before them, they have only to believe. It is the perverse and perilous who have the arrogance to bring mere fallible reason to bear on what is ineffable. Go on! Two points, you said. What is the second?"
Serb cast an almost apologetic glance at Radulfus, and an even more rapid and uneasy one at Elave, who all this time was staring upon him with knotted brows and thrusting jaw, not yet committed to fear or anger or any other emotion, simply waiting and listening.
"It arose out of this same matter of the Father and the Son. He said that if they were of one and the same substance, as the creed calls them consubstantial, then the entry of the Son into humankind must mean also the entry of the Father, taking to himself and making divine that which he had united with the godhead. And therefore the Father and the Son alike knew the suffering and the death and the resurrection, and as one partake in our redemption."
"It is the Patripassian heresy!" cried Gerbert, outraged. "Sabellius was excommunicated for it, and for other his errors. Noetus of Smyrna preached it to his ruin. This is indeed a dangerous venture. No wonder the priest warned him of the pit he was digging for his own soul."
"Howbeit," Radulfus reminded the assembly firmly, "the man, it seems, listened to counsel and undertook the pilgrimage, and as to the probity of his life, nothing has been alleged against it. We are concerned, not with what he speculated upon seven years and more ago, but with his spiritual well-being at his death. There is but one witness here who can testify as to that. Now let us hear from his servant and companion." He turned to look closely at Elave, whose face had set into controlled and conscious awareness, not of danger, but of deep offence. "Speak for your master," said Radulfus quietly, "for you knew him to the end. What was his manner of life in all that long journey?"
"He was regular in observance everywhere," said Elave, "and made his confession where he could. There was no fault found with him in any land. In the Holy City we visited all the most sacred places, and going and returning we lodged whenever we could in abbeys and priories, and everywhere my master was accepted for a good and pious man, and paid his way honestly, and was well regarded."
"But had he renounced his views," demanded Gerbeit, "and recanted his heresy? Or did he still adhere secretly to his former errors?"
"Did he ever speak with you about these things?" the abbot asked, overriding the intervention.
"Very seldom, my lord, and I did not well understand such deep matters. I cannot answer for another man's mind, only for his conduct, which I knew to be virtuous." Elave's face had set into contained and guarded calm. He did not look like a man who would fall short in understanding of deep matters, or lack the interest to consider them.
"And in his last illness," Radulfus pursued mildly, "he asked for a priest?"
"He did, Father, and made his confession and received absolution without question. He died with all the due rites of the Church. Wherever there was place and time along the way he made his confession, especially after he first fell ill, and we were forced to stay a whole month in the monastery at Saint Marcel before he was fit to continue the journey home. And there he often spoke with the brothers, and all these matters of faith and doubt were understood and tolerated among them. I know he spoke openly of things that troubled him, and they found no fault there with debating all manner of questions concerning holy things."
Canon Gerbert stared cold suspicion. "And where was this place, this Saint Marcel? And when was it you spent a month there? How recently?"
"It was in the spring of last year. We left early in the May, and made the pilgrimage from there to Saint James at Compostela with a party from Cluny, to give thanks that my master was restored to health. Or so we thought then, but he was never in real health again, and we had many halts
Nancy Holder, Karen Chance, P. N. Elrod, Rachel Vincent, Rachel Caine, Jeanne C. Stein, Susan Krinard, Lilith Saintcrow, Cheyenne McCray, Carole Nelson Douglas, Jenna Black, L. A. Banks, Elizabeth A. Vaughan