Why not? Wasn't Christ so to the Pharisees?

"Or perhaps 'meaningless' is not the word I seek. 'Helpless.' What can God do unless we help? Without us, He's so lonely. I have nothing to repent, don't even know, beyond habit, why I'm making more devout folk wait like this. But I think—yes, I think I could do now what He set for me once, long ago. Not understanding, no." The voice had eased by habit into the gentle Prydn fall. "I'm not a scholar, I'll never understand it all as scholars do. But if my Father will have a little patience, I might be easier now for Him to employ." Meganius could almost hear the rueful smile. "And perhaps to tolerate, if He won't mind an argument now and then."

That was all. Silence and the curtain between them. Meganius looked at his own hands lying in his lap, and for the first time in his life, and that quite happily, violated the rule of the confessional.

"If God has any patience at all, Sochet, you will be its measure. I'll expect you to supper tonight."

The soft laughter was barely audible. "I thought Your Grace would never ask."

The kneeler scraped, the sword belt rustled. The soft shoes moved away, overlapped by another nearing step.

"B-bless me, Father, f-for I have sinned."

Oh, Lord, the vintner's daughter again. The girl had a nervous stutter that made her seem always on the verge of tittering when actually she was painfully shy and withdrawn. She was fourteen, plain, and melancholic.

She would tell him everything, and nothing ever happened to her. In spite of himself, Meganius' thoughts returned to Sochet.

Without us, He's so lonely.

That would include the vintner's girl. Meganius leaned closer to the veil. "In what way, child?"

TO HIS HOLINESS, CELESTINE, descendant of Peter, Vicar of Christ, Bishop of the Holy See of Rome. CAIUS MEGANIUS at Eburacum asks the papal blessing.

For that our mission to the Irish has long languished, we have this day received the pallium that we asked of Auxerre for consecration and have Germanus' personal blessing in the investiture of Father Magonus Succatus Patricius. We have appointed him to that See for which his aptness is exceeded only by his passion for that calling to which he was ordained. Father Patricius is an Au-gustinian long in my service. Through his efforts, the Word of God has spread north to the wild tribes of Pictland, even to the Faerie, an undertaking that would have been impossible to any other understanding of faith but that of the singular Patricius. We do not agree with those who say the Irish would make indifferent Christians. Being near to them in blood, we have never known them to be indifferent about anything. They are the tinder, needing only the spark that the Church this day sets to them. To His Holiness' prayers we commend ourselves and Succatus Patricius, bishop to the Irish.

Like any powerful cleric and courtier, Meganius knew the higher forms of banditry and the uses of distance. He was at an utter loss (he later confessed to a peremp-

tory Holiness) to understand why his earlier letters on Patricius had not been received. Had they been so, his actions would be completely clear. He apologized formally and promised to look into the discrepancy with a full report to follow.

Celestine was startled, displeased, and Auxerre heard of it forthwith. Who was this Briton? Why did Germanus send a pallium without informing Rome? Did he not know the See of Ireland was marked for as worthy and pious a man as Palladius, already about to embark?

Actually, it was the pallium for the new Coritani bishop that was sent, but Germanus even crowed over it a little. The Holy See could rest easy; Patricius was that same zealous enemy of the Pelagian blight, ever at Germanus' side in the recent and total victory over heresy in Britain.

Rejoice, O See of Peter, that thou hast a Joshua at the gates of Jericho. Glory to God, Alleluia.

If Meganius' reasons were dim to Celestine, at least one reference was totally incomprehensible. "Faerie?" he questioned his monkscribe, a man of many travels and tongues. "What are Faerie?"

The scribe searched for simile. Ah, yes, Holiness. They were like the German trolls, little folk who lived under earthen mounds, or so it was said by Saxons. Many did not believe in them at all.

Like poor scholarship, the definition misted more than it illuminated and sent Celestine bemused to his next audience. "Trolls ... mounds. This Briton is digging for converts?"

So Celestine—that is to say, Holy Church—gave it up for the moment. Palladius, who was to be bishop to the Christian Irish, quietly unpacked.

Waiting to say his farewell, Meganius fed bits of softened bread to his peacocks. The fat things hardly needed

feeding, but it gave his hands something to do during this kind of prayer.

Lord, my God: this day he opens a new door in Your house. Though he goes to Ireland, he is not the man who came to me seething for it. Somehow he doesn't even look right in canonicals and tonsure anymore, yet men have attested miracles by his converts. Miracles are dubious expedients at best, the province of saints now and then. It is not a saint I send, nor even, perhaps, a cleric to Rome's cut, but my heart knows him the man for Ireland.

