How Firm a Foundation: Chapter Thirteen

.VI.

Archbishop’s Palace,
City of Tellesberg,
Kingdom of Old Charis

    Winter in Tellesberg was very different from winter in the Temple Lands, Paityr Wylsynn reflected as he stepped gratefully into the shaded portico of Archbishop Maikel’s palace. Freezing to death wasn’t much of an issue here. Indeed, the hardest thing for him to get used to when he’d first arrived had been the fierce, unremitting sunlight, although the climate did get at least marginally cooler this time of year than it was in summer. The locals took the heat in stride, however, and he loved the exotic sights and sounds, the tropical fruits, the brilliant flowers, and the almost equally brilliantly colored wyverns and birds. For that matter, he’d acclimated well enough even to the heat that the thought of returning to Temple Lands snow and sleet held little allure.

    Especially these days, he thought grimly. Especially these days.

    “Good morning, Father,” the senior of the guardsmen in the white and orange of the Archbishop’s service said.

    “Good morning, Sergeant,” Paityr replied, and the other members of the guard detachment nodded to him without further challenge. Not because they weren’t fully alert — the attempt to assassinate Maikel Staynair in his own cathedral had put a conclusive end to any complacency they might once have felt — but because they’d seen him here so often.

    And I’m not precisely the easiest person to mistake for someone else, either, I suppose, he reflected wryly, looking down at the purple sleeve of his cassock with its sword and flame badge. I doubt there are half a dozen Schuelerites left in the entire Old Kingdom by now, and most of them are Temple Loyalists hiding in the deepest holes they can find. Besides, I’d stand out even if I were a Bédardist or a Pasqualate.

    “Welcome, Father Paityr. Welcome!”

    The solemn, senior, and oh-so-superior servants who’d cluttered up the Archbishop’s Palace under its previous owners had become a thing of the past. The palace was vast enough to require a fairly substantial staff, but Archbishop Maikel preferred a less supercilious environment. Alys Vraidahn had been his housekeeper for over thirty years, and he’d taken her with him to his new residence, where she’d proceeded to overhaul the staff from top to bottom in remarkably short order. A brisk, no nonsense sort of person, Mistress Vraidahn, but as warmhearted as she was shrewd, and she’d adopted Paityr Wylsynn as yet another of the archbishop’s unofficial sons and daughters. Now she swept him a courtesy, then laughed as he leaned forward and planted a kiss on her cheek.

    “Now then!” she scolded, smacking him on the shoulder. “Don’t you be giving an old woman the kind of notions she shouldn’t be having over a young, unattached fellow such as yourself!”

    “Ah, if only I could!” he sighed. He shook his head mournfully. “I’m not very good at darning my own socks,” he confided.

    “And are you saying that idle layabout Master Ahlwail can’t do that just fine?” she challenged skeptically.

    “Well, yes, I suppose he can. Poorly,” Peter said, shamelessly maligning his valet’s sewing skills as he hung his head and looked as pitiable as possible. “But he’s not a very good cook, you know,” he added, actually getting his lower lip to quiver.

    “Comes of being a foreigner,” she told him, eyes twinkling. “Not but what you don’t look like he’s managed to keep a little meat on your bones.” Paityr sniffed, looking as much like his starving seminarian days as he could manage, and she shook her head. “Oh, all right. All right! You come around to my kitchen before you leave. I’ll have a little something for you to take back to your pantry.”

    “Bless you, Mistress Ahlys,” Paityr said fervently, and she laughed again. Then she turned her head and spotted one of the footmen.

    “Hi, Zhaksyn! Run and tell Father Bryahn Father Paityr’s here to see His Eminence!”

    Anything less like the protocol in a typical archbishop’s residence would have been all but impossible to imagine, Paityr thought. Of course, so would the footman in question. The lad couldn’t be much older than sixteen or seventeen years old, his fuzzy beard (which needed shaving) just into the wispy silk stage, and his head came up like a startled prong buck’s as the housekeeper called his name.

    “Yes, Mistress Vraidahn!” he blurted and disappeared at a half-run.

    Not, Paityr noticed, without darting an even more startled look at him. And not just because of his Schuelerite cassock, he felt sure.

