"Oh, of course."

"Shall I present him?"

"If you wish, but then I must be off. People to

see .. . M the prince-magistrate trailed off vaguely. "Yes, he does favor Calpurnius somewhat. Spent some time as a slave among the Irish, didn't he?"

"Six years."

Marchudd whistled softly in compassion. "Ought to take that off purgatory for the lad."

"From what I've heard of Father Patricius, I don't think he'd permit it."

As the young priest strode energetically across the atrium, Meganius couldn't see where Irish captivity had done him much harm. Patricius had a rugged, unpriestly gait. He bobbed his head to the prince and dropped to one dutiful knee to kiss the bishop's offered ring.

"Thank you for receiving me, your grace."

"My blessing, Father Patricius. Prince Marchudd, allow me to present Magonus Succatus, the son of Calpurnius."

"Father."

"Honored, my lord," Patricius said in a brusque tone that signified a deal less than that.

A comely enough young fellow, Meganius decided: in his mid- or later twenties, reddish hair shaven across the crown, eyes large and inconsistently brown in the round face, the fair skin permanently darkened from years living in the open. Where many British priests allowed themselves light linen in warm weather, Patricius was severe in coarse dark woolen canonicals, the studiedly plain garb Germanus wore when he refuted the Pelagians in debate.

Yet, somehow, Meganius sensed the severity of Patricius to be something laid on and not inherent, like an actor striving too hard for effect in a role. He'd paused a moment coming across the courtyard to stroke one of the house dogs and note with pleasure the lush spread of a peacock's tail. Underneath the zeal, Meganius suspected a sensual and perhaps very sensitive man.

"Until tomorrow, your grace." Prince Marchudd turned to go.

"My anticipated pleasure, my lord."

Bishop and priest inclined their heads as Marchudd hurried away, wrestling with his toga.

"So that is Marchudd Rhys, prince of Parish and Bri-gantes." Patricius dropped it like an accusation. "Why does he style himself in the pagan manner when he is baptized?"

The bishop waved him gracefully to the vacated chair. "Sit down, Father. Some wine?"

"No. Thank you."

"Well—I will in any case." His goblet hardly needed refilling, but Meganius felt a need to turn aside the rigid intensity of the young man. "You and I are priests with one allegiance, Father. The prince has many to deal with, not all of whom have seen the light of God."

"Germanus noted that. And deplored it."

"And rightly, perhaps, but Germanus is in Auxerre. You, Father Patricius, might at least attempt the patience of the Church that ordained you and give our prince a year or two to convert them." Meganius raised his goblet. "Long life—which hardly needs my invocation by the sturdy look of you, Sochet."

"No one has called me that since I left home. Your grace is a Brigante?"

"Born and bred. Cai meqq Owain. I thought I recognized the accent. We northerners have a prickly sound that doesn't fade."

"With your leave, I would speak of my mission."

Mentally Meganius riffled through the letters from Caerleon. "Yes .. . Ireland?"

"Will you sponsor me?"

As a bishop, Meganius was of necessity a diplomat. "Well, I will certainly consider it. Ireland surely needs a mission. Meanwhile—"

"It is my calling." The young priest thrust forward in the chair, serious and intent. * 'Frozen and burned into me through six years. And in a vision at Auxerre, I heard Irish voices calling me back to preach to them."

"Yes ... so said the bishop of Caerleon. Admirable." And an annoyance. Meganius saw some malice on Caer-

leon's part for sending this bristling avatar to him; they were hardly personal friends. Meganius felt his irritation rising. The priest's rudely direct glance might be unsettling to some. Patricius gave the impression that he was weighing one's every word—one's soul—against the feather of his truth and finding you light in the balance. Strength was there but that pitiless youth as well.

"You doubt my calling, your grace?" You darel

"No, no." Meganius found his usual courtesy an effort. There is nothing more rancorous to an older man at peace with an imperfect world than a young one reminding him of unsullied verities, especially when the young one may be essentially right. Canonical volunteers for Ireland did not crowd the western ports. "My boy, if I sponsor you and Auxerre sends you a consecrated pallium, you will be bishop of Ireland."

And while he was not yet an experienced parish priest, no more than a year in Germanus' charismatic wake, no doubt Patricius saw himself in Meganius' robes with the pliant Irish kneeling to kiss the diocesan ring. Meganius saw them boiling him alive for his callow arrogance. Pagan or not, the Irish kings and their shamans were men of experience, apalling as much of it could be. Reason, wisdom, and maturity might round off their sharp edges, but not this ponderously self-important young man. Meganius trusted his stomach in the measure of a man, and his stomach had hope for Patricius as a priest and a man who might in time wield the shepherd's crook as a guide, not a weapon. But not this week.

