Clerics clogged the streets, climbing higher so as to be the first to catch sight of the man who was favourite for the Pontiffship. Avila helped Albrec along as the little monk puffed and sweated up the hill. Their breath clouded around them in the cold air, and they could see the snow on the higher slopes above them.
“There,” Avila said, satisfied.
They stood on the ridge that curled protectively about the south-west of Charibon. The slope around them was black with people, religious and lay alike. They could stare down and see the entire, beautiful profile of Charibon with its towers and spires kindled by the autumn sunlight, and the inland sea of Tor glittering off to their right.
“I see him,” Avila said.
Albrec squinted. “Where?”
“Not there, you ninny, along the northern road. He’s coming by way of Almark, remember. See the escort of Knights? There must be close on two hundred of them. Himerius will be in the second coach, the one flying the scarlet Hebrian flag. They’re certainly putting on a show for him. I’d say he had the Pontiffship in the palm of his hand already.”
One of their neighbors, a hard-faced priest in the plain robe of a Friar Mendicant, turned at Avila’s words.
“What’s that you say? Himerius as Pontiff?”
“Why yes, Brother. That seems to me to be the way of it.”
“And you have looked deeply into these matters, have you?”
Avila’s face seemed to stiffen. It was with his full aristocratic hauteur that he replied, “I have a mind. I can examine the evidence and form an opinion as well as the next man.”
The Friar Mendicant smiled, then nodded to the approaching cavalcade. “If yon Prelate assumes the High Pontiffship you may no longer be permitted the luxury of an opinion, lad. And many innocent folk will no longer possess the luxury of life. I doubt if that was the way of the Blessed Ramusio when he was on this earth, but it is the way of your brother Inceptines these days, with their Knights Militant, their purges and their pyres. Where in the Book of Deeds does it say you must murder your fellow man if he differs from you? Inceptines! You are God’s gorecrows, flapping round the pyres you have created.”
The grey-clad Friar turned at that and stumped off, elbowing his way roughly through the gathering throng. Avila and Albrec stared after him, speechless.
“He’s mad,” Albrec said at last. “The Friars are always an eccentric lot, but he’s lost his mind entirely.”
Avila stared down the hillside to where the Prelate of Hebrion’s retinue was thundering along the muddy northern road, raising a spray of water as it came.
“Is he? I cannot ever remember a tale of Ramusio destroying someone who did not believe in him. Maybe he is right.”
“He struck down the demon-possessed women of Gebrar,” Albrec pointed out.
“Yes,” Avila said absently, “there is that.” Then he grinned suddenly with his accustomed good humour. “Which is another reason why clerics do not marry. Women have too many demons in them! I believe all clerics have mothers, though.”
“Hush, Avila. Someone will hear.”
“Someone will hear, yes. And what if they do, Albrec? What would happen? What if they chanced upon that cache of books you have saved? Do you ever wonder what would happen if they did? We had a mage on my father’s staff when I was a boy. He used to do tricks with light and water, and no one could heal a broken limb faster than he. He became my tutor. Is that the sort of man the Church wants to destroy? Why?”
“For the sake of the Saint, Avila, will you be quiet? You’ll get us into all manner of trouble.”
“But what manner?” Avila asked. “What manner, Albrec? When does a conversation, an idea, lead to the pyre? What must one do to earn such a death?”
“Oh shut up, Avila. I won’t argue with you, not here and now.” Albrec looked round with increasing nervousness. Some of the nearby clerics were turning to listen to Avila’s voice.
Avila smiled again. “All right, Brother. We’ll chase this hare later. Maybe Brother Mensio can help us out.”
Albrec said nothing. Avila loved to carry a conversation to the edge of things-to the limits of orthodoxy. It was worrying. Albrec sometimes thought that the gap between what Avila believed and what he said was widening and even he, the nobleman’s friend, could not say for sure just how deep was the gulf between what appeared to be and what was in the younger man’s mind.
The Prelate’s cavalcade splashed by, one pale hand waving graciously from the depths of the coach at the assembled crowd. Then it was gone. There was a feeling of anticlimax.
“He could at least have got out and given us his blessing,” a monk next to them grumbled.
Avila slapped the man on the back. “That was his blessing, Brother! Didn’t you see his fingers tracing the Sign of the Saint as he galloped past? A swift blessing, it’s true, but none the worse for that.”
The monk, an Inceptine novice with the white hood of a first-year student, beamed broadly.
“So I’ve been blessed by the future Pontiff of the world. Thanks, Brother. I’d never have noticed. You have good eyes.”
“And a lively imagination,” Albrec muttered while he and Avila made their way back down into Charibon. The bells of the cathedral were tolling the third hour and the flocks of monks were returning to their respective colleges for the morning meal. Albrec’s stomach gave a premonitory twinge at the thought.
“Why do you do such things?” he asked his friend.
“You are strangely snappish this morning, Brother. Why do I do it? Because it pleases me, and it brightened that novice’s day. By tomorrow the tale will be round his college how Himerius endowed them with his personal blessing, much good may it do them.”
“Avila, I do believe you are in danger of becoming a cynic.”
“Maybe. Sometimes I think that every man who wears this black habit must be either a pious fanatic or a cold-blooded schemer.”
“Or a nobleman’s younger son. There are a lot of those, don’t forget.”
Avila grinned at his diminutive friend. “Come, Antillian. Will you dine with the noblemen’s sons this morning? If anyone points a finger at your mud-coloured habit I’ll say you’re a scholar come to use our library. And our refectory is renowned, as you well know.”
“I know. All right. So long as you fend off the antics of the novices. I’m in no mood for a bread fight this morning.”
The two of them picked a path down the cobbled streets into the monastery proper, the tall Inceptine and the plump little Antillian. No one looking at the unlikely pair could have guessed that between them they would one day change the course of the world.
The bells of the cathedral tolled the hours of Charibon away. The inhabitants of the monastery-city said their devotions, ate their meals and read their offices in fast mumbles, but in the splendidly appointed quarters of the Vicar-General a more select company sat at their ease and sipped the Candelarian wine that had come with the meal. They had pushed their chairs back from the long table, said their thanks to God for the bounty which had presented itself before them and were now enjoying the fire burning in the huge hearth to one side. Five men, the most powerful religious leaders in the world.
At the head of the table sat the Vicar-General of the Inceptine Order, Betanza of Astarac, formerly a duke of that kingdom. He had found his vocation late in life, helped, some said, by the sea-rovers who had destroyed his fief in a lightning raid one summer thirty years ago. He was a big, powerful man edging into corpulence, with a ruddy face and a pate that would have been bald even had it not been tonsured. The Saint symbol that hung from his neck was of white gold inset with pearls and tiny rubies. He was fingering it absently as he stared into the candlelit depths of his wine.