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The young man's papers claimed him to be seventeen, and by the look of him you wouldn't question it. A dog, with his ears cropped and tall, street-style, and a baleful depth to his eyes. His ragged clothes were faded and torn and soaked right through, but the tight, hardened young body beneath spoke of ample body heat, and the cracked leather jacket was likely just a costume to seem even tougher, and a convenient place to slip the wallets and watches he stole so deftly.

Flicking through the pages of the file splayed on my desk, ignoring the simmering hostility from the fiery dog across from me, I let a little time pass, and then a little more. This runt had been in and out of orphanages, foster families and police stations for all of the eight years recorded in this spotty phonebook of a file; a lad like that wouldn't be cowed by the passive intimidation of a priest like myself. Still, I let the time pass.

The police officer who'd muscled the troubled youth into my office in the first place was actually the first to break a sweat. "Uh, Father Argyle," the bear drawled awkwardly, fiddling with the helmet he'd so respectfully doffed when they'd walked into the office. "I ought to get back to the office. Social worker's gonna come 'round tomorrow with the rest of the paperwork, and, you know, that'll be that..." He trailed off, standing aimless and useless like a green recruit awaiting dismissal.

A grin tugged at the corners of the young dog's lips as I left the officer to shuffle for a minute longer, but when I made eye contact with him, there was no humor in his eyes, none of the sly wickedness the rest of his facial showed. He was playing me, and doing a fine job of it. Someone with a more optimistic disposition, seeing that cheeky grin, might think they were breaking through his shell and beginning to bond at the expense of a bumbling copper's nerves.

"Give Patrick my regards," I said without looking at the officer. "And tell him he owes me a favor for taking this scamp off the Yard's hands."

The officer put his helmet back on and nodded firmly, almost a bow. "Certainly, sir. Is there anything you'd like me to take back to Sergeant Ma--"

"That'll be all, thank you." There was something about this young man, something profoundly... veiled, one might say. His false smirk had faded by the time the bear closed the door behind him, and we were gazing into each other's eyes with all the patience of courting lovers and all the tension of an unexploded hand-grenade.

"So. Is it true what they say 'bout you gents? Trouble keeping y'selves celibate when there's a young buck around, that sorta thing?" An arrogant leer, and the creak of leather as he tilted his chair back to balance casually and perfectly on its rear legs. "Last bloke who tried that one me wound up singin' falsetto when I was done with him."

"Perhaps I ought to call Officer Cromwell back to have that added to your file." I stood up, though my knees ached and last night's turnip stew was not sitting well in my stomach. "You've been remanded to our care in lieu of imprisonment due to the tenuous circumstances of your apprehension and the fact that you're teetering on the edge of emancipation. This is not the first or last time we offered to lighten the burden of the local constabulary by taking on a troubled case, but let me make something clear to you, boy." I strode around the desk, and hoped I hid my satisfied smirk as well as he hid his urge to track me with his gaze. "You will conduct yourself in an orderly fashion, or we'll keep you in our care just long enough for you to turn eighteen, and the punishment for your transgressions will be more substantial than the slap on the wrist you're getting away with now. Do we understand one another?"

"I'm not seventeen," he said in a smooth baritone, and I'm ashamed to admit I blinked first and showed some surprise before I regained my composure. "And my name isn't Deacon McCall. But I think it'd be best for both of us if we both pretend that I am, and it is. Deacon McCall will, as you say, legally emancipate in a few months, and you can be rid of me. Deal?"

Heading back around the desk, I turned toward the window behind my chair. As a clergyman, one is taught to be sensitive to the souls of fellow sinners, the art of which, once acquired, is practically akin to basic psychiatry. I tried to call on that training to assess my opinion of him, not-Deacon McCall, as my usually canny instincts weren't leading me anywhere useful. In all likelihood the young dog had a number of other aliases, each with their own criminal and social services record, each as thick as the bundle on my desk. He was intelligent, manipulative and patient, utterly unafraid of calculated risks. And thoroughly, catastrophically arrogant.

Don't misunderstand me when I tell you I didn't quite know how I felt about the lad. Whether the scuttlebutt about the uncouth tastes of Catholic clergy was valid or slanderous, that had nothing to do with the confusion I felt in his presence. "You have no intention of staying here until then," I said softly, to mask any lingering emotion in my voice, as I gazed out the window at the courtyard. Brother Marin was raking the herb garden below, completely oblivious to the rain that turned the soil into quicksand, soaking into his brown robes.

"I see we understand each other, Father Argyle."

Within a few days of his arrival, the weather cleared and revealed the crisp splendor of English spring. Situated as it is in the languid plateau of Dorset, every window in the priory offers a magnificent view. The coast of the Channel to the south, often shrouded from view by fog, and if not, a terminally drab grey desert, now sparkles with such a vivid azure one could be forgiven for imagining himself on the beaches Algarve. The priory itself looks positively Mediterranean in this light, its aged red bricks showing a terracotta iridescence, lending subtle, warm tints to everyone's clothes and pelts. And all around, modest but colourful flowers compete with thick carpets of lush green grass in vying for the love of a sinner's eye.

The true gem is of course the priory's walled courtyard. We are blessed to have an otter among our number, since none of the early spring's drizzling misery could deter the oily-pelted Brother Marin from tending to the patch of herbs for which he takes responsibility and, always striving to give the right example, he's wont to linger in the courtyard after his daily duties to do a quick bit of weeding in the fruit and vegetable patches that fall under others' auspices. To praise him in public would only offend his modesty, so none of the brothers ever mention to him our private joke that God and Brother Marin alone sustained the beauty of the courtyard, and that we have our doubts about God.

We've had troubled young lads like 'Deacon McCall' under our care before, often as a courtesy to the local constabulary in 'cases of inconvenience', as they were known. We've also had a few eager young pilgrims from abroad, so seeing a solitary outsider in our midst should have been no special interruption to our daily business. Deacon is different, though, even in the first week of his stay with us, and as I take my evening constitutional on the path toward the coast, the magnificence of spring is lost on me, vexed as I am.

The original priory had been built to withstand a small siege, and while it had never suffered one, each renovation or rebuilding over the centuries had maintained that heritage. When we took in a troublemaker, they would be assigned a room with a lockable door, whose barred window looked out over the courtyard, from which it was almost impossible to climb to the roof, and certainly it would be suicide to climb down from there on the outside. Abandoned monasteries had often been repurposed as prisons, and ours would have done well.

Being that he's a hardy, resourceful young villain, I have my doubts that even those measures and the brethren's vigilance would be enough to keep Deacon from fleeing, but so far he hasn't yet tried. I'm certain he keeps an eye open for opportunities, as he showed great interest in participating in as many of the different duties in the priory as he could. In the month he's been here, he's seen more of the priory and the functions than even the most eager pilgrim.

