Patrick (53 page)

H
OW LONG
I lay teetering between life and death, I do not know. Someone came to sit with me from time to time—Dea was there, I know, and also a physician. Once I awoke and, thinking I was in the German forest, tried to get up and run away to escape the barbarians I imagined chasing me. I did not get far before my legs gave out and I fell sprawling on the floor. Sometime later I found myself back in bed.

Then one evening, just as the sun was sinking, I awoke to footsteps in the corridor beyond the room. “Agatha?” I called out in a voice dry and hollow as the tomb.

Decimus' face appeared in the doorway. He took one look at me and disappeared. I heard him calling for his wife outside, and the good woman arrived a short while later, bearing a jar of wine and some bread soaked in milk, which she fed to me a morsel at a time until I begged her to stop. I sipped some wine then and found I could speak. “Where is Agatha?”

The old woman looked at me with sad, sorrowful eyes and said, “She has died, Master Succat.”

“No.”

Dea nodded sadly. “The fever took her two days ago. She was not strong.”

Kindly Decimus added, “I put her beside Lady Oriana.”

It was several days before I had strength enough to get up—and then it was only to shuffle from the bed to relieve myself in a pot before falling back into bed panting with exhaustion.

Little by little, however, the disease abated—it happens this way sometimes—and the day came when I could stand and walk without collapsing. I asked Decimus to take me out to see the graves. Summer was beginning to fade; I could feel it in the air and see it in the lowering slant of the sun. Still, the sky was bright and the breeze warm on my skin. With his hand under my arm, the old man led me down the path through the small stand of olive trees to the low bluff above the sea where I had dug that first grave.

We stood for a while in silence, and I could feel Decimus growing uncomfortable, so I said, “You can go.” He started to protest, but I reassured him. “I'll be all right. Come back for me later.”

The old man nodded and hurried away, and I returned to my contemplation of the graves. The dirt was still fresh on the second, smaller of the two, but on Oriana's grave the mounded earth had already begun to settle. Soon the grass would cover the place, and there would be nothing left to tell that it was there.

I stood staring at the bare mound and thought,
Is this all there is?

A heap of dirt that would not outlast next year's harvest—was that what life was all about? Was there nothing else? For if all the laughter, hope, passion, and dreams, all the love and life ended in a dank hole in the ground, what was the use? It all came to nothing. In the end the grave loomed over everything—and even that did not last.

The grave swallowed everything. Greedy and insatiable, the grave devoured young and old alike. No one escaped. Death was the answer, the last argument, brutal in its irrefutable finality. Death conquered all, and it would take me as it took everyone else. There was no escape, and nothing I did would ever make the slightest difference.

Even as I stood contemplating this desolate prospect, I heard someone coming down the path. Thinking it was Decimus come to fetch me before time, I turned to wave him off and saw that it was not Decimus but a stranger. Dressed in a
simple gray robe, like that of a provincial priest, he came ducking the olive branches and humming a curious tune.

A tall and very plump, round-shouldered man, white-haired but sprightly still, he walked lightly on the balls of his feet. His substantial girth was gathered in a plain leather belt, and though his clothing might have been that of a cleric, the sandals on his feet were those of a Roman soldier.

The happy stranger glanced up as he drew near, smiled cheerfully, and raised his hand in greeting. “So!” he exclaimed in a deep, resonant voice. “Back in the land of the living. Good.” He nodded with evident satisfaction. “Not that I had any doubt at all.”

He came to stand beside me and looked down at the graves. “Ah, well,” he said softly. He folded his hands before him and stood for a moment, bobbing his head. “Ah, yes, well.” He sighed and turned to regard me with eyes the same color as the sea. “How are you feeling?”

“You are the physician,” I said. “The one who attended me.”

“I suppose I am. Although, just between you and me and God, I have been accused of worse.” Nodding to himself, he said, “But I am no true physician. I know a little, and I am happy to do what I can. Sometimes it helps.”