    Paityr had always been more than a little amused by the typical mainlanders’ perspective on the provincialism of the “out islands” as they dismissively labeled Charis, Chisholm, and Corisande. Tarot (which was the least cosmopolitan of the lot, in Paityr’s opinion) got a pass from mainland prejudices because it was so close to the mainland. Still, the Tarot Channel was over three hundred miles wide, and more than one mainland wit had been heard to observe that good cooking and culture had both drowned trying to make the swim.

    And what made that so amusing to him was that Charisians were actually far more cosmopolitan than the vast majority of Safeholdians . . . including just about every mainlander Paityr had ever met. The ubiquitous Charisian merchant marine guaranteed that there were very few sights Charisians hadn’t seen, and not just their sailors, either. Every nationality and physical type in the entire world — including the Harchongese, despite the Harchong Empire’s insularity — passed through Tellesberg eventually. Despite which, Paityr Wylsynn still got more than his share of double takes from those he met.

    His fair skin had grown tanned enough over the years of his service here in Old Charis to almost pass for a native Charisian, but his gray eyes and bright red hair — touched to even more fiery brilliance by all that sunlight —  marked his northern birth forever. There’d been times he’d resented that, and there were other times it had simply made him feel very far from home, homesick for the Temple Lands and the place of his birth. These days he didn’t feel homesick at all, however, which had more than a little to do with the reason for this visit.

    “Paityr!” Father Bryahn Ushyr, Archbishop Maikel’s personal secretary, walked briskly into the entry hall holding out his hand. The two of them were much of an age, and Paityr smiled as he clasped forearms with his friend.

    “Thank you for fitting me into his schedule on such short notice, Bryahn.”

    “You’re welcome, not that it was all that much of a feat.” Ushyr shrugged. “You’re higher on his list than a lot of people, and not just because you’re his Intendant. It brightened his day when I told him you wanted to see him.”

    “Sure it did.” Paityr rolled his eyes, and Ushyr chuckled. But the secretary also shook his head.

    “I’m serious, Paityr. His eyes lit up when I told him you’d asked for an appointment.”

    Paityr waved one hand in a brushing away gesture, but he couldn’t pretend Ushyr’s words didn’t touch him with a glow of pleasure. In a lot of ways, whether Archbishop Maikel realized it or not, Paityr had come to regard him even more as a second father since his own father’s death.

    Which is also part of the reason for this visit, he reflected.

    “Well, come on,” Ushyr invited, and beckoned for Paityr to accompany him to the archbishop’s office.

 

---

 

    “Paityr, it’s good to see you.”

    Maikel Staynair rose behind his desk, smiling broadly, and extended his hand. Paityr bent to kiss the archbishop’s ring of office, then straightened, tucking both his own hands into the sleeves of his cassock.

    “Thank you, Your Eminence. I appreciate your agreeing to see me on so little notice.”

    “Nonsense!” Staynair waved like a man swatting away an insect. “First, you’re my Intendant, which means I’m always supposed to have time to see you.” He grinned and pointed at the armchair facing his desk. “And, second, you’re a lively young fellow who usually has something worth listening to, unlike all too many of the people who parade through this office on a regular basis.”

    “I do try not to bore you, Your Eminence,” Paityr admitted, sitting in the indicated chair with a smile.

    “I know, and I really shouldn’t complain about the others.” Staynair sat back down behind his desk and shrugged. “Most of them can’t help it, and at least some of them have a legitimate reason for being here. Fortunately, I’ve become increasingly adroit at steering the ones who don’t off for Bryahn to deal with, poor fellow.”

 

---

 

    The archbishop tipped back in his swivel chair, interlacing his fingers across his chest, and cocked his head to one side.

    “And how are your mother and the rest of your family?” he asked in a considerably more serious tone.

    “Well, Your Eminence. Or as well as anyone could be under the circumstances.” Paityr twitched his shoulders. “We’re all grateful to God and to Madame Ahnzhelyk and Seijin Merlin’s friend for getting so many out of Clyntahn’s grasp, but that only makes us more aware of what’s happened in the Temple Lands. And I suppose it’s a bit difficult for them — for all of us — not to feel guilty over having managed to get here when so many others didn’t.”

    “That’s a very human reaction.” Staynair nodded. “And it’s also a very irrational one. I’m sure you realize that.”

