smackenzie

Of all the things in the heretic community, the one thing that Brother Peire can always understand is his work in the copy room. After a week it doesn't even matter to him what he's copying, as long as he has the comforting smell of ink and the familiar weight of a pen in his hand and the texture of parchment or vellum under his fingers. He scores guidelines for the letters and marks out margins and spaces for the illustrated capitals, if there are any, and the first time he makes a mistake he internally asks God for forgiveness, and then cuts a little piece of scrap parchment, glues it over the misspelled word, and continues on.

It helps that he hasn't been asked to copy any blatantly heretical texts, and in fact the manuscript that Jaufre gives him to work on is an old history of the northern part of the country, before the north assimilated the south at the point of a sword, even before the king established his capital in Ravene. Some of it is history that Brother Peire already knows, but some of it is not. And there are no illustrations, aside from the capital letters at the start of each chapter, which he's allowed to paint any way he wants. He's only had to do two so far, and both of them ended up twined around with vines and morning glories and birds and rabbits. For some reason, birds are easy for him to draw, and he remembered the lesson he and Rainaut walked in on, when he first came to the monastery, when Verrine was teaching the class about how God created the hare.

"Good work," Jaufre tells him one afternoon, looking over his shoulder as he's carefully lettering some commentary on a long-dead king's economic policies. "I knew you'd settle right in."

"I did this at the friary. I was never very good with illustrated capitals, but I enjoyed it. So it's familiar to me already."

"Well, you're still doing a good job. Do you know how to bind the pages and make a book?"

"No. Do you do that here?"

"If I have the time. So far I haven't, but now that you're here to help me I might be able to. I'll teach you if you want to learn."

"I'd like that, thank you."

Jaufre goes back to his desk and resumes his work, but as if complimenting Brother Peire's work gave him an idea, he starts talking about the woman he calls his wife – although Brother Peire doesn't think they're actually married – and how they met here, and what he did before he joined the heretic community, and what other work he's done, and he keeps up a stream of chatter until the bell rings to call them to the dusk service.

"He must really love her," Brother Peire comments to Rainaut later. "He could not stop talking about her."

The next day, during the morning meeting, they find out why.

Martel, who's been leading the services and thus the morning meetings, announces that Jaufre has something to share, and when the crowd parts to let Jaufre through, he wishes everyone peace upon their morning, and then says that the information is only half his to share, and it's really Felise's. So she makes her way to the front, but instead of wishing peace upon everyone assembled, she blurts out “I'm with child!” Which brings a round of congratulations and blessings and kisses on cheeks and embraces, until Martel manages to restore order and the head of the kitchen announces that dinner will be more festive, considering this good news.

"'Festive' means 'mead,'" Rainaut tells Brother Peire as they walk out of the chapter house. "You've had mead, have you not?"

"No," Brother Peire admits. "Just wine, sometimes. And beer."

"It's good. Maurin makes it. You'll see."

Once in the copy room, Brother Peire congratulates Jaufre personally and asks if he and Felise would mind if he said a special prayer for them in the chapel, a blessing that he learned in his capacity as a Gray Friar. Jaufre says that would be fine, he doesn't think Felise would mind either, and thank you.

But there's no time before the dusk service and then the festive dinner, which includes not only mead but river fish and eggs and new cheese. The eggs, he's told, symbolize new life. The river fish is just because this is a special occasion.

Pitchers of mead travel up and down the tables and Brother Peire accepts a cup when the pitcher comes to him. The mead is sweet and still pretty cold, but a harsher drink than he's used to and he coughs as it goes down. Rainaut thumps him on the back and laughs at him.

"What do you think?" he asks. Brother Peire takes another sip to make sure he likes it. He coughs again. "Didn't I tell you it was good?"

"It's stronger than I'm used to."

"Don't drink it too fast – I don't want to have to carry you back to the cell." Rainaut grins. Brother Peire rolls his eyes, a trick he learned from one of the little boys, and drinks some more.

He can feel the mead going to his head, and knows that drunkenness is a sin, but he can't quite bring himself to care. He doesn't plan to drink that much, anyway.

