" The young priest flushed under the warning. "It does

not matter. My mission is not here among the complacent ;but in Ireland."

! "That again? Permit me to note that you will go to Ireland when and if 1 send you, Sochet."

But Patricius had heard the reaction of the royal ..house and was in fine defensive fettle. "Permit me to note, your grace, it seems an injustice."

. "Oh? How, Sochet?"

Patricius' uncomfortably direct glance turned aside in Some deference. "Your grace is a Pelagian."

;^ "Which is to say I place some value on human com- ^ mon sense in attaining heaven."

^ "And that is the human error!" Patricius exploded.

*: "Man cannot reason with God. 'I am that I am.' Man is ' ^nothing without God. He must submit totally to achieve 3:, Grace. Ireland is virgin pasture. I will teach the truth with j^ no heretical error."

^ "No doubt. And God help the Irish. They take their :;* religion quite seriously. But let me remind you further of ; ; the abysmal failure of earlier missions there, which sur- ^ prises me less than it does plebeian bigots like Augustine.

*h'; It's not enough to speak their language. Their wise men, ,*^.;pagan though they may be, will look into your heart and II,'quickly read you for the ill-writ, half-finished page you i?'are. No, don't interrupt me. To be ignorant of Christ is ' ^l.not to be ignorant of men. They'd know you for an arro- ll.gant pup, Sochet. You wouldn't last a month. No. I will Bpiot send you to Ireland, not yet."

Caius Meganius was anything but a severe man. The piressing down he gave the younger priest upset him per- haps inore than Patricius, who could shrug it off with the Ijpesilience of his righteousness. The priest avoided his bishop ^For several days-to brood further, Meganius suspected.

tie was agreeably surprised when Father Patricius accepted lis invitation to dinner, evidently with new matter on his

42.

mind. They were finished with the cold oysters before Patricias broached his subject. Apparently the young man had not only thought on the bishop's words, he'd profited by them. His humility, ordinarily that of an actor project- ing it from a stage, seemed genuine now.

"1 prayed for guidance. I asked where and how and when I was to be used if my calling is real. It's not enough to teach or preach, not enough to wear an anointed sword.

One must use it, strike with it. And yet . . ."

Meganius allowed the priest his own time and tether.

"Yes?"

On his dining couch Patricius made a vague gesture,

cleaning his fingers in a bowl of rose water. "I asked myself: is it only my arrogance, this mission to Ireland? I feel like-like a mosaic, each tile a truth adding to a whole if 1 could arrange them right. Your grace has put doubts

in my mind, and now . . ."

"Not into the mind of the priest, only the man,"

Meganius cautioned gently. "Do you know clearly why you took orders, Father Patricius? Did you feel drawn back to

Ireland then?"

Patricius took up his wine and swallowed a little, con- templating the gobfet. Not the priest but the man an- swered the question. "There was my vision. I called it that.

It was early in the morning after a night of poor sleep. I can't honestly say I wasn't dreaming."

So he was not without the ability to question his own motives, Meganius thought. "There's so much dissent in the Church now, one forgets what it all rests on. Put aside the war for now. I am interested now only in the heart of Magon Sochet, a Brigante like myself. What does he warn to do for God? What does he want from God? I don't think you'd be honestly content pattering after luminaries like Jerome. You're not much of a Roman and hardly a

Greek for subtlety."

"Lord no!" Patricius laughed heartily at the idea. and

his expression lost its tight self-containment. "I'm a plain man. I like plain people."

"And open skies. And animals."

"Yes. Just that I can't think of myself as anything but a priest, not since I was seventeen."

"I see."

43.

"Do you? Much of it's for myself, 1 admit that. The KChurch tells me the why of all things. 1 want to know why.

HSometimes I think it's myself I'm trying to save," Patricius 'finished unhappily.

As I did at your brutal age; Meganius smiled inwardly.

!. "I want to find the Grace I preach, else I'm no more than a scribe babbling his master's word. 1 want to find Iwhere it is, dig for it, hold it in my hand, define it. Hold it up and say, 'Here! Here is ultimate truth!' "

I? Meganius sighed over his wine. The men who would It-be drunk on God: a heady wine, and Patricius already an ijsaddict. The inconsistency troubled the bishop. If Patricius ijiwere truly another Jerome-narrow, abrasive, forever un- ^. resolved himself between the Scylla of flesh and Charybdis ^]of faith-nothing would help now or later. But there was ^:;a disconcerting humanity to this young man under the ^carapace of Germanus' laid-on rigidity, a healthy clay ^'Meganius felt wary of molding hastily in the wrong shape.

f;For all that, purpose was seeding in his mind.

^ "There is a mission to which I will sponsor you. Not y Ireland, not yet, but north across the Wall among the *i^Picts. There have been priests there; the Venicones have ,sorne knowledge of Christ. If you can establish a mission %among them, then we might speak of Ireland."

A The young man's headlong passion for godhead con- It cerned Meganius enough to address a large portion of his ^ private prayer to the problem that night.

^ "Did I do wisely in sending him north? Was it guid- ;Cance. or am I simply an old man impatient or fearful of ^younger strength? Stagnant water jealous of the fresh ;Sjpring? My God, my God, this Patricius needs Your spe- J&l care. He would go over a cliff for You. Have I shoved um to the edge? He will never be the zealot he wants to

The Pictish mission was not Patricius' dream but a eague toward it. He had the character and perseverance Q accept it with a glimmer of humility if not full enthusi- sm. When he set out for Corstopitum during the Kalends if July, Meganius' personal relief was not unalloyed with cruple. He'd purged his own headache by giving it to the lets.

44.

Parke Godunn

After six years among the Irish, the Venicones were not a cultural shock to Patricius, although he found them startling enough. Some of them were tattooed over much of their body from the neck down and lived naked to display il, their faces dyed or tattooed to the point of nightmare. The warriors stiffened their hair into bleached quills with birdlime. They lived in colorful sloth, each household of brothers with as many communal wives as they could maintain and fearing very little that went in daylight. With sundown, however, their hearts quailed.

They barred the doors with iron and lived under siege of the evil dark until the sun rose again.

Curiosity opened gates to Patricius. Shamans of the Christ were sdll a novelty to the southern Picts, and he was welcome to preach to them if he didn't mind doing it over dinner or in the fields or while the village elder was pronouncing a sentence of death on someone for any one of a dozen sanguinary reasons. Patricius found it hard at first translating the profundities of Latin into their tongue.

It was not that different from his native Cumbric but far less altered since their ancestors brought it from Gaul.

The Venicones applauded his message of salvation. They were less impressed with his notions of virtue, especially at the riotous feast of Lughnassadh, when Patricius preached of Paul the Apostle and the basic tenets of Christian mar- riage. He stood close to the door of the smoky longhsuse and called on the village eider, Vaco, to relinquish four of his five wives, tragically ignorant of what he demandad.

Picts might fear Faerie as reincarnated spirits of the dead, but they shared one age-old custom with them, from king to village head: descent through the female line, brothers sharing wives in common. To Patricius the custom was as legally vague as it was sinful. He knew and cared nothing for the reasons behind it. Each wife brought into a family linked it specifically within a social pyramid.

Women were carefully chosen and not lightly discarded.

This Briton's teaching was not only radicalbut dangerous.

He exhorted men to celibacy and women to virginity with marriage as a poor alternative, as if a new generation would grow of itself like grass on the heath.

"1 do not like this Christ-man," Vaco counseled with .