“If you are not a physician,” I said, “who are you?”

“I am called Pelagius,” he said. “And, yes, I did look in on you a few times. I am leaving Aenaria in a few days, and I wanted to see you up and around before I left.”

“Pelagius,” I said. “I have heard about you.”

“Ah, yes, well.” He sighed again. “I suppose most everyone has by now. Still, I make no secret of it.” He peered at me amiably. “Do you have views?”

“None whatsoever,” I replied. “I have heard your name, that's all—from a former friend of mine, a priest.
He
had views.”

The kindly man rolled his eyes. “Priests! They all have views.”

“Are you not a priest?”

“A monk of a sort, but not a priest. Never a priest.” He shook his head and looked at me. “Decimus told me you are British born.”

“Indeed.”

“I am a Briton, too,” he confided. He looked out across the sea. “We are both a long way from home, I think. But I at least will not see Britain again.”

“Why not?”

“I am bound for Jerusalem,” he said. “I have long wanted to go, and now the opportunity has come. I do not imagine I will make any more journeys after that.”

As he spoke, a fleeting melancholy tinged his voice. He paused, then said, “I only wanted to see if you were better.” He smiled again, recovering something of his former gladness. “And now that I have seen, I will bid you good day.”

“Why do they hate you so much?” I asked. The words were out of my mouth before I thought to curb my tongue.

He stared at me, his blue eyes narrowing with the quick intensity of his stare.

“I do beg your pardon,” I said quickly. “Please, I meant no disrespect, but as you are leaving soon and I may not see you again, I merely wanted to know. You see, I've heard the way they talk about you, but you are so unlike the person I imagined, and…”

“You wanted to know if what they said about me was true?”

I nodded.

“Ah, yes, well, it is not an easy thing to say,” he replied, scratching his white-bristled chin. “Am I a fomenter of spurious teaching? A snake in the garden of paradise? A heretic?”

“Are you?”

“Never anything so grand as all that,” he confided. “Still, I have made some powerful enemies, and your question is apt. Why do they hate me so very much?” He spread his hands. “That I cannot say. Truly, I find it incomprehensible.

“As to the charge of heresy, I have stood before the pope
himself in Rome to receive his judgment. I defended my teaching, and I was acquitted.” Pelagius was no longer the jolly monk, his voice taking on the fire of conviction. “
Their
charges,
their
court,
their
council—and I alone, by myself without a friend in the room. The pope heard me out. The pope ruled: ‘I find no fault in this man!'”

Pelagius shook his head. “That should have been the end of it. But, alas, it was only the beginning.”

“That is the way of the world,” I said.

“The way of the world, yes,” he agreed, “but not God's way. Truth against the world—ah, now,
that
is God's way.”

At his use of the term, I heard the echo of a time so far removed from me it seemed as if it had happened to someone else. “Truth against the world,” I replied, unable to keep the sneer out of my voice. “You speak like the Ceile De.”

His white eyebrows rose in merry amazement. “You know the Ceile De?”

“I do—in fact, I once considered myself one of their number. At least I wanted to be.”

“Once? What happened?”

“I grew up,” I replied bitterly. “I got true wisdom. I learned how little it matters what a man believes. Whether a man prays to Zeus or Mithra, Christ or Apollo—no god is ever going to come to his aid; there is no help in trouble, and in the end nothing is going to save him.”

Pointing to the graves at our feet, I said, “God's way? I can tell you that from here it looks like God's way is death and corruption in a never-ending parade of brutal and senseless destruction.”

“You are bereft,” Pelagius told me gently. “It is natural to feel this way in times of grief.”

“Grief only sharpens a man's vision,” I snapped. “But, no, I have felt this way for a very long time.” Indicating the graves once more, I said, “And this—this is merely the final confirmation of a long-held belief. Nothing I have ever seen argues otherwise.”

