Severo sat facing Fra Damaso Murta across the table in the cathedral refectory. Great though the powers of a cardinal might be, they did not extend to countermanding a special inquisitor. The prince of Grandinsula, be he cardinal or no, could not defy the Inquisition, without facing terrible anathemas from Rome. And that would be a scandal among the people. The simple people feared heretics as they feared witchcraft; they gladly assisted inquisitors, in hope of procuring their own salvation. And Severo had taken the great vows to serve and obey the Church that are laid on all the clergy, and had thought to live and die without the least temptation to break them. He was struggling to overmaster dislike of the man before him, and do what he had decided, overnight, and in prayer, to do. He was going to explain to the special inquisitor why he had not proceeded in the usual manner, and invite him to take an interest in the snow-child.
Fra Murta listened to the account of Palinor, to the careful analysis of his position that Severo put before him, with pursed lips. The expression made his features, loaded with surplus fat, wobble, so that he looked like a pig.
‘You are too scrupulous, Holiness,’ he said icily. ‘Of course an atheist is a heretic.’
‘I have understood from the best scholarship available to me that there is some doubt whether knowledge of God is innate,’ said Severo. He paused, in case his opponent wished to contradict him, but Fra Murta offered no comment. ‘How would it be,’ Severo continued, ‘if there were available to us an absolute proof, worldly evidence of an incontrovertible nature, that the knowledge of God is inborn in everyone? Would that not be a missionary weapon of great power? Would you not like to have such a thing?’
‘What kind of evidence do you mean?’ asked Fra Murta.
‘Suppose there were a child reared outside human society, who had never heard a word spoken in any language. Suppose such a child were taught to speak in careful seclusion, so that it could not accidentally learn the truths of religion; and then suppose one were to ask it what it knew . . .’
‘Such an experiment would be forbidden,’ said Fra Murta. ‘It would outrage charity. I could not approve it. Never forget, Holiness, that the purposes of the sacred Inquisition are merciful.’
‘But what if this forbidden experiment had occurred naturally?’ Severo asked. There was an expression of deep interest in the glittering eyes of the other man, which he failed to dissemble by toying with the quill and paper before him on the table. ‘In fact, it is extremely lucky that you have come, Fra Murta, for now there will be two of us to witness what occurs,’ Severo continued, and gave him an account of the snow-child. About the providential coincidence of the child and Palinor’s arrival, about what arrangements he had made, and why.
‘I must ask your forgiveness, Holiness,’ said Fra Murta. ‘I was too hasty in ascribing your slowness in this case to slackness, or even to reluctance. There are some bishops, I blush to tell you, who regard the duty to pursue heresy with repugnance, and who not only fail to assist the Inquisition but even obstruct it. It is not at all unheard of . . . Indeed, as I need hardly tell you, it was the disgraceful tardiness in the bishops’ Inquisition against heretics that led to the duties and powers of inquisition being given to the mendicant orders of monks, my order among them. That led to our powers to override the local clergy. You will forgive us for supposing that you too were slack or recalcitrant; the reports that reached us in Rome were garbled.’
‘I am familiar with the origin and extent of your authority, Fra Murta. As to confusion about the present case, I am not surprised at it. I have proceeded with the greatest possible discretion in regard to the atheist, and in sworn secrecy over the child. My reasons are obvious to a man of your intelligence.’
Fra Murta bowed. ‘I cannot wait to see this phenomenon of nature,’ he said. ‘How long since, Holiness, did you consign her to the care of the nuns of Sant Clara?’
‘It is now many months ago. Some progress has been made. I am not sure if it is yet enough.’
‘But shall we not go at once and see?’
‘I think I should warn the nuns that we intend to come; they may need to prepare her for a visitation of strangers. I will take you there in, shall we say, a fortnight? Meanwhile, the island is full of shrines that a man of your piety will no doubt wish to visit.’
As soon as Fra Murta had left, Severo called Rafal. ‘Have that man watched,’ he said. ‘I want to know of every inch of ground on which he sets foot; I want to know just where he is day and night, and every person to whom he has spoken, even to give a good day. Discreetly, mind, and by no-one of clerical appearance. Go and hire me a couple of footpads.’
Beneditx was praying. ‘Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord, Lord hear my prayer. Let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication . . .’
When he had finished, he rose and went to find Palinor. He had one last dart to throw. Palinor was not in his chamber. Beneditx flinched slightly at finding himself with Dolca. The girl was heavy-lidded, and Beneditx, who had not noticed her at all at first, was suddenly finding her disturbing. He longed for the peace of the Galilea.
‘He is below,’ she said. ‘In the workshops.’
Beneditx descended the stairs into the warren of coopers’ shops, weaving shops, potters’ shops, carpenters’ shops and suchlike, full of noisy workers, men and women, whose crafts produced the wealth of the Saracen’s House. Palinor was deep in conversation with the blacksmith, and showing him drawings. ‘Really?’ the man was saying. ‘Would it work?’
‘Perfectly,’ said Palinor. ‘Look, we put a wheel in the waterfall, and we take a drive off like this . . .’ He frowned slightly when he saw Beneditx, but he came at once, saying ‘Later’ to the smith. They ascended again to their airy colonnade.