I commend into Your hands what may be my last significance. The sun takes longer to warm me now and leaves too soon. I ask Your blessing for my Sochet. If he chafes now and then, it is only because the Church must look with the eyes of men, more often shut tight than open, and Sochet's sight is painfully clear.

Did You worry when he left his vows? I did; I lost more sleep than a prelate should over one boiling young priest. But Sochet is one of those rare ones whose calling will always lie in the crucial gap between Your reach and human grasp. I understand his wife was much the same. Not surprising; I can't imagine him with the comfortable sort of woman—

44 Your grace?"

"Oh. Sochet. And here am I, maundering over these silly pets of mine. Is it time, then?''

Padrec knelt to kiss the bishop's ring. "Up, Sochet." Meganius opened his arms to embrace his priest. "Godspeed."

"Pray forme, Cai."

"Of course I will, and you must write. Well, let me look at my investiture. My investment." Although Padrec's tonsure and new robes were carefully done, the canonicals did look strangely inappropriate to him now. Then Meganius frowned; over the priest's heart, instead of the Chi-Rho medallion, was hung a simple cross of cold-wrought iron. The bishop's frown deepened to distaste. "Really, Sochet."

"I know what your grace will say, but the cross has been used before."

"Not widely, I'm pleased to say, and not in civilized Britain." Meganius was genuinely put off by the notion. "The Chi-Rho is Christ's symbol."

"And the cross as well."

"Of a brutal death in a shameful manner. There are those cults who respond more to the death than the life. Clerics of taste do not dwell on it as a focus for prayer."

Padrec touched the cross. "Call it my last heresy. Rome need never know."

"Not from me at any rate," Meganius promised. "Why, Sochet?"

Padrec had settled unconsciously into that stillness never learned in Auxerre. "Do you think it is Christ's death I remember in this?"

Meganius remembered Malgon and eloquent pictures in the earth. "No, I suppose not."

"Chi-Rho is Christ in symbol. It was on that dirty cross that I saw the reality. What He tried to say and how well we are made to hear it. Some of us. Better men than me. From the cross it was that I was taught. It is not for other men but myself. And you know the kind of gauds Rome will be sending."

Meganius hid his private disappointment. He'd planned to send something himself, a Chi-Rho in enamel and gold or even a mosaic worker to adorn the first new chapel.

"Indulge me, your grace," Padrec smiled at him. "My sanctity is just out of the press and a bit stiff. Well, now: it's a fine day to start, isn't it?"

"Sochet, don't put me off, I'm serious. There is no bishop in Britain who wears such a sign or who would even consider it. You're not a hot young torch of a priest anymore, hooting after truant souls. You are a bishop. It is questionable taste—your grace."

A bishop with an odd, distant gaze, used to hills and horizons, never to be at home in anything like a house again. "You have my reasons."

"Reasons?" Meganius put an arm around Padrec's shoulder and led him to the open gateway and the waiting cart. "It's you will be wearing it, Sochet. If Christ were hanged, would you wear a noose about your neck?"

Padrec embraced him once more and sprang up onto the cart. "Why not? The Irish would."

He gathered up the traces, but paused before starting up the oxen. "There! Will you look at the dazzle of that sky, Caius Meganius? It almost puts your peacocks to shame."

-oAo-

The Last Bainbow

In the ports of Arran where the galleys from the Middle Sea loaded and disgorged, there were many languages spoken, but the only universal tongue was money. The shipowners dealt in realities, the more so here in the decaying north, where hard cash was much scarcer.

Milius Apullo of Massilia owned not a galley but a ship of the newest kind, a covered afterdeck, ample cargo space, mainsail with intricate shrouding, and a new foresail that could half-reef quickly in a stiff gale or spread full and cut days off his time to landfall.

"No wallowing, not my ship. Turn her over, you'll not see the rot of some of these other seagoing sows. She's scraped regular as I pray. I know you've got gold, I see it. Do you people understand what I'm saying? What do you want of my ship?"

The ship itself they wanted, and that quickly. Milius had never seen Faerie before, though of course all seafaring men heard and traded fabulous stories. They didn't look fabulous, more ... he couldn't quite find the word, but it wouldn't be "warm." They had a way of just standing there, looking dead at you as if they'd been sown, sprouted, and grown on the spot. It was better to talk business.