Barnaby the Wanderer

Chapter 29: Three Discussions

Friar Cedric

"You were arrested for what?" asks the prisoner from the cell across my own. Their voice expressing equal disdain and disbelief.

"For declaring the truth," I repeat. "That the saints are but the shadows of natural laws cast on the cavern walls of our minds. We dress those shadows in clothes, give them holy names, assigning absurd human motives."

There comes argument up and down the hallway.

"Oh, go burn, Lucretian," shouts someone of faith.

"How do you put clothes on a shadow?" demands another, who fails to grasp the idea of metaphor. Which, ironically, is my point. The world fails to see that the saints are mere metaphor.

"Hardly seem worth death by fire," comments the prisoner two cells down. A female, from the voice. Clearly educated, though charged with theft of horse.

She has the right of it. 'The saints are shadows'. Not a stirring truth. Might justify a burned thumb. Certainly not a fiery pyre before one's funeral.

"All truths are one," I declare. "As many stones to one cathedral. If a mind values the Edifice of Truth, it matters naught for which stone one gives oneself."

What brave words come from me since I left Mill Town. Seeking the boy's bones, finding only tavern argument, arrest as Lucretian.

"Caves and shadows," mused the prisoner down the hall. "That's old stuff."

"You seem educated for a horse thief," I observe. Then repent the words; they sound dismissive. Perhaps I am jealous that she will only be whipped, sold to St. Martia.

The prisoner takes no offense. "I'm a bard.. From St. Martia, actually. If they sell me I may wind up in my mother's kitchen. I'll spit in the soup for sure."

"I thought those of the land of the Saint of Just Battle only studied the arts of war. Not philosophy."

The prisoner was silent a bit.

"That's about right. But we, my old family, were important. We have the blood of St. Martia herself, before she took vows, determined to spread the word of the Saints' Just Cause."

"So?"

"So we had a library."

"Ah," I say. For some reason I feel deeply sad, and yet amused. "Books led you astray."

At that we laugh together; the other prisoners make no rejoinder; entirely thrown by how a book might lead a soul to crime and flame, glory and truth.

Val the Bard

I sit in a closet of rough stone, stare at iron bars blackened by dark thoughts from the ten thousand sad prisoners who sat here previously, their labored breath and sweat of fear blackening the very same bars. Now I add my own dark thoughts, blackening the view yet more.

Beyond the bars I glimpse other cells, a table with a lamp, a bored guard reading a book. I desperately want out; and desperately wish to know the title of the book.

We prisoners make idle conversation from cell to cell; seeking escape from the dread that smolders in our stomachs, confuses our minds. Each awaits the moment when gaolers will come to our particular door, rattling keys and clinking manacles. To march us staggering and blinking out... only to be surrendered to a whipping post, a bonfire, a glowing iron, a noose, the headsman's axe.

So we chat upon what missteps and sad dice-throws led to our present sorrows. The fellow across and to the right is a heretic of the interdicted Society of St. Lucretius. He proudly admits his idiot crime of arguing reality with authority. I admit it makes a more glorious story than horse-theft. But more pointless. A horse at least has use.