Sixteen.

“No, thank you, Matron,” Geoffrey told her. “Pater will be waiting for me.”

“And have you made arrangements for the night, Geoff? We’ll happily find a place for you two. We haven’t much room, but it’s a roof, init?

“Pater’s taken care of all that, Matron. But thank you. Thank you all the same.”

Geoffrey nodded his head to take his leave. He asked, “With your license?”

“What’s that, Geoff?” Rian’s mother smiled, clearly perplexed by the expression but patient enough with the student’s high manners.

“With your leave, Matron?”

“Yes, yes. Don’t let grass grow through your toes.”

Geoffrey turned outdoors and soon enough he heard the banging of pots coming closer. What in the world? he wondered. He just reached the corner of the cottage and was mowed down by a beast of a man, not tall at all, but with a chest the breadth of a barrel. And squat legs that kept to their awkward running.

“Blast!” the man shouted. “And me so bowlegged!”

Could that have been an apology?

And now came a young women banging a metal spoon against a metal pot, laughing at the collision and the tumble of a boy.

Geoffrey looked up and saw her and thought, She's beautiful. Her light brown hair done up in braids and her figure so appealing to the boy’s imagination. Blue eyes that seemed to spark and white teeth that gleamed as the girl laughed.

“He is my uncle, young sir,” she expressed between her laughing and the banging of the pot. “He is quite bowlegged.” And off she raced. The sight of her joyful to Geoffrey’s eyes, and him not a bit mindful of his toppled pride.

Well, he thought, as he pulled himself up. I’ll be the bowlegged one.

Fifteen.

In the village–not far away, just over two gently rolling hills and down two or three field lengths, lying just beside a rushing stream–Geoffrey stood at the cottage doorway and puzzled over what he might say. The boy’s mother–Rian’s mother–insisted that the master and he join the family for a meal the next day.

“After Pater has spoken to the boy, when that’s all done and put aside, we’ll have a meal. Rian’s just now gone to collect the sperage and we’ll have a hen or two. We’ll make a small feast of it, won’t we?”

“Tomorrow’s an ember day, Matron...”

“No meat then. Is that it? That is a shame.” She thought of what might be in the larder and was puzzled, too. “We’ll make do, young man. Still a feast. A small one maybe, but bread at least, and greens. And we’ll find something frothy for our cups.” She took to sweeping again. The floor couldn’t have been more clean, a mud floor dried hard and shiny. “You’ll see, young man. Geoff, was it?”

“Yes, Matron.”

“A feast, a feast,” the woman said, though she shook her head at the puzzle of it. Why visit on an ember day when all within her said they must eat?

For Geoffrey’s part, he bit his tongue. No one ever called him Geoff, not unless they wanted to provoke a fight. Country manners, he thought. When he first introduced himself, the matron hugged him and insisted, “I’m Beatrice, but they all call me Bea.” He recoiled at the familiarity.

Ember days, of course, were days of complete fasting. Geoffrey hated them, but it was better to choose hunger than be forced by want. Nothing but water. Broth perhaps, if you were sick, or old. He didn’t have the heart to say as much to the woman in front of him, who nearly danced with her broom.

“Come sit down, Geoff. I can’t see how you won’t have a nibble at least now. No ember day today, is it? That wouldn’t be fair. Not at all. A growing boy like you?”

A bit more for Part Fourteen.

Again Selden whispered, “Matron, did Primus share his truename with you?”

“Heavens no,” she answered. And she thought, “You are a queer sort... No one gives their truename.”

Which was true enough, though a daughter might tell her mother–a man might tell his bride–but it was the village priest who would remember and would give a dead man a proper burial and stone, a stone with one’s truename etched for all to see and remember. It was no secret then. The dead were past caution, past any fear they might have that their truename be used against them. One’s true name bound one irrevocably to those who knew it, perhaps more completely even than marriage.

One never asked for another’s truename. That was understood. When given, it was nearly always an unexpected gift ... and always a burden. Sometimes the vagrant, the lonely traveler, the exile ... they might give their truename to a priest when they thought they had no more days to live. More often, they died nameless and unclaimed. If there were a stone, it might read “Berwin, as he was known,” or “Aline, as we called her,” but such a monument seems to break the heart.

“He might share it,” Selden supposed, “but I don’t think we should count on it.”

“You can’t divine it?” Matron asked, which brought a smile to Selden.

“Fairy tales, Matron. Not even the Black Arts can force a man’s truename.”

Matron shivered and mouthed, “Avert,” the spoken charm that even toddlers learned. “Avert” meant to turn evil. Many gestured, too, passing a flattened hand, palm down, across the air in front of them, as though they were at table and meant to say “No more.”

Fourteen.

“Thank you, Pater,” the old woman said.

