The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [47]
Very good, thought Manuel, since you’re dining with a witch why don’t you go and voice some blasphemies while you’re at it? Maybe later the two of you could eat a baby or something. Did witches eat babies? Manuel had not given any heed to stories about witches once he had grown up, and so found himself unsure of what she might be capable of.
“You don’t think all of your holy men are just?” Awa could not believe her luck in finding an actual breathing person critical of the world around him, another person who thought instead of blindly believing. Such had prevented her from making many —or any, she corrected herself—friends among the living. She could account for faith, though she did not share it, but not the unquestioning obedience that brought about the horrors of the Inquisition that she had almost experienced firsthand.
“No,” said Manuel, resigned to let his wine-whetted tongue run its course. It was rather liberating, for she seemed quite interested in what he had to say. Of course she does, he thought ruefully, she’s a witch, and you’re speaking her language now, alright. “Men lose their way, just like sheep, no matter how careful the shepherd. It’s not the shepherd’s fault, for even the best shepherd will, when his flock becomes large, rely on his dog, and if his dog is not dependable then sheep will be lost. Our Shepherd has a flock that requires a great many dogs to tend it, but dogs are hungry animals, and when there are tasty morsels everywhere to distract them the dogs—”
“What are you talking about, Manuel?” Awa interrupted. “Dogs or priests?”
“Priests,” said Manuel, “but the metaphor—”
“Your priests are hungry? You seem clever enough to speak in clearer terms than dogs and shepherds. There are many followers of your god, and so your god has many priests, yes? After that I could no longer follow you.”
“Yes,” said Manuel. “The priests, well, the priests have become distracted by the world, I think, by material rewards instead of spiritual ones. Follow?”
“No,” said Awa.
“Look,” said Manuel, “I’m no Erasmus but I’ll see if I can’t explain. Priests are supposed to be concerned with God, and with helping we mortals follow God. Yet in the time between the foundation of the Church and today, right now, much of the clergy has stopped doing so selflessly, instead demanding payment for their service to God. Men no longer need to live just lives, but instead can be as corrupt as they wish so long as they pay the Church to forgive them. Sins, wicked acts that displease God, are forgiven by the Church in exchange for wealth, instead of the acts of contrition and penance that God had stated was the only way to be restored to His graces.”
“How do you know all this?” asked Awa.
“From what I’ve seen, and what I’ve heard and read.” Manuel shrugged. “And not all priests are like that, of course, but enough to give one pause.”
“You still haven’t told me how you were living like your god before you became a soldier.”
“No. And I said I was trying to live like God, not that I was succeeding. You asked me if God was a soldier, and I said no. He kills, yes, and we servants of He are soldiers when we have to be, yes, but He is not a soldier Himself, for soldiers follow orders and He—”
“So you had to be a soldier?”
“No,” said Manuel with more guilt than he was accustomed to feeling about the matter. “I became a soldier to feed myself and my wife and niece and maybe one day my children, and to better serve Him in my own humble fashion—through my art, through the pictures you liked. I do not think God