He's made plenty of transgressions, of course, blasphemy and vulgarity being the most common, and he has frequently been found wandering where he was told not to. Once, he was seen uprooting some members of Brother Marin's little flock of herbs and, when confronted, confessed quite readily, taking the punishment of dish-washing duty in stride. Brother Trevor later told me he'd suffered a painful pang of his arthritis and had asked Deacon to make him a cup of tea. I suspected the young dog had taken the liberty of helping himself to some feverfew from the herb garden to mix with the Darjeeling tea.

This is what consumes my mind, as I wander the familiar fields, what blinds me to the lavender sunset, deafens me to the faint sound of waves from the sea. When he swears, or uses the Lord's name in vain, he takes the disciplining chores or even the whack of a cane in good spirit, easily and smoothly ingratiating himself even in the coldest hearts of our community. His theft of the herbs seemed indeed to ease Brother Trevor's pain immensely, and Deacon had showed great piety in protecting the privacy of old monk's ailments through his silence on the matter.

As closely (yet discretely) as I study his behavior, one unsubstantiated, intuitive conclusion always comes to mind.

He is testing us.

With summer now fully upon us, the mystery of Deacon McCall is so constant that I often forget the circumstances under which he came to be a part of the priory. And he is very much a part of it. His room is perpetually tidy, he's punctual for his duties, all of which combined with the advanced age of most of the brothers makes it easy to forget why precisely he was brought to us.

While the view of the courtyard is best from my office, the library offers more light, and I've often found that having warm sunlight at one's back does wonders for eloquence and penmanship when writing letters. I'd neglected to mention young Deacon's arrival in my last missive to the Bishop, and only now, after penning two full pages of my latest report, do I even remember that he bears mentioning.

I catch a glimpse of him in the courtyard below, accompanying the young fox that brought this week's groceries on a stroll across the courtyard. A pretty young thing, this lad, clearly destined for delicate craft rather than the crude and hardy labours to which most locals find themselves drawn. The fox offered to bring some letters to the post-office, and since I had yet to finish mine, young Deacon in turn offered to give the fox a tour of the priory while I finished my correspondences.

There is something about the way the pair walk through the courtyard that stirs me from my idle concentration. Standing from the desk, I lumber toward the tall window overlooking the courtyard and study them more closely. Perhaps Deacon is merely being friendly, laying an arm across the younger fox's shoulders. Perhaps he's only whispering in the boy's ear to share a little joke at the expense of one of the foppish old Brothers. Perhaps pinching the boy's bottom is a modern gesture of camaraderie in the culture of the streets today...

Pish tosh.

It was the sixties when I was their age. I know full well what it is I'm looking at.

There is nothing especially modern, after all, about the sight of two young people furtively looking around themselves to ensure their privacy, before positively darting through the western archway, and the spiral staircase that leads to the ale cellar, with the clear intentions of putting their God-given bodies to sinful yet delightful purposes.

As I hurry along the upper corridor on the western wing, passing the prayer rooms where the brothers can study in solitude and silence when the library is too crowded for their tastes, I wonder who's the greater sinner. The fox, for allowing himself to be so easily seduced by a rakish young dog? Deacon, for reverting to the behavior reflected in his police record and wielding his sexual appeal to pleasure himself upon yet another starry-eyed lad? Or frail old Father Argyle, for hurrying down the secondary staircase on the western wing, to watch the furtive tryst like a dirty voyeur? I pace myself, both to keep my besandaled paws from slapping too loudly on the cool masonry of the staircase and to keep my breath from giving out, but even halfway down the winding spiral I can hear Deacon's rough, seductive whispers and the fox's excited laughter.

"C'mon, darlin', do an old dog a favour... I've been stuck here for months, I'm gagging for it!"

"So I suppose you want me to gag on it for you, dirty puppy?"

A laugh from the dog, the sound of a shove, shuffling paws and a yelping giggle from the fox. "I have higher ambitions than that, sweetness..."

Their footsteps are quick and fanciful, by the sound of the echoes; the pair are playing run-and-catch among the barrels in the cellar. My heart beats in my throat, and I try to tell myself that it's the exertion causing my brow to sweat. Steady on, Argyle, steady on...

"I wouldn't dream of stuffing something in that pretty mouth of yours. Not when you've got such a lovely voice, and such a lovely tail. C'mere!"

When the fox squeals with laughter, I take the last steps into the cellar, crouching down under the low ceilings, and stalk along the wall, to keep out of the glare of the electric lights strung along the beams overhead. In the gaps between the stacked barrels I catch a glimpse of a russet vulpine tail, the shade of Deacon's black garments, a flash of tan pelt from his exposed chest.

"Caught you fair 'n square, lovely," the dog rumbles, his voice so deep he sounds older than even his papers claim. "Now what's a hound to do with a captured fox?"

I perch behind the farthest stack of barrels, laden with dust. Our oldest stock, where the brothers are advised not even to walk, for fear of tipping over a tub, or for succumbing to the temptation of the richly aged ale they contain. My thirst, however, is not for liquors, but for the spectacle unfolding before me, which brings a smile to my old lips.

There was a time when I was that dog, soothing an eager but nervous lad's shivers even while I peeled off his neat white shirt and his ironed denim trousers, and stroked my hands up along his thighs to pull him against me, his pert behind pressed against the bulge behind my zipper. There was a time, earlier still, when I was that fox, turning and with the boldness of youthful hormones sinking to my knees before my canine adonis, taking the liip of his zipper between my teeth, watching him suck in a breath as I pulled down, down, to expose him.

The sight of these two young men engaging in such base, unchristian behavior should repulse me, the teachings tell me, but I know better. All flesh is frail, and even though I've shrugged off the appetites they now indulge -- I'm perfectly honest when I say I feel no arousal at what I witness here -- I understand the majesty of the body, the pleasure of the flesh, regardless of the purpose such an act does or doesn't serve.

Naked, both, the fox and hound are beautiful, simply beautiful. Deacon is the paragon of canine virility, his short pelt splashed at the chest with a light tan tone which only accentuates his nudity, while the silky darkness covering the rest of him makes a sensational display of every tight curve, every firm muscle. The fox, a half-foot shorter in stature, is his perfect complement and embodies all aspects of vulpine grace, and Deacon clearly delights in running his fingers through the thick, lush pelt of his brief lover, who now gives trembling little licks at his broad chest.

