Chapter 11
The Apostate
God’s Church was a strange marriage of the hierarchy of pre-Crossing Catholicism and the beliefs of a particular sect of Protestantism that emerged in the early aftermath of the Landing. This sect was less concerned with the moral salvation of souls than with the biological salvation of the human race, a salvation viewed as God’s great plan in raising the New World out of the sea.
This strange mixture of disparate elements was both a marriage of necessity and a harbinger of things to come. God’s Church became a realist’s religion, its interpretation of the gospels riddled with pragmatic holes, the influence of the pre-Crossing Bible limited to what would serve. Ecclesiastical discontent was inevitable; many priests, faced with the increasingly brutal political realities of theology in the Tearling, needed only the slightest touch and they were ready to topple.
—Religious Dimensions of the Tearling: An Essay, FATHER ANSELM
When Father Tyler entered the audience chamber, Kelsea’s first impression was that he carried a great burden. The priest she remembered had been timid, not saturnine. He still moved cautiously, but now his shoulders sagged. This weight on him was new.
“Father,” she greeted him. Father Tyler looked up toward the throne, his blue eyes flickering to meet hers and then darting away. Years of Carlin’s tutelage had prepared Kelsea to find all priests either bombasts or zealots, but Father Tyler seemed neither. She wondered about his function in the Church. With such a quiet demeanor, he couldn’t be a ceremonial priest. There were weak priests, certainly; Carlin had covered that territory extensively. But only a fool mistook caution for weakness.
“You’re welcome here, Father. Please.” She indicated the chair on her left.
Father Tyler hesitated, and no wonder; Mace was stationed behind the proffered chair. The priest approached as toward a chopping block, his white robe trailing behind him up the steps to the dais. He sat down without meeting Mace’s eyes, but when he finally turned to Kelsea, his gaze was clear and direct.
More afraid of Mace than of me, Kelsea thought ruefully. Well, he wasn’t the only one.
“Majesty,” the priest opened, in a voice as thin as paper. “The Church, and the Holy Father in particular, send greetings and wishes for Your Majesty’s health.”
Kelsea nodded, keeping her expression pleasant. Mace had informed her that the Holy Father had entertained many Tear nobles in the Arvath over the past week. Mace had great respect for the guile of the Holy Father, and so Kelsea did not underestimate it either; the question was whether that guile extended to this junior priest, who stared at her expectantly.
Everyone is waiting for something from me, Kelsea thought tiredly. Her shoulder, which hadn’t troubled her for at least several days, gave an answering throb. “Daylight runs, Father. What can I do for you?”
“The Church wishes to consult you about the matter of your Keep Priest, Majesty.”
“I understood that a Keep Priest was a discretionary matter.”
“Yes, well . . .” Father Tyler glanced around, as though looking for his next words on the floor. “The Holy Father requests a report on what your discretion has dictated.”
“Which priest would they give me?”
His face twitched, betraying anxiety. “That matter hasn’t been decided yet, Majesty.”
“Of course it has, Father, or you wouldn’t be here.” Kelsea smiled. “You’re no card player.”
Father Tyler gave a surprised huff of laughter. “I’ve never played cards in my life.”
“Are you close to the Holy Father?”
“I’ve met him personally twice, Lady.”
“In the past two weeks, I’ll wager. What are you really doing here, Father?”
“Just what I said, Majesty. I’ve come to consult you about appointment of your Keep Priest.”
“And who would you recommend?”
“Me.” The priest stared at her defiantly, his eyes full of a bitterness that seemed entirely impersonal. “I present myself and my spiritual knowledge for Your Majesty’s service.”
No one would ever know the courage it took Tyler to drag himself to the Keep on his devil’s errand. If he succeeded, he would become a loathsome creature, an agent of duplicity. If he failed, the Holy Father would have his revenge on Tyler's library. For years, the Church had turned a blind eye to the growing collection of secular books in Tyler’s quarters. The senior priests thought his hobby odd but harmless. Ascetics had few enough pleasures, and no one had a burning interest in pre-Crossing history anyway. Upon Tyler’s death, his room would be cleaned out and all of his books would belong to the Church. No harm done.
But if the question were put to him, Tyler would be forced to admit that he wasn’t a true ascetic. His love of the things of this world was as strong as anyone’s. Wine, food, women, Tyler had let them all go easily. But his books . . .
The Holy Father wasn’t a stupid man, and neither was Cardinal Anders. Two days ago, Tyler had awakened from the most vivid yet of his nightmares, in which he failed in his errand and returned to the Arvath to find his room locked from the inside, smoke pouring from beneath the door. Tyler knew it was a dream, for he was wearing robes of grey, and no priest of God’s Church wore grey. But the knowledge that he was dreaming didn’t change the horror. Tyler clawed at the doorknob, then tried to break the door down, until both of his thin shoulders were battered and he was screaming. When he finally gave up, he turned and found Cardinal Anders behind him, holding a copy of the Bible, his red robes aflame. He held the Bible out to Tyler, intoning solemnly, “You are part of God’s great work.”
For the past two days, Tyler had slept for only a few minutes at a time.
He thought that the Queen might burst out laughing when he finally got around to the real subject of his visit, but she didn’t. She stared at him, and Tyler began to glimpse, if only dimly, how this girl could command such a fearsome character as the Mace. One could watch the Queen and almost see her thinking, a series of rapid and complex calculations. It made Tyler think of pre-Crossing computers, machines whose great value had essentially been the ability to do many things at once. He felt that hundreds of small variables went into the Queen’s deliberation, and wondered what sort of variable he was.
