Magnus crushed out another cheroot, his lips downturned in judgement and scepticism.
‘He hasn’t given you freedom though, has He?’ said Magnus. ‘He hasn’t delivered you from the hands of your enemy. And He hasn’t saved you from slaughter. You’ll pardon my ignorance if I don’t see your hands overflowing with His gifts.’
‘The value of things changes when you live in the care of the Creator. The things you’re talking about have no value to me. The Creator might give them to me or He might not. It doesn’t matter because He has already filled my life up. I am content and rich beyond your imagining.’
Magnus nodded and stood up. He stretched his massive arms behind his back and audibly cracked a few joints into place before walking over to Collins.
‘I’m surprised, you know,’ he said in a matter of fact tone. ‘You’ve really made me think about things differently. I thought you were just some lunatic that had enough energy to fool the stupid people of this town. But you’re a lot more than that, Collins. You’re intelligent. You’re passionate. And you’re dangerous. You’ve taught me a lesson about myself and you have, against all the odds, changed my mind about what I’m going to do with you.’
He looked at Collins’s face, still so placid and open. The man was listening but he didn’t seem to have taken in that Magnus might be hinting about some kind of leniency, some kind of arrangement. He wasn’t, but it annoyed him that it didn’t seem to matter to Collins one way or the other. The man’s face was lean, serene and bright. Magnus smashed one hammer of a fist straight into it and felt the nose break and flatten beneath his knuckles with minimal damage to himself. The chair sailed over backwards spilling Collins onto the floor and separating him from the old blanket. Magnus expected him to lie there and check himself over before begging not to be hit again.
Collins’s naked body rippled and tightened as he rolled over backwards with the momentum of the spill. He was on his feet and half crouched ready to defend himself before Magnus had finished inspecting his knuckles.
It was a short walk from the office of records back to the main cluster of Welfare buildings but the way she felt, it was an effort to return. Why they hadn’t located the archives nearer the rest of the Welfare offices and Central Cathedral she couldn’t understand. She pulled her gowns closer around her, struggling to get warm again after hours of studying records. It was hard to tell now whether she was shivering with cold or because of her sickness. Her stomach kept up its jagged griping; worsened, she felt, by her frustration.
The records had revealed nothing of any use to the investigation. There had been two hundred births in the town the year that the baby Richard Shanti died. Of those, thirty were stillborn. Twelve mothers died in childbirth. Of the surviving children, only eight – a very few – were orphaned by poverty, calamity or neglect. It had been a good year for the population. However, each of the orphans was accounted for in the records and nothing seemed out of place. There was certainly no connection between any of them and the Shanti line.
Right now Parson Mary Simonson planned to obtain eight warrants, one for each of the orphans, and visit each of them to be certain nothing underhand was going on.
But first, an audience with the Grand Bishop of the Welfare.
The steps that led up to Central Cathedral were fifty yards broad at the base, narrowing as they neared the tall entrance. Sixty steps. She waited at the bottom composing herself, gathering breath, and then began the ascent. Her muscles complained, her chest laboured, cold was replaced by a sudden prickly sweat. Three times she stopped. Parsons passed up and down to her left and right. None helped.
On gaining the cavernous main entrance, she rested again with her back to the ornate stone of the pointed arch rising high above her. The great wooden doors had long ago rotted beyond use and been removed. Now the Cathedral’s entrance yawned like a huge toothless mouth whilst the Parsons scuttled in and out of the darkness beyond.
She queued outside the Grand Bishop’s chambers with many other Parsons of varying rank. Most of them spent no more than a couple of minutes inside and so the queue moved swiftly. Just before it was her turn to go in, her stomach twisted and tightened around its hub of spikes and she put a fist there to control it. Sweat broke again, not long dried from her trek up the steps.
The spasm was still in control when the Grand Bishop’s door opened and her name was called from within.
She hid it as best she could, knelt before him and kissed his hand.
‘Mary,’ he said. ‘It’s good to see you.’
It was good to see him too, as far as looking went, but the reason she was there made seeing him no good at all.
‘And you,’ she managed.
She raised her head to look at him and saw the man that had inspired her into the Welfare years before.
‘You may rise now, Mary.’
He was looking at her with concern. She must have been kneeling there for longer than she thought. She tried to stand and understood why she hadn’t already – it was a task even to lift her own weight. Seeing her struggle, the Bishop offered her his hand again and this time she took it and used it to haul herself upright. She smiled but she knew he could see past it.
‘Why don’t we sit for a while,’ he said.
‘What about all the others?’
‘They can wait. That’s what the queue’s for.’
Instead of sitting behind his desk and keeping her on the opposite side, he walked her over to the fireplace where a few sticks were almost burnt out. Still, the warmth was what she needed; it eased the pain off a little to be so comforted. They sat facing each other on straight-backed wooden chairs in which the woven straw seats had been replaced by rough planks.
‘I’ve been keeping watch over you in my way,’ he said after they’d been quiet for a few moments. ‘I’m told you’re not yourself these last few weeks.’
It was months but she didn’t bother to correct him.
‘I need… guidance,’ she said.
‘Whatever I can give, I give gladly.’
‘There’s a… not a problem exactly, but an issue with someone who is a great server of the town. I am not sure how to proceed. If I pursue the issue, there’s a chance I’ll discover an irregularity.’
‘How serious an irregularity?’
‘Serious enough to revoke status.’
‘I see.’
‘My concern is that the individual in question, judging by his exemplary service to us all, is entirely unaware that the irregularity exists. Even if my concerns turn out to be justified, this individual may have no knowledge that his very existence is… blasphemous. My question is: do I allow this situation to exist and hope that no one else ever discovers it or do I take my investigations further and risk destroying a man who, in his own mind, is entirely without fault?’
The Grand Bishop’s face didn’t change outwardly but she could see that her question had caused him to access some deeper part of himself. His eyes still made contact with hers but were focussed somewhere else, somewhere far beyond his chambers.
‘What does your heart tell you?’
‘My heart tells me that if a wrong has been perpetrated, it was by someone other than this individual. If he has no knowledge of what has gone before, then he is as innocent as he believes himself to be.’
‘And what does your God tell you?’
‘My God tells me that only townsfolk may feast upon the Chosen. Only townsfolk may undertake the husbandry of the Chosen. Regardless of this individual’s impression of himself, my God tells me that if he is not one of us, then his status must be revoked. He must face the truth and all it brings with it.’
The Grand Bishop nodded very slightly and smiled to himself. Then the elsewhere-focussed stare returned to his face. He remained silent for some time.