Still, by the time dinner is over and everyone is dispersing to sleep or work or socialize before the midnight service, he feels light-headed and unsteady and careless and happy. He's happy for Jaufre and Felise and their illegitimate child. He's happy that he is consistently pleased to be working in the copy room. He's happy that he has Rainaut, and that Rainaut has him, and that they will no doubt lie down together before the midnight service, most likely to try and sleep but maybe they'll talk, or just lie in the dark and quiet and meditate.

He remembers that he was going to offer a prayer to God in the chapel, a prayer of thanksgiving for the new life growing in Felise and a plea for God to watch out for the child and bless it and make sure it doesn't come to harm. But he can do that later. Right now Rainaut is talking to him, telling him about the heretics' way of raising children, and Brother Peire just wants to listen to his voice.

The cell is warm and quiet. In the past week, they've shared the bed three times but Brother Peire has only let Rainaut kiss him once. But he thinks he's ready to do it again. Just to make sure, he grabs Rainaut's shirt as soon as the door is closed behind him, and pulls him close and kisses him on the mouth. Rainaut's response is tentative at first, but as Brother Peire keeps going, Rainaut's return kisses grow more and more sure.

Finally Brother Peire has to pull away and breathe. The shutters are still open so there's light in the cell from the half moon, and he can see that Rainaut is grinning.

"You taste of mead," he says.

"So do you."

And now it's Rainaut's turn to pull Brother Peire close to kiss him.

"Lie down with me," Rainaut says into his mouth.

"I want to, to – to lie with you," Brother Peire answers, not quite understanding what he's saying until he's already said it.

"That's what I said."

"No. I mean, I mean like men and women. I mean - "

"I know what you mean." Rainaut's voice is quiet. "Are you sure?"

"I. Yes. I think. It's the mead."

"You panicked when I kissed you and now you want to - " He spreads his hands, at a loss. "How much did you drink?"

"I'm not drunk, Rainaut. Just tipsy. A little. I'm happy. I think I just want to share it. I want – I don't know what I want. You."

"You want me."

"I want you."

"Despite your vows."

Brother Peire just kisses him again. "Didn't you say I should try to put them behind me?" he asks, his lips brushing Rainaut's as he speaks. "Didn't you suggest I try to be someone new? Not a friar, but not a heretic?"

"Yes...."

"Then let me."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. Please." Another kiss. Brother Peire can feel it, the thing inside him that responds when he and Rainaut are this close, the thing that scared him so much the first time. It's warm and pleasant and eager, and he wants to feed it, wants to encourage it. The mead has made him careless and unconcerned, and he wants to know what it's like, to lie with Rainaut instead of just lying next to him.

Rainaut pulls off his shirt and tugs at Brother Peire's robe. "Let me see you first," he says. So Brother Peire unties the brown rope belt and pulls the sand-colored robe over his head, the one the friars gave him when he was sent away, the same kind of robe they give the poor. He stands naked in front of Rainaut, nervous now but still wanting him.

Rainaut steps out of his breeches and spreads his hands, as if to say "Well? Do you like what you see?" And Brother Peire does. This is a sin, he knows, to admire a naked man's body with desire, but as with everything else, he can't bring himself to care. Rainaut's skin is pale and the hair on it is dark, like the hair on his head, and his muscles are well-formed and he isn't as skinny as he was when he was released from the prison. Brother Peire's gaze drifts down, unconsciously, and Rainaut seems to be well-formed between the legs as well. He just grins while Brother Peire looks him up and down, and Brother Peire feels lightheaded again, like he could float away.

"Come," Rainaut says, lying down on the bed and patting the mattress in front of him. Brother Peire joins him obediently, stretching out next to him, close enough to feel the heat rising off his skin. "I'll be gentle, I promise."

Rainaut kisses him and touches him, brushing light fingers across Brother Peire's face and his chest and down his arms and to his hips and his thighs. Brother Peire makes a noise, soft and surprised, as Rainaut's fingers brush over his stiffening cock.

"Is that ok?" Rainaut murmurs, and Brother Peire nods. "I should keep going?" Another nod. "Tell me if you want me to stop."

"I don't." It could be the mead talking. It could be his traitorous body. It could be that he's finally recognizing and accepting his own desire.

And it could just be that he enjoys Rainaut's mouth on his and Rainaut's hands on him, and he's so glad to have something in this place that he enjoys, he wants to hold on to it.