    “Oh, I do. For that matter, Lysbet and the others do, too. But, as you say, it’s a very human reaction, Your Eminence. It’s going to be a while before they manage to get past that, I’m afraid.”

    “Understandable. But please tell Madame Wylsynn my office and I are at her disposal if she should have need of us.”

    “Thank you, Your Eminence.” Paityr smiled again, gratefully. The offer wasn’t the automatic formula it might have been coming from another archbishop, and he knew it.

    “You’re welcome, of course,” Staynair said. “On the other hand, I don’t imagine that’s the reason you wanted to see me today?”

    “No,” Paityr admitted, gray eyes darkening. “No, it wasn’t, Your Eminence. I’ve come to see you on a spiritual matter.”

    “A spiritual matter concerning what? Or should I say concerning whom?” Staynair’s dark eyes were shrewd, and Paityr sat back in his chair.

    “Concerning me, Your Eminence.” He drew a deep breath. “I’m afraid my soul isn’t as tranquil as it ought to be.”

    “You’re scarcely unique in that, my son,” Staynair pointed out somberly, swinging his chair from side to side in a slow, gentle arc. “All of God’s children — or all of them whose minds work, at any rate — are grappling with questions and concerns more than sufficient to destroy their tranquility.”

    “I realize that, Your Eminence, but this is something that hasn’t happened to me before. I’m experiencing doubt. Not just questions, not just uncertainty over the direction in which I ought to be going, but genuine doubt.”

    “Doubt over what?” Staynair asked, eyes narrowing. “Your actions? Your beliefs? The doctrine of the Church of Charis?”

    “I’m afraid it’s more fundamental than that, Your Eminence,” Paityr admitted. “Of course I have the occasional evening when I lie awake wondering if it was my own hubris, my own pride in my ability to know better than Mother Church, that led me to obey Archbishop Erayk’s instructions to remain here in Charis and work with you and His Majesty. I’m neither so stupid nor so self-righteous as to be immune to that sort of doubt, and I hope I never will be. And I can honestly say I’ve experienced very little doubt over whether or not the Church of Charis has a better understanding of the mind of God than that butcher Clyntahn and his friends. Forgive me for saying this, but you could scarcely have less understanding!” He shook his head. “No, what I’m beginning to doubt is whether or not I have a true vocation after all.”

    Staynair’s chair was suddenly still and silence hovered in the office. Then the archbishop tilted his head to one side and pursed his lips.

    “I imagine no priest is ever fully immunized against that question,” he said slowly. “However clearly we may have been called by God, we remain mortals with all the weaknesses of any mortal. But I have to tell you, Father, that of all the priests I’ve known, I can think of none whose vocation seemed clearer to me than your own. I realize another’s opinion is scarcely armor against one’s own doubts, and the truth of a priest’s vocation is ultimately between him and God, not him and anyone else. Despite that, I must tell you I can think of no one into whose hands I would be more willing to entrust God’s work.”

    Paityr’s eyes widened. He deeply admired and respected Maikel Staynair and he’d known Staynair was fond of him. That he’d become one of the archbishop’s protégés. Yet Staynair’s words — and especially the serious, measured tone in which they’d been spoken — had taken him by surprise.

    “I’m honored, Your Eminence,” he replied after a moment. “That means a great deal to me, especially coming from you. Yet the fact of my doubt remains. I’m no longer certain of my vocation, and can a true priest — one who had a true vocation to begin with — ever lose it?”

    “What does the Office of Inquisition teach?” Staynair asked in reply.

    “That a priest is a priest forever,” Paityr responded. “That a true vocation can never be lost, else it was never a true vocation to begin with. But if that’s true, Your Eminence, did I ever have that true vocation to begin with?”

    “That is what the Inquisition teaches, but as you may have noticed,” Staynair said a bit dryly, “I’ve found myself in disagreement with the Office of Inquisition on several minor doctrinal matters lately.”

    Despite Paityr’s own concern and genuine distress, the archbishop’s tone drew an unwilling chuckle out of him, and Staynair smiled. Then his expression turned serious once more.