I kneel, in my dusty hiding-spot, and ignore the ache of my bones as I watch the passion of these two magnificent bodies, letting its splendour consume me. You might call it a syncretic experience, as I both admire the scene and meditate on the sin of it, but in both these senses it's a deeply satisfying revelation. Deacon is a competent lover, gentle and firm, as he bends the fox over a barrel and smoothly enters him from behind, eliciting a drawn-out, high-pitched yelp, gnawing teasingly on the vulpine's shoulder. The dog's body responds to the relief of joining with another, which was until his stay at the priory no doubt a frequent indulgence, and when he gives over to his masculine urges, gripping the fox's hips and slamming his pride under the proffered tail, I can't help but smile.

At last, I have proof before me that Deacon is profoundly mortal, profoundly flawed.

I believe, in time, I might even be able to trust him.

Deacon pummels the lad savagely, but the fox is clearly his equal, bucking back against each feverish stroke of that thick, hard doghood with a fury. Even in this modern age a fey fox like this delivery-boy must find it hard to find companionship in the local community, and sharp young Deacon no doubt seized on that opportunity to endear himself. In my hayday, though, it would have taken me substantially longer than twenty minutes to seduce a potential bedmate, especially one so sweet and delectable as this fox. Is it a pang of jealousy I feel? No matter.

The scent is magnificent. The dust and wood and the heady fumes of old liquors, the faint sea-salt carried in the breeze and the deep, fresh, musky passion of two young men. Even closing my eyes I can feast on the dance of flesh, the sharp breaths of the two lovers nearing the peak of their ecstasy, the dusty air warmed by their bodies.

A sudden dizziness leaves me breathless, my frail old body thrumming with the energy of their climax, and only then do my eyes open and focus to witness Deacon McCall, every muscle highlighted under his pelt like a bronze sculpture, hunched over the trembling young fox who receives the gift of the dog's masculinity. One of his arms clutches the lad around the waist, the other hand clasps the vulpine's muzzle shut, and all the world holds its breath as the radiance of their rapture anoints the ales collected in these old barrels.

The plethora of impulses tugging at my mind amuses me, as I carefully dust myself down and stretch my aching knees, stealing back the way I came to leave them their privacy, now, after the act is played out. I should chastise them and shame them, says the Catholic priest. I should applaud them, console and counsel them, says the understanding old sinner. I should whisper the sordid details of this outrageous scandal to my brothers one night, over a mug of this very ale.

I think, instead, I'll finish my letter to the bishop, and neglect to mention Deacon one more time. Being young men, they'll need only a little time to recover their energy, and even if they decide to push their luck and indulge in a second round of sinfulness, I have little time to finish writing.

"Father Argyle?" Deacon pokes his sharp-featured snout in cautiously, knocking on the door to my office as he opens it. His face and even his expression haven't changed from the day he was marched in here in the cold and rain. He's still implacable, still challenging and keenly analytical of everything he sees. I'm sure he sized me up by my office the moment he set foot in here -- the diplomas on the walls, the antique desk, the books on my shelves. His eyes dart about the room even as he peeks inside, no doubt noting all the little changes, and I have to keep myself from chuckling.

"Deacon," I say, waving him in. A gust of cool wind from the open window behind me ruffles the fur on my neck and sends a pair of brown leaves skittering across my desk. I rise and turn to the window to close it, and remind myself that while summer may have been brief, I should cherish the fact that it was intensely beautiful. It makes a lovely light, after all. "Thank you for coming. Sit down, please, sit. Happy birthday, Deacon McCall."

The young dog eases himself into the chair opposite my desk with a chuckle. "Thank you, Father Argyle. I feel like a fully emancipated eighteen-year-old citizen of the United Kingdom, ready to do my duty by voting, drinking and driving, in whichever order it pleases Her Majesty!"

I allow a smile, and sit back down across from him, my fingers steepled. Since that time I saw him with the fox he ceased to vex me so profoundly, and I've been able to simply accept that his perception of the world and his agenda were a mystery. He relaxed around me as well, no doubt sensing I was no longer weary of him, that I respected his privacy, and the status quo between us has served us both. "I apologize for not calling you to see me sooner. As of this rainy morning, your sentence -- such as it was -- is complete. Deacon McCall is now of legal age, and free to go. It was neglectful of me not to notice that in a timely manner, and help you prepare for your transition. Now, since there are no parents or living relatives mentioned in your files, I've taken the liberty of--"

"Father?" The dog reaches out, placing his hand gently on my own, and looking me in the eyes with... I don't know what I see in his eyes, and it leaves me breathless. He looks vulnerable, honest, supplicating. These are things one sees often as a priest, but from a man like Deacon, a young man gifted with a mind like a razor... "If I wanted to leave, I'd be gone now. I'd have snapped the arms off the gold candlesticks in the prayer rooms. I'd have absconded with the lockbox with the grocery-money you keep behind the painting of St. Barnabas," he says with an awkward chuckle as he points to the framed painting on the wall by my book-case. "The file in front of you would have been burned to ashes, and I'd be living the life of Riley in Amsterdam. I want to stay."

I hadn't realized how I felt about the prospect of his departure, not until now. I was relieved, happy to return to the simplicity of a life without him. So peculiar, so peculiar -- he's done nothing to upset the tender balance of our community, and yet I feel, now, apprehension. Worry that the peace we enjoyed with him among us was mere chance and that every day he remains taunts fate. "Deacon... This is a place of piety, study and worship. You've made yourself valuable here, but we're not a guest house."

"I was never a prisoner, Father, and I was certainly never a guest," he says, insistently, and reaches out to clasp my hand again, his gaze utterly penetrating in its sincerity. "There is something about this place -- something electric. I felt it the minute I was brought here, I felt it. As if a voice is calling to me from these hallways, from these stones... no, not calling, not calling," he says furtively, his ears flicking up and down, his eyes casting around. I struggle to keep my muzzle shut. "Singing. Soothing. Like a lullaby, like the rain outside the window at night, when you're warm in bed."

He clutches my hand hard, his voice trembling as the words spill from his lips, his eyes showing their whites. "Don't send me away, Father. Let me stay. Let me study. I don't want to go out there yet, to the noise and the chaos. Please, Father. Please."

I'm breathless. Deacon has always been in full control of himself, even when he rutted his foxy fling in the cellar. He let his body run free, but his mind was clear and sharp. Now, though, he throws himself at my feet, naked and unprotected, and when I start to gather my thoughts, to structure what I know and feel to form an answer, I look down to find myself squeezing his shaking hand in return. "You feel it too?" I say, and my voice is small and thin as a choirboy's. I've forgotten the apprehension, just like that. "Come with me."

