Fiachra continued up the slope and into the Collegium. He stood listening at the door of Brenos’ office for a moment, and then gave the three quick raps that identified his presence.
“Enter Fiachra,” the abbot called out.
When the secretary crossed to the desk, Brenos was reading a letter. Fiachra observed his gaunt face while he waited. The brown eyes under thick, dark brows were extraordinarily intelligent, and the man might have been considered handsome were it not for the unflattering ear-to-ear tonsure shaved across his skull, that left a fringe of long hair growing at the back.
Brenos finally looked up. “This is Patricus’s report from Hibernia. Have a lector read it at the evening meal.”
Fiachra said nothing. He knew about the missionary who had studied at Germanus’ school, then immediately been ordained a bishop and sent off to preach on the island of Hibernia—all because of a dream he claimed to have had. The monk listened in sullen silence as his abbot read aloud.
I, Patricus, am one born out of time like the Blessed Paul, yet by the will of God ordained shepherd to convert a pagan flock, and sent to reveal to them the good news of their salvation.
“What arrogance!” Fiachra blurted out, his face flushed with resentment. “The man dares compare himself to the Apostle? And he calls himself Patricus now? His Celtic name of Padraic isn’t good enough for him?”
“Caritas, Brother Fiachra, be charitable,” Brenos gently admonished, realizing his secretary was venting a measure of envy that would have to be disciplined. “The name was given him by our patron Germanus, when he elevated him to the episcopacy. Let me continue. ‘It is my joy to report the success of my earlier efforts in converting the followers of the chieftain Eirinn, although not without great humiliation to me. The pagans ridicule my tonsure, which I accept as a sign of the Nazarene’s humiliation on being mocked with a thorn coronet. Tailcenn they call me, in our language ‘Baldhead,’ amid much laughter. Yet they are in awe of my bishop’s vestments and crozier. The staff was left me, you will recall, on the island of…I have forgotten the name…in the Tyrrhenian Sea, by the Nazarene himself.’”
“By the Nazarene?” Fiachra burst out again. “Th…the insolence of the man! Even Paul never claimed—”
“Fiachra, Fiachra,” Brenos admonished with a shushing motion of his finger. “Are you harboring envy in your soul?”
“Pardon, my Abbot,” he mumbled, bending his head low. “I will do an extended penance on the stone cross, to atone for my pride.”
“We’ll talk of it later.” Brenos gave him a thin smile. “Listening to the rest of this letter may be penance enough. ‘I am opposed in my work by the druid priests who keep their countrymen in the darkness of error. Two of them attempted, by magic, to conceal my preaching in a mantle of darkness. I had gone to a wood called Focluit in answer to a dream about King Amalgaid and his seven sons. As I was teaching about the Blessed Trinity, the druids caused a sudden darkness to appear.’”
“A lowland fog,” Fiachra muttered. “I’ve seen it creep along the Sinnenus valley like a gray cat mousing in a barn.”
Brenos ignored him and continued reading, “‘To dispel it, I struck a stone with the tip of my crozier and the ground began to burn.’”
“A spark into a dry peat bog,” Fiachra scoffed.
“It divided itself into twelve fires, one for each of the Holy Apostles. Lo! The darkness fled and with it the perfidious druids. The priests could not even evoke their god, Crom Cruach, because I had thrown down the idol on the Plain of Magh Slecht five years earlier—”
Fiachra suddenly gave a sharp, guttural cry, then pulled his coarse robe over his head and lay face down on the stone floor, naked except for a swaddled loincloth. “I cannot tolerate the man’s boasting,” he croaked, stretching his arms out as if on a cross. “Punish me, Abbot.”
Brenos did not order him up. It might be better to let him lie in that pose until he begins to shiver. He looked at the thin body, whose pale skin was speckled with brownish moles and traces of old insect bites, and was pleased that Fiachra did not cultivate lice colonies, as did several other monks. Brenos had cautioned against penances that sapped strength, even while practicing them himself during the week that commemorated the Passion of the Nazarene.
The abbot noticed his secretary’s body convulse slightly, and found it hard to understand how some monks could be sexually attracted to each other. Hibernian bishops were wise in permitting marriage among their presbyters, to forestall homoerotic liaisons. At the same time he realized that, in the past, Celtic warriors had considered it honorable to be loved by men of the same social class. Women had given themselves freely to the bravest fighter, and children born of such unions were raised by the clan without stigma. The Roman Church had changed all that.
Patricus the Briton might be doing good work by planting the vineyard of faith in Hibernia, Brenos mused, but he was putting in fragile canes that were in danger of being uprooted by the druids he mentioned. Ciallanus, on the other hand, was a native of the island and knew its fickle people. With more sense than Patricus, he had