    “All humor notwithstanding, my son, I believe the Inquisition has been in error in many ways. You know where most of my points of disagreement with the Grand Inquisitor lie, and you know it’s my belief that we serve a loving God who desires what’s best for His children and also desires that those children come to Him in joyous love, not fear. I can’t believe it’s His will for us to be miserable, or to be crushed underfoot, or to be driven into His arms by the lash.

    “You and I have differed on occasion on the extent to which the freedom of will and freedom of choice I believe is so critical to a healthy relationship with God may threaten to confuse and disorder our right understanding of God’s will for us and for all of His world. Despite that, I’ve never doubted for a moment that you’ve looked upon the task of disciplining the children of Mother Church with the love and compassion a true parent brings to that duty. I’ve never seen a malicious act, or a capricious decision. Indeed, I’ve seen you deal patiently and calmly with idiots who would have driven one of the Archangels themselves into a frothing madness. And I’ve seen the unflinching fashion in which you’ve stood fast for the things in which you believe without ever descending into the sort of mental and spiritual arrogance which know that anyone who disagrees with them must be completely and unequivocably wrong. That’s the priest I see when I consider whether or not you have a true vocation, Father Paityr, and I ask you to remember that it’s the Writ which says a priest is a priest forever and the Inquisition which has interpreted that as meaning that a priest who loses his vocation was therefore never in fact a true priest at all. Search the Writ as you will, my son, but you will never find those words, that statement, anywhere in it.”

    He paused, letting silence lie over the two of them once more, yet Paityr knew the archbishop wasn’t done yet. So he sat, waiting, and after a moment Staynair continued.

    “I’m a Bédardist. My order knows more about the ways in which the human mind and the human spirit can hurt themselves than most of us wish we’d ever had to learn. There’s no question that we can convince ourselves of literally anything we wish to believe, and there’s also no question that we can be far more ruthless — far more cruel — in punishing ourselves than any other reasonable person would ever be. We can — and we will, my son, trust me in this — find innumerable ways in which to doubt and question and indict ourselves for things only we know about, supposed crimes only we realize were ever committed. There are times when that truly is a form of justice, but far more often it’s a case of punishing the innocent. Or, at the very least, of punishing our own real or imagined misdeeds far more severely than we would ever punish anyone else for the same offense.

 

---

 

    “I’m not going to tell you that’s what you’re doing. I could point out any number of factors in your life which could account for stress, for worry, for outrage, even for the need to punish yourself for surviving when your father and your uncle and so many people you’ve known all your life have been so cruelly butchered. I believe it would be completely valid to argue that all of those factors combined would be enough to push anyone into questioning his faith, and that’s the basis of any true vocation, my son. Faith . . . and love.

    “But I don’t believe your faith has wavered.” Staynair shook his head, tipping his chair further back. “I’ve seen no sign of it, and I know your love for your fellow children of God is as warm and vital today as it ever was. Still, even the most faithful and loving of hearts may not hold a true priest’s vocation. And despite what the Office of Inquisition may have taught, I must tell you I’ve known men who I believe had true and burning vocations who have lost them. It can happen, however much we may wish it couldn’t, and when it does those who have lost them are cruelest of all in punishing themselves for it. Deep inside, they believe not that they’ve lost their vocation, but that it was taken from them. That they proved somehow inadequate to the tasks God had appointed for them, and that because of that inadequacy and failure He stripped away that spark of Himself which had drawn them into this service in the joy of loving Him.

    “Only it doesn’t work that way, my son.”

    Staynair let his chair come forward, planting his elbows wide apart on his desk blotter and folding his hands while he leaned forward across them.

    “God does not strip Himself away from anyone. The only way we can lose God is to walk away from Him. That is the absolute, central, unwavering core of my own belief . . . and of yours.” He looked directly into Paityr’s gray eyes. “Sometimes we can stumble, lose our way. Children often do that. But as a loving parent always does, God is waiting when we do, calling to us so that we can hear His voice and follow it home once more. The fact that a priest has lost his vocation to serve as a priest doesn’t mean he’s lost his vocation to be one of God’s children. If you should decide that, in fact, you are no longer called to the priesthood, I will grant you a temporary easing of your vows while you meditate upon what it would then be best for you to do. I don’t think that’s what you need, but if you think so, you must be the best judge, and I’ll go that far towards abiding by your judgment. I implore you, however, not to take an irrevocable step before that judgment is certain. And whatever you finally decide, know this — you are a true child of God, and whether it be as a priest or as a member of the laity, He has many tasks yet for you to do . . . as do I.”