Rainaut is lying nearly on top of Brother Peire by now, pulling his thigh up to hook it around his waist. Brother Peire puts both hands on either side of Rainaut's face, to hold him still while their kisses grow deeper and more intense. Then Rainaut starts moving on top of him, rubbing against him, and he surprises himself with a moan of pleasure. Rainaut grins against his mouth.

"I can't wait any longer," Rainaut murmurs. "And you feel ready to me."

"What's, what else is there?"

"You'll see." Rainaut sits up, narrowly avoiding digging an elbow into Brother Peire's chest, and climbs over him to get to the shelf on the far wall. There's a small pot on the shelf, next to a small leather-bound book and a carved wooden duck, and he brings the pot over to the bed and holds it out for Brother Peire to see what's in it, and to smell it. It's half-full of some kind of cream and it smells cool and herbal.

Rainaut climbs back into bed and kneels between Brother Peire's thighs. He swipes his finger through the cream, paints his stiff member with it, and then gently slides a finger into Brother Peire's body. Brother Peire squeaks, surprised and embarrassed, but Rainaut just slides his finger in and out, adds another finger, and apparently paints Brother Peire's insides as well with the cream.

"Are you sure you're ok?" he asks. Brother Peire nods. "You're a surprising and amazing man, friar. I think you need to know that."

Brother Peire doesn't even ask Rainaut not to call him "friar". He just nods again. Rainaut pushes Brother Peire's thighs apart, takes himself in hand, and guides himself into Brother Peire's waiting body.

Brother Peire sucks in a breath, open-mouthed with astonishment. He feels stretched and filled and something he finally determines to be aroused. He doesn't understand this at all, but he trusts Rainaut and he loves him and he wanted this, didn't he? He asked for it.

Rainaut leans down, drops a kiss on Brother Peire's lips, and starts to move. And this is so far from anything Brother Peire has ever experienced, he doesn't know how to react.

"Still ok?" Rainaut asks. Brother Peire nods. "Are you ever going to say anything?"

"I don't understand. But I, I, I like this. I, I – oh. Oh."

Rainaut smiles at him. Brother Peire's breath is heavy and shallow and he moans with abandon as Rainaut thrusts into him, in and out and in and out, bringing pleasure and pain both. His face hanging over Brother Peire's is a little flushed, and his lips are parted as he pants with the effort. Brother Peire wants to kiss him.

The bed creaks alarmingly under them as they rock together. Brother Peire can feel something building in his spine, his groin, the back of his neck. He feels tense and receptive at the same time. His skin feels hot and tight. He is open to all the love in the universe, Rainaut's love and God's love and the music of the stars and light of the sun and -

And then it crashes over him and he cries out, his pleasure taking him completely by surprise. He isn't sure, but he thinks he can see the face of God.

When he comes back to himself, Rainaut is sitting up, watching him, hips pumping in and out with increasing desperation. Brother Peire murmurs his name and Rainaut smiles down at him, touches his face, and bows his head and lets out a low groan as he too apparently reaches his climax.

He stretches out on top of Brother Peire, lying on him almost carefully, and now they can kiss. They're both tired and sated but their mouths are still eager for each other.

Rainaut brushes Brother Peire's damp curls away from his face. "Are you still ok?" he asks. His voice is quiet but even.

"Yes," Brother Peire says. "I think – it felt almost holy, what we did. Like God smiled down on us. I thought I saw Him, when I – when I – at the end. I saw light and felt... blessed."

"We believe that this kind of pleasure – all pleasure, really – is a gift from God. People are meant to find joy in each other, and God wants us to lie with each other for no other reason than we enjoy it. It's not always holy – sometimes it's just something people do for the sheer pleasure of it. But sometimes it is. Wait for Midsummer. On Midsummer we go out into the fields at night and lie with each other, to encourage a good harvest and to celebrate that we're alive and God loves us."

"I don't think I could. Outside, I mean. I don't know." Brother Peire's voice is shaky. He can still feel his heart pounding in his chest. Rainaut shifts around, pulling out of him and rolling off him. Brother Peire presses close and wraps his arm around Rainaut's head. "Thank you," he whispers.

"It was my pleasure." Rainaut grins. "Literally my pleasure. How do you feel?"

