Padrec touched the cross. "Call it my last heresy.

% Rome need never know."

- "Not from me at any rate," Meganius promised. "Why, ,^ Sochet?"

Padrec had settled unconsciously into that stillness ^ never learned in Auxerre. "Do you think it is Christ's i death I remember in this?"

*; Meganius remembered Malgon and eloquent pictures in the earth. "No, I suppose not."

"Chi-Rho is Christ in symbol. It was on that dirty cross that I saw the reality. What He tried to say and how well we are made to hear it. Some of us. Better men than me. From the cross it was that I was taught. It is not for other men but myself. And you know the kind of gauds Rome will be sending."

Meganius hid his private disappointment. He'd planned to send something himself, a Chi-Rho in enamel and gold or even a mosaic worker to adorn the first new chapeT.

^'Indulge me, your grace," Padrec smiled at him. "My sanctity is just out of the press and a bit stiff. Well, now:

it's a fine day to start, isn't it?"

400 Parks Godwin

"Sochet, don't put me off. I'm serious. There is no bishop in Britain who wears such a sign or who would even consider it. You're not a hot young torch of a priest anymore, hooting after truant souls. You are a bishop. It is questionable taste-your grace."

A bishop with an odd, distant gaze, used to hills and horizons, never to be at home in anything like a house again. "You have my reasons."

"Reasons?" Meganius put an arm around Padrec's shoulder and led him to the open gateway and the waiting cart. "It's you will be wearing it, Sochet. If Christ were hanged, would you wear a noose about your neck?"

Padrec embraced him once more and sprang up onto the cart. "Why not? The Irish would."

He gathered up the traces, but paused before starting up the oxen. "There! Will you look at the dazzle of that sky, Caius Meganius? it almost puts your peacocks to shame."

In the ports of Arran where the galleys from the Middle Sea loaded and disgorged,

there were many languages spoken, but the only universal tongue was money. The shipowners dealt in realities, the more so here in the decaying north, where hard cash was much scarcer.

Milius Apullo of Massilia owned not a galley but a ship of the newest kind, a covered afterdeck, ample cargo space, mainsail with intricate shrouding, and a new fore- sail that could half-reef quickly in a stiff gale or spread full and cut days off his time to landfall.

"No wallowing, not my ship. Turn her over, you'll not see the rot of some of these other seagoing sows. She's scraped regular as I pray. I know you've got gold, 1 see it.

Do you people understand what I m saying? What do you want of my ship?"

The ship itself they wanted, and that quickly. Milius had never seen Faerie before, though of course all seafar- ing men heard and traded fabulous stories. They didn't look fabulous, more ... he couldn't quite find the word, but it wouldn't be 'warm.' They had a way of just standing there, looking dead at you as if they'd been sown, sprouted, and grown on the spot. It was belter to talk business.

Milius Apullo. My ship's for cargo hire. What do you transport?"

Themselves, they told him. A few ponies and sheep.

"Oh, well, you realize that's expensive. Have to take on supplies for passengers, ballast cargo. Very expensive."

403.

404.

Parks Godwin

The woman's hand passed over the rough table be- tween them. Lying on the planks, lustrous and undeni- able, was the fattest garnet Milius ever saw. Interesting.

even of some value, but not near enough for . . .

Milius looked again and swallowed hard. The stone was not garnet but a ruby. His eyes widened as one of the little men, the one with the limp, solemnly laid a heavy gold trading stick between Milius and the ruby.

"Well." He cleared his throat. "Well, now."

The other man, the sleety-eyed one, put down a sec- ond bar to bracket the stone. Then another woman, the tastiest of the lot, reached into the bag, which must have come from Croesus' treasure-house, and drew out two more trading sticks. The woman who obviously led them completed the golden square and spoke to Milius.

"Be square, the tallfolk shape of things."

Milius thought nimbly. What he saw would pay for the voyage, but there must be more where that came from. None of them looked like they'd ever been near the sea.

"Enough." He clapped his hands together with a show of expansiveness and business well concluded. "That will do it. Now, where do I take you? Massilia? Antioch?"

More than a little disturbing, all of them, they were unearthly. The cold-eyed man with the bow leaned over the table toward him. "West."

"I see. Ireland. Leinster?"

A shaking of the dark head. "West."

"The western coast, then? Conaill? Shannon?"

"More west."

"West of Ireland?" Milius regarded the weird group and their round-eyed children, digesting the magnitude of their request. "There is nothing west of Ireland."

They didn't understand or didn't care. At the edge of the world sea the water boiled and whirled in a race that made the swiftest rapids look like a garden pool, didn't they under-

While Milius talked, the woman began to double the golden frame about the ruby.

-stand? Milius faltered. He hefted one of the bars.

Full weight.

"West," said the woman, then whispered something to 405.

be translated by the man with the bow. "Gern-y-fhain says thee knows nae the shape of the world. Water does nae boil at edge but turns calm." Malgon hovered over the ship's master as if expecting him to rise and be about it.

-**Can go now?"

Well, it was a hard world for sailing men. even harder for those who didn't know fortune when it lay before (hem. Such people would be no problem, not to the crew Milius was already recruiting in his experienced calcula- tion. He needed ten men; five had disappeared the night (hey dropped anchor at Brodick- Nothing new there; men were always to be had on Arran, especially for a very short voyage like this.

"Gold!" he exhorted the new men, most of whom were known to him. "Gold, feel it. Look at this stone.

Here, give it back. We'll coast them down the channel, then two nights out, three at most, when they're bent over the rail and bringing up the bottom of their bellies . . .

then."

Preposterous. Milius was more amazed than amused.

The woman said he didn't know the shape of the world?

Due west, was it? Ah, yes, of a certainty.