As one, we rise from our chairs and rush out the door, the young dog on my heels as I hurry through the hallway. Brother Marin greets us as we pass, but neither I nor Deacon notice him, and when we approach Brother Dunly at the staircase, he sees the urgency in our march and steps aside. Down the stairs, out the door to the courtyard. An early autumn wind whips a chill through my robes, and Deacon in his thin black shirt doesn't seem to even notice. Through the archway by the herb garden and down again, along the spiral staircase to the ale cellar.

Going straight for the barrel standing under the brightest light on the ceiling, I have to laugh once I lay my hands on it. "Is something wrong, Father?" Deacon asks meekly, stepping up carefully behind me.

"Don't worry. I just realized a bit of irony, is all," I say with a chuckle, and start to push the barrel aside. The dog is quick to join me, his young muscles easily dwarfing my own efforts. The barrel on which Deacon committed, to my knowledge, the only act of sodomy to have ever been perpetrated in the history of the priory, shifts aside to reveal a wooden hatch, with a wrist-wide hole in it. "I know what you did with... with that delivery-boy. I never did get his name," I tell him with a wink, as I roll up the sleeve of my robe and ease my arm into the hole in the hatch.

"To tell you the truth, neither did I," Deacon replies with a rakish waggle of his eyebrows, and it takes all my fortitude to keep from bursting out in laughter. How could I have yearned for the simplicity of his absence? How could I not have relished the thrill of a little disequilibrium?

Reaching deep down through the hole, my fingers trace damp bricks. I feel an earwig scurry away under my fingerpads before finally I touch the cool metal of the locking mechanism. Three gears, each with irregular notches. I flick them in place quickly, before I have a chance to wonder whether I remember the sequence right, instead allowing my fingers to do the work for me. A rough clink, a deep thud, and as I pull my arm back, rolling the sleeve of my robe back down, one edge of the hatch raises up, the hinges creaking.

"What I'm going to show you, Deacon," I say in a whisper, and now it's my voice's turn to quaver. "It's been a decade since I've been down there myself. I... I don't want you to join me. You have to believe me when I tell you you're not yet ready, and you also have to believe me when I tell you that you will be, with patience and fortitude. I'm going to go down, and bring you something that, that... None of the brothers know this hatch is even here. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, Father," the dog whispers reverently. He takes the edge of the hatch and steps back, pulling it open. His eyes are on me, and there's no doubt in them. He burns with curiosity, but it can't overwhelm him. It's been so long since someone, anyone, looked at me with that kind of faith, and as I ease my legs down through the hatch and descend the ladder, I feel ten years younger.

It took him almost a year to read the book I gave him. He was already fluent in French, but that could only help him so much in deciphering the ancient dialect inscribed so studiously on those antique but sturdy vellum pages. Twice I had to remind him I wouldn't discuss the book with him until he finished reading it. Only twice.

He was masterful in his discretion. He continued performing his duties with the brethren day after day, and was never questioned. None of them even thought to ask me why the dog was still with us, when he would be remanded back to the constabulary's custody or simply sent on his way, as all the others had, before. The only time someone actually remarked on his presence was when Brother Marin, the half-blind, good-hearted fool of an otter, came timidly into my office to show me the robes he'd sewn for Deacon. Didn't I think it would help him feel more at home, if he wore the same garb as the rest of the Brothers? The heathen dog hadn't taken his vows, of course, he certainly wasn't one of the Brothers, but the robes weren't a uniform either, and would I mind giving him the robes?

Sweet Brother Marin. Always so terrified of recognition for his virtues, as if a good deed were less meaningful when others knew about it.

The brown cloth suited Deacon surprisingly well. The occasional visitor would show a moment's shock if they passed him; a street-tough young dog in a monk's robes was quite a sight, but Deacon was too focused on his duties to notice them.

The gardens flourished under his care. With Brother Marin's blessing he even rearranged some plantings in the herb garden to keep the taller sprouts from casting their shade over the shorter ones. Being young and tall, he was able to clean the nooks and corners of the kitchen that none of the brethren could reach without standing on a stool and risking a broken hip.

And throughout this all, he read the book, the book no-one here could know about. He would wait until there was a legitimate errand that brought him to my office at the end of his day's work. We'd discuss this or that while I took the book out of the safe hidden behind the painting of St. Barnabas. I would scarcely have handed it to him or he'd have whisked it away into the folds of his robes, unseen, and take his leave.

He'd plunder the library for numerous books. Old French texts and their modern interpretations, but Welsh ones as well, and Gaelic. Despite the fact that these were merely a cover for his true activities, he would still study them, so he could endure Brother Colwyn's playful jibes at his poor pronunciation.

I honestly don't know what I'd expected to happen. I often feared that Deacon would betray my trust, either by showing the book to someone, or by stealing into my sanctum under the ale cellar. But even when caution got the better of me in midwinter, I could find no evidence that the barrel had been moved since the day I'd brought him the book, and I chastised myself for my lack of faith... and then wondered afresh if perhaps I lacked the insight to detect his betrayal.

Without assistance, without encouragement, and without losing patience, Deacon read the book and crushed his desire to speak to me about each new thing he read, accepting my admonition that none of it was worth discussing until he'd read it all. I could see the stress it brought him to maintain that serenity, I felt his occasional spark of grudge against me for forcing him to endure this. I prayed very vigorously, on those occasions, to be forgiven for the pride and satisfaction it gave me to wield such cruel power over him.

This year's summer is starting to fade, and so is today's sun. I feel the calling of the sea. Standing from my seat at the library, I raise my chin and let the warm sunlight bathe my throat as it shimmers through the window. Brother Trevor looks at me curiously for a moment, and I do feel somewhat silly, but I ignore the indignant coughs of the others in the library as I abandon the notes I was making and announce it's time for my constitutional. I feel like a teenaged rebel throwing beer-bottles at police vans, as I walk out of the priory without putting away my books!

For all the sins and wickedness of this world, there is so much to enjoy. The warm breeze, the sound of gulls, even the stink of rotting seaweed, soon enough to be washed away when the tide returns. To the west, the strange shape of Durdle Door, a rocky outcropping with a natural archway, which draws a smattering of tourists and photographers to the local communities. To the east, the pink-tinted sunset, and a few scattered boulders in the sea...

One of them confuses me a moment, as it's plainly the wrong shape. I fumble for the spectacles in my sleeve pocket and perch them on my snout, squinting against the light, until I see the source of the aberration: a brown-robed figure with tall, cropped ears is sitting on the rock that seemed so misshapen. "Deacon," I call out, and carefully step from stone to slippery stone, foam from the waves licking at my sandals, heading toward him. "What brings you out here today?"