"Empty. Full. Lightheaded. My heart's still racing."

"Do you want to know how you felt to me?"

"Yes?"

"Hot and welcoming and tight and eager and astonishing." Rainaut presses his forehead against Brother Peire's. "I should thank you. I don't know how I'm going to concentrate during the midnight service, though. Are you going to panic?"

"I don't know. I hope not."

"I hope not too." Rainaut untangles himself from Brother Peire enough to sit up and pull the blanket over them, and then they press close again, wrapping arms and legs around each other. "If you decide later that it was the mead, don't tell me. I want to think you finally determined that you just wanted me."

Brother Peire is falling asleep, tired out from his exertions and the mead. "I won't," he murmurs. "It wasn't the mead. It was me. And God. I think it was God."

Rainaut might say something to that, but he doesn't hear. He's asleep.

The bell wakes them for the midnight service and they stumble out of bed and into their clothes and around the cloister to the church. Brother Peire wonders if anyone can see it on his face, that Rainaut brought him the kind of pleasure he never thought he'd have, the kind of pleasure that no friar is supposed to feel. He has broken a vow. He's strangely unmoved by that.

But the next day it hits him, what he did and what he asked for, and how ashamed he is that he could so blithely throw off one of the major tenets of his order. He doesn't think God would want to deny His children such joy, but at the same time, friars take a vow of chastity to better dedicate themselves to God, and Brother Peire has torn right through it.

He wakes in the middle of the night, slides out of bed, and makes his way to the chapel, to kneel in front of the altar and beg God to forgive him.

Please don't punish Rainaut on my account, he adds. I asked it of him. The sin is mine and mine alone.

He feels less burdened when he's done, and goes back to the cell and crawls back into bed – next to Rainaut, who hasn't stirred – and falls back to sleep.

Several days later he's taking a break from his copy work to walk around the monastery and stretch his legs, and he finds himself walking around the backs of the cells. The monks who used to live here planted small gardens outside the cells and built a wall to contain them. The heretics pulled down what was left of the wall but replanted some of the gardens, and if someone so chooses, they can walk through them or around them and past the outer wall of the cells and guess who's in and who's asleep by whether or not the shutters are pulled closed.

Most of the shutters are open, and because it's a warm day, most of the windows are open as well. As he passed by one of them he can hear Rainaut's voice. So this must be their cell from the other side. Brother Peire doesn't mean to stop and listen, but after Rainaut is a woman's laughter, and Brother Peire pauses to listen, curious as to who she is and what they might be talking about. He can't make out their words – their voices are low – but soon the sound of conversation becomes the sounds of coupling, and he feels his face heat with shame and hurries on.

He goes back to the copy room with something hot and tight in his chest, an unfamiliar emotion he can't name. He feels weirdly and briefly angry and Rainaut, and isn't sure why.

By the time the dusk service is over, he thinks he knows – because of her, whoever she was, the woman in their cell, giving him pleasure and receiving it from him in return. Brother Peire hadn't known that Rainaut was attracted to women that way. He hadn't thought Rainaut would lie with anyone else.

He shouldn't be angry, not at Rainaut, and not for enjoying someone else's company. But he is. And he's ashamed.

He doesn't mean to ask about her, but she sits on Rainaut's other side during dinner – Brother Peire knows it's her because he recognizes her voice – and as they're taking a walk afterwards, he does.

"Who was the woman in the cell today?"

"Who?" Rainaut repeats, apparently not paying attention.

"I took a short break from my work to stretch my legs, and I heard a woman in the cell with you. You were, were - "

"Oh, Aude. She's been away for many months, traveling around and talking to people."

"Proselytizing."

"So to speak. She came back today – there will be an announcement at meeting tomorrow morning – and I think she missed me."

"But you - "

Rainaut stops suddenly and takes Brother Peire's arm, forcing him to stop too. "Are you jealous, friar?"

So that's what it is, the strange feeling in his chest.

"Don't be," Rainaut goes on. "Aude likes men, or at least she likes me, but she prefers the company of women. She went from me to Amada. She'll probably stay with her. There's nothing between us. You don't have to worry."

"I wasn't worried."

"You're a terrible liar. I'll introduce you tomorrow. You might like her."

