Poor child, thought White as he sighed, you have to endure it, this is your savior. If it weren’t for the Church’s envoy who always supported me through the winter, I would only be an unattended corpse at the side of the road.
Soon, the ambassador came back, climbed up, and sat beside White and only commanded, “Go.”
“Brace yourselves, I am driving!” shouted White as he shook his reins, removing the carriage. “Are they all from the Wolfsheart Kingdom?”
“Almost, the churches in every town in the Kingdom takes in some of the orphans especially during the winter, when there is a food and clothing shortage everywhere. We receive many times more people compared to the other seasons because of this. If we only depended on our Church’s own members, it wouldn’t be enough, so we have to employ some drivers with good reputations to help us to transport the orphans to the Oldy Holy City. Until now you have done very well, White. My predecessor could only praise you.”
“It is my privilege to be part of such a good deed,” said White, honored. “Your excellency, will they also be sent to the monastery? I hate to ask, though they are orphans, their characters aren’t the same. Although some of them aren’t so old, some of them have already done terrible deeds, so won’t these people contaminate the pure and holy earth?”
“God will judge them, and even if they are guilty, they will get the opportunity of salvation.” answered the envoy with complete conviction.
“Will they? That’s a good thing.” Wright was amazed, but soon he raised his head and looked at the sky before he continued. “It’s late. Sir, shall we stay in the next town? If the weather tomorrow is good, we will arrive at the Old Holy City at noon.”
“It’s already this late?” asked the Ambassador, “Look for an inn, and after you bring the carriage to the yard you can prepare the food for the orphans.”
“Okay!” White agreed to the plan.
This town belonged to the Wolfsheart Kingdom, and if someone wanted to reach the Old Holy City, they had to go through this town. So, it wasn’t White’s first time here. Thanks to this, he quickly found the inn he had previously frequented. He drove the carriage into the yard and then took some coins from the Church’s envoy to buy some food for the orphans. As usual, he bought sweet potato porridge, which was the most appropriate choice since it was cheap and still had a pretty good taste. After watching them divide the porridge, White limped back to the inn, asked for some bread with butter, and sat at the bar to eat. As for the envoy, he certainly had a better place to go.
If White hadn’t broken his leg ten years ago, he would have gone to the tavern to order a glass of wine, and he would also have thrown some dice — he had always had a good hand for them. But now… White took his purse and found his room to sleep early.
Later, in the evening, he heard some voices from the yard. So, he got up and lifted the curtains to control the situation. But White only saw that the Church’s drunken envoy had come back. The envoy opened the door of the carriage and went into it. Soon he returned outside, pulling two orphans with him. Beside the carriage, two people dressed in aristocratic clothes were already waiting.
Seeing that it was only the envoy, White put the curtain down and went back under the warm blanket.
This wasn’t the first time he witnessed the envoy doing this. Actually, it was a regular thing for him. Being alive is the greatest happiness, he thought, they have just to endure the pain for the moment. You only have to survive until we reach the Old Holy City, there you will be able to start a new life. At least in the monastery, you won’t have to fear starving. Thinking until here, White yawned and soon fell asleep.
At dawn, he got the envoy and drove on. The last part of the journey went without incident, and they even reached the Old Holy City two hours sooner than expected. There were already other church’s carriages waiting for them; it seemed that these poor devils still had some way to go, but all this had nothing to do with him.
“This is your reward.” The envoy called to White and threw a bag toward him.
White took the coins out of the bag and counted them twice. Indeed, it was twenty silver royals. So he nodded and said, “I hope I will see you again in the coming year.
But the envoy did not answer. Instead, he waved his hand to indicate that White could depart.
White noticed that in addition to him, several other coachmen were doing the same job. Are they the from the other Kingdoms? He asked himself, but soon he noticed something strange, it seemed only girls would come down from the carriages. So when the church adopts orphans, they only adopt girls?
He shook his head, threw this problematic thought to the back of his head, and started the journey back home.
Chapter 84 The truth behind Hermes
Bishop Mayne followed the circular staircase leading into the earth.
The staircase, with a depth of at least of four times that of the cathedral’s highest tower and a diameter of about twenty feet, was built in a natural doline and lead directly into a strategically-positioned and spacious castle. The beginning of the staircase was well lit by skylight pathing through the windows of the high dome above, giving the twisting and turning stone walls an icy color.
But when following the steps, the stairway quickly darkened, seemingly fusing the walls into one. But after some time at the center of the staircase, the reflection of a blue light could be seen, and the deeper one went, the brighter it would become. So even without a torch, they would never fall into a pitch-black predicament.
At the foot of the staircase, a pathway that was firmly attached to the rock wall meandered around a dark hole.
The path was cut out of granite, formed by many rectangular pieces three fingers thick. The path was wide enough for two people walk side by side. One end of each granite piece was embedded into the rock wall while the other end was in the air. In order to prevent accidental falls, there were wooden fence posts that were connected by rope at the side of the hole..
Mayne didn’t count the number of steps he walked. In the end, there were just too many, but he knew that embedding every piece of stone was a tough task. The masons hired by the Church had to lean on a rope to hang down while they knocked out suitably deep holes in the hard rock.Afterwards, they had to insert the granite plates into the holes. Each action had to be done very carefully because every rope slippage or breakage lead to a fall to the bottom, which happened to more than three hundred people.
If the Church’s Cathedral on the surface was a symbol for the unyielding spirit of the church, then the hidden castle in the Hermes plateau was the real core of the Church.
A piece of God’s Stone of Retaliation was embedded at the edge of every step, and a guard was placed on every hundredth step. For last line of defense, there was even a squadron of the God’s Punishment Army that was always ready to face an attack from intruders. Many bags of sand and gravel were buried between the Cathedral and the underground castle. This was in case every line of defense in the Holy City had failed. If every important person was evacuated, the pope could start the trap and bury everything under a deep layer of sand and gravel.
Although it wasn’t Mayne first visit to the underground castle, the feeling of walking on air still made him feel dizzy. Especially after some time, he would always have the illusion of falling.
So he was a little relieved when he finally had once more solid ground under his feet.
At the bottom of the sinkhole was a huge white stone disc, with a surface as smooth as a mirror. When standing above it, someone could even clearly see their own reflection. Through a cleverly designed construction, the light coming through the windows within the dome was so reflected that it directly hit the millstone. Thanks to this, even without lighting a torch, the bottom of the doline was never dark.