He has one leg dangling over the edge of the rock, his bare toes tickling the water, while the other is drawn up, hugging his knee to his chest. Such casual athleticism, contrasted to the stuffiness of the robe... it's a painter's dream. Less so, is the sight of an aching old monk whose bones creak as he sits himself down next to his protege. I know him well enough to know he only came out here to talk to me, and that he chose this place to talk, so that I'd know he needed to be taken seriously.

"Father Argyle," he says softly, his eyes turned toward the sunset, and his face is that bare, impenetrable mystery again. "Why did you give me that book? The things written there, they were... hard to grasp."

I sigh, softly. "It was given to me as I gave it to you. I had the benefit of a classical education, though. I should have thought you'd need some more assistance in deciphering the language."

"It wasn't hard to read. If I could have kept it with me, I'd have finished it in a month or two." There's no cockiness in his tone, I don't doubt for a second he's right. "But the duality... the philosophies are so contradictory, to each other, and to the Bible. If God said to go forth and multiply, how could that Frenchman..." Struggling for words, the dog turns to me, vainly gesturing with his hands. "The fifth chapter almost reads like a polemic extolling the virtues of anal--"

"No need to be vulgar, Deacon," I say with a snort, and bump my shoulder against his. "Let's take a step back, first. I've seen you ransack the Comparative Religion shelves in the library, so I assume you have a decent historical framework. What school of thought would you say this book represents?" It's been so long since I was a teacher to anyone. It's like riding a bicycle, like slipping into a warm bath, instantly familiar. I will need to pray again tonight, for my pride in lying to him so happily.

He kicks at the water. A slip of seaweed clinging to his toes, which he wiggles loose. In the pale red glow of the sunset, his pelt is like mahogany, the tan highlights shining like gold, all wrapped in the coarse, plain brown of a pious monk's robe. "It's a form of Gnosticism, without a doubt. I parsed the text mostly on cognates, but considering the similarity with Catalan, I have to assume the source language is an older form of Occitan. The writer speaks of coastal towns to the east and west, and they seem to be equally significant. I'd pin him square in the middle of the French Mediterranean coast. The book seems to have been written written in Languedoc. Eleventh century, give or take." I'm about to reach over and pat his shoulder, praise his insights, but he shies away and cuts me off. "The writer was a Cathar heretic. Are you, Father?"

I hadn't expected him to understand so much so soon. It took a year for him to finish the book, but we never spoke about it before. "Deacon," I whisper to him without hesitation. I may not have been expecting the question today but I knew the question was inevitable and I've had nearly a year to prepare an answer. "What is your real name?"

He smiles. "We all have secrets, don't we." He bumps his shoulder to mine, toeing at the seaweed again.

"Only on Earth, my son."

A liturgy is a wonderful thing to have, because you're never at a loss for what to do when something happens. If you've sinned, you confess. If you're worried, you pray. And if someone dies...

The loss of Brother Marin weighed heavily on all of us. Brother Trevor's hands still shake from the shock of finding him in the courtyard, covered in snow. Brother Deacon whispered to me that he noticed tracks in the dirt; he was convinced Brother Marin had fallen while tending his garden, and his last act in this life was to roll away, to protect those few little plants that stood a chance of lasting through the winter from being crushed by his corpse. I asked him if I should mention this in my eulogy, but he advised against it. Many of the brethren aren't long for this world themselves -- one look at Brother Trevor makes this plain -- and they seem to find comfort in the idea of an instant death. They imagine doing their daily tasks, when suddenly an angel's hand touches their shoulder, and lifts them from their body, just like that. They believe Brother Marin died like that, and that is enough for them.

I stand at the head of the open grave where the brothers, groaning and creaking with the effort of it, lower the simple box that holds Brother Marin's remains. I say the words, and the brethren repeat them, and I feel the warmth and strength they give to me, to us all. Gathered around this hole in the ground, mourning our friend, the bunch of us look like fossils from the Middle Ages, with our hoods drawn up and white, powdery snow collecting on our shoulders like dust in the library. Only Brother Deacon grounds us in modern reality, but even in his young eyes I see only the solemn resignation of a man who's seen enough friends buried to know how he will feel afterward, and that life goes on.

"Even as we lay our Brother to rest, we welcome into our midst another." All eyes turn briefly to Brother Deacon, who positively blushes. A murmur of coughs masking chuckles rises from the gathered men. "Brother Marin was a humble and noble servant of the Lord, and our friend. 'Leave the burying to the young, and the dying to old men,' he once said to me. Were he with us, he would ask us to care for his garden, and to spend no more time in this chill than we must."

A last prayer, and we all shuffle back along the path toward the priory, passing between the cherry-blossom trees that line the way to the cemetery. Those trees were a gift from a Japanese ecumenical delegation in the seventies. The visitors and the brothers spent all summer planting those fickle scoundrels; they blossom at a whim in spring, and only for a scant few days. But they are beautiful when they do, and they remind us all that few of the wonders of life will allow themselves to be planned. Death comes when the Lord calls, but so does happiness, and so do new friends.

"I don't want to study today," Brother Deacon says to me, as we straggle behind the others' hurried trek to the priory's warmth.

I lay my hand on his shoulder, his robe damp under my fingerpads, his young body warm enough to melt any snow that lands on him. "It's bad enough that our study sessions usually devolve into discussions on the topics of the, ah... literature I shared with you, but if you're going to skip even those few moments when we're truly focusing on your studies, you'll never be ready to take your vows!"

"The vows aren't the goal, Father Argyle. The goal is a deeper understanding of God in all his facets. Isn't that why you gave me the book?" he asks, with a sickening grin on his canine snout.

"You know well enough that it was as much a test of your patience as of your mind... Brother Deacon, are you trying to cheer me up, on so solemn an occasion as a fellow Brother's funeral?"

He leaps into the air, the brown cloth billowing about him like smoke from an incense pendulum and vaults up into one of the frozen trees, reminding me, as he so often does, that the body hidden under that cloth is vastly unlike any of the others in our priory. Ours are crumbling vessels of our piety; his is a weapon, a vehicle, a tool for great works. "What fascinates me more than anything about the teachings you've shared with me is the duality of the world, and of God. The material and the transcendental. Power and love." He orates these words, with which he's begun so many of his diatribes, from the limbs of a frozen sakura tree, but they're no less puckish than when he hurls them at me in the privacy of my office. I fold my hands, ignoring the cold, and wear an amused and patient grin as I await his newest tirade.

