I rose and stretched. I had behaved idiotically with Theodora as well as with Joachim, but it was always so good to be with her that the attractions of spending the evening at her house far outweighed the embarrassment of facing her.
And then I saw a lone figure striding across the meadow. He was dressed in black, so that his person and his long shadow seemed to merge into one. He walked with his head down and hands behind his back, paying no attention to the Romneys’ camp or anything else.
Cyrus! I thought, heading rapidly toward him. Now was my chance to confront him.
But it was not the mysterious miracle-worker from the Eastern Kingdoms. It was the bishop.
Joachim glanced up as I approached. He gave a start as though surprised to see me still in Caelrhon, or perhaps to see anyone. But then he nodded gravely in my direction and kept walking.
At least he did not seem frightened of me-but then he hadn’t this morning either. I fell into step beside him. Something must be very wrong for the bishop to be out here alone, without any accompanying priests, without guards or servants.
We walked in silence for several minutes. “I had not expected to meet you, Daimbert,” he said at last, “but perhaps it is only appropriate that I do. For it is because of our conversation earlier that I have spent much of today searching my soul and have now come to a very difficult and terrible decision. For I know that God first summoned me to the office of bishop, and it is because of my own sins that I must now resign.”
I stared at him, stunned. What could my wild accusations have done to him? Or could he- But I dismissed this idea before it could even form.
“The devil is even more subtle than I had imagined,” Joachim continued, soberly and quietly. “I told you this morning that I knew well my own sins, but I was wrong. I have sinned, and sinned willingly, in ways that I kept hidden even from myself. It is only fitting that I tell you first, Daimbert, before announcing my decision to the cathedral chapter.”
“Uh, I thought bishops had chaplains of their own to whom they were supposed to confess their sins,” I mumbled. At this point, tired, humiliated, and deeply worried about Yurt, I didn’t think I was in much of a position to help a bishop through a spiritual crisis.
Joachim paid no attention to my mumblings if he even heard them. “For you were right. It is especially against you that I have sinned.” He had been avoiding my gaze, but he suddenly turned toward me, his enormous deep-set eyes darkly shadowed as the sun sank toward the horizon. “I began wondering why I should have become so wrathful at your accusations, when it should have been clear that these were only the product of the fears that lurk in midnight dreams. But in turning my thoughts over I realized that it was the wrath of a sin that fears exposure.”
We had stopped walking and stood facing each other. Joachim was taller than I, and I had to look up at him. The breeze fluttered his vestments around his ankles and stirred his hair.
“You distrusted Cyrus when I first told you about him,” he said. “And then today you said that it was my sins that had allowed a demon to enter the cathedral. Although I am still certain that Cyrus is no demon, you were right that a bishop’s sins can put his entire church in mortal peril. If I can no longer sift out evil from good, then I cannot in conscience lead my flock.
“As I told you, Daimbert,” he continued quietly, “I have never touched Theodora. And in eschewing sins of the flesh, I had managed to persuade myself of my own purity. Of course I spoke with her often about her duties as seamstress for the cathedral, and even, in quiet moments that each of us might take amidst our responsibilities, we would share a cup of tea and talk about you. I was happy, I told myself, that my oldest friend had won the love of such a woman, and that the two of you could prosper together in chaste friendship, the parents of a fine little girl. But today I have had to ask myself: did I counsel Theodora in physical purity only so that I did not have to think of her loving another man as she could never love me?”
I had to interrupt him, even if he was giving voice to ideas I had unwillingly had myself. I could see his eyes now within the shadows of their sockets, and they burned like dark coals. “Joachim, you’re getting yourself all upset for nothing. None of your cathedral priests will understand what you’re talking about. Theodora has always admired you, and you, quite naturally, appreciate her fine qualities. I can’t believe that a bishop immediately falls into sin if he thinks well of a woman.”
He took a deep breath and held my gaze with his as though determined to push through a reluctance to reveal something deeply disgraceful. “But I have not yet told you all. When you first went to the guest chamber to sleep, leaving me with my thoughts, I was almost amused, thinking that I could well understand your murderous intentions. After all, I told myself, for a woman like Theodora a man might well do anything to keep her from pain or harm, even gladly kill another in the full knowledge that he would damn himself for eternity, world without end. And then I listened to what I was thinking. Horrified at myself, I resolved I should never see her again. It was when I realized how much I would miss her that I knew I must leave Caelrhon at once and become a hermit.”
“You can’t be a hermit,” I said weakly before the intensity of his gaze. “You’re the bishop.”
“And in my misery and sin,” he said, looking away at last and seeming to pay no attention to anything I said, “I thought this afternoon to walk to the hermitage in that deep valley at the east end of Yurt. If I started now, I told myself, I could be there in two days. I would leave my vestments and episcopal ring for the Romneys to find. If they kept the ring for themselves-well, it had become too tainted for the next bishop to want anyway. Naked I would reach the valley and beg the hermit with tears of penitence to accept me as a novice.”
The picture of Joachim walking naked across two kingdoms in order to shave his head and become an apprentice hermit was almost too much for me. Shoulders quivering, I managed to suppress hysterical laughter. The bishop would probably only consider it appropriate punishment for me to laugh at him on top of everything else, but I could not let it out. The thought of the hermit of the shrine of the Cranky Saint, a man who had been a ragged apprentice hermit himself when I first met him years ago, did not help.
“That was why I was so startled when you walked up to me, Daimbert,” Joachim continued after a moment, looking out to what was shaping up into a rather fine sunset. “You appeared like the voice of conscience, telling me by your very presence that a bishop cannot walk away from his duties without even telling anyone that he is going, and that to escape without confessing my sins would be only to embrace them. My true penitence must come in facing my cathedral chapter. They will be surprised when they hear that their bishop-who, I have led them to believe in my own sinful complacency, is a virtuous man-has fallen so far.”
I knew I had to talk him out of it if I could only think of what to say. Somehow my own insanity this morning must have infected him. “Don’t do anything you may regret without giving it proper thought,” I said inadequately and out of my own experience.
Joachim turned, and we started slowly back toward the city. The sun had slipped behind the horizon, and the whole world now was shadowed. “Would it be better to tell my chapter this evening, in a privacy that would not disrupt the simple faith which Christians have in their priests,” he asked, “or would it be best to announce it publicly at the high altar tomorrow morning? Would my sins be more truly atoned for if I suffered public humiliation, or am I only taking a perverse pride in how far I have fallen?”
Considering that I did not feel he had fallen at all I had trouble answering him. But then a light flickering in the distance before us caught my eyes.