Large-Hearted Boy. Part Eleven.

Selden remained quiet, waiting for the bishop to finish.

The bishop asked, “You see my stubbornness, don’t you, Selden?”

Selden nodded ever so slightly. Perhaps the bishop saw. He would sense it, nonetheless.

“And you understand that I would have named the boy if his parents had consented? I wouldn’t have told anyone about this boy’s gift. I wouldn’t now if I had the choice. How can I be forgiven for something for which I won’t repent?”

Selden answered him, “Primus, surely it’s not a sin to follow one’s heart. And the decision wasn’t yours to make. You’ve done the right thing. After all, the parents decided. You didn’t thwart them. You haven’t sinned.”

“Yes...”

“I absolve you, in the name of God.”

And the bishop’s burden fell away. He saw himself as if from a distance, and the world took full bloom. He wouldn’t see another frost, he knew. It was clear to him now, and he became oddly dispassionate, accepting that he had seen the seasons turn, first so wildly, forcibly, and now so steady and certain. It was as though his life had been a child’s top, ready to tumble still.

Selden stood. “Where is the oil of the sick, Primus? Is it here?’ He looked just past the bishop’s cot and saw the small vial. “Of course it is.” Selden moved to the other side of the cot and poured a small amount of the oil into his left palm.

At a man’s deathbed, all distinctions of rank disappear. “Brother, I anoint you,” he told the bishop, and after dipping his thumb in the oil traced a small circle on the bishop’s forehead and then touched his lips and then his chest, just above where the heart beats. He traced circles on the bishop’s hands, too, tracing the palms as was the tradition with priests. Ordinary men, even kings, offered the backs of their hands.

There were prayers to be said, but the bishop had fallen back into his slumber. Selden sat again and prayed for them both.

So he prayed, from memory–his memory was good–and he arrived at the final Amen and opened his eyes. In the distance, looking down at them from the height of a tall tree, was a single rook, black as priests are dressed, and waiting for ...

“What?” Selden asked the bird.

And it cawed.