with loveliness. Yet, to every rose, a thorn.
Fra Danielus considered also this. Like the thorn, it was perceptible, (in the paper he had left lying in his book-chamber.) Like the thorn, it wouldnot be felt until one put one’s hand thereon.
Danielus turned his eyes down to the City. Which thrived and moved. Not having felt, yet, the thorn.
Last summer, from this very tower, the priesthood had hung out seven “bird-cages,” low enough that the citizens might observe how the six men and one woman swung in them and starved to death.
They were persons of wickedness, thieves and murderers, the woman also a whore. But worse than breaking the commandments of God, they had been caught out in sins against God Himself.
The Council of the Lamb was forthright in its punishments. Without example, half-blind, Man would stray.
Yet the prolonged death of the malefactors, their cries and contortions, finally their corruption, had been aesthetic blasphemy. The Angel Tower was for angels to alight upon, not to hang out dying men like washing.
Though he had thought it, he would never have said it. He said very little, generally.
Fra Danielus was not much more than forty years, and looked youthful for that age. His hair was more black than gray, and his eyes were black still. The thin long nose, the thin but well-formed lips, the long, thin fingers—even without his belted magenta habit, and jeweled crucifix, his body itself revealed him as a man of thought and learning, a calm selective man, self-pared to the service of Almighty God. He had no vices, even those which the Church permitted. He drank no wine, ate sparingly, avoiding all meat, wore beneath his finery the most ordinary undershirt.
All excess, it seemed, recoiled from him. Perhaps miraculously. Fair women became, they said, in his presence more plain. A dog which had once run snarling and foamingat him, dropped at his feet, dying without delay.
At the age of thirty, Danielus had attained his present position, third of the Magisters Major, one of the Primo’s highest religious authorities, beside the Council of the Lamb. More, he was the Master of the Upper Echelon of the Bellatae Christi. Perhaps an equal, in all but inherited luxury, to the Ducem in his island palace.
The Soldiers of God were in themselves a power, an essential asset to the City and provinces of Ve Nera.
Their Upper Echelon was as famous through the world as some emperor’s crack guard. Of course. They were the mortal guard of heaven.
Danielus was not thinking of this. He walked down the stairs of the Tower, then down the ramp, beyond which the cages had hung out. He reached the ground, and crossed through the inner gate to the courtyards of the Primo.
A young man, one of the Bellatae, was in the first court. He had paused by the lion fountain, but now came straight towards the Magister.
Danielus extended his hand. The cool lips of Cristiano pressed the emerald in the Magister’s ring.
“Magister, can you grant me a few minutes speech?”
“Yes, Knight. And in turn, I shall speak to you.”
“Have I offended?”
The pride, almost insolence, with which Cristiano had responded, amused Danielus slightly. He masked his amusement. He always did. Amusement, rancor, any vivid emotion. Even natural beauty he could regard unsmiling.
“No, my son. This is something our order must soon hear of. You and your brothers first of all.”
They walked through a second court, from which led the castra of the Bellatae, and their chapel, in which Cristiano had kept his Vigil. A widemarble stair took them up into the Primo’s flank. From here, an indoor stair of stone ascended to the Golden Rooms.
The majesty of these apartments was lost, in a way, on Cristiano. As he expected everything of God, (seemingly this was mutual) so the magnificence of the Primo Suvio was inevitable. Not a marvel, merely a law obeyed.
“Sit, if you will.”
Cristiano took a chair in the book-chamber.
Indirect sunlight from a
Fra Danielus considered also this. Like the thorn, it was perceptible, (in the paper he had left lying in his book-chamber.) Like the thorn, it wouldnot be felt until one put one’s hand thereon.
Danielus turned his eyes down to the City. Which thrived and moved. Not having felt, yet, the thorn.
Last summer, from this very tower, the priesthood had hung out seven “bird-cages,” low enough that the citizens might observe how the six men and one woman swung in them and starved to death.
They were persons of wickedness, thieves and murderers, the woman also a whore. But worse than breaking the commandments of God, they had been caught out in sins against God Himself.
The Council of the Lamb was forthright in its punishments. Without example, half-blind, Man would stray.
Yet the prolonged death of the malefactors, their cries and contortions, finally their corruption, had been aesthetic blasphemy. The Angel Tower was for angels to alight upon, not to hang out dying men like washing.
Though he had thought it, he would never have said it. He said very little, generally.
Fra Danielus was not much more than forty years, and looked youthful for that age. His hair was more black than gray, and his eyes were black still. The thin long nose, the thin but well-formed lips, the long, thin fingers—even without his belted magenta habit, and jeweled crucifix, his body itself revealed him as a man of thought and learning, a calm selective man, self-pared to the service of Almighty God. He had no vices, even those which the Church permitted. He drank no wine, ate sparingly, avoiding all meat, wore beneath his finery the most ordinary undershirt.
All excess, it seemed, recoiled from him. Perhaps miraculously. Fair women became, they said, in his presence more plain. A dog which had once run snarling and foamingat him, dropped at his feet, dying without delay.
At the age of thirty, Danielus had attained his present position, third of the Magisters Major, one of the Primo’s highest religious authorities, beside the Council of the Lamb. More, he was the Master of the Upper Echelon of the Bellatae Christi. Perhaps an equal, in all but inherited luxury, to the Ducem in his island palace.
The Soldiers of God were in themselves a power, an essential asset to the City and provinces of Ve Nera.
Their Upper Echelon was as famous through the world as some emperor’s crack guard. Of course. They were the mortal guard of heaven.
Danielus was not thinking of this. He walked down the stairs of the Tower, then down the ramp, beyond which the cages had hung out. He reached the ground, and crossed through the inner gate to the courtyards of the Primo.
A young man, one of the Bellatae, was in the first court. He had paused by the lion fountain, but now came straight towards the Magister.
Danielus extended his hand. The cool lips of Cristiano pressed the emerald in the Magister’s ring.
“Magister, can you grant me a few minutes speech?”
“Yes, Knight. And in turn, I shall speak to you.”
“Have I offended?”
The pride, almost insolence, with which Cristiano had responded, amused Danielus slightly. He masked his amusement. He always did. Amusement, rancor, any vivid emotion. Even natural beauty he could regard unsmiling.
“No, my son. This is something our order must soon hear of. You and your brothers first of all.”
They walked through a second court, from which led the castra of the Bellatae, and their chapel, in which Cristiano had kept his Vigil. A widemarble stair took them up into the Primo’s flank. From here, an indoor stair of stone ascended to the Golden Rooms.
The majesty of these apartments was lost, in a way, on Cristiano. As he expected everything of God, (seemingly this was mutual) so the magnificence of the Primo Suvio was inevitable. Not a marvel, merely a law obeyed.
“Sit, if you will.”
Cristiano took a chair in the book-chamber.
Indirect sunlight from a
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