“It’s a gift from the Archmage himself.”

Bread of life, bread of heaven.

Selden remembered the story the Archmage told when he handed the bread over to him: The Archmage began his religious life as a monk, one who traveled his city’s streets begging for food. One day a housewife was so irritated with him she threw a very hard loaf and struck him in the head. “It hurt very much,” the Archmage recounted. “I think that perhaps she did not give it with a glad heart.”

Part Thirteen.

Selden signed himself and then turned to where the bishop lay. He spoke quietly a spell that would bring back the bishop’s appetite, making the small gestures called for, questioning himself still if this was what the dying man would want. He took away the fever, too, knowing that he was just masking the symptoms of the man’s dying.

He called for Matron then, not out loud, but by placing the gentlest of suggestions into her mind. Matron would sense it as curiosity or concern. And, sure enough, she appeared in just a moment, her eyes searching those of the middle-aged priest for some sign of hope.

She came close and Selden whispered, “How well do you know this man?”

Matron’s mind scurried between anger and suspicion and fear. What a question to ask, she thought. This is no man lying here; he’s a priest. And do you mean, am I intimate with him? No, I love my husband still–God rest his soul–and I wouldn’t sin with a priest. How dare you, her mind demanded. And of course I know him well, Pater; he’s my parish priest. I confess to him. Less likely would I turn to you for penance and forgiveness. So, what do you mean: Do I know him? Is he not what he seems?

Matron finally spoke, “I am as close to him as if he were my brother.”

“Then you’ll care for him until the end? For you should know, Matron, he is not long with us. He’s been shriven. He calls for the end, so that he might begin his new life.”

Matron’s eyes filled with tears. She struggled to speak, “Is there nothing you can do? I would ask– ”

“Nothing more can be done... Or, at least, ought to be done.” He looked at her closely, calling her attention to his eyes, and perhaps his heart. Might she hear him as he felt? “One reaches a place of quiet–even when everyone else is wailing and in tears, even when one’s self makes a terrible groaning... A vast place of quiet and towering clouds, that race toward the setting sun. And then comes certainty. Death comes as naturally as a heartbeat, as unplanned as our breathing. We make the steps as though we are young again. The best of us go skipping, making songs like those children might sing.”

The old woman smiled, a bit. Perhaps she understood.

Selden told her, “I’ve done some small things. For comfort. I’ve taken the fever away and given back an appetite. Don’t be fooled by it, Matron. Your priest hasn’t long to live.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Let me tell you something. Not a secret, but tell no one until he’s passed. Will you be bound?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Your priest is a bishop.”

Matron showed her surprise, but looked at the dying man as if she had known all along. Selden heard her thoughts: We’ve known that he is a holy man.

“He gave up his crosier when his health began to fail. And was called here to Cald Mere. Tiny Cald Mere.” To himself, Selden reasoned, He came to Cald Mere to teach this boy. One would receive no better catechism.

“So he is Primus to us, Matron. When he wakes, Primus will be hungry. Give him broth and ... I have a loaf of bread with me, from the Archmage. It is the eulogia, but some days old. Perhaps it will be a sop for you two, for you should eat of it also. It is blessed bread and you share in its blessing as you tend to Primus.” Selden placed a hand on the woman’s head. “God reward you, Matron.”

He knew her well enough from what he had seen in her. She was a kind woman, devoted more to her priest than to her God, perhaps, but that was her path.

And Selden knew, “All paths lead to God.”

Part Twelve.

There were others who might do more for the bishop, Selden knew. There were charms that kept fevers down, spells that would bind wounds, all manner of things a healall might do ... but the bishop was an old man and worn thin. Worn out, really. He was ready for death. And, thankfully, not afraid. He needed no strengthening of his faith, no consolation, no reminders of God’s grace. What more could Selden do?

Would the village grieve him? Selden didn’t know. Matron would, of course.

And when could he ever be replaced? Cald Mere was so far north, so distant from any real throne. The people here had a taste of freedom, there was no doubt of it, but its cost came heavily: the hardest of lives and bone-grinding poverty (Selden’s father would have exclaimed, “God love ‘em! They have not even a pot to piss in!) Restless sons would leave for the wars and most would never come back, intoxicated as they were with the spilled blood and free-flowing wine, free women too, and song.

It was sad to consider, so Selden pushed it from his mind.

“I have a job to do, Primus,” Selden whispered. “Even if it means taking a talented boy from his village.”

The bishop slept.

“And what about this boy’s having a destiny? It can’t be to plough dirt, can it? Not if he has the gift. That would be the sin you would have welcomed, Primus.”

Selden pushed his thoughts away again.

“We’ve put that behind us anyway.”

Large-Hearted Boy. Part Twelve.

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