The priest stood upon his plank and beamed. 'A man after my own heart. I yield to your wise counsel.'
As the priest climbed down from his suspended walkway again, Cait indicated a solitary scrub-oak tree a little apart from the building site. 'Come, Thea, we will prepare the meal. We can sit in the shade.'
They dismounted and, taking the bundles from behind her saddle, Cait led her sister past the mounds of stone and timber to the tree. 'Thea, there is no time to explain. But whatever Rognvald or I may say – just you consider it the truth. Better yet, Thea, keep your mouth closed.'
'I know the Templar isn't dead,' she said. 'Is that what you mean?'
'Yes, and there is more. I will explain everything later. Believe me, I do not like it any more than you do -'
'I like it just fine,' remarked Alethea glibly. 'And so do you-I saw your face when you told him. You enjoy it! So, do not try to pretend being holy and contrite all of a sudden. I know better.'
'Oh, very well, have it your way,' Cait told her. 'We will talk later. Just see you do not interfere.'
'Why would I interfere? Anyway, he is a fine and handsome man-do you not think so, Cait?'
'He is a priest!' hissed her sister. 'You cannot treat with him like other men. In fact, you must not treat with him at all.'
Alethea shrugged, and they unwrapped the bundle and began spreading the meal beneath the tree. Shortly, the knight and priest finished their inspection of the far-from-finished church, and joined them. 'Bertrano sent you to tell me this?' the priest was saying.
'He did,' answered the knight. 'You see, the archbishop took your concern to heart and sent to the pope for guidance in the matter of the Holy Cup.'
'You know about the Mystic Rose?' wondered Matthias. 'Bertrano told you?'
'Commander Renaud de Bracineaux was Master of Jerusalem,' the knight said. 'He told me of the pope's letter before he died. He asked me to take word to Archbishop Bertrano, and Bertrano has sent me to you.'
The priest nodded. 'I begin to see now. I did not know the archbishop would involve anyone else. I told him in confidence.'
'And so it remains,' Cait quickly assured him. 'I am certain the good archbishop would not have confirmed us in this task if there was a better way.'
'Although you might not know it,' the knight added, 'the Muhammedans have been troubling the region of late. Travel has become very difficult. No doubt the archbishop took this into account.'
'I suppose you are right,' agreed Matthias. 'There has been trouble, true enough. Thanks be to God, we have been spared until now.'
'Why did you think Archbishop Bertrano was dead?' wondered Alethea.
'Thea, not now,' hushed her sister.
Matthias grinned again, his teeth white against the sun-darkened patina of his skin and curly wisp of a beard. 'So long as that cathedral of his remains unfinished, the man is a very plague to all the poor workmen who must labour under his tireless zeal.' He chuckled to himself. 'In truth, it is only a matter of time before one of his harried builders smites him with a hammer, or throws him from a scaffold.'
'Even so,' said Rognvald, 'the cathedral rises day by day. It will be a magnificent church.'
'That it will,' agreed Matthias with a sigh of resignation.
The marked lack of enthusiasm did not go unnoticed. 'You do not approve of such enterprise?' asked Cait.
'Lady, I confess I do not. The expense is beyond belief. For the cost of one cathedral, a thousand churches like mine could be built and a hundred monasteries, convents, and hospitals besides.' He sighed again. 'But cathedrals woo the wealthy, and everywhere kings are vying with one another to see who can build the most ostentatious monuments to their own vanities.'
'The food is ready,' said Alethea pleasantly. She smiled at the tanned and hardy priest. 'Please sit, brother, be our guest.'
Taking up one of the small loaves of bread, the monk raised it on high as if it were the host of the holy sacrament, and blessed it, whereupon they all sat down to a simple, but perfectly satisfying meal. They had brought bread and smoked fish, olives, cheese, and plums. There was watered wine to drink, and while they ate, they listened in enthralled silence as Matthias told an enchanting and wondrous tale.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
'I first learned of the Holy Cup four years ago,' Matthias said, rolling an olive between thumb and forefinger before popping it into his mouth. 'This was in Old Alfonso's day, mind, when the king's peace still held-and I was travelling in the high hills to the east, beyond the Ebro valley, where there are many villages without churches. But in one of the places-a small settlement in the mountains reached by a single sheep trail which is all but impassable most of the year-I found that the people already knew Christ and his teachings.
'I asked how this had come about, and the head man of the village told me that they had preserved this knowledge from long before the Muslims came -'
'But that must be,' said Rognvald breaking in, 'what? Three hundred? Four hundred years?'
The priest nodded; he broke off a bit of bread and chewed thoughtfully. 'You know something of history, my friend. Yes, four hundred years-as you shall see. And for all those hundreds of years the people have remained faithful though surrounded by Muhammedans on every side – like a tiny rock of Christianity in a turbulent Muslim sea.'
'Extraordinary,' breathed Alethea, hanging on the handsome young priest's every word.
'Miraculous,' agreed the monk placidly. 'I confess that, at first, I scarce thought it possible. So, during my sojourn with them, I took every opportunity to question the villagers about this-subtly, of course, for I did not care to make them wary. Gradually, they began to trust me, and to tell me more. And the more I learned, the more extraordinary it became.
'In time, they came to realize my interest in them was genuine, so one night the village chief came to me and asked if I wanted to learn a secret which would answer all my questions. I told him I would welcome it – if he wished to show me. But if it would disturb any of his people in any way, I did not care to know it; for I valued their friendship far more than any secret they might possess.'
Alethea clucked her tongue with impatience at such irrelevant civility. '/ would have made him show me at once.'
'And that,' replied Matthias with a wink, 'is why you would still be waiting to discover the secret. You see, the hill people are not like others. I believe they are the remnant of a more ancient race. They are secretive by nature, but they can be very loyal and they have extremely long memories. They remember the slights and injuries of centuries as if they happened yesterday, and they never forget a kindness.
'So, my answer was just the right one, for the chief looked at me and said, 'I would not show you if I had not already asked everyone. I asked them, and everyone has agreed-even Gydon, and he never agrees to anything!' Well, it was the middle of the night, and I thought he meant to show me in the morning, but he instructed me to tie up my shoes and put on my cloak and, taking neither lantern nor torch, we walked out into the darkness and up into the hills behind the village with nothing but the light of a pale quarter-moon to guide us.
'I saw neither trail nor path; like a blind man, I had to maintain a tight grip on the chief's shoulder to keep from stumbling with every step. We walked a fair distance, or so it seemed, and came at last to a hidden valley- nothing more than a crease between two steep bluffs – and high up on the side of one of the bluffs was the entrance to a cave.
'I could not see it-for all it was dark as the bottom of a well -but he assured me it was there, and by virtue of small steps cut in the bluff, he led me up to the cave. Though it was a tight squeeze through the rough doorway, once inside the chamber we could stand upright. My guide knew the cave well, and by means of some materials left there, he soon lit an oil lamp so we might view what he had come to show me.'
'What was it?' asked Alethea, rapt, her eyes gleaming.
'A small altar had been cut in the rock at the back of the cave, and the entire wall whitewashed and painted with the sign of the cross so as to make a sort of shrine. This painting was of a delicate and intricate craft the like of which I had seen but once before-in an old, old text in the scriptorium of the monastery where I received my
