Page 70 of The Wolf and the Woodsman

Finally, Reményi goes quiet, his hand tensing around the edge of the table. The white feather on his chest seems to bristle, even though the air in the chamber is stiff, still. I know he is thinking of another one of Saint István’s heirs, one that he would like to see wear the crown instead.

“Come with me,” the king says brusquely. “I must consult the Prinkepatrios.”

After my sleepless night with Zsigmond the council meeting has left me particularly weary, and I don’t have the strength to refuse, even if my oath would allow it. My mind is reeling with everything I have learned, and all that I still don’t know. It is like the blank spaces where the Yehuli vowels ought to be, something you must be taught by someone older and wiser, if you ever want to understand how to fill the absence.

The chapel surprises me by being carved right into the cliffside. Its oaken door is wedged between two knuckles of rock, scarcely wide enough for the king and I to walk through at once. Torches are mounted on blackened stones, and candles are set in the cave’s many small orifices, casting bubbles of filmy light. Green moss spangles the ceiling, a damp, breathing topography. The Sons and Daughters of the Patrifaith scuttle through the pews, looking like little brown mice. Their shaven heads are as glossy as pearls in the recessed candlelight. I wonder which among them drew up the missive calling for my death.

Gáspár and Nándor have both joined us here, looking properly contrite. After hearing Count Reményi’s ramblings I am even more loath to meet Nándor’s stare, though he watches me with hawkish scrutiny, his eyes holding the pale candlelight. Gáspár keeps his face turned away from me, too, but I see his gaze flicker toward me once, so briefly I might only have imagined it.

“Some say the three-pronged spear is really a trident.” Gáspár’s voice, hushed as it is, still echoes through the near-vacant church. Syllables scrape the craggy ceiling. “They say that the Patrifaith began as the cult of a sea god in Ionika, but it morphed and changed as it moved further north.”

“Detractors and infidels say that,” Nándor replies flatly. “And princes who spend too much time reading the mad scribblings of heretics in the palace archives.”

“These things should not be spoken of in a holy place,” the king says, sounding almost queasy.

A narrow aisle breaches the pews, clambering over the rock and up to a large stone altar. Melting candles are heaped upon it like dirty snow. They have cooled and hardened into a single mound, needles of ossified wax dripping off the edge of the dais. Mounted above it is the three-pronged spear, or trident, of the Prinkepatrios, set in gold, and below it a marble statue, dyed pale green by a hundred years of moist air. It’s of a man, entirely nude, his muscled arms coiled around the throat of a huge bull. Moss grows over his bare toes. Ivy wreathes the bull’s long horns.

The statue is so curious that I can’t help the question falling from my lips. “Who is that?”

“Mithros,” Gáspár surprises me by answering. “He was a mortal man granted the favor of the Prinkepatrios. He proved himself to be a great hero, so the Prinkepatrios made him immortal. He stepped into the sea and vanished, joining God in heaven.”

I don’t like how very much Mithros sounds like Vilmötten. As we approach the altar, I can see the bulging sinew of Mithros’s bare thighs, and the appendage hanging between them. It makes me wonder how Gáspár ended up so fretfully prudish when he’s spent his life worshipping at the feet of some lusty naked man’s statue.

The king and his sons kneel before the altar, hands clasped. From behind, I can see only their bent backs and their hunched shoulders, their hair. The king’s, gray with age; Gáspár’s, his dark curls twining down his neck; Nándor’s like whorls of liquid gold. They are still and quiet for several moments until the Érsek emerges from behind the altar, swathed in a cocoon of brown muslin. He totters unsteadily up the dais and blinks his wet little eyes. I remember him now—he was the man fixed beside Nándor in the courtyard, soberly watching my father stand in pig’s blood.

“My lords, why have you come here today?” the Érsek asks. He has a low, nasal voice, and I am reminded of the wicked minister from Zsigmond’s story, the one who ordered the deaths of all the Yehuli. In truth I can hardly imagine the Érsek doing such a thing, if only because I think Nándor would leap up to do it first.

“Today, I pray for wisdom,” the king replies. “So I may learn how to set right the mistakes of the past.”

“Then wisdom you shall have,” the Érsek says, and he brushes his thumb against the king’s forehead. He turns to Nándor. “What do you pray for today, my son?”

“Today, I pray for strength,” Nándor replies. “So I may do what weaker men cannot.”

“Then strength you shall have,” says the Érsek, his thumb brushing Nándor’s forehead. It lingers there for longer than it should, and Nándor closes his eyes and lets out a shuddering breath. I remember Szabín’s story—how he has lived his whole life with the priest whispering in his ear—and something knifes through my loathing, an unexpected and hard-won pity. How much can you blame a hunting dog for biting when it’s only ever been trained to use its teeth?

My pity shrivels when the Érsek turns to Gáspár. “What do you pray for today, my son?”

“I would like to confess a sin,” he says.

The air in the cave seems to thicken, and my muscles tense. The Érsek gives a nod, and says, “Speak, my son.”

“I took a man’s life. Two men. They were both guilty of terrible crimes themselves, but they were good Patritian men, pious and prayerful. I would like to cleanse my soul of sin.”

He has not confessed to kissing me, to touching my breasts or stroking me between my thighs. I cannot see Gáspár’s face, only the heave of his shoulders as he takes his labored breaths. The Érsek brushes his thumb quickly over Gáspár’s forehead, barely grazing his bronze skin.

“Godfather Life grants you mercy,” he says. “You have made your full confession, and you are now absolved of your sin.”

As the king and his sons rise in perfect synchrony, I gape at the Érsek. For all of Gáspár’s prattling about souls and justice, it takes only the touch of a priest’s finger to absolve him? I wonder how the men he killed would feel about that. Before I can even give voice to my bewilderment, they each produce a small leather pouch, bunched shut with a drawstring. From the pouches, they pour out a small pile of gold coins, the carved profile of Saint István glinting on every one. They hold the coins out in their cupped hands, and the Érsek takes them, sliding each piece into a satchel of his own. He tugs the drawstring to close it, the coins rattling as he slips it into his robes. The bag forms a bulge in his side beneath the brown muslin, an answer to my unspoken question.

“The Prinkepatrios accepts what you have given,” the Érsek says, bowing his head. “Where there is sacrifice, great things are sure to come.”

The Érsek ambles toward the shadowed doorway, his gait now lopsided with the load of the coins, and Nándor bounds up the dais to follow him. Their faces are close as they speak in whispers. Perhaps it was even the Érsek who left the note at my door, another one of Nándor’s slavering followers. The king stalks aimlessly through the pews, murmuring to himself. And then I am standing alone with Gáspár.

It’s the first time we’ve had a chance to speak since he came to see me in my cell, and the memory of it bruises me. Despite it, I have some small instinct to tell him everything that has happened: about the council meeting, about Zsigmond. As if he can help fill some of the empty spaces. But I have quashed the instinct by the time he opens his mouth.

“You did survive,” he says quietly.

“No thanks to you,” I bite back. I think of the way he sat silently at the banquet table while the king held his sword over my head, and I feel as wretched as ever.