Barnaby the Wanderer

Chapter 28: On the Nature of Lightning

Friar Cedric

I am free.

True, I sit in a cell of the gaol of Persephone. But free to speak the truth. To the stones of my cell, the rats in the oubliette, the yawning guards, my fellow prisoners in their separate cells. To speak openly, as I never dared as secret Lucretian, nor hiding as mere friar in farmland oblivion.

Let us pray. But do not bow your heads. Raise them! Do not close eyes. Open them! For Truth is not catechism mumbled to the floor. If prayer be truth, it is light to be seen, and to see by. Let us begin.

The world is round. Literate folk know it so; and were all folk literate all would know it so. And the sun is a great burning stone around which the earth circles. We dwell upon a point on the gear of a crystalline clock.

But what of the stars? Is it not logical to believe they also are fiery stones equal to our sun? Great burning fires so distant they appear only as bright points of light. As a bonfire on a hill might seem to distant eyes as a mere point of light, small and bright.

And if the stars are suns, shall they not also have their earths? And who can say what strange folk walk those lands? What saints rule? Only the Lord of Saints himself knows what hides within the stars. Dark worlds of eternal night. And worlds of light, and realms of fire and ice. In the sky above us await unfathomable wonders and horrors, all the places of our dreams. The night sky is bedecked with the light of dreams.

A pleasant vision. I will be burned alive for saying it. And yet I declare it worth the fire. There are worlds in the stars. A beautiful truth. Twice so, thrice so, from this dark cell.

A pilgrim in search of absolution, I went down the roads of this world seeking Barnaby's bones. Thinking to spy his corpse on the roadside, where crows fed, dogs growled.

I wondered what sad method his mother and brother chose to ensure his death. A mere map to a cursed tower did not suffice. They could hardly suppose the innocent boy would find his way there. No, the map had been Alf's spiteful jest, to give Barnaby a fool's destination.

They wished the boy's death; but beyond village bounds, beyond village eyes and gossip. Elsewise, years past Alf would have shoved Barnaby into the millwheels.

The Squire might have arranged with some assassin to meet the boy on the road; murder him, hide the body. But the greedy man would be obligate to forsake his beloved coins. Then trust in a murderer's silence? Unlikely.

Perhaps they gave Barnaby a sealed letter to deliver to some official, confessing terrible crime? The boy would faithfully perform such duty. Proud to keep word not to open the letter. Bah; that was absurd theatre.

Simpler for brother Alf to follow on the road, knifing Barnaby from behind. But... sly Alf is not so direct. His style would be to convince Barnaby to fill his pockets with stones, leap into a river to visit the amorous merwomen.

His stepmother... she'd not hesitate at murder. But walked warry. I recalled the blackened tongue of Barnaby's father. Knife-thrusts were superfluous. Simply send the boy from the village with poison in his pack, and murder done.

So I journeyed from Milltown, asking all I met whether they'd seen a large youth with straw hair, cheerful smile. Or his remains. They eyed my humble robe and staff bedecked with cockle shells in sign of pilgrimage, and gave respectful answer. Always no. None saw such boy, nor such a corpse. It did not surprise. He might well have wandered into woods, over a cliff, down a well. Else wolves and crows had not left a bone to keep as relic of holy innocence.

So I went, tiring more quickly than years past when I trotted from Pomona to Persephone, Necropolis to St. Daedalus, even the forests of St. Sylvanus. And yet I walked in high spirits. Wherefor not? Weary years I lived as prisoner of my own cowardice. Though I now sought a dead innocent, walked in threat of arrest as heretic, I knew myself reborn. There is no meaning in truths whispered to shadows; nor life lived in shadows.

Warnings of bandits waylaying travlers on the road brought me to join a band of tinker-traders heading to Persephone. Cheerful folk, they welcomed me for the blessing of St. Demetia.

Their leader was a cinnamon trader from Sister Parvati, skin as brown as his spice wares. An educated creature. We walked through a storm, debating upon the nature of lightning as the bolts flew about us, as the others crouched in alarm, muttering prayers to Typhon.

The cinnamon-trader maintained the crackle and blast was the Lord of Saints quarreling again with Lucif. As thunder rumbled, bolts flashed, I explained how what seemed war in heaven was merely a by-product of natural process.

"Consider a rain barrel," I told the shivering tinker, as we walked drenched down the road. "The rain fills it, makes it too heavy to even lift. And yet the same water floated happily above the earth. What kept the water in the air? Why, the same power that sends steam from a kettle. Fire, my friend. The fire of the sun's light sends water to the sky. This storm above us is the war of fire and water; sending rain and lightning upon us."

I raised arms to the thundering storm, and so help me St. Tinia if a bolt did not pass so close above that my hair stood on end, drenched though it was.

I laughed. The tinkers and traders laughed as well, but uneasily. Their look declared I was a holy man, touched by lightning. And so I am; and so is any man.

As we arrived at the gate of Persephone the road grew crowded with those anxious to enter. But gate guards made it a slow journey. We watched as they arrested first a horse thief, then a witch. When our band of wanderers came to the guards, the cinnamon-trader whispered to their captain, who looked to me, nodding wise as all a congregation of owls.

And there at the gate of Persephone I was arrested for being a Lucretian.