Aude is tall and bony and has short brown hair that looks like it was hacked off with a knife, and not very skillfully at that. She sounds pleased to meet Brother Peire – it seems that Rainaut told her about him. Brother Peire swallows his shame that he listened to her and Rainaut, and his jealousy at what he heard, and says he's pleased to meet her as well.

And so life continues. The weather gets warmer. The gardens and the orchards start to yield fruits and vegetables. Brother Peire works in the copy room and eats and prays with the heretics and sometimes sleeps with Rainaut. He feels himself adjusting, whether he wants to or not, and he tries to worship with sincerity, but the differences in the heretics' beliefs and the Gray Friars' beliefs still trip him up. He still keeps waking up in time for the Gray Friars' night service, when everyone in the heretic community is fast asleep but the friars are filing into their chapel to pray under the light of the stars and the moon. Sometimes he visits the heretics' chapel and says his own prayers, and asks God to give him strength and to help him live here, among apostates and blasphemers who are still genuinely decent people. He doesn't know if God can hear him, or if He's even listening, but it gives him some comfort just to ask.

Sometimes he's at home in the former monastery for days at a time, and sometimes he's just confused as to why the heretics believe what they do – that if a woman experiences true pleasure when she's lying with a man, that will help her conceive, or that God wants men and women to lie together for the simple pleasure of it whether it leads to children or not, or that there is no hierarchy under God and the most equitable way to find a spiritual leader is to cast votes, or that God is neither male nor female but both and sometimes neither, or that it's not only acceptable but encouraged for him to take pleasure in Rainaut's body and for Rainaut to take pleasure in his. His spiritual habits and beliefs were ingrained over thirteen years of religious service, not to mention the years he spent with Father Ancelmetz before coming to Montagui, and he can't give them up so easily.

But sometimes he wants to. He really, really wants to. He wishes he could just throw everything aside and be a new man, even a heretic, just so that he won't have to be confused and he won't have to be unsure and he won't have to be lost. Because sometimes he's still very, very lost.

It frustrates him and to his eternal shame, it angers him. And one day he's just had enough. It's an early summer festival, a saint's day, marked by a break from work (if one so desires) and a great deal of festival food and drink, and special prayers at the services, and music and dancing at night. It's a celebratory time, but Brother Peire is angry and impatient and tired of everything.

If the abbot wants to believe him capable of heresy and no longer worthy of the Order of St Austor, then fine, he will act in a way befitting an apostate and an unholy man. He accepts too many cups of mead, downing them in quick succession until he no longer feels like himself. He is braver, stronger, far more careless and far less concerned with God. He is also far less steady on his feet, but he manages to thread his way through the crowd milling around the edge of the dancers and find Rainaut.

"Come with me," he says, grabbing Rainaut's arm and not caring that Rainaut is apparently trying to have a conversation with Verrine and Maurin and the head of the kitchen.

"Now?" Rainaut asks. And then "Are you drunk, friar?"

"Don't call me that. Don't call me that any more."

"You are." Rainaut seems amused. Brother Peire, quite uncharactertistically, wants to slap him. He really has had too much to drink.

"I am. So what?"

"So it's not like you."

"I don't want to be like me any more."

"Excuse us," Rainaut says to the other three, walking off a little ways and forcing Brother Peire to follow him. "What's wrong with you?" he asks, when they've put a little distance between themselves and the festivities.

"Everything. Nothing. I'm tired of, of this." He waves his arm in a wide arc, indicating the celebration and the rest of the monastery and probably even Montagui and the Gray Friars' house inside it. "Of being wrong and being somewhere I don't want."

"What do you want?"

"I want to drink myself insensible. I want to fornicate. I want to take you on the floor of the cell and - "

Rainaut grabs his arm and pulls him back to the cloister and their cell. But once inside, Brother Peire jerks him close and kisses him hard, hands twisted in his shirt and teeth biting at his lips.

"I'm tired of being done to," he pants, when they finally separate. "I'm tired of being told. I'm tired of – people still look at me like I don't belong here, and I'm tired of that. I don't want to stand out. I want to be part of, of – I'm tired of talking." He yanks Rainaut's shirt up and yanks his breeches down and bears him to the floor. He remembers the pot of cream just in time, and sweeps it off the shelf.

