Barnaby the Wanderer

Chapter 17: Friar Cedric of Mill Town

The saints know I never sought the boy's death. "Teach him to be a fool," I was told. An easy task, but an evil request.

Request? No. Best I speak honest. It was command. Given by two scheming peasants as beneath me in breeding as in learning. By the Lord of Saints, I am no mere friar! I am an ordained priest of the Order of Saint Demetia herself.

But, alas, I am also a brother of the excommunicate Society of Lucretius; those who gather in secret places to whisper truth to shadows. Vanity and cowardice! It was not to shadows we should have preached. We should have shouted in the streets; proclaiming aloud the truth of saints and stars, earth and stone, the order of beasts and men, the spinning world beneath us.

For all it would have earned us martyrdom. Branding, and a breaking on the wheel. But a man must speak the truths he holds, else the truth shall rot within his soul. Like forgotten grain moldering in a basement.

But we of the Society only shared our secrets in shadows, confiding our truths to shadows. Till shadows no longer protected; and the Society of St. Lucretius, the One True Saint, was pronounced anathema across the kingdoms. My scholarly brethren hunted, captured, broken.

The miller's sly wife and her evil consort the Squire gave me sanctuary in their little peasant fiefdom. So long as I obeyed, like a proper serf. Serf? No, like a whipped dog.

When the miller died, I made no question concerning the blackened tongue of the corpse. When stepmother and stepbrother declared the mill rightfully theirs, I nodded as if they recited catechism, not proud declaration of theft from the miller's son.

"Teach him to be a fool." A degrading task. And unnecessary as instructing a duck in the art of paddling a pond. Barnaby was born with head empty as the sky on a cloudless day.

And yet... and yet. At times I wondered if we all misunderstood the creature. Not that he deceived, pretending madness as King David to fool his enemies, or feigned idiocy as Claudius did to deceive Caligula. But what the sly and clever of this world take for foolishness, can be a different wisdom. Neither the practiced innocence of the Church, nor the academic mind of the universities, nor the cool objectivity of we Lucretians.

If he read upside down, still he read. When the cruelties of his mother and brother drove him from his hearth corner, he would come to my cottage, sit by my shelves, perusing books. Yes, upside down. But who else but me held them at all?

For there be six wisdoms, says the Book of Sacred Sophia.

The wisdom of the Holy, who know the ways of salvation. The wisdom of the Serpent, who knows the ways of the world. The wisdom of the Scholar, who knows the rule of material things. The wisdom of the beasts of the field, who know the ways of nature. The wisdom of the young, who know the joy of Life. And last, the wisdom of the old, who know the pain of Life.

Six. I always felt there should be a seventh. Perhaps it is that of the Fool. But what does the fool know? How to read upside-down, how to trade a cow for magic beans, how to walk whistling into the dragon's den. The seventh wisdom is beyond scripture and logic alike. A dangerous path, leading over the precipice's edge.

Once Barnaby sat by my hearth. Staring into the fire as he did whenever not set to some task of use.

"What do you see in the fire?" I asked.

"Faces. My Da's, most oft. But also yours and the Squire's. Alf's and Mother's. Other folk too. All the faces of the world, sometimes."

"The world's full of faces. Why seek them in the fire?"

"The faces in the fire are the real ones."

I could make nothing of that. And yet, I wondered.

When his family sent the boy to die, I did not join the farewell. I remained in my simple cottage, seeking comfort in the texts of St. Lucretius. Looking for distraction in explanations of stars and sand grains, the absolute laws that turn the greatest and least wheels of earth and heaven.

Priest though I am, I said no prayers. How should I dare and why would I bother? There come times when seeking communion with the Absolute is pointless; for one already sits in the presence of Truth. As I did then.

And the truth was clear. I'd let an innocent be sent to certain death. No doubt he waved cheerful goodbye to his murderers.

Truth is light; and the light revealed what I'd done, and where I dwelled. I looked about, seeing no friar's cell for prayer and study, but a prisoner's cell. And then, gazing into the hearth fire, I saw my own face. Not the noble scholar my mirror presented. The face in the flames was a thing of subservience, a visage worthy of some creature best suited to crawl the earth upon its belly.

St. Lucretius has no use for penance nor remorse. Only this does the One True Saint revere: acceptance of what is true.

This, then, is truth: I have done evil. There is no mending. The boy is surely dead, his murder done. Yet, I will hide in this hole no longer. I will seek his bones upon the byways of this world. Not in exile but in pilgrimage.

And should I ever find Barnaby's bones, I shall give them proper words, if the hungry wolves of the world have left aught.

Alas for the poor wolves of this world! And I a dog among them.