"The Gnostics hold, as you do, the belief in a binary God. In the red corner, ladies and gentlemen," he says like an American showman, waving toward the distant, snowy priory and the vanishing figures of our brothers, "stands Rex Mundi, the King of the world, as Leonardo would say. He that made all that is real, and it is to Him, you say, that our brothers pray. But there is a challenger!" His pantomime is so lively, I can't help but laugh and clap my hands, even as he waves toward the cemetery. I scarcely held back my tears when I stood at that grave, but now the sight of it fills me with tranquil humour, as if briefly I caught the gag of a cosmic pun. "In the blue corner stands the true God! The God of love and transcendence, the God of generosity and totality. He demands and asks nothing, He forgives all, to embrace Him is to be free of the shackles of this mortal, material trap. So, that is, say the stuffy authors of your secret, deviant books!"

He leaps from the tree's branches and lands in a deep, mocking bow, so like a jester of old. "In your heart, you prayed for Brother Marin's soul to be remanded to that distant God. The ungraspable, the unnamed, the unspeaking, instead of the Rex to whom our brethren devote their lives. Every day, to their faces, you say one thing and think another. You lie and deceive and you love it, you live for it."

My mirth fades abruptly, and my throat catches. As if to slap me in the muzzle, the wind picks up and the icy chill cuts into my body, whipping past my snout. "Deacon. That's enough."

Where his clowning was comical a moment ago, his antics carry a menace now. The young dog dances toward me with a speed and energy that would intimidate anyone whose joints are prone to aching in winter, and I can't help but take a stumbling step back. "I know more than you think, Father Argyle. Anthony Ares Argyle, former inmate of Her Majesty's prison in Featherstone, one of the very first prisoners to be held there. Pederasty, no less. You'd scarcely taken your vows before you were caught diddling an altar boy. Ain't you just a cliché through and through, old droog?"

His words pound into me as ferociously as the wind, but he won't let me stagger back. He dances around me, spinning like a dervish and darting like the devil, giving me not a moment to collect my thoughts. "They were going to send me there, too -- well, Brinsford Prison, but it's right next to Featherstone. Just opened, so if it weren't for that kindly sergeant Patrick Ma_whatever_ at the Yard, I'd have been one of the first inmates there too. How's that for déja fucking vu?"

He presses his advantage, steps on my robe and trips me. I yelp from the shock, but the Brothers are too far to hear, now already at the Priory's gates, hurrying inside for warmth and prayer. Deacon McCall falls upon me, his teeth bared, and he is magnificent. The power of him, the brutality, it makes my heart beat faster and faster. I don't want a moment to gather my witse. I want to see where his power will take him, I want to know how he learned these things about me, why he punishes me so, and then to see if I have a response in me. The thrill of it, I tell you, the thrill of it, I can't convey. My old bones don't ache any more, blood flows richly in corners of my body where once it only trickled.

"Do you think they might have done to me what they did to you, Father Argyle?" His foot slides along my robe, creasing it between my legs. In ecstatic panic I grab at his ankle, but he leans his weight in and presses the sole of his sandal to my crotch, leaving me bent over, hugging his thigh. "Brinsford's only a juvenile facility, and I'm not a kiddy-fiddler. Still, you know as well as I do I can't quite keep it zipped up. You think, sooner or later, someone would come into my room with a broken plate and make a few choice cuts to keep me from ever doing the deed again? Was it over before you knew it, or did they make you feel it?!"

Fire surges through me, and a strength I haven't known since I was Deacon's age pulses in my arms. I brace, and with a growl I throw the dog off me -- it feels as though I throw him back clear against the sakura tree behind him, though my eyes tell me he merely skips back at the shove I give him. "Is today the day, wretched pup? Am I finally seeing the truth of you? Call me a villain, call me a liar -- I spit on the God my brothers think I worship, and I love it. And I'll take no bullying from you, Deacon, who lie so totally I wonder if you even remember your own fucking name!"

I couldn't say which of us is more shocked when I punch him. It's graceless and brutal, a boxer's strike, and catches him perfectly on the snout. He falls back in a plume of powdery snow, cracking the back of his head on the root of a tree, and now I press my sandal on his loins, where he has far more to lose than I. "To be imprisoned for pederasty... out of all the crimes they could have caught me for, they put me away for the one I didn't commit. How's that for a laugh? Course, if they didn't think I'd been banging that sweet little choirboy, they might wonder if I had an alibi for, say, the murder of Paris Caulfield. Self-castration was a high price to pay, but taking that broken plate to myself in a fit of guilty grief took away any doubts anyone might have about which crime I committed that night..."

I let him up, and he shuffles back onto his feet warily, keeping his eyes on me, his back hunched as if ready to spring and escape. And then dawn breaks -- there's that smile, that same glibness, just as when he played the jester, just as when he accosted me with a barrage of horrifying half-truth. The smile is the same as when he was pushed into the seat across from my desk that very first day, but behind it stands a different man. By God, I've changed him. I don't know how or in what way, but before me stands a different man and my instruction, my manipulation caused him to differ.

"I understand, Father. I understand that you're my enemy and my friend, that you want me to be happy and to suffer, that you're a liar and a prophet," he whispers to me, his eyes cast down in reverence I'm sure I don't deserve. A year or two ago that might have been feigned, but now... he sees in me something I don't see myself, something I don't understand. Can I now call myself a prophet? An instrument of God, a mouthpiece who speaks a message intended only for ears other than his own?

"Are you ready to prove it to me?" Does he realize I don't know what I'm saying? How can a mind so sharp not see that he's learned from me a thing that I could never teach?

He's blinded by the rush of illusory realization, just as I was when I was taught. Perhaps my teacher knew as little about the duality of the world as I do now. Is that the truth of it? Is the purpose of these teachings, of this book, simply to be false, and to let that be the lesson?

"I'll prove it to you," he says, and takes my arm.

Between you and me, I honestly don't remember if I was innocent or guilty of the charge of which I was convicted. I was quick enough on my feet at the time to competently juggle both homicide and sodomy on a single wicked evening. Much of that period of my life exists only in hazy memory and terse police files. I bedded young men and women before I entered the service of God, at first only the Catholic interpretation of Him, though I do recall betraying my vow of celibacy once or twice. But never, to my knowledge, a boy...

None of that matters, though, any more than it matters how he could learn these things about me without, so far as I know, leaving the priory in the years he's been here. His words cut through me as only the truth and the chill of winter can, and left me mute and senseless as I followed him on a circuitous route through the snowy landscape.

First to the shore where, among the stones of the Drundle Door archway, he had hidden a cache of supplies. He tore off his robe and folded it, unashamed of his nakedness in the sun and snow, and why should he be? He had only an old monk for a witness, and perhaps the eye of one God or another. In a flash he'd dressed himself as a common young man, in jeans and jacket, sweater and shoes, and he tossed me a bundle of 'civilian' clothes to put on myself.