Rainaut is lying on his back, shirt rucked up his chest. Brother Peire falls on top of him, grinding against him and kissing him with too much teeth and feeling himself grow hard with want.

"Peire," Rainaut gasps, wrapping his legs around Brother Peire's waist and bucking up against him.

But this isn't what Brother Peire wants. For once, he wants to lead this dance. He's tired of being led, too. He pulls Rainaut's legs off him, flips him over, and yanks at his hips until Rainaut gets the idea and pushes himself up onto his hands and knees. Brother Peire hikes his robe up. A quick swipe of his finger through the cream, a quick press of that finger in and out of Rainaut's body, and Brother Peire digs his fingers into Rainaut's hips and slams into him.

He thrusts jerkily, without rhythm, wanting only to bury himself in Rainaut's body and lose himself in the act of their coupling. He is unsteady on his knees, probably too drunk to do this properly, but his hands on Rainaut help give him balance, and Rainaut's panting moans urge him on.

Brother Peire can hear the wet slap of skin on skin. The scent of their combined desire fills his nose and mouth when he tries to breathe. They're both panting, gasping for breath, Brother Peire grunting like a beast as he pounds into Rainaut and Rainaut begging him for something he can't understand. And then his hips stutter against Rainaut and he's groaning with release, and he's relieved and dizzy and so thoroughly empty he feels hollow.

But Rainaut is still moving underneath him, begging for his own release, and Brother Peire doesn't know what to do. His anger has deserted him and with it his drive.

"Your hand," Rainaut pants. "Give me, give me - "

Brother Peire thinks he understands. He pulls out, lets Rainaut fall onto his side and then roll onto his back, his hand going to his swollen cock. Brother Peire's fingers close around it, pulling hard, and in no time Rainaut is spending himself over Brother Peire's hand.

And then it's over and they're both breathing heavily, sheened with sweat, and Brother Peire is suddenly exhausted. The cell sways around him and he tips over onto the floor. He feels sick.

"Don't pass out," Rainaut says, slapping him lightly on the cheek. "Peire. My brother. Get up."

"No," Peire mumbles.

"You can't sleep on the floor."

"Used to."

"Not drunk and smelling like sex. Come on, friar, into bed."

Rainaut manhandles Brother Peire into bed, arranging his robe to cover him and gently turning him onto his side. Brother Peire notes that Rainaut has put his shirt back on.

"What was that about?" he asks.

"I don't know any more," Brother Peire admits. "I was just... I was so tired. My life only half makes sense. You don't even. You don't."

"I don't make sense?"

"No. Why you, you, you want me. You still love me. You – I don't, I don't. Want to be here. Still. I don't. And you're, you're, you're so, you're patient. And you show me – this - " He flaps his hand at Rainaut, trying vainly to wave at the cell, to indicate the times they lay together and made each other pant and moan with pleasure. "And I'm still, I'm, I want it. And you. But I'm not, I'm still a friar. I still love my God. Want to keep my vows. Still want to, to please Him, to walk the path He sets me on. I still talk to Him. In the chapel, at night, late. Does He hear me? I don't know. And I'm tired, I'm, I'm tired of, of not knowing. I used to know. I did."

Rainaut rests a hand on his head. "I can't help you, my brother. I want to. But this is for you to do. It's hard, I know. Don't be so hard on yourself."

"You told me." Brother Peire tries to tilt his head so he can look Rainaut in the face. "I should try to, to be someone else. New. Someone new. Not me, not, not Friar Peire, but not Heretic Peire, but just, just Peire. I tried. I did. Just, just now, I wanted to be new. Not me. But I think it was a mistake."

"You can only be who you are," Rainaut says quietly. "You told me that once. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have suggested that. I thought it might help you, but I was wrong. I'll tell you something, friar – I like that part of you. I don't want you to be anyone else."

"But you said."

"I was wrong. Sometimes I'm wrong." He chuckles.

"No. No. I can't, I can't. I can't stay here and, and be a friar, like I was. I have to, to adapt. Change."

"I thought you were. Wait." He stands up. Brother Peire closes his eyes against the way the cell is swaying around him. He feels Rainaut climb over him and lie down and rest an arm across his waist. It anchors him to the bed and makes him feel more secure. "This is better. But I thought you were adapting. I thought you were fitting in quite well."

