me toast you some cheese-there is only one toasting-fork. I fear. I'm not much used to getting visitors-'
There didn't seem to be anything they could do to stop him, so Rune made herself useful by pouring cider, while Talaysen cut the bread and cheese. The dogs looked up hopefully at the proceedings, and Rune finally asked if they needed to be fed as well.
'The greedy louts would gladly eat anything that hits the floor, and look for more,' Father Bened said, as he laid a second slab of toasted cheese, just beginning to melt, on a slice of bread. 'I've fed them, but they'll try to convince you otherwise. I could feed them a dozen times a day, until their eyes were popping out, and they'd still try to tell you they were starving.'
'What on Earth do you feed them?' Talaysen asked, staring at the dogs as if fascinated. 'And where did you get them? They're stag-hounds, aren't they? I thought only Sires raised stag-hounds.'
Father Bened ducked his head a little, and looked guilty. 'Well-the truth is, they aren't mine, really. They belong to a-ah-a friend. I-ah-keep them for him. He comes by every few days with meat and bones for them; the rest of the time I feed them fish or whatever rabbits I can-ah-that happen to die.'
Rune began to get a glimmering of what was going on. It was a good thing no one had ever questioned the good Father; he was a terrible liar. 'And if the meat your friend brings them is deer, it's just really lucky that he found the dead carcass before it was too gone to be of use, hmm?' she said. Father Bened flushed even redder.
'Father Bened,' she said with amusement, 'I do believe that you're a poacher! And so is this 'friend' of yours!'
'A poacher? Well, now I wouldn't go that far-' he said indignantly. 'Sire Thessalay claims more forest land hereabouts than he has any right to! I've petitioned the Sires and the barons through the Church I don't know how many times to have someone come out and have a look, but no one ever seems to read my letters. My friend and I are simply-doing the work of the Church. Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked-'
'With venison, cony, and buckskin and fur,' Talaysen supplied. 'I take it that a lot of the small-holders out here go hungry in the winter, else?'
The Father nodded soberly. 'When the Sire claimed the forest lands, he also laid claim to lands that had been used for grazing and for pig-herding. Many of the small-holders lost half their means of support. You're Free Bards, aren't you?' At Talaysen's nod, he continued. 'I thought you might be. A year ago last winter one of your lot stayed with me for a bit. A good man; called himself 'Starling' if I mind me right. I told him a little about our problem; he went out with my friend a few times to augment food supplies.'
'I know him,' Talaysen replied. 'From a small-holder family himself.'
'I thought as much.' Father Bened shrugged, and laid out the third slice of cheese, then wasted no time in digging into his portion. Rune picked up the bread and nibbled gingerly; the cheese was still quite hot, and would burn her mouth if she wasn't careful. It tasted like goat-cheese; it was easier to raise goats on marginal land than cattle, especially if your grazing lands had been taken from you.
'I'm city-bred, myself,' the Father continued. 'When I was a youngster, the Church was very special to me, and I grew up with this vision of what it must be like-full of men and women who'd gotten rid of what was bad in them, and had their hearts set on God. Always felt as if the Church was calling me; went straight into Orders as soon as I could.'
He sighed. Talaysen nodded sympathetically. 'I think the same thing happened to you that happened to my cousin Ardis.'
'If she had a crisis of conscience, yes,' Father Bened replied sadly. 'That was when I found out that the Church was just like anyplace else; just as many bad folk as good, and plenty that were indifferent. Since I hadn't declared for an Order yet, I traveled a little to see if it was simply that I'd encountered an unusual situation. I came to the conclusion that I hadn't, and I almost left the Church.'
'Ardis decided to fight from within,' Talaysen told him. 'She got assigned to the Justiciars.'
'I decided the same, but to work from below, not above,' Father Bened replied. 'There were more of the bad and indifferent kind when you were in the city, in the big cloisters attached to the cathedrals, or so it seemed to me. So I got myself assigned to the Order of Saint Clive; it's a mendicant order that tends to wayside shrines. I thought that once I was out in the country, I'd be able to do more good.'
'Why?' Rune asked. 'It seems to me if you were city-bred you'd have a hard time of it out in the wilds. You must have spent all your time trying to keep yourself fed and out of the weather-'
'I didn't think of that,' he admitted, and laughed. 'And it was a good thing for me that God takes care of innocent fools. My Prior took pity on me and assigned me here; this cottage was already built, and my predecessor had been well taken care of by the locals. I simply settled in and took up where he'd left off.'
'What do you think of the Priest in Brughten?' Talaysen asked carefully. Father Bened's face darkened.
'Father Bened can only say that his Brother in the Church could be a little more charitable,' he replied carefully. 'But I am told that there is a poacher of rabbits who roams these woods that has called him a thief who preys on widows and orphans, a liar, and a toady to anyone with a title or a fat purse. And the poacher has heard that he goes so far as to deny the sacraments to those he feels are too lowly to afford much of an offering.'
'I'd say the poacher is very perceptive,' Talaysen replied, then described his encounter with the Brughten Priest, though not the part where he revealed himself to be Gwydain. Father Bened listened sympathetically, and shook his head at the end.
'I can only say that such behavior is what I have come to expect of him,' the Priest said. 'But at least I can offer a remedy to your problem. Friends, if all you wanted was to be wed-well, I have the authority. I don't have even a chapel, but if this room will suit you-'
'A marsh would suit me better than a cathedral right now,' Rune said firmly. 'And that fat fool in Brughten may have joy of his. This room will be fine.'
Father Bened beamed at her, at Talaysen, and even at the dogs, who thumped their tails on the floor, looked hopefully for a morsel of cheese, and panted.
'Wonderful!' he exclaimed. 'Do you know, you'll be my first wedding? How exciting! Here, finish your dinner, and let me hunt up my book of offices-' He crammed the last of his bread and cheese into his mouth, and jumped up from his chair to rummage through one of the cupboards until he came to a little leather-covered book. 'I should have some contracts in here, too, if the beetles haven't gotten to them-' he mumbled, mostly to himself, it seemed. 'Ah! Here they are!'
He emerged with a handful of papers, looked them over, and found the one he wanted. It had been nibbled around the edges, but was otherwise intact. He placed it on the table next to the cider, and leafed through the book.
'Here it is. Wedding.' He looked up. 'I'm supposed to give you a great long lecture at this point about the sanctity of marriage, and the commitment it means to each of you, but you both strike me as very sensible people. I don't think you need a lecture from me, who doesn't know a thing about women. And I don't expect you're doing this because you don't have anything else to do tonight. So, we'll skip the lecture, shall we, and go right into the business?'
'Certainly,' Talaysen said, and took Rune's hand. She nodded and smiled at Father Bened, who smiled back, and began.
* * *
'Well, did that suit you?' Talaysen asked, as they spread their blankets in Father Bened's hardly used spare room. There was no furniture, the light was from one of their own candles, and the only sounds were the snores of Father Bened's mastiffs in the other room and the spattering of rain on the roof.
'Practical, short, to the point, and yes, it suited me,' Rune replied, carefully spreading their blankets to make one larger bed. It practically filled the entire room. 'There's a duly signed sheet of parchment in your pack that says we're married, and the next town we go through, we'll drop the Church copy off at the clerk's office.' She stood up and surveyed her work. 'Now, are you happy?'
Talaysen sighed. 'If I told you how happy I was, you probably wouldn't believe it-'
Rune turned, smiled, and moved closer to him, until there was less than the width of a hair between them. 'So why don't you show me?' she breathed.
He did.
It was a long time before they slept.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