Even now, as I hide in an empty cupboard, I'm still flushed with the maelstrom of emotions of the day, and it's been a long one. Yesterday, I awoke to the shock of Brother Marin's death, and spent the day dealing with paperwork and police. I skipped sleep in favor of prayer and read the long liturgy of a monk's funeral, and then had my soul torn open by a vicious young dog I thought, after two years, I finally understood.

Bold as a peacock, he marched me into town. It's so different in winter, and I so rarely venture out of the priory, that I couldn't honestly tell you which town it was, as quickly as he marched us to our destination. A council flat, one of three identical, drab concrete menhirs dropped along the town's outskirts. The stairwell smelled of piss, the walls were covered with lewd graffiti and half the windows were smashed. Deacon knew exactly where we were headed, and even had a key with which to open one of the apartments. It was empty inside, the walls showing bare concrete. It smelled stale and lifeless, it was clearly never inhabited, but light-bulbs hung from the ceiling and rudimentary curtains could shut out sunlight and prying eyes.

"What you did or didn't do is a matter of the duality of conscience, Father, and I'm going to give you a demonstration," he said as beckoned me into what should have been a bedroom, and opened the wooden cupboard door for me, gesturing for me to enter. "But it's also going to be a gift. Duality. Remember that," he said, and closed the door.

It must have been two hours that I've been waiting in this cupboard, and I need to pee. I wonder if this is another prank -- I can't be certain of anything when it comes to Deacon McCall, not after seeing this new side of him, his eagerness to embrace the illusion of revelation. But I feel compelled to wait, compelled to obey. There was a time when I held such sway. When I was the new Prior and commanded the hearts and minds of the monks, and turned them from a herd of bookworms into a community of bookworms. Is this how they felt? Blindly obedient, unable to speak or move and unable to understand why? When did I lose this power?

There's a sound like music -- no, it's laughter. Two voices, one is clearly Deacon. The other... My word. It's a girl. A vixen. As pretty as the delivery-boy I witnessed him coupling with on top of the entrance to my sanctum in the cellar, she could well be the lad's sister, for all I know. She's every bit as taken by the dog's smooth, charismatic charm as the young man was, and who could blame her?

"I can't believe I'm doing this!" she squeals, clutching at his chest, licking her lips. "I can't believe it."

He holds her full, supple hips and slides his hands slowly down her thighs, easing her short black skirt upward. "You mean skipping classes?" he rumbles, licking at her black-tipped ears. Her muzzle falls open and she falls against him, scratching at his shirt, nuzzling his throat. "I'd best get you back soon, then. You wouldn't want to miss out on the professor's view on Derrida."

"How did you know -- ah!" she squeaks as he spins her in his arms, pulling her back against him. He gnaws on her neck, leaving her like a rag-doll in his arm. He squeezes her breasts, to elicit another delighted moan from the vixen, and slides his hands down again to finish raising up her skirt. And he looks at me.

For a moment I forget that this is a show he's putting on for my benefit. I feel like a dirty old priest hiding in a cupboard and spying on two young lovers through the crack in the door, and for that moment my heart thumps at the thought of being caught by the young man in question. But even when I realize that I have nothing to fear in that regard, my fright doesn't fade. It hasn't since he turned on me at the cemetery. His eyes are cold and unfeeling, even as his voice and hands radiate seduction and lust, sending the vixen into a frenzy, writhing back against him, helping him peel her undergarments down around her knees. And he's doing all this because he thinks I expect it from him. Perhaps I didn't lose my power after all.

He feels nothing for her. Not for her as a woman, not even for the beauty of her body. That's what he wants me to see. If I were whole where it counted the blood would be boiling in my veins with lust and envy for either of them. To hold so beautiful a woman's virtue in the palm of my hand, to tug at her needs and bend her toward mine... Or conversely to be so skillfully seduced by so fine a young man.

Deacon is an expert con-man. He pushes and pushes, but holds back at key moments to let her make a decision. While he grinds the bulge behind his fly against her naked rear, she's the one who reaches behind herself to tug the lip of his zipper down, she's the one who reaches into the folds and gasps at what she feels there. "What's your name?" she asks, turning her head to look at him over her shoulder, as she hoists his pride into the open, squeezing and kneading at his flesh.

I hold my breath. My gaze isn't even tempted by the sight of his doghood, the prospect of the dishonest sex I'm about to witness. It's his mouth and eyes I focus on. The tug of a grin at the corner of his lips, the sparkle of cruel mirth in the depths of his pupils. He whispers something in her ear, too soft for me to hear and too quick for me to study his lips, and enters her. He told her the truth, I'm certain. I'm certain. Something he would never do for me, his teacher, the man who brought him into the only place he's known some semblance of peace.

He mounts her like a stallion, both of them still fully clothed, right in the middle of this bare-walled room in a derelict building. It couldn't be less romantic, and with me hiding in the cupboard, less intimate. He's silent as he mates with her, sliding himself in and out of her with practiced power and confidence, and she thrums around him, rolling her beautiful hips, clutching at her belly as if to hug his member within her. She throws her head back in ecstasy as he squeezes her warm, full breasts through her shirt... But he doesn't speak. Doesn't moan. There's only the sound of his breath, the rustle of his clothes, the clink of his belt buckle. And his eyes, still focused on me. What is it that he thinks I've taught him? He's clearly not a woman's man. I've no doubt that he'd just as happily make love to his own foot as to this girl, and yet he went to the trouble of seducing her, in the space of two hours, and bringing her to this dingy little hovel to have his way with her, all for my benefit.

All to prove himself to a stuffy old monk who hides secret books in secret places and lies for no reason.

That's what he's doing, that's what he's showing me! He's deceiving and violating this lovely young woman for no reason, for no benefit, just as I decieve my Brothers by pretending to be a pious Catholic, and pondering heresies in my own mind. There was a time when, if I seduced a woman as Deacon has done, I would have felt powerful and triumphant. There was a time when I had a reason for taking this priory, and burying my books there.

But Deacon is still a man, with a man's urges. She may not be to his tastes, but his body has its own opinions, and when a man approaches his apex, very little matters. It's a sight to behold, primal and obscene. He slams himself into her, his nostrils flaring like a rutting stud, his hands gripping her hips so firmly his fingers surely leave bruises. She's weak at the knees but he won't lie down with her, won't let her reach for the window-sill to brace herself, and it's clearly all she can do just to keep from toppling over with the force of his pounding.

He roars his satisfaction, he pulls her back against him and fills her. She thrashes in his arms, her shoes scraping at the concrete. Two people divided by lies and deception. Two bodies unified in careless, carnal delight. Which of these is the deeper truth? If I told her right now what he had done to her, how he had betrayed her trust, and asked her if she felt she'd been raped... she would kick me aside and simply feel him inside her, feel the ecstasy of his masculinity.

