There is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin

[reliantnav]

The journey north from Muscovy was long, wet, and muddy. Abel wondered a thousand times if it wouldn't be quicker to cut through the forests rather than staggering on and on along the muddy road that dragged at the horses' hooves, but the forests were dark and tangled with thickets, and as often as he thought it, he thought of being torn by briars and scratched by twigs, and he stayed on the muddy road.

His guide did not talk much. Abel had tried, in the early days of their journey, to share conversation and reminiscings, but the monk answered in grunts and monosyllables, and expanded those only in recitation of prayers, which then made Abel feel guilty for wanting trivialities. Even so, he was company, and their soggy little fire helped keep back the chill every night.

The going was less pleasant once the guide was gone, but also freer. Alone with his thoughts and with only one road to follow--

just keep going along this trail, it's only a day and a half farther

--Abel let his mind wander. The air seemed clearer, no longer the foggy murk of the past week, and it brought him scents of wildflowers and loam, and the path was no longer mired in mud. He could imagine, almost, seeing the figures of myths amidst the trees, crowned in flowers and radiant in darkness.

By night, alone with his small fire, Abel wished he'd told himself fewer of the frightening stories. He slept only fitfully, waking at each sound and searching the darkness.

At the first light, he saddled his horse and hastened on.

The little village was a pretty, remote thing, placed on a rocky rise at the edge of the forest. The muddy fields of their crops swept the skirt of the hill, and the villagers stopped to stare, and to talk. They did not soon stop talking, and it was a balm and a drain after the days of silence.

Abel was taken to the great house, fed, fussed over, and made much of. The girls blushed at him and skittered shyly to and fro, while the boys asked for tales of Muscovy and asked if all the Muscovites were so delicate of face and build, and joked that he was soft as a girl, until the adults shooed them all away and plied Abel with yet more food and drink. To fatten and strengthen him, so he would survive the winter, soft city lad that he so clearly was.

It was all overwhelming, and Abel was grateful when the hour grew late enough that he could reasonably ask to be taken to the chapel to settle in.

The building was pretty, hunched at the edge of the deep woods. Dark stone walls and the encroaching forest made the chapel seem as though it was a part of the woods, and might at any moment be swallowed up. Tall steps led up to the double doors, with high windows to let in light, all of it clearly designed with deep snows in mind. Tall peaks of gables covered the windows, and a similar sharp tilt formed the roof.

Inside, it was all lines and angles, beautiful in symmetry, and utterly different from the familiar cathedrals of Muscovy, which were curves and domes in whitewashed stone, like bubbles in meringue. This seemed older, arcane, but still sacred.

The altar was plain stone with a white cloth, so different from the lavish altarpieces of the city that Abel thought for a moment that it was meant for a different god.

Shaking away the fantasies that had always been his weakness and his folly, Abel stepped through the door into the priest's chambers adjoining. They were very large for a priest's cell, but hard to mistake for anything else because of the bed. There was a large fireplace, well stocked with wood, and an adjoining little study filled with books, some of them very old. Abel went to them, rapt, but had no time to explore before a woman came from the village with hot coals for his fire.

He'd known nothing about the former priest other than his age. It seemed that he--or one of his predecessors--was a scholar. And now everything that had been his belonged to Abel.

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[reliantnav]

Again Abel had the sense that there was a threat in the simple words, though they could as easily be assurances.

Wary, Abel watched the stranger. His host and his guest, simultaneously. Provider and threat.

"I don't believe you told me your name," Abel said. His heart fluttered in his chest, nerves combined with another wave of desire. "I am Abel."

Not the name his father gave him, but the church. He'd been named Brother Abel in the monastery. He no longer thought of himself as Ethan.