Twenty-seven

“So the boy asked me to see the woman,” Gereon recounted, now speaking aloud. He paused. And the sky took on the colors of dusk in the early spring. The blue shadows had grown long and the bud break seemed encased still in ice.

Selden listened closely as the bishop told the tale, though he couldn’t help but feel slightly impatient hearing a story so dated and unimportant. Every boy comes of age.

But the bishop spoke up and said, “And I told him, 'no.'”

Selden hid his surprise.

“I was disgusted by what I had heard about the woman. Disgusted by what she had been reduced to, and disgusted that she reveled in the scandal of it. I made excuses to Rian. The healall will know what’s best... The trip would be a long way for me... He saw through it all, of course. He stood up and asked, ‘You won’t help her?’ and I said, ‘No.’"

“'I will,' he told me.”

“I warned him of the village talk, his parents’ disappointment.”

“And he told me–I still hear the rebuke. He said, ‘Every one has proved faithless; all alike are turned bad; there is none who does good; no, not one.’ And he turned and strode away, each footstep wounding me. Past the churchyard he went, and then I called him before he passed through the hedge. I called with the Gift.”

“Yes, I see. And he heard you,” Selden said.

But Gereon talked over Selden’s murmuring, “He turned and stared back at me. Not defiant, but unbending and, truthfully, ashamed for me.”

“I told him, ‘I’ll go,’ and the rustle of the beech trees shimmered and I seemed delivered to the boy. He wasn’t ashamed as much as grieved, and now he shone with certainty. ‘Wait for me,’ I said. ‘Yes, I’ll lead you,’ he told me, and I followed up the creek where Ava was as sour as vinegar and Rian was the sweet balm."