I feel the heat, the alchemical passion that fills the room, and the confusion Deacon instilled in me with his outburst in the cemetery is transformed by it, transmuted like lead to gold into a fierce determination. For a decade, I've been going through the motions as he did with this girl. I've allowed my deceit to become a habit, fruitless and aimless, without pleasure or even relief. I can have what he's having now. I want to. I must have it. He doesn't know what he's given me.

When he left with her, I waited for him, and when he didn't return after two further hours I knew the lesson was over and returned to the priory without waiting any longer. I walked to Durdle Door to fetch my robes from the seaside rocks, and was about to simply pull them down over the civilian clothes Deacon had provided for me, when I caught myself. Grinning like an idiot, I didn't even check to see if anyone were looking as I undressed, while the snow turned to drizzling rain, and took a few minutes to trot, naked, along the rocky beach. Not so old, these bones of mine and not so frail!

When I ceased my lunacy and dressed myself again in plain, monastic brown, I had to keep reminding myself that Brother Marin had died, and that the mood would be solemn in the priory. I entered the main gates, taking care to hide the energy I felt in my body, intending to head straight to my office to think of all I'd learned today.

No. Not to my office.

I glance up as I cross the courtyard, to the library window, where some of the brothers sit and talk, clutching their teacups. To bring food or drink into the library is a transgression that a Prior like myself should take seriously, but I'm not a Prior of the Lord right this moment. I am Anthony Ares Argyle, raised a Cathar heretic, a rebel in my youth and a lover of men and women and a slayer of them, a convicted -- and possibly even guilty -- sex offender, and oh, such a liar.

With this thick blanket of snow, I have to take great care to avoid trampling Brother Marin's garden. Isn't that just the essence of the duality I thought I'd been teaching Deacon? To lie to my brothers and love them all the same? Deacon made that girl feel loved and wanted, but felt nothing of the kind. Which of us is the greater sinner? Should we all have two consciences, with which to catalogue the sins we commit in thought and in body?

I'm in such a rush to get to my dusty little underground sanctum that I don't even notice that the barrel's already been moved aside and that the hatch's edge is already raised among the floorboards. I pull it up and descend the ladder in haste, letting the hatch fall shut again, and only now do I notice that there is already light.

An electric lantern rests on the desk in this underground cell, smaller even than my little office, though the dank bricks that line the walls don't give the light much opportunity to bounce and play. "We all have secrets, don't we," says Deacon. He's still wearing his civilian clothes, seated at the desk. With all that's happened today, I do feel a little silly about having kept him out of here for so long.

I dismount the ladder with the ease of a feline half my age, though I keep a weary distance from the young man at my desk, and lean back against the paper-press behind me. I do love the smell of this place. The heady scents of the inks, the vellum, the powders and glues. He picks up a framed photograph, the only decoration in my little sanctum, and shoots a questioning look at me. "That's Imelda, with her husband and her son," I whisper. He throws the photograph at me and I jolt in place to catch it before the glass can shatter on the ground.

"He's not the boy's father, and you know it. You're not the first man to go into the clergy because you knocked up your own sister. Probably not the first to take a knife to his privates out of guilt either."

It should stab me through the heart, this confrontation, but the day's turmoil has left me numb. "You deduced that from a photograph?" I ask, caressing the portrait of my beloved sister and her family, and set it down next to a stack of parchment sheets, still drying after being boiled. I lean against the cupboard, a little bundle of knotted flax dropping onto my shoulder. "Deacon... when did you know?"

"That the ancient tomes of wisdom you handed me weren't centuries old? Please. The Cathar book was still damp when you gave it to me that night. If it really were that old, it would have fallen apart after a month in a wet hovel like this." He takes the weight off one of the books I'd finished binding only a week earlier and carefully opens the cover, flicking through the pages. "You did beautiful work, Father Argyle. These forgeries of yours are stunning."

I dare to take a step closer, still clutching the photograph. "Then why did you read them? Why did you study the books I kept giving you?"

He smiles, and takes my cheeks in his hands, pulling my head forward until his forehead presses to mine. "Because you made them for me, Father. Whether you spun them from memory or invented them on the spot doesn't matter, and it doesn't matter that they weren't ancient. Duality, Father Argyle. Remember that. Just because those books were your fake doesn't mean they couldn't be true. Just because you are a pathetic liar doesn't mean you can't be my teacher."

I smile, and pet his hands, and wipe at my stinging eyes. "You were the teacher today, Brother Deacon. Together, we can--"

"I'm leaving." The damp, dead air feels cold all of a sudden, and the humming energy this room has always had for me is silent. "No other God before me, Father. Rex Mundi or the God of Love, we have to chose one of them, and if I stay here with you, all we'll do is discuss the wonders of their duality. That may be your idea of retirement, but..."

I nod, and smile. "The lesson with the vixen. Even an unfulfilling choice can still yield its rewards, am I right?"

"You're not a bad student yourself, Father," he says, and with a last flash of that rakish smile, he brushes past me, takes the rungs of the ladder and climbs out.

A few times, I open my mouth to speak. I turn to the ladder, to chase him, and stop myself. I want to ask him so many things. Did he ever come down here? Was he merely humoring me in our private discussions, or was he truly fascinated? Did he sneak out of the priory often, to sate his lusts among the willing young lads of the local communities? Would he like to know whether the books my own thoughts, or whether I'd copied them... Does he think I should leave behind my silly little forgeries and my silly little philosophies, or should I teach the brothers what I've learned?

I am an instrument of God, both of them or either, who's to say -- but I can see no other explanation. I built a priory of deception and lived a liar's life without a reason, until now. He found this place electric, he said, and I know what he meant. The love of this place, the peace of it. He could have been shaped by it and made into a man of worth and value to the world, if there hadn't been Father Argyle. A confused heretic with secrets so seductive they could keep his mind away from love and peace, keep him curious and unfulfilled. And now he's gone away again, untouched by serenity, back into the noise and filth with fresh questions and paradoxes to keep him occupied and convince him that there is no bliss to be had, not for someone like him.

Someone like him.

He isn't unique, after all. He was a villain, and so was I -- but he still had his innocence, as I once did. We each found ourselves faced with the question which of the two Gods we favored, and each of us chose the same answer: not to answer at all. Oh, it's the worst of fates, a path that takes the merit out of virtue and the pleasure out of sin, and none of my crimes were ever as dreadful as taking what I took from him -- whatever that was. I wonder what else I can take, and who I can take it from. I wonder if it's time for an instrument of God to be sharpened and put to good use once more.

By the time I climb out and slide the barrel back over the hatch, any footsteps he left in the courtyard have already been snowed over.

Deacon McCall might just as well have never existed.