“Good evening, Father,” Father Brandt said. “Please come in.”
“Thank you, Father,” Aelfden murmured and shuffled into the little house.
Brandt thought the priest was looking worse than he had ever seen him. “Wilt have a bite to eat?”
“I fast.”
“I supposed so. Immoderately, I think. Shalt have a bite of bread and cheese.”
Aelfden sat at the table and did not protest when Brandt brought him the plate of cheese, but neither did he begin to eat.
“And a drop of wine,” Brandt advised and went to pour.
“No! I try to weaken myself.”
“To what end?” Father Brandt asked. He poured a cup of wine anyway.
“So that my body will not respond to hers.”
“Ach, so!” Brandt sighed and sat beside him. “Has she come again?”
“No.”
“I think it wiser to face her with strength and not with weakness.”
“If I am too weak she cannot have what she wants.”
“I think it is not thy body she wants,” Brandt scolded. “What she wants, she has. Dost not see?”
Aelfden hid his face in his hands and moaned.
“She has all thy thoughts,” Brandt said.
“I try to pray.”
Brandt pushed up the sleeve of the priest’s robe and clucked at the sight of the fresh wounds across his forearms.
“I try!” he whimpered.
“Even the leeches would have no use for thy body,” Brandt sighed and pulled the sleeve down again. “Forget not that thou art no monk, but priest. Thou art no brother, but father. Hast not only thine own soul in thy care, but these many others.”
“How can I help them when I cannot help myself?” he whispered. “If I was being tested, then I have failed.”
“We are all tempted, to not say tested, and we all fail. Thou knowest.”
“Hast finished reading?” Aelfden asked with a sudden animation.
“Even yesterday.”
Father Aelfden had left his latest manuscript, On Time and Untruths of the Mind, with Brandt for a second reading. His first essay, On Time, had been an intriguing work, but the changes he had made since his visitation by the strange woman had brought it to border on heresy.
The Duke had been quite pleased with it and had found it to have a very Greek flavor, which Brandt understood to mean pagan Greek. Nonetheless it had made for some interesting debate between the three of them over the past weeks, and Father Brandt had not been able to dismantle any of Aelfden’s arguments with mere doctrine. He was looking forward to the reactions of more learned minds, either to condemn it or to show him how it could be believed.
“Wilt send it on to Lund?” Brandt asked him.
“I wish it to go to Rome.”
“Rome! Even so!”
“I wish to take it.”
Brandt was speechless.
“Hast visited Rome?” Aelfden asked him.
“Once.”
“I never. I wish to go. It is the right time. I can do nothing here. Now I am no priest, even as thou sayest.”
“At once?” Brandt breathed.
“Even so.”
“In the winter?”
“Even so.”
“My brother…”
“I have spoken to His Grace, and he will let me go.”
“Of course, but… the Alps…”
“I shall not overreach my strength. I shall go as far as I can, as quickly as I can. It is what I need.”
Brandt sighed. He knew well the futility of arguing with the man. “Shalt overwinter at Paderborn,” he insisted.
“It is an excellent idea.”
“But a man who makes a long journey should eat,” Brandt reminded him and pointed at the bread.
Chapters
Now, what has that strange woman done to him? He's a weird man, that priest, but still...
I love your side-characters, they add so much more dept and they feel as if you have allready written the plot and every character ever to be used in this story! I simply love it!!