Pelagius was silent for a moment, contemplating the
graves at his feet. He nodded to himself, then said, “It is true that we live in a world that does not love us. Our great mother has a voracious appetite for her own offspring, and she will kill us if she can. And, yes, I suppose she will kill us anyway in the end. Our bodies may be dust, but”—he raised a finger to point skyward—“our spirits were made for heaven.”

I complimented him on this well-spoken sentiment and said, “Yet if that is the end, why not just lie down and die and save ourselves all the heartache and trouble?”

“Ah!” He brightened. “It is the trouble that makes it all worthwhile.”

“Spoken like a true son of the church,” I scoffed.

“Do you doubt it?”

“I do.”

He regarded me with kindly indulgence and said, “Give me your hands.”

I stared back, uncertain that I had heard him correctly.

“Your hands,” he said, reaching out, “let me see them.”

Thinking only to humor him and so cut short this increasingly irritating interview, I did as he asked. He held my hands and gazed at them for a moment, as if judging the worth of a pair of gloves. He turned them over and examined the backs, then peered into the palms.

I stood there, awkward in this posture, and wondered how long I must endure his peculiar inquisition.

“They are good hands, strong hands,” Pelagius declared at last. “I can see that from a young age you have had to seize whatever has been given you in order to survive. You have done well; you have succeeded where others would have failed, and you have done it by the strength of your hands alone.”

My throat tightened with the knowledge that, inexplicably, he spoke the truth.

“Ah, yes, but now”—he continued gazing at my hands as if at a map or chart of an unknown island—“you have reached the limit of what human strength can achieve. You
look upon the work of your hands and see how worthless it is. For unless it is allied to something greater than itself, your achievement will not outlast the hands that framed it.”

He raised his eyes to mine and saw the confirmation there. “I see that this is so.”

Unable to dispute his conclusion, I merely nodded.

“Ah, but see! Your labors have not been in vain,” he assured me. “It is a great and wonderful gift you have been granted: Now you know a truth that it takes some men a lifetime to understand—and many never learn at all.”

He released my hands, and the spell was broken. “A dubious gift, it seems to me,” I muttered, finding my voice again.

“Never say it,” he retorted gently. “Truth against the world, remember. In truth is freedom itself. Dwell in truth and the things of this world can no longer enslave you.” He smiled suddenly, “And you know something of being a slave, I think, yes?”

Again I merely nodded.

“Wealth, power, fame—all those prizes for which other men strive so ardently—none of them can ever hold dominion over you again. You are free to pursue the things that last.”

“What things are those?”

“The things of God.”

He genuinely meant it, but I stiffened at this prosaic pronouncement. How little he knew if he imagined I would find any comfort in that quarter.

Before I could protest, he touched my hand again and said, “You have learned what a man can do in his own strength, yes? Perhaps now it is time to learn what God can do with a man who knows the limits of his strength.”

He smiled and held his head to one side, as if considering a view he found mildly amusing. “Do you mind if I pray for you in the days to come?”

“Not at all. But why not use your breath for whistling? It will do as much good.”

He looked around at the olive grove and the flat, motionless sea glittering beneath the sun. Finally he said, “Ah, yes, well, I have inflicted myself upon you long enough. I must go. I will say farewell, Patricius.”

It is an ordinary word,
patricius;
it means nobleman. And I thought nothing of it at the time. I wished him well on his journey and bade him go in peace. He lifted a hand in parting and walked back up the path, humming as he went. In a little while I was alone again, and more bereft than ever.

 

I visited the graves every day from then on. Each day the despair in me grew. Morose, heartsick, I sank down and down into a black, airless abyss: trapped. There was no consolation, no way out. Dea fussed and worried over me, and Decimus tried to interest me in running the estate. It was a gesture of kindness only; he needed no help from me.

Instead I sat in the olive grove and watched the days pass, sinking deeper and deeper still into a grim and solitary hopelessness.

Then one evening I returned to the house to find a courier waiting for me—a young soldier wearing the blue belt of the
scholae,
or imperial bodyguard.