‘What were you doing?’ asked Beneditx.
‘It would be possible to make the water drive a hammer for the smith. He would be relieved of a considerable part of the labour, and could use both hands to work the metal. I was discussing it with him.’
Beneditx had never given one moment’s consideration to smithy work, and was nonplussed. ‘Is the work hard?’ he asked.
‘You have only to watch it, to see,’ said Palinor, sitting at the little rustic table and clapping his hands for Joffre. Joffre brought nuts and apricots and a jug of wine, and left them, padding silently away on bare feet.
‘You make out a good case for doubt,’ said Beneditx. ‘Before you came I would have thought that unbelievers were all frivolous – merely people who wished to be relieved of the duty to good conduct that belief imposes – but you have taught me otherwise. I see that doubt may be as deep, as serious, as belief. But there is a deficit in your arguments, just the same. It is one thing to be an unbeliever, to think that the proofs of God are not sufficient; but that would leave the matter in doubt. You would be maintaining simply that you did not know. How can you go further and say, “There is no God”? How can you defend a claim to negative certainty, which of all things is the hardest to prove?’
Palinor was silent for a while. Then he said, ‘You are right, Beneditx, in saying that to claim to know for certain that there is no God would be a preposterous claim, so vast is the universe, so puny our understanding of it.’
Briefly, hope and relief spiralled in Benedtix’s heart. ‘Will you answer to the name agnostic, then?’
‘No. Not in the sense you defined – that an agnostic is one who thinks that one day or if something happened he might be convinced. For I think that it is in principle impossible to know whether there is a God or not. I know therefore with immovable certainty that I shall never know that God exists. Likewise I shall never know that he does not. Such knowledge is always, and in principle, out of reach.’
A sort of coldness ran in Beneditx’s veins. ‘Why do you say that?’ he asked.
‘Have you seen the little fishes that swim in these clear streams?’ asked Palinor. ‘What do they know of the air? As they are immersed in water and can know only water, so are we immersed in space and time and can know only our universe. But your God is outside both space and time and beyond the universe. Perhaps, if he exists, there are dim reflections of him in the material world, as, for the fishes, there are green reaches of the water shaded by trees. But knowledge is a firmer, clearer thing, and for us not possible.’
‘But God has revealed himself to us, so that we do know him, though it be not by human means . . .’ Beneditx spoke urgently, but as if to himself.
‘No, my friend. For the difficulty in this knowing does not lie with God, but with us. It arises out of the very nature of the tools we have for thinking with, for knowing with. Our minds are sunk deep in the waters of space and time. Look, I will show you something, as you showed me the mosaic.’ Palinor clapped his hands for Joffre, and Joffre brought him a broken lantern, that had been hanging above the stair. Working delicately with his long dark fingers, Palinor extracted a pane of glass from one side of the lantern. It was a greenish gold colour, and full of little bubbles. Before he had freed it’ Joffre brought him also a handful of flowers.
Palinor laid the flowers on the ground. Then he put a white blossom in his wine-cup on the table and said to Beneditx, ‘What colour is that?’
‘White,’ said Beneditx.
Palinor held the glass in front of the cup. ‘What colour is it now?’ he asked.
‘It looks golden,’ said Beneditx, patiently, ‘but it is still white.’
‘You know that only because you saw it without the glass,’ said Palinor. ‘Close your eyes for a moment.’ While Beneditx closed his eyes, Palinor switched the flower, taking a different, large one from the bunch. He held the lantern pane in front of the flower, and said ‘You can look now. What colour is this one?’
‘White?’ said Beneditx.
Lifting the glass away, Palinor showed him a golden flower. ‘Shut your eyes again,’ he said. This time, when Beneditx looked again, there were two flowers behind the pane. ‘Which of these is blue?’ asked Palinor.
‘The smaller one is darker,’ said Beneditx, unhappily. ‘So I expect it is that one.’
‘Alas!’ said Palinor. ‘The darker one is red. Now, what colour is the smaller one?’
‘Red,’ said Beneditx.
‘How do you know?’
‘But I might have been lying,’ said Palinor, laying down the pane. The smaller flower was blue. ‘To trust me and to know are not the same thing at all. You may believe your scriptures, Beneditx, and they may be true – but still you do not and you cannot know what lies outside space and time. You cannot, I cannot. Nobody can.’
‘And this is what you mean when you say that you are an atheist?’
‘Yes. It is not quite what you mean by the word, I know, but the only alternative you offered me was to name myself as one who could in principle be convinced, and I know that I am one who in principle cannot be. Further, I know that all those who say that they know that God exists are mistaken. They can know no such thing.’
It was of his opponent that Beneditx thought first. ‘This might cost you your life, Palinor.’
‘But will you tell me to bend my conscience in order to save my life? If I am the fragment of dark glass that the great craftsman set to be a shadow in the picture, to be the obverse of a sparkle in his golden sky, why do you strive so to alter the pattern, to tilt me into the light? You are a man of faith, but is faith more than doubt? Or is it also part of a whole, each part being necessary, but none more necessary than another?’