to repay the agony of his sacrifice by which we all are saved. Enter, and join our feast of love.' Father Ramphion's broad gesture within had a compulsion to it as real as if it had created a suction in the air by its passage. Bemused and still uncertain, Perennius obeyed.
The interior of the spire was lighted primarily by rush-candles - pithy reeds dipped in grease. There were good-sized windows in the building's upper levels. Because the sun was low, the windows could only throw rectangles on the curved surface of the wall across from them. The church was designed much the way Perennius had assumed from the exterior. Eight thick columns supported the second level; four separate columns reached up the full forty feet to the base of the third. The belfry which was perched on top of even that must have been constructed of wood, because there was no evidence of the additional bracing which that structure would have required if it were stone. Though the church looked massively large from the outside, the columns filled its interior and gave it a claustrophobic feeling despite its volume.
What Perennius had not expected - though it might have been the norm for Christian churches - was the fact that all the stonework inside had been brightly painted. The porous limestone provided a suitable matrix for the paint, and the rock's natural soft yellow color was used both for
backgrounds and for the flesh of the figures. Those figures were painted in stiff, full-frontal poses which seemed to reflect local taste as much as they did the crudity of the efforts. While the paintings were not the work of trained artists, their execution displayed some of the same raw power that suffused the architecture of the church itself. The bright colors and the depictions of calm-faced men undergoing gruesome tortures affected Perennius as real events were not always able to do. The agent kept remembering Calvus' face and the way it retained its surface placidity during her multiple rape.
It was Calvus herself who shook the agent from his grim imaginings. 'How would they have gotten high enough to do that painting?' the bald woman asked in Latin. She gestured with a flick of her chin instead of raising her hand.
'Ah, that?' the agent said. 'Scaffolding.' He had to swallow the 'of course' that his tongue had almost tacked on. Calvus did not ask questions to which the answers would have been obvious if she had thought. There were surprising gaps in the traveller's experience, but her mental precision was as great as her physical strength. 'Would have needed it just to build the walls,' the agent went on. He wondered how on earth the tall woman had thought the stones had been lifted into place. Perhaps there were people - where - she came from who could make stones fly. She had denied that she herself could move anything of real size without touching it, but . . . 'You're right, they seem to have built this without so much as a staircase integral to it.'
Perennius was thinking as a military man. Any tendencies the architect - if that were not too formal a term - had toward military design were exhausted when the bottom level was pierced with arrow slits. A rope ladder served as access to the belfry, adequate for religious ends and as a watchtower. If there was no easy way to use the height of the upper levels against putative assault, then there seemed to be no reason to do so either. The thick walls, with the modicum of offensive capacity which the slits gave, would suffice against raiders. A real military force would make short work of an isolated tower, however strong it was individually. The waste of capacity still prompted an inward sneer. The agent thought that perhaps it was that from which arose his growing sense of unease.
'Herakles, Legate,' Sestius called cheerfully from behind him, 'This isn't the sort of place I expected to find out in the sticks. Or the kind of spread I thought we'd be offered, neither. Hey, what do you suppose they've got for wine?'
'Quintus,' the agent said. His voice was as flat as a bowstring. 'Bag it. Pretend you're at a formal dinner given by the Emperor. We need the help of these people.'
The centurion winked and clapped Perennius on the shoulder.
The thick columns had trefoil cross-sections which increased their resemblance to walls. Perennius had the impression that he was in a spacious maze. Ramphion himself guided the strangers to a table beneath the belfry. There was no aisle from the door to the other side of the circular building. Those entering the church had immediately to dodge one of the outer ring of pillars. There was another such pillar in alignment across the room. It might be barely possible to see from the outer wall at one point to the equivalent point across the building, but the focus of any mass services would have to be the center of the room rather than the side.
Villagers were entering and filling the long trestle tables set up between the two rings of columns. The movement was not quite formal enough to be a procession, but many of the local people were singing. The agent was not sure whether a number of separate hymns were being intoned at the same time, or whether the acoustics of the room were so terrible that they created muted cacophony from a single work. The drab, joyous villagers flitted among the brilliantly-painted stones like sparrows in a flower garden.
Perennius paused and waved on the other members of his party as they followed the village priest. Sabellia was at the end of the line. The agent fell in step beside her and asked in Celtic, 'Where's the altar? You have one for sacrifice, don't you?'
'Not for sacrifice,' the woman snapped. 'Christ was the world's sacrifice.' But her face promptly pursed into the look of uncertainty it had shown before the agent's gaffe. 'It must be movable,' Sabellia said. 'The building isn't like any church I've been in. Anything I've been in.'
'Sit down, guests,' Father Ramphion said with a two-handed gesture. 'Accept the thanks of this valley which your presence blesses.'
The central table was, like those around it, a cloth-draped panel supported by two trestles. There was nothing of civilized formality about the meal, with guests reclining on couches around a small table filled with delicacies. At the other tables, villagers sat on benches. In the center, six stools surrounded the table. Father Ramphion had positioned himself at the end further from the hidden door. Perennius nodded and took the chair across from the local man. When the remainder of the party had ' seated themselves along the sides, the priest clapped his hands. The singing and shuffling of feet on stone floors ceased at once. Muffled echoes continued to rasp among the odd angles for long seconds thereafter.
Villagers joined hands with their neighbors to either side. Those who were standing moved into the gaps between tables and joined them so that the whole room was linked by a double ring of hands. Father Ramphion made a ritual gesture, crossing his torso. Then he lifted his eyes and his hands. 'Almighty God,' he prayed in a voice which the room made reedy, 'we thank you for blessing us, your servants, by sending the Anointed and Dioscholias his apostle into our midst to make known your will. For thirty-three years we have kept your ordinances that the Anointed may return when the way has been made smooth for him. Continue to bless your servants, and bless these strangers to your use. Let it be so.'
Sixty-odd feet above the table, the bell clanged twice. The dim air quivered among the heavy columns. The priest relaxed. 'Welcome, strangers, to our feast of love,' he said in a normal voice. When he sat down, the cheerful bustle resumed all around.
While the offered meal was not of urban refinement, neither was it a simple one. The skeleton of it was wheat bread and chunks of lamb roasted on skewers. Both dishes were marvellously fresh and delicious. Beside those staples of a rural feast, there were a score of different cheese, egg, and vegetable courses, most of them offered cold. The one most to Perennius' taste was a collation of cucumbers and cultured goat's milk touched with additional herbs. The agent noted Sabellia's eyes open in surprise. Her tongue spread the morsel she had taken carefully around her mouth as she separated flavors and piquancies. Her expression was appreciative.
There was no difference Perennius could see between the servitors and the villagers eating at the other tables. They all wore homespun and had the calluses and sunburn of people who worked outdoors. Those who carried food and water among the diners did so with enthusiasm if not the polished obsequiousness of men and women whose whole lives were sent in ministering to others. As the meal progressed, those who had first been doing the serving sat down to eat. They were replaced by some who had eaten already.
Sestius noticed the situation, too. He pointed with a cheese-laden wedge of bread and remarked, 'Father, where's all the slaves? Don't tell me you all work your plots alone out here.' Sestius' Cilician was rusty, but it was still more serviceable than the agent's own.
Ramphion smiled. 'We have no slaves in this valley, no. But then, we have no private plots of land, either. We decided, our forefathers - ' Someone came by with a bowl of chives in yogurt. The priest dipped some out with his index and middle fingers, licked the taste off, and waved the dish down to the others at the table. Perennius noticed that each dish was offered first to Father Ramphion, and that he always sampled it openly - even ostentatiously - before the strangers were asked to try it.
