Roble sagged and lowered his eyes.

Magnus glanced at Rod, then stood and stepped over to the bar. He leaned across and hooked a tankard off its peg. He beckoned to Roble, who looked up in surprise, then followed him back to the table, where Rod and Magnus were each pouring half their tankards into the empty one.

"Drink." Magnus set the stoup in front of him. "We are not of the village."

Roble looked them slowly up and down, with suspicion but also with relief, then growled, "I will-and bless thee, strangers." His lips quirked with a mirthless smile. "If the blessing of a sinner and an outcast will do aught for thee."

"I certainly can't cite anyone else for being a sinner," Rod rejoined, "and the blessing of a father should certainly . . ." But Roble was sinking again. "I am parent no longer. Call me not `father,' goodman."

The innkeeper came bustling back out and jarred to a halt, staring at them, shocked. Then he remembered that he wasn't supposed to even see Roble, and turned away.

Magnus decided to press his luck. He stepped over to the counter, calling, "Ho, goodman! Fill the bowl again, if thou wilt!"

Corin turned to stare at him, then let a slow smile show. "Aye, stranger." He refilled Magnus's tankard, took down a new one and filled it, too. "For thy father." Then he turned away quickly, back to the kitchen.

"So," Magnus murmured, sitting, "he hath some fellowfeeling after all."

"Corin was ever a good-heart," Roble allowed. "Dost say thou art this man's son?"

"I have that honor."

Rod looked up in pleased surprise.

"'Tis a holy bond," Roble growled. He turned to Rod. "Rejoice in him."

"Good advice," Rod said slowly. "I do."

"I'll give thee better: leave this village, and quickly. The bishop will be angered with thee for thy mercy to me, as will his curate, his acolytes, and his nuns-and what they hate, all the folk will hate. An thou dost gain the enmity of the clergy, thou dost gain the hatred of all the town-which thou wilt, by naught but thy converse with me, for such hath been declared to be a sin."

"Whatever the priests tell them is Gospel, huh? Well, I think we'll take our chances. Being from out of town can be a big help."

"Such conduct is odd," Magnus pointed out, "for they who preach Charity."

Roble shrugged. "There are virtues, and other virtues. For all their preaching, they will tell thee quickly that obedience is of greater import than charity."

"Obedience?" Rod frowned up at Magnus. "I don't remember that as being one of the cardinal virtues."

" 'Tis an aspect of Faith, goodman-for if one hath Faith, one doth obey God's Word."

"And God's Word is whatever the priest tells you it is?"

"Aye, and he doth say Faith is the greatest virtue of all." Magnus shook his head and quoted softly, " `For there abide these three: Faith, Hope, and Charity-but the greatest of these is Charity.' "

Roble looked up, startled. "Whose words are these?"

"Saint Paul's, from the first of his Epistles to the Corinthians."

"The priest hath not read us that from the pulpit."

"And you're not taught to read for yourself?"

"Nay. Only they who are learned can correctly interpret God's Word. None others should read."

Rod jerked his head toward the outside. "I take it those boys we saw this morning are being taught their letters?"

"The acolytes? Aye. They have been chosen for their intelligence and faith."

Which probably translated as their fanaticism and willingness to do whatever the priest said, Rod imagined. "They're giving up a lot. Your neigh ... fellow villagers tell me the priests and nuns really live very chaste lives."

"Aye," Roble admitted, "that they do. I ha' ne'er seen so much as a gleam in a priest's eye; they are consumed with devotion. Each hath a small house by the church, though the bishop's is larger than the others, and none ever enter those houses save the one who doth dwell there. Nay, they are pure in their zeal."

"If zeal is enough to make a man good. Yes. Of course, sparing someone else's feelings might be a factor in spiritual quality, too."

"Charity, aye-but it doth take second place, or third, when there is the matter of protecting all other souls from heresy--or thine own, from thine own error."

