By Schism Rent Asunder (42 page)

“And what have they become, Your Eminence?” Merlin asked quietly.

“Agents of subversion,” Staynair said simply. “Only a very small handful of the most senior Brethren are aware of the existence of Saint Zherneau's journal or any of the other documents. Outside that handful, none of them have ever heard of a book called
The History of the Terran Federation
, or of a document called
The Declaration of Independence
. What
every
Brother of Saint Zherneau has been taught, however, is that every individual is responsible for his or her personal relationship with God. The Inquisition would most certainly find that teaching pernicious, even though it's precisely what the
Holy Writ
says. Because,
Seijin
Merlin,” the archbishop looked back from the window, his eyes dark and intense, “a personal relationship implies both toleration and questions. It implies a personal
search
for God, a need to understand one's relationship with Him for
oneself
, not simply the regurgitation of official doctrine and catechisms.”

Merlin nodded slowly as he felt previously unsuspected puzzle pieces slotting into position. So that was the explanation—or
part
of the explanation, at least—for the openness, the sense of inclusiveness, which had attracted Nimue Alban to Charis and its society when she first set about seeking a proper base of operations.

“Almost every Brother of Saint Zherneau is aware that our emphasis on personal relationships with God would not find favor with the Inquisition,” Staynair continued. “But not one of them, to the best of our knowledge, has ever brought the philosophy of Saint Zherneau to the Inquisition's attention. And that, Merlin, is because there is something in most men which cries out to
know
God. To find that personal, direct relationship with Him. The Brethren of Saint Zherneau—
all
of the Brethren of Saint Zherneau—recognize that wellspring of personal faith and belief within themselves. And although we never specifically address the point, all of them know it must be both protected and passed on.”

“And it's also the first line of defense, isn't it, Your Eminence?” Merlin said shrewdly.

“Of course it is.” Staynair's smile was crooked. “As I say, very few of the Brethren have ever learned the full truth of Saint Zherneau's writings. But by protecting and preserving the portions of Saint Zherneau's teachings of which they are aware, they also protect and preserve the portion of which they are
not
aware. For reasons I'm sure you can understand, it's been necessary to limit complete knowledge to a relatively small number of people. That's been a problem for many of us over the centuries, because it goes against the grain to deceive, even if only by omission, those who are truly our brothers. Yet we've had no choice, and so the majority of the Brethren have always viewed our purpose as gradual reform—as teaching the clergy to truly serve the souls of God's children rather than the wealth and power of Mother Church.

“Even that has scarcely been a safe mission over the years, of course. But many of our number, the majority of whom do not know of the existence of Zherneau's journal, have risen to relatively high positions in our local churches, and from those positions, they've sheltered and aided other Brethren of Saint Zherneau. Which is, of course, one reason why such a high percentage of our local priests were prepared to support our break with the Council of Vicars.”

“I can see that, too,” Merlin agreed.

“Don't misunderstand me, Merlin,” Staynair said soberly. “When Zherneau's journal was first unsealed four hundred years ago, it was deeply shocking to the then Abbot. Only his own deep-seated faith in the teachings of Saint Zherneau kept him from doing one of the things you'd wondered about. He very seriously considered simply destroying all of it, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. Even the ‘mainstream Church' has a deep and abiding reverence for written testimony. That goes back to the original Adams and Eves who wrote
The Testimonies
, I suppose. And, of course, four hundred years ago, there were far fewer literate Safeholdians than there are today.”

Merlin nodded again. The Church of God Awaiting's historical and doctrinal experience included none of the textual disputes of terrestrial tradition. The documents which composed the Church's official canon had been defined by the archangels themselves, not by any potentially fallible councils of humans, which automatically placed them beyond any possibility of dispute. And there was no tradition of “false gospels” or other fraudulent documents deliberately constructed to discredit the Church's faith in its formative period. There'd
been
no “formative period,” and any attempt to produce such “false gospels” would have been buried without a trace under the writings of eight million literate colonists. As a consequence, Safehold approached the historicity of the Church with a completely different mindset from that of terrestrial theologians. Every scrap of history only proved the accuracy of the Church's traditions, and so became one more pillar of support, not a seedbed of skepticism.

Of course, that could change, couldn't it? As the decades in centuries passed in a society deliberately locked into muscle and wind power, with all of the hard labor required to support such a society, that universal literacy had disappeared. By and large—there
had
been exceptions, especially in the Church—only the upper classes had retained the leisure time to become literate. And as the ability to read and write had become less and less common, the reverence of the common (and illiterate) man and woman for the written records whose mysteries they could not penetrate had become paradoxically greater and greater.

And that must have suited the Council of Vicars just fine
, he thought grimly.
In fact, “Mother Church” may well have encouraged the trend, since the illiterate members of the Church became completely dependent upon their hierarchy to instruct them about the contents of those mysterious books they could no longer read for themselves. And that, in turn, became one more tool for strangling independence of thought in its cradle. On the other hand, the fact that literacy's been on the upswing again for a century or so is one of the reasons the wheels are threatening to come off their neat little mind-control machine, isn't it?

“Despite the temptation to simply destroy the journal and other documents, he chose not to,” Staynair said. “It must have been an incredibly difficult decision for him. But in addition to the journal itself, he had the letter Saint Zherneau had left for whoever finally unsealed the vault. And, of course, he had ample historical evidence to support the fact that Saint Zherneau had, indeed, been an Adam himself. That Saint Evahlyn had been an Eve. That, coupled with all of the public writings the two of them had left—including sections in
The Testimonies
—was enough to stop him from simply labeling the journal the ravings of a mad heretic. And the fact that he knew the books included with the journal had been sealed in the same vault for the better part of four hundred years proved they, too, must date from the Creation itself or immediately after it.

