at him, dark eyes gleaming.The scientist in him would defeatthe churchman every time, as Cai had also observed.“Haveyou?”
“I have.When BrotherPetros got caught out in the snowdrifts with the sheep, a rabbitskin on the top of his head did him more good than all our clothesand blankets.Even than the fire.”
“Is it so?Well, you mayhave a point.Enough to let me put off the evil day, anyhow—I don’tquite understand why our bald pates are pleasing in the sight ofGod.”
“Because, my lord abbot,”Leof offered shyly, “he doesn’t wish us to be covered up fromhim.”
“Why, Leof, you sound as ifhe told you so himself.No.It’s simply a sign of our renunciationof the world and its vainglory.”
“In that case, I shouldlike it to be done.”Leof cast a wistful glance at Cai, as if hemight like the hair he’d run his fingers through in worldly,vainglorious pleasure to be left well alone.“To me, at anyrate.”
“Then so it shall be,child—as soon as I get my shears back from Brother Petros.Caius,you’ve arrived home in good time.Did Leof tell you my firstchapter is complete?”
“No, my lord abbot.”We’ve been a littlebusy.Caipushed the thought away from him.“But that’s good news.Did youdecide yet on a title?”
“Yes.”They had reached a turningin the long stone flight.Theo took up position on a flat rock andspread his arms as if to address the sunny infinity of moorlandsand dunes that lay before him.“Poor copy though it is, I shallcall it theGospel of Science.”
Leof flinched.Like all the brethrenof Fara, he loved and feared Theo in equal measure.He would nevercontradict him, but Cai had observed how he’d sit in Theo’slectures, head bowed, his hands clasped in his lap, as if silentlybegging God to overlook the blasphemy one more time.Well—good andconventional churchmen did not get appointed to world’s-edgeoutposts like Fara, and Theo had not been so much sent as banishedthere.He was a renegade, a once-powerful teacher caught in therebellious possession of books now deemed heretical by the RomanChurch.Stripped of his treasured volumes, his power and authority,he had been shipped off to the far west—where, according to thebeliefs of his masters, he might well tumble right off the planet’srim and trouble them no more.
He had noticed Leof’s involuntarytwitch.Cai tensed.A man of sublime patience, a father to hisflock who would help Cai bathe their wounds with his own hands, hecould still fly out in rage at wilful ignorance and superstition.“Does my choice trouble you, child?”
“Yes,” Leof said bravely.“The gospels are the words of Christ, not…arrows and dots, and longstrings of numbers fit to bewilder all God-fearing men.”
Theo smiled.“Well, I do hopenotallof them.Not forever, anyway.”He resumed his climb, makingroom beside him on the path for Leof to walk at his side.Cai,bringing up the rear, looked at them both in affection.“Remember,Leof.All I am doing is trying to recall and write down a fragmentof the books that were lost.My gospel—we can call it somethingelse for now—will only ever be a copy, a shadow, of that greatwealth.I use mathematics and diagrams because, in their neatness,they can convey what an army of monks writing all day and nightcould not teach.You, the best and most godly of my brethren, neednot be disturbed by it at all.”
“Yes, my lord abbot.Thankyou.”
“And although it woulddistress me, I will give you dispensation from illuminating myheresies—if you wish.”
Leof jerked his head up.Cai couldhave laughed aloud at his open-mouthed dismay.“Why—no, sir.Pleasenot that.”
“Good.Because I valuethem, your vines and grapes and little dancing stoats.”
“Those are foxes,sir.”
“Ah.Well, nonetheless.You’ll carry on?”
“Of course.I wish I sawwhat my plants and my beasts have to do with your—your gospel,however.”
Theo put an arm around his shoulders.“Science makes an error,” he said, the gentle laughter fading fromhis voice, “in cutting itself off from nature.In thinking ofitself as separate.I feel a chill inside my heart when I imaginewhere such an error might lead.So, my clever painter, though yourvines and foxes may not illustrate the turning of the Earth uponits axis, or the distance to the moon, I hope they will remind themen of some future day that foxes, moon and Earth are one, and allthe work of one great hand.Yes—I do believe that, for all myblasphemous ways.It’s not so hard, as a doctrine—even for thelikes of Brother Cai.”
