"We are your salvation," De'Unnero said to the trembling man.
"Yes, master."
"Yet you took our money for passage," De'Unnero went on.
"Kill him, Brother Truth!" several men yelled.
"Take it back!" the pilot begged, pulling his purse from his belt and thrusting it into De'Unnero's hand. "I swear, Brother Truth, if I'd'a known, I'd not taken a copper bear. On me mum's soul, I swear."
De'Unnero took the purse and eyed the pilot dangerously a bit longer. Then he shoved the man down to the deck. "Get us in to dock," he said disgustedly, and he moved forward. The city was coming into clear view now, the buildings showing through the morning fog.
His anger was feigned, though, for in truth, the former Bishop of Palmaris was in a fine mood this particularly sweet day. He and his ferocious brood had swept across the southland, all across Yorkey, scouring town after town of infidels, and taking care to avoid any Abellican abbeys-with the sole exception of Abbot Olin's St. Bondabruce. As De'Unnero had guessed, Olin had been quite sympathetic to his cause, and while the man hadn't openly endorsed the Brothers Repentant, hadn't even let them into his abbey, neither had he opposed them and he had secretly met with De'Unnero. That meeting had gone wonderfully, as far as De'Unnero was concerned, for he hadn't missed the intrigue on Olin's face when he had hinted that he might know the way to Pimaninicuit, the far-off isle holding the treasure equivalent of the hoards of a hundred, hundred kings on its gem-covered beaches.
But those were thoughts for another day, the fierce master knew. For now, before him lay the most coveted jewel, the city of his greatest triumph and greatest defeat. Here lay Palmaris, mighty Palmaris, thick with the plague and ripe for the words of the Brothers Repentant.
Marcalo De'Unnero had not forgotten the treatment the folk here had given to him, nor the stern words of Abbot Braumin when the fool had expelled him from the city.
No, De'Unnero had not forgotten anything about Palmaris, the city in which all of this trouble with the plague had really begun. The city where Markwart and the old ways had been abandoned for this new foolishness. The city that embraced Braumin, and thus Jojonah and thus Avelyn and their insane ideas that the Church should be the healer of the common folk.
De'Unnero spat as he considered the irony of that goal. Where were the healers of the common folk now, this kinder and more compassionate Church? Hidden away, by all reports, behind thick walls and stinking flower beds.
Their cowardice would be their undoing, De'Unnero knew. Their cowardice would deliver the desperate, abandoned people of Palmaris to him, would make them heed his words of potential salvation.
Then Abbot Braumin and his foolish friends would come to understand what their errant beliefs had bought them.
Yes, this was a particularly sweet day.
Roger suffered through the indignity of another spiritual rape in the gateouse of St. Precious, then stormed out when at last he was cleared to titer. house of St. Precious, then stor enter.
"Where is Abbot Braumin?" he demanded of Brother Castinagis, who was again manning the gate.
Castinagis snorted and shook his head, patting poor Roger to calm him. "He will see you," he assured the man, but Roger shoved him away.
"He will hear me!" Roger retorted. "And woe to those who turned Dainsey away!" Roger turned and stomped off, heading for the main building and the office of his friend.
"Abbot Braumin already knows," Brother Castinagis called softly behind him, stopping Roger in his tracks. "He knew even as we were inspecting you and the woman, even as we were following his orders that no one enter St. Precious without such inspection. He knew that your woman friend was turned away before it ever happened. Do not look so surprised, Roger! Have you forgotten that similar treatment was afforded Colleen Kilronney when Jilseponie brought her to our door? "
"B-but…" Roger stammered, and his thoughts were all jumbled. "I am your friend."
"Indeed," said Castinagis, with no trace of sarcasm, "a valued friend, and it pains me, as I'm sure it pains Abbot Braumin, that we cannot help your woman companion. Do you not understand? This is the rosy plague; we have no weapons against it."
"What am I to do?" Roger asked. "Am I to sit by and simply watch Dainsey die? "
"You would be wiser by far to stay here with us," came a soft voice behind them. Roger turned to see his old friend Braumin Herde emerging from the building. The man had aged noticeably in the last year, the first signs of silver streaking his curly black hair, and deep lines running out from the sides of his eyes. "There are plague houses which will make your Dainsey comfortable. I can arrange it. You need not return to her."
Roger stared at him incredulously.
"There is nothing you can do for her," Braumin went on. He moved closer and tried to put a comforting arm on Roger's shoulder, but Roger danced away. "And contact with her greatly endangers you."
"There must be some answer…" Roger started to argue, shaking his head.
"There is nothing," Abbot Braumin said sternly. "Only to hide, and you must hide with us."
"Dainsey needs me," Roger argued.
"You will do nothing more than watch her die," Castinagis said.
Roger turned back to him, his expression grim and determined. "Then that is what I must do," he declared. "I must watch her die. I must hold her hand and bid her farewell on her journey."
"Those are a fool's words!" Castinagis cried.
Roger started to shout back at him, but he hadn't the strength. He stuttered over several beginnings, but then just threw his hands up and wailed. Then, his legs giving out beneath him, he fell to his knees, sobbing. Both monks rushed to him immediately.
"I will arrange for her care," Abbot Braumin promised.
"You will stay with us. Among friends," Castinagis added.
Roger considered their words, their good intentions, for a brief moment; but any comfort or hope they tried to impart was fast washed away by an image of Dainsey, Roger's dear Dainsey, the woman he had come to love so dearly, lying feverish on a bed and calling out for him.
That was a cry that Roger Lockless, whatever the potential danger, could not ignore.
"No!" he growled, and he stubbornly pulled himself up to his feet. "No, if you cannot help her, then I will find someone else who can."
"There is no one," Braumin said softly. "Nothing."
"Then I will stay with her," Roger snarled back at him, "to the end."
Castinagis started to say something, but Abbot Braumin cut him short with a wave of his hand and a nod. They had seen this behavior before, of course, in Jilseponie, and so it was not unexpected that one who was not of the Church could not see the greater good against the immediate pain.
Roger started to walk away but stopped suddenly and wheeled about. "I wish to marry her," he said-and it was obvious that the thought had just then come into his mind-"formally, before the eyes of God." "She cannot come here," Brother Castinagis said.
"Will you do that much for me, at least?" Roger asked Braumin. "Perform the ceremony from across the tussie-mussie bed." He stared hard at his friend.
Castinagis, too, looked at Braumin.
"I would prefer that you not return to her," the abbot of St. Precious said. "You ask me to sanction a union that cannot last out the rest of the summer."
"I ask you to confirm our love before God's eyes as something sacred, for that it is," Roger corrected. "Can you not even do that much for me?"
Abbot Braumin spent a long time thinking it over. "If I believed that there was some chance that I might convince you to abandon this lost cause, then surely I would," he said at last, "but if you are determined to remain beside the poor woman, then better that it be a union sanctioned by God. Go and bring her to the tussie-mussie bed, and be quick, before I become convinced that I, too, am playing the part of the fool."