He shrugged it off and handed her a glass. Tess accepted it warily. Drink gave her a propensity for punching priests, and this one was almost begging for it already.
“You seem like an adventurous soul,” said Father Erique, settling into his chair. “Have you considered traveling to the Archipelagos to convert the heathens?”
“No,” said Tess. “I’ve lost my—”
“Your vocation. I know,” he said, smiling wanly. “It’s not uncommon, Brother, believe me. Isn’t that the purpose of travel, to rediscover your convictions? It matters less where you go than that you keep moving.”
Tess had often felt that. She swirled the amber liquid in her glass, wary but listening now.
“I mentioned that southern expedition. There are many such, and each one needs a priest. If those islands are ever to be fully Ninysh—as Heaven clearly intends, because why are they so close to us, otherwise?—then we need to sow knowledge of the Saints among the people there. They must be made to understand that they’re part of a divine plan.”
Tess must have looked unenthusiastic, because he added, “Ninysh expansion doesn’t appeal to a Goreddi, eh?”
“I’m not sure spreading the scriptures, as such, appeals to me,” said Tess. She’d read scripture every day as a child; it had been her mother’s favorite stick to hit her with. She’d never seen any divine plan, unless the plan was to saddle her with guilt and self-loathing.
Those voices had been unusually quiet since she’d seen Anathuthia, she suddenly realized, as if the serpent had given her permission to let go of all that.
And now this priest thought she should take her mother’s stick to the Archipelagos and beat those people with it? No thank you.
Father Erique poured himself a second cognac. “This is our time, Brother. Our faith is ascendant. Think how many new Saints were revealed during St. Jannoula’s War. St. Pandowdy is out there somewhere, head touching the clouds; St. Jannoula is a traveler like you. We’ll spread the word to all corners of the world. My bishop even speaks of converting the Porphyrians. What a coup that would be!”
The whole scheme sounded revolting to Tess. Father Erique laughed at her expression and misinterpreted it. “You’re like I was at first. It sounds impossible. But you’ll see.”
“I thought only the Samsamese aspired to convert everyone,” said Tess. “I thought you Ninysh were famously relaxed about these things.”
Father Erique’s expression soured abruptly. “We’re nothing like the Samsamese! They revere strict, intolerant Abaster and Vitt, keep their women locked up until marriage, and don’t even drink. What sort of civilization is that? Ninys is enlightened and tolerant—which is why we need to win this race, don’t you see? The Samsamese fleet is restored; they’ll be sending out missionaries as fast as they can. Would you rather live in a Samsamese world?”
Tess had lived in one, after a fashion, thanks to Mama’s devotion to St. Vitt. She’d be the first to call it restrictive, but the idea of converting “heathens” repelled her. Her own father, for all his faults, was an unbeliever. It was one of the nicer things about him.
Father Erique apparently concluded that he’d won the argument, for he rose and stretched as if the conversation—or possibly conversion—were over. It probably was; Tess was too irked to argue further, and she doubted he’d listen. She set her untouched cognac under her chair.
“I’ve had Angelica make up her room for you,” said Father Erique.
“Oh,” said Tess, taken aback. “I thought you had a spare room.”
“That is the spare room,” said Father Erique. “You can make her sleep on a blanket in the corner if you want to, of course, but I highly recommend keeping her in the bed with you. She’s nice and warm, my Angelica, and compliant as you please.”
Tess’s understanding, which had been floating unmoored down the river of her mind, was suddenly firmly tied up at harbor. No wonder Angelica hated her on sight. Father Erique apparently lent her to guests for their personal use. Tess’s dinner came unsettled.
“Daanite?” said Father Erique pityingly, as if this were the only reason he could imagine for Tess’s nauseated expression.
Tess couldn’t speak; she felt too much. Her heart pounded, and she teetered between the urge to smash his face and to run. Flight won. She snatched up her pack and rushed blindly into the night, toward the sanctuary.
“The key is under the statue of St. Munn’s terrier,” Father Erique called after. “See you at breakfast! My Angelica makes the best—”
Tess slammed the church door on his description and staggered toward the altar, where a wooden statue of St. Munn loomed in darkness like a solid shadow. Tess bent double, hands upon the Saint’s oaken feet, and wrestled the urge to vomit.
Here she’d been walking around feeling light and free, marveling that the world was different than she’d thought it was, while it was the same as it ever was: a world where Julissima Rossa died for shame and Dozerius sailed on; where a woman walking alone had to fear every shepherd, whether he meant her harm or not; where Roger Ivy spied on her from behind a screen and gave student-priests permission to call her whore; where she might be ruined, while Will, who took without asking, ran off without consequence.
Where Angelica could suffer…Tess could barely complete the thought. It crushed her.
She collapsed before the altar and was insensible to the world for a long time, maybe hours. She awoke stiff and cold, with clammy cheeks, and gazed up at the statue, knowing she’d find no comfort there. St. Munn’s eyeballs, painted eerie white, were visible in the darkness, as was a corsage of frail mushrooms growing from his shoulder. She didn’t know this Saint well, only that Aunt Jenny had been married in his church and that the Ninysh side of the family revered him.
“My mother must’ve rejected you,” Tess whispered, rising. She touched his robe, and paint flaked off; the frail wood crumbled like gingerbread under her fingernails. “That makes me inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt, but what do you tell Angelica, to reassure her that the world is more than she can see from under a monstrous priest?”
Is it, though? the statue seemed to answer. You’ve gotten awfully arrogant. One glimpse of a big pagan worm, and you think there’s a way out of all this. Get on with you, mooning about, wallowing in gooey sentiment. It doesn’t change anything.
“It does, though,” said Tess, a blaze igniting in her heart, a blue flame. “Maybe the world isn’t really different, but I am different, and I am in the world.”
Not just in it. She was it.
Tess knew what to do. She was called to do it.
She thought about pushing St. Munn over—there would have been some satisfaction in that—but those mushrooms meant he was already rotting from the inside. They glowed faintly at his shoulder, like an afterimage.
Tess returned to the vicarage; the door opened readily. She didn’t bother taking her boots off, and skipped checking the priest’s bedroom. He wouldn’t be there.
She threw open Angelica’s door and there was Father Erique, who’d apparently just shed his nightshirt, climbing into the bed, and there was Angelica, squeezed against the wall, as if she might have slipped into the crack and disappeared.
Her expression cut Tess—that was a blankness she knew, that she’d lived. Angelica had absented herself, but Tess was here, uncurled, heart fully breaking.
Tess pulled the priest by the arm, practically lifting him out of the bed. He was scrawny, and Tess was strong enough, after months of road work, to have beaten him within an inch of his life. She was angry enough to have made it half an inch or less.
“Changed your mind?” said Father Erique hastily. “Take her with my blessing, Brother.”
Tess twisted his arm behind his back.