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arms held high above his head, his short, stubby thighs pumping forward zealously with every step.
    For Jerome was his God on earth, his all-in-all. Some of the brothers had sneered at Dominian’s devotion and made it a subject for complaint. Others muttered about Dominian’s failure to defeat Isolde, and the spirit of disrespect had infected them all. Overhearing their whispers, Simeon had given one a bloody nose and broken another’s teeth, and had been thrashed himself for bringing violence into God’s house. But how else was he to defend his master against himself?
    Not far now . . .
    Oblivious to his novice’s troubled thoughts, Dominian trudged on through the heart of the wood. Ahead now lay the ancient sacred well, its moldering roof covered in damp lichen and moss. Behind it loomed the low stone hermitage, likewise dank and dripping in the bone-crunching cold.
    Dominian looked at Simeon. “Wait here,” he ordered.
    It would do the boy good, he decided, to stand shivering in his thin habit, enduring the cold on his sandaled feet. That was nothing to his own ordeal, having to live every day without God’s love. Dominian felt the jagged tears starting again. Simeon’s trial would be over soon. His sufferings would last till the day he died.
    My God, my God . . .
    Jerome’s narrow cell was colder inside than out. A film of ice covered the earthen floor, and the old man’s drinking water was frozen in his cup. A trickle of melting snow dripped from the roof, and even the lowly bed was glistening with damp. Jerome sat cross-legged in the center of the floor, his white head nodding on its fragile neck, his frail body in its thick woolen habit no more than skin and bone. Dominian touched the cross above the threshold, stepped inside, and fell to his knees.
    “Bless me, Father,” he groaned, “for I have sinned.”
    “Sinned, my son?” Jerome swiveled his blind gaze toward the door. “How?”
    “I dreamed of ousting the Great Goddess from these islands, just as God taught us in the Bible, in the holy Book of Kings. I wanted to be like King Asa when he threw down his mother’s idol in the groves of Hebron, where Queen Maacha worshipped the Great Whore of all Asia and danced before her shrine.”
    “The Great Mother a whore?” the old man pondered. “Remember Our Lord had a mother whom He loved.”
    Dominian recoiled. “But Mary was chaste!” he spat out. “Not like the loose-loined women of these islands, who claim the right to share their beds with any man.” He shuddered with disgust. “There was none of that for the Mother of God!”
    “Son—”
    But Dominian was not listening. “Was I too ambitious, Father? I only wanted to make Mark a Christian king.”
    Jerome’s voice was as paper-thin as his frame. “Was that all?”
    Dominian’s cry shattered the crystal silence of the cell. “Was I wrong, Father? I meant to make all these islands a place of God.”
    “These islands alone?” An edge of interrogation had entered Jerome’s tone. “Or did your hopes lead you farther afield?”
    Dominian did not hesitate. “I wanted to lead our mission all the way to Rome. The Holy Father rewards those who serve the Mother Church well.”
    Rome . . .
    Dominian’s sight dimmed. The Eternal City on her Eternal Hill, the rock of Saint Peter, the foundation of God’s church. Already he could feel the hot sun on his back, see the thousands of holy men gowned in black, white, brown, and red, keeping the flame of faith triumphantly alight among the city’s merchants and tradesmen, mountebanks, thieves, and whores.
    Yet he, who had dreamed of kneeling before the Pope, must now languish forever in the deserts of disgrace. And he would pay for his failure at the Last Judgment, too. There were some sins that God could not forgive.
    He howled like a dog. “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
    “Take comfort, my son. Rome is not all the world.” Jerome held up his hand. “Our Father alone sees what