Magnus frowned. "Dost thou believe this of thyself?" Roble's mouth hardened. "Nay. 'Twas that which drove my boy Ranulf mad with grief-for he had a mind that sought sense, mind you, and would protest to the nuns, even when he was a child, that the Holy Ghost would not be separately named if He did not truly exist, or that Christ could not be any more a son of God than any others of us if He was not in some sense God Himself."

Rod whistled. "That must have gone over like a whirling skillet."

"A most bright lad," Magnus murmured.

"Aye, much good did it to him. They took offense," Roble confirmed, "and screamed at the boy that he was a heretic and a damned and impious one, then beat him. His schoolmates beat him worse, on the way home, and he wept bitterly when he was come to his mother. She sought with gentle words to explain to him that he must never question the nuns' teachings-and the bishop came to accuse me of poisoning the lad's mind with my incessant questioning of Holy Doctrine, and to read me the passage in which Christ says of the one who leads younglings astray, that it were better for him to have a millstone bound around his neck and be cast into the depths of the sea. Yet I had been careful not to speak of my own questions in the lad's presence-aye, or even in his mother's, when first I found that she was frighted by my wonderings." He lapsed into a brooding silence.

"So thou, too, didst note the contradictions in the bishop's teachings?"

"Aye, when I was young myself. The old bishop, who came before this one, told me I had a twisted and rebellious mind, and was over-fond of listening to the Devil. I will own that I chafed at the authority of the priests, for I could not see that they were that much better in soul than any other men, save in the matter of mastering their fleshly lusts. I wished to leave the village, and even crept away one dark night-but the old bishop sent men after me, with dogs to trace my scent, and they beat me and brought me back."

Magnus's eyes widened; he exchanged a quick glance with his father. "So, then. Thou art not allowed to leave."

"Aye, for, saith the bishop, I fled toward the Devil, entranced by his wiles and snares. The whole forest is the domain of the Adversary, seest thou, and the great wider world beyond it is there only to corrupt the innocent." His mouth twisted in bitterness. "I think they may have truly believed such. Surely they did lock me in a darkened cottage, to meditate upon my sins, and mine only company was a curate who came to preach to me an hour at a time, three times daily. At last I was so desperate for release that I came to believe I had been misled by the Tempter, and confessed my sins. They loosed me then, but watched me closely. They need not have, for I was cowed, and truly believed myself to be evil. I lived in penitence, and at last the bishop judged that I should marry. I balked at this, but he lectured me sternly, to show me that 'twas my obligation either to serve God as a priest-and I lacked the strength of Faith for that--or to wed and rear up babes to witness the glory of God-for there were, after all, only those two vocations."

"Nay," Magnus said sharply. "There are three-the chaste and single life is another, even without the call to the priesthood."

Rod nodded. "Of course, it has its own burdens and responsibilities-and it's a very lonely life."

Roble gave him a brittle smile. "The bishops have told us, throughout the ages, that no soul should endure such loneliness and the temptations with it, if he cannot-and therefore all should marry, if they are not priests or nuns. So they matched me to a lass whom no one else wanted, and wed us-and she never forgave me for marrying her out of force, not love. She shrilled at me, she scolded me, she nagged, and I thought again about fleeing to the forest-but she bore a son, and proved as gentle and sweet a mother as she was a hard and bitter wife. Yet she would not tolerate the slightest sign of impiety in Ranulf, and as he grew older, began to beat him sorely for daring to speak of it. As he grew, and questioned more, she grew harsher and harder, even as the nuns, and then the priests lectured and upbraided him, and told him he was corrupt in his very nature, and bound for Hell, because he was my son. My wife would have turned me out from the house then, were divorce not sinful-and 'twas not long thereafter that she died. The bishop proclaimed her saintly, for having striven so hard to raise Ranulf in the fear of God, and for enduring the presence of the rebellious soul who was her husband." He said this all without expression, his tone level.