"No," Brother Peire mumbles. "But trying. But not, not fit."

"You will."

"No."

"Tomorrow, or the next day, when you're not sick from all the mead you drank, you'll be able to look at yourself and your place here more objectively."

Brother Peire doesn't think that's true. But he doesn't know. He doesn't know anything right now, except that he's sick and he's tired and he was too rough and he was wrong.

He realizes with an exhausted, drunken start that for once he doesn't want to go home, because he is home.

He doesn't know what to think about that. But how can he say that he wants to leave so badly, when he has nowhere else to go and when this place has started to feel like home?

"I'm sorry I can't help you," Rainaut murmurs in his ear. "I wish I could."

"You can."

"How?"

"Don't know. But if anyone can, can help me, it's you. Somehow."

"I appreciate your faith in me." Rainaut sounds like he's smiling. Brother Peire is amazed that he knows the heretic so well that he can hear the grin in his voice, without having to see it. "Go to sleep. We'll miss the midnight prayers but I think God will forgive us."

"I won't know. He doesn't, He doesn't talk to me."

"But God talks to me. And God is telling me to let you sleep. Peace be upon you, my poor lost friar, my brother. Tomorrow will be better."

But tomorrow is not better, mostly because Brother Peire is ill from all the mead he drank, to the point that he can't get out of bed for either the dawn service or the midday service, and he certainly isn't going to breakfast or to the copy room to work. Rainaut brings him a bucket to be sick in, and even after his stomach is empty he keeps heaving over the side of the bed. He is never drinking again.

And he's ashamed of his behavior and ashamed of the way he treated Rainaut – like Rainaut was there for his pleasure, to be used and abused as Brother Peire felt was necessary – and ashamed of how hard he tried to deny his religious training and his life as a friar and his love for those years. So when everyone else is at dinner, and because he still isn't ready to eat anything yet, he hides in the chapel. He kneels in front of the altar and runs through the friars' dusk service, as much as he can by himself, and then confesses his sins and begs forgiveness from God.

I was wrong, he admits. I thought I could throw off my years as a friar like I take off my robe. I tried to deny You and You words and Your laws. I committed the sin of drunkenness, and the sin of fornication, and the sin of cruelty, and the sin of selfishness. I am not worthy of Your light and Your love, but please, Lord, please do not forsake me. I am still Your most humble servant. I still serve You in my heart, even here among the apostastes. It's hard, it's so very hard, but I want to believe that You would not put these trials in my path if You did not think I could handle them.

Please do not punish Rainaut on my behalf. I went to him. I forced him. He is only doing what he thinks will help me. He loves me and he wants me to find peace within myself so that I can be happy. It is not on his head that I love him as well and that I find pleasure in his company and in his body. By Your laws I know that what we do is wrong, but please, my Lord, please, I beg of You, please do not turn Your face from me. Please hear my prayers. Please give me the strength to be myself, to worship You as I always have, to strive to live in a way that is pleasing to You.

But if You have ever loved me or looked into my heart and found it acceptable, please allow me to find the peace that Rainaut wishes me to have, and that I believe I might find with him. Please show mercy upon me and my weakness, because I no longer think it is a weakness, because how can something that brings pleasure to men and women, that brings them closer to each other and to You, how can that be wrong? According to Your scripture, it is a sin. I am arrogant to assume that You will allow me to break this law and still live in Your light, but I beg you, Lord, as I have never begged for anything, allow me this small joy.

I will never leave this place, I know that now. And I must believe this is the path You wish me to walk. I do not know why You sent me here, but I am trying to make a place for myself and I only wish to know that You have not forsaken me, that You still hear my prayers and accept my love for You. I wish to continue to love You and worship You and honor You with the works of my hands and the meditations of my heart. And I wish to stay with Rainaut, to love him and to bring him joy, as he brings me joy.

I am no longer chaste, and because of that I do not feel very obedient. But I have not broken my vow of poverty, and I strive to remain humble in all things, and contrite for my sins. I am trying, Lord, I am trying so very hard to remain true to You and to myself, to live the life I was taught by the Order of St Austor, at least as much as I am able. I have had to adapt, and adjust, and take what was offered me because there was no other choice.

