Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [46]
Constantine wanted to scream at the man, but that would expose his pain like his own nakedness, incomplete, marred by circumstance outside his mastery. He had been doubly castrated, robbed of the office that was rightfully his by virtue, faith, and the will to fight. John Beccus was for the union with Rome, a coward and a traitor to his Church.
“Go!” Constantine’s voice was rasping from a throat raw with pain.
The servant stared at him and then fled.
When his footsteps had ceased to sound on the stones, Constantine let out a howl of fury and humiliation. Hatred was like fire in his soul. He could have torn John Beccus apart if he had laid hands on him at this moment. A whole man, an insult to Constantine’s existence. As if organs made the soul! A man was his passions of the heart, his dreams, the things he longed for, the fears he had overcome, the wholeness of his sacrifice, not of his body.
Was a man better because he could put his seed into a woman? Beasts of the field could do that. Was a man holier because he had that power and abstained from using it?
Constantine could take a knife and slice Beccus’s testicles: see the blood flow, as it had from his own body as a boy; see the agony, the terror of bleeding to death! Then watch him clutch at what was left of his manhood with a horror at his loss that would never leave him as long as he existed. They would be equal then. See who could lead the Church and save it from Rome!
But it was only a dream, like other images in the night. He could not do it. His power was in the love and the belief of the people. They must never see his hatred. It was weakness. It was sin.
Could the Holy Virgin read his heart? His face burned scarlet with shame. Slowly he knelt, tears wet on his face.
Beccus was wrong! He was a liar, a time server, a seeker after favor and office and his own power. How could a good man pretend to approve that?
Constantine asked himself whether he was a good man. He could make himself be, and he must.
He rose to his feet to begin: now, today. There was no time to waste. He would show John Beccus, he would show them all. The people loved him, his faith, his mercy, his humility and courage, his will to fight.
In the uncounted days that followed, he worked until exhaustion overcame him, taking no thought or care for his own needs. He answered every call he could, walking miles from one house to another to hear confessions of the dying and give them absolution. Families wept with gratitude for such peace of heart. He left with aching legs and blistered feet, but soaring spirits in the certainty that he was loved, and for his sake an ever increasing number of people would remain loyal to the true Church.
He celebrated the Mass so often, he felt sometimes as if he were doing it in his sleep, the words reciting themselves. But the eager faces were all the reward he wanted, the humble, grateful hearts. When he lay down, exhausted, it was often on the floor of wherever he was when night came, and he thought nothing of it. He rose at daybreak and ate what the wretched could spare him.
It was very late one night when he was listening to the confession of a bull-chested man, something of a local leader and a bully, that he began to feel ill.
“I beat him,” the man said quietly, his eyes meeting Constantine’s uncertainly, clouded with fear. “I broke some of his bones.”
“Did he …,” Constantine began, and then found he could not draw his breath. His heart was beating so loudly, he thought the man kneeling before him must hear it also. He was dizzy. He tried to speak again, but he could hear nothing but a roaring in his ears, and the moment after he was plunging into oblivion, for all he knew death itself.
He awoke in his own house, his head pounding, his stomach sick and cramped with pain. His servant Manuel stood beside the bed.
“Let me send for a physician,” he begged. “We have prayed, but it is not enough.