“Accepted, with conditions.”
Tyler struggled to hide his surprise. “Yes?”
“The Keep chapel will be converted into a school.”
She watched him narrowly, clearly expecting an outburst, but Tyler said nothing. As far as he was concerned, God had never lived in that chapel. The Holy Father would rant and rave, but Tyler couldn’t worry about that now. He was focused on the exact task he’d been given.
“You are not, at any time, to attempt to proselytize me,” the Queen continued. “I’ll have none of it. I won’t silence you when you speak to others, but I may debate you to the best of my ability. If you can tolerate my arguments, you’re free to minister to or convert any other occupant of this Keep, not excepting the pigs and chickens.”
“You make sport of my religion, Lady,” replied Tyler, but his words were automatic, without rancor. He had long outgrown the period of his life when atheism could rouse his temper.
“I make sport of all things inconsistent, Father.”
Tyler’s attention was drawn to the silver tiara on her head, the tiara that he had held in his hand. Again he was arrested by the revolving nature of history; it repeated itself in such extraordinary and unexpected ways. There had been another monarch, a pre-Crossing monarch, crowned amid bloodshed, never meant to ascend the throne. Where had it been . . . France? England?
The Holy Father won’t care about the pre-Crossing, his mind whispered, and Tyler shook himself from such thoughts. “If there’s no chapel in the Keep, Majesty, and you yourself reject the word of God, what exactly am I to do here?”
“You’re an academic, I’m told, Father. What is your area of expertise?”
“History.”
“Ah, good. That will be your use to me. I’ve read many works of history, but I’ve missed many also.”
Tyler blinked. “What works of history?”
“Works mostly of the pre-Crossing. I flatter myself that I have a good knowledge of pre-Crossing history, but I’m poorly informed about early Tear history, and particularly the Crossing itself.”
Tyler stuck on one piece of information. “What works of the pre-Crossing?”
The Queen smiled, slightly smug, the corners of her mouth tucking downward. “Come with me, Father.”
The Queen’s wound must have been well on the way to healing, for she rose from the throne without assistance. Tyler made no sudden moves as he followed her down the steps, avoiding the guards who shifted themselves expertly to follow her progress and block him off. He could sense the Mace right behind him, and resolved not to turn around.
The Queen walked in a purposeful way that many would describe as mannish. No one had taught her the graceful little steps that Tyler had observed in women born ladies. The Queen moved in great strides, so great that Tyler, whose arthritic hip never really quieted these days, was hard-pressed to keep up. He sensed again that he was in the middle of something extraordinary, and didn’t know whether to thank God or not.
Pen Alcott walked a few feet ahead of Tyler, right on the Queen’s heels, his hand on his sword. Tyler had assumed that the Mace would be her close guard; no doubt the whole kingdom had thought so. But the Mace had other business several days ago, in the south of the kingdom. News of the fire that destroyed the southern Graham stronghold had run like quicksilver through the Arvath. The Grahams were generous donors, and the senior Lord Graham was one of the Holy Father’s old friends. The Holy Father had made it clear that Tyler should call the Mace and his mistress to account.
Later, Tyler thought. For now, the exact task I was given.
The Queen led Tyler down a long corridor behind the throne, a corridor with at least thirty doors. It was a servant’s wing, Tyler realized with astonishment. Could anyone, even a queen, need that many servants?
Only a few of the doors were guarded. When the Queen approached one of them, the guard opened the door and then stood aside. Tyler found himself in a small chamber that was nearly empty, save for a desk and a few armchairs and sofas. It seemed an odd use of space. But then he halted just inside the threshold, dumbfounded.
The far wall was covered with books, beautiful leather-bound volumes in the rich hues that had been used before the Crossing: red, blue, and most astonishing of all, purple. Tyler had never seen purple leather, hadn’t even known it was possible. Whatever the dye was, the formula had been lost.
At a gesture of invitation from the Queen, Tyler ventured closer, assessing the quality of the books with a collector’s eye. His own collection was much smaller; many of his volumes were as ancient as these, but most were bound in cloth or paper, and required great care and constant treatment with fixatives to keep them from falling to pieces. Someone had taken equally conscientious care of these books. Their leather bindings appeared to be intact. There had to be well over a thousand, but Tyler noted—with some satisfaction—that he had many titles that the Queen’s collection was lacking. His fingers itched to touch the books, but he didn’t dare without her permission.
“You may, Father.” When he looked up, he found her watching him with clear amusement, her mouth curled as if at a private joke. “I told you that you were no card player.”
Tyler turned eagerly to the shelf. Several authors’ names immediately leaped out at him. He took down a Tuchman book and opened it gently, grinning with delight. Most of his own books had been treated with an imperfect fixative, leaving their pages wrinkled and discolored. This book’s pages were crisp yet soft, nearly white. There were also several inset pages of photographs, and these he perused closely, almost unaware that he was speaking at the same time. “I have several Tuchman books, but this one I’ve never seen. What’s the subject?”
“Several eras of pre-Crossing history,” the Queen replied, “used to illustrate the fact that folly inherently pervades government.”
Despite his fascination with the book, something in the Queen’s tone made Tyler close the cover. Turning, he found her staring at her books with utter devotion, like a lover. Or a priest.
“The Tearling is in crisis, Father.”
Tyler nodded.