“Or, of course”—the archbishop's eyes bored into Merlin's—“from
before
it.”

Merlin nodded once again. Personally, despite all of the Church's traditional reverence for history and historical documents, he suspected Staynair was probably understating even now the incredible depth of the spiritual struggle that long-ago Abbot of Saint Zherneau's must have faced. The degree of intellectual integrity it must have taken to make—and accept—the connections Staynair had just summarized so concisely in the face of every single word of the Church's official doctrine was difficult even to imagine.

“Forgive me, Your Eminence,” he said slowly, “and please, don't take this as any sort of attack. But with this journal, and the other documents in your possession, you've known all along that the Church's entire doctrine, all of its theology and teachings, are built upon a monstrous lie. Yet not only did you never denounce the lie, but you've actually supported it.”

“You would have made a splendid Inquisitor yourself, Merlin,” Staynair said, his smile more crooked than ever. “I mean an Inquisitor of Father Paityr's sort, not that pig Clyntahn's, of course.”

“In what way, Your Eminence?”

“You understand how to direct questions that force a man to look straightly at what he
truly
believes, not simply what he's
convinced
himself he believes.

“In answer to your perfectly valid question, however, we must plead guilty, but with extenuating circumstances. As, I feel quite confident, you already understood before you asked.

“Had we openly opposed Church doctrine, proclaimed that every word of the
Holy Writ
was a lie, we would merely have provoked the destruction of Charis centuries earlier. Perhaps the Inquisition might have settled for simply exterminating those who brought the disturbing message, but I think not. I think too much of Langhorne's and Schueler's intolerance and … thoroughness clings to the Inquisition even today.” The archbishop shook his head. “I've read Saint Zherneau's account of what truly happened in the destruction of the Alexandria enclave, what truly happened on the dreadful night when it was transformed into Armageddon Reef. I do not have the background to understand how simply dropping rocks could have had the effect Saint Zherneau describes, but I fully accept the accuracy of his testimony. And if the Inquisition of today lacks the
Rakurai
, the Group of Four has just demonstrated that it continues to command swords in plenty.

“So, since we dared not openly oppose the Church's lies lest we achieve nothing but the destruction of the only evidence that they
were
lies, the Brethren of Saint Zherneau—those of the Brethren who knew the truth, at least—dedicated themselves to gradually building a different sort of Church here in Charis. Even that much constituted a deadly risk. We recognized that, eventually, the Inquisition would undoubtedly react as, in fact, Clyntahn has reacted. We'd hoped it wouldn't be this soon, and it probably wouldn't have been if Clyntahn hadn't become Grand Inquisitor. Yet he did, and we'd already pushed too far, made too many changes of which Mother Church disapproved. The truth of the matter is, Merlin, that Clyntahn has been right all along about the danger Charis poses to his precious orthodoxy. I rather doubt he's felt that way on the basis of any reasoned consideration of the evidence, but his instincts have not played him false where we are concerned.”

“How much of this did Haarahld know?” Merlin asked quietly.

“All of it,” Staynair replied simply. “He read the entire journal, read the history of the Federation. As for all of us, there was much in that history which he didn't understand, for which he had no context. But, also as for all of us, he understood enough. When you asked him why his grandfather had abolished serfdom here in Charis, he answered you honestly, Merlin. But he could have added that one of the reasons his grandfather believed all men were created equal was that he, too, had read every magnificent word of the
Declaration
.”

“And Cayleb?” Merlin asked the question even more quietly, and Staynair frowned gravely.

“And Cayleb,” he replied, “is one of the reasons you and I are having this conversation at this particular time.”

“At this time?”

“Yes. One reason is that we are rapidly approaching God's Day, and it seemed … appropriate for you to be told the truth before that.”

Merlin nodded once more. God's Day, which was inserted into the middle of the month of July each year, was the Church of God Awaiting's equivalent of Christmas and Easter, rolled into one. It was the highest and most holy religious festival of the year, and given what the Brethren of Saint Zherneau knew about the religion they'd dared not openly denounce for so long, he could see why Staynair would have wanted to have this conversation before he had to celebrate God's Day in Tellesberg Cathedral as Archbishop of Charis for the first time. Still—

“I can understand that, I suppose, Your Eminence. But what, exactly, does Cayleb have to do with your timing for this little revelation?”

“Ever since the vault was unsealed, there have been strenuous rules governing when and how its contents were to be made known to others. One of those rules has been that before anyone could be admitted to the truth, he must have attained the age of wisdom. Which, simply because some firm definition of when that could be presumed to have occurred was necessary, was set at the age of thirty. Another rule is that all those already privy to the truth must agree before anyone else is admitted to it, and not everyone nominated for the truth is actually told in the end. Two of the last eight monarchs of Charis were never informed, for example, because the Brethren of their time believed telling them would have constituted too great a risk. And”—Staynair's eyes turned even graver—“in both cases, their own fathers agreed with the majority of the Brethren.”

“But surely that's not the case with Cayleb,” Merlin objected.

“Of course not. We've always—Haarahld always—intended to inform him of the truth as soon as he reached the age of thirty. Unfortunately, the Group of Four refused to wait long enough for that. Now we have a King whose determination, courage, and wit we all trust implicitly, but who's too young, under the Brethren's rules, to be informed. And, to be perfectly honest, there are some among us who fear his youth and … directness. His impetuosity, perhaps. One thing young Cayleb has never been is hesitant about speaking his mind or confronting an enemy. The fear isn't that he would reject the journal's contents, but rather that if he learns the full truth, if he's shown the proof that for almost a thousand years the Church has controlled all of Safehold through the greatest lie in human history, he'll be unable to resist throwing that charge against the Group of Four, as well. And that, Merlin, is something we cannot do. Not yet.