Barnaby the Wanderer

Chapter 31: Three Interviews

Friar Cedric

The Questioner has come. He stands outside my cell bars, not approaching overclose. Velvet green robes, shoulders draped with stole of black to declare ecclesiastic authority. Thumping the floor with a staff wound with vine in sign of service to the Green Saint. We stare at one another. I don't know the fellow, though no doubt we've crossed paths in chapel and temple, in studies and sacred gatherings. He clears throat in sign that he now begins formal speech.

"Are you Cedric Weiland, ordained Priest of the Order of St. Demetia from the parish of Pomona?"

I debate whether to stand or remain seated upon the stone floor. This is ceremony, and I have come to loathe ceremony. But sitting is rude. And I do not resent this person. I do not long for the power to defy his pompous authority. I desire the power to open his mind to the truth. There is no greater power, nor more rare.

I stand, arms at side.

"Yes, I am Cedric Weiland."

"Excellent. Are you that Cedric Weiland who accompanied the excommunicate Bishop Amandine to the Republic of St. Hephaestus, to learn systems of thought contrary to the teaching of Sainted Demetia and the Lord of Saints?"

"Indeed I did go to Daedalus. With full permission of the Counsel of Studies."

He declines to debate permissions.

"And did you not return from that land of mechanical abominations tainted with the Lucretian heresy?"

I smile. "I returned with a tinderbox that told me the hours of the day. And a book of formulae explaining the motion of objects, whether falling ball or whirling planet. But neither time nor motion are abominations to the saints. Say rather, they are laws of the creation of the Lord of Saints."

He stamps his staff, making an unimpressive 'bump'. "I am not here to debate. Such would be painful to my mind and your soul. Let us in mutual mercy be brief. I ask now once. Cedric Weiland, who is Lucretius Carus?"

And there it is. The question that cannot be danced around, nor turned upon its head. If only the officious fool would argue the nature of the saints, the source of magic or the mystery of existence. Then I could draw forth a thousand clever words. And if he crossed into discussion of the worlds hidden within those points of light we call stars... Ha. In an hour I would have him questioning the very earth he thumps with his staff.

He repeats the question, the thump of staff. "Twice now I ask. Cedric Weiland, who is Lucretius Carus?"

'Painful to my soul,' he'd said. What is 'soul'? A word for the shadow that calls itself 'me'. The saints themselves are shadows; and the Lord of Saints too. All, all, mere shadow. But for shadow to be cast there must be light. Light is Truth, Truth is light. The light of the stars is the fire of infinite suns. The night sky is the only true host of heaven. Their light touches us; and yet knows us not. Light, truth, fire... for a moment I am overcome, shivering before the vision that contains all things, and yet only knows itself through my clay eyes, my trivial mind.

Words. Truth is no tangle of words. It is revelation. It may come in a book of perfected formulas describing time and motion. It may come in a quiet hour watching the dawn. Or in a cold night peering at the stars through crafted lenses, perceiving one tiny bit of their nature. No matter the medium, Truth is the only true fire from Heaven. Alas that we cannot pass it on to others, except in words. We only speak of light in words of shadow.

And so I think, and so I shiver, and so the Questioner waits. No doubt knowing full well my thoughts, if not the meaning of my thoughts.

To live dishonest, or die honest?