' 'We will talk of it over dinner. And perhaps you will say Mass tomorrow in my stead. I must officiate at the baptism of Marchudd's son."

Patricius relaxed a little. "I will say Mass for your grace. But as to dinner, I am vowed to fasting three days out of the week and can eat no meat."

"Oh, what a pity. My cook's done up a wine-drowned chicken."

"Oh, that's my favorite!"

Meganius' stomach was justified; for an instant a

healthy, hungry young man glowed out of the brown eyes before the ascetic reined him back. "But... my vows."

"Permit me to grant you an indulgence for this evening."

"Well..."

"You would please me to accept it."

Patricius' smile was broad and unreserved now. "Your grace is kind."

For his own part, Patricius tried not to like Meganius, not because he didn't want to but rather feeling he shouldn't. An avowed Pelagian and suspiciously tolerant, Meganius was just the sort of prelate Germanus inveighed against. Patricius would accept the indulgence and enjoy his chicken—a little, no more—and add several paternosters to his devotions before bed. He would hear the confessions the busy bishop urged on him for the morrow and quite eagerly take the day's Masses, since the well-to-do of Eburacum would attend at least one. There would be the wealthier merchants and perhaps even one or two of the royal family. Patricius' eye gleamed with frosty zeal. Dyw\ Would they not hear a Mass! And the sermon ...

And the sermon. Suffice to say, any flesh left unflayed on the body spiritual of Britain by Germanus was colorfully flagellated by Patricius in his sermon. He glared down from the pulpit on the genuinely alarmed citizens of Eburacum—doubtless as the angel once surveyed Gomorrah, with an angel's suffusing and peculiarly merciless innocence—as he reminded them of how Jerome and Augustine fought for years to defeat the presumption of "your corpulent, corrupted hog of a darling, Pela-gius."

And those who confessed to Patricius, accustomed to reasonable penances for reasonable sins, found themselves hanging by a shred over the fiery pit and under penances of an Anchorite severity. Meganius heard it from the breathless royal scribe who had it, brief and

blistering, from the princess: who was this rabid sin-catcher? They were of a tolerant tradition; they ruled with Christ and the older gods in sensible conjunction, did they not? This hellfire preaching would cease, did the bishop understand?

Meganius understood and winced and went back to saying Mass himself. He took Patricius aside, still avuncular but sterner. 'They must be led to faith, Patricius, not flogged to it."

The young priest flushed under the warning. "It does not matter. My mission is not here among the complacent but in Ireland/'

"That again? Permit me to note that you will go to Ireland when and if I send you, Sochet."

But Patricius had heard the reaction of the royal house and was in fine defensive fettle. "Permit me to note, your grace, it seems an injustice."

"Oh? How, Sochet?"

Patricius' uncomfortably direct glance turned aside in some deference. "Your grace is a Pelagian."

"Which is to say I place some value on human common sense in attaining heaven."

"And that is the human error!" Patricius exploded. "Man cannot reason with God. 4 I am that I am.' Man is nothing without God. He must submit totally to achieve Grace. Ireland his virgin pasture. I will teach the truth with no heretical error."

"No doubt. And God help the Irish. They take their religion quite seriously. But let me remind you further of the abysmal failure of earlier missions there, which surprises me less than it does plebeian bigots like Augustine. It's not enough to speak their language. Their wise men, pagan though they may be, will look into your heart and quickly read you for the ill-writ, half-finished page you are. No, don't interrupt me. To be ignorant of Christ is not to be ignorant of men. They'd know you for an arrogant pup, Sochet. You wouldn't last a month. No. I will not send you to Ireland, not yet."

Caius Meganius was anything but a severe man. The

dressing down he gave the younger priest upset him perhaps more than Patricius, who could shrug it off with the resilience of his righteousness. The priest avoided his bishop for several days—to brood further, Meganius suspected. He was agreeably surprised when Father Patricius accepted his invitation to dinner, evidently with new matter on his mind. They were finished with the cold oysters before Patricius broached his subject. Apparently the young man had not only thought on the bishop's words, he d profited by them. His humility, ordinarily that of an actor projecting it from a stage, seemed genuine now.