    Paityr sat very still, and deep inside he felt a flicker of resentment, and that resentment touched the anger which was so much a part of him these days. It was like the breath of a bellows, fanning the fire, and that shamed him . . . which only made the anger perversely stronger. It was irrational of him to feel that way, and he knew it. It was also small minded and childish, and he knew that, too. But he realized now that what he’d really wanted was for Staynair to reassure him that he couldn’t possibly have lost his vocation. That when the Writ said a priest was a priest forever it meant a true vocation was just as imperishable as the Inquisition had always insisted it was.

    And instead, the archbishop had given him this. Had given him, he realized, nothing but the truth and compassion and love . . . and a refusal to treat him as a child.

    The silence stretched out, and then Staynair sat back in his chair once more.

    “I don’t know if this will make any difference to what you’re thinking and feeling at this moment, my son, but you’re not the only priest in this room who ever questioned whether or not he had a true vocation.”

    Paityr’s eyes widened, and Staynair smiled crookedly.

    “Oh, yes, there was a time — before you were born; I’m not as young as I used to be, you know — but there was a time when a very young under-priest named Maikel Staynair wondered if he hadn’t made a horrible mistake in taking his vows. The things going on in his life were less cataclysmic than what you’ve experienced in the last few years, but they seemed quite cataclysmic enough for his purposes. And he was angry at God.” Their eyes met once more, and Paityr felt a jolt go through his soul. “Angry at God the same way the most loving of children can be angry at his father or his mother if that father or mother seems to have failed him. Seems to have let terrible things happen when he didn’t have to. That young under-priest didn’t even realize he was angry. He simply thought he was . . . confused. That the world had turned out to be bigger and more complex than he’d thought it was. And because he’d been taught it was unforgivable to be angry at God, he internalized all that anger and aimed it at himself in the form of doubts and self-condemnation.”

    Paityr’s jaw tightened as he felt the echo of that young Maikel Staynair’s experience in himself. Until this moment, he wouldn’t have thought Staynair could ever have felt what the archbishop was describing to him now. Maikel Staynair’s faith and love burned with a bright, unwavering flame. That flame, that unshakable inner serenity, was the reason he could walk into a hostile cathedral in a place like Corisande and reach out even to people who’d been prepared to hate and revile him as a heretic. Not only reach out to them but inspire them to reach back to him in response. It was who and what he was. How could a man like that, a priest like that, ever have been touched with the darkness and corrosion Paityr felt gnawing at his own soul?

    “What . . . May I ask what that young under-priest did, Your Eminence?” he asked after a long, aching moment, and to his own surprise, he managed to smile. “I mean, it’s obvious he managed to cope with it somehow after all.”

    “Indeed he did.” Staynair nodded. “But he didn’t do it by himself. He reached out to others. He shared his doubts and his confusion and learned to recognize the anger for what it was and to realize it’s the people we love most — and who most love us — who can make us angriest of all. I wouldn’t want to say” — the archbishop’s smile became something suspiciously grin-like — “that he was a stubborn young man, but I suppose some people who knew him then might have leapt to that erroneous conclusion. For that matter, some people might actually think he’s still a bit stubborn. Foolish of them, of course, but people can be that way, can’t they?”

    “I, ah, suppose they can, Your Eminence. Some of them, I mean.”

    “Your natural and innate sense of tact is one of the things I’ve always most admired in you, Father Paityr,” Staynair replied. Then he squared his shoulders.

    “All jesting aside, I needed help, and I think you could use some of that same help. For that matter, I think you’re probably less pigheaded and stubborn about availing yourself of it than I was. As your Archbishop, I’m going to strongly suggest that before you do anything else, before you make any decisions, you retire for a retreat at the same monastery to which I retreated. Will you do that for me? Will you spend a few five-days thinking and contemplating and possibly seeing some truths you haven’t seen before, or haven’t seen as clearly as you’d thought you had?”

    “Of course, Your Eminence,” Paityr said simply.

    “Very well. In that case, I’ll send a message to Father Zhon at Saint Zherneau’s and tell him to expect you.”