I only wish to know that You have not abandoned me, because I have not abandoned You. Please, Lord, show me that I am not alone. Please show me that You have heard me, and You still love me.

He wonders suddenly if God has already given him a sign, and he just hasn't seen it. He could ask Rainaut how a person would recognize a sign from God as a holy man living among heretics, or maybe Jaufre would have that conversation with him, or even Amada. He could ask Verrine. Maybe she has a lesson that would teach him what to look for.

Have You given me a sign already, Lord, and I was just too stupid and too blind to see it? I will look harder, I swear. I will pay closer attention to the world around me and to my own heart, in case You choose to speak to me through me.

He is finished with his prayers and confessions but the chapel is so quiet and peaceful, and he feels so content here, that he gets to his feet to sit in a pew. The sun has set by now, he's sure, but it set behind the chapel and the only light coming through the round window behind the altar is the light from the moon and, indirectly, from the church. But he lit the candles on the altar, so he's not sitting in the dark.

He feels better, less ill in body and less ill in his heart. He might be able to make a life here after all. He'll just have to figure out how to do it as a friar.

Two days before Midsummer, Rainaut gives him a gift – a sun pendant carved out of honey-colored wood and polished to a high shine. Brother Peire is speechless. Rainaut finds him a leather cord and watches with a pleased smile as Brother Peire presses the pendant to his lips and then slips the cord over his head. He'll wear it outside his robe. He'll never forget where he came from now, and he'll always have the reminder that God is with him.

"Thank you," he says, before grabbing Rainaut's face and kissing him soundly. "Don't tell me – you made it for me because you thought it would help." He grins, and Rainaut grins back.

"I'm predictable now, aren't I."

"A little bit, yes."

The Gray Friars never take their suns off, so Brother Peire doesn't either. That night he bends Rainaut over the side of the bed to take him from behind, and the pendant swings against his chest as he thrusts in and out of Rainaut's body. It's disconcerting to think that he's wearing the symbol of his commitment to God's laws and the laws of the Mother Church at the same time he's eagerly breaking some of those laws.

Two days later is Midsummer, which sounds at least as pagan as it does anything else, the way Rainaut explains it.

"I know I already mentioned that at night, after the drinking and dancing and eating and the songs and the prayers, everyone who wants to goes out into the fields to lie naked with whomever they please. We do that to encourage a good harvest, to give some of ourselves to the land, and to conceive children. I've been told our celebration has its roots in old fertility festivals, when the king would take a beautiful girl into the fields to lie with her and impregnate her, as a way of renewing his contract with the land. He takes care of the woods and the fields, and in return the gods of those places helped him sire heirs."

"That sounds almost like blasphemy," Brother Peire says. Rainaut just shrugs.

"It's an excuse to be with someone you find attractive."

"Every day is an excuse to be with someone you find attractive, in this place."

"That's true. But Midsummer is special. It's another way to show our gratitude to God for the good life we've been given. The best way to show your appreciation of what God has given you is to obviously enjoy it. And God has given us this fertile piece of land, and a nobleman to rent it to us and offer us some protection from your church, so we owe it to God to get as much pleasurable use out of it as we can."

"Which means lying with anyone who takes your fancy."

"Ideally more than once."

That actually sounds interesting to Brother Peire. He wouldn't mind doing it twice.

But first is the Midsummer dusk service, which is much more joyful than the normal service, and then dinner served outside, in the grass behind the cloister. The long tables and benches have been carried out of the refectory and decorated with greenery and fruits and vegetables from the gardens and the orchards. There is rabbit and cheese and bread with honey, fresh fruit and roast vegetables, mead and beer and even wine. Brother Peire tries not to drink too much too fast, as he did at the saint's festival and which led to him angrily forcing Rainaut in their cell and feeling so sick the next day. He drinks wine, only switching to mead after dinner is over and some people have brought out instruments to make music for the dancing.

He sits on a bench watching the circle of dancers, working his way through cups of mead and hoping no one asks him to dance. And then someone does – Felise, her pregnancy just barely starting to show, pulls him to his feet and into the circle, where she tries to teach him the steps and laughs when he stumbles. But he laughs with her and doesn't mind.

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