The little man’s face lit up with a smile that transformed it. “Then you must be Marco! Please, will you come back to my quarters? I’d like to ask you a few questions, about those herbs you have been giving some of my flock.”
Marco would rather not have gone with him, but there didn’t seem to be much choice. Reluctantly, he followed the sibling through a door behind the statue of Saint Raphaella and into a tiny closet of a cell that didn’t hold anything but a pallet on a wooden platform, a stool and desk, a crucifix on the wall, and a lamp. “Please sit down, Marco,” the Sibling said, taking the stool, leaving the only place for Marco to sit being the bed. He sat very gingerly on the edge as Brother Mascoli took out pen, ink, and a roughly bound book, opening it to a blank page.
“Now, if you would be so kind—I wonder if you could tell me—” the words were gentle, the interrogation ruthless. Brother Mascoli extracted every particle of information Marco had about Sophia and Chiano’s herbs, even going so far as to take out an enormous herbal from beneath the bed and leaf through all the pages until he had identified the exact plants to his satisfaction. The herbal, Marco noted, was handwritten, the drawings quite accurate, and the script identical to Brother Mascoli’s. Had the sibling actually ventured out into the marshes to collect samples of all of those plants himself? If so—his estimation of the rabbitty little man went up several notches.
“Now, what incantation did you use?” Brother Mascoli asked, briskly.
Marco froze. The sibling raised an eyebrow at his silence. “Well?” he prompted.
“None,” he said stiffly.
“None?” The other eyebrow rose. “Surely not.”
“None,” he repeated, his voice cracking with strain.
Brother Mascoli carefully blew on the page to dry it, and closed the book. He regarded Marco for a very long time with a deceptively mild gaze. Marco couldn’t move.
“Marco,” the sibling said quietly, “Why are you so afraid of your magic?”
Marco began to sweat. “What magic?” he squeaked.
He can tell! How can he tell? How does he know?
Chiano knew. . . .
Brother Mascoli’s gaze ceased being mild. After another very long time, he sighed. “Marco—I am one single man, serving people who are the poorest of the poor. I have no help, and very little money, and although I am something of a mage, I am absolutely the least powerful of any in this city. And yet the people I serve number in the thousands and they are the most likely to become ill, to be seriously injured. Now, I continue to serve them because God saw fit to grant me a gift, and it would be a sin—a sin—not to use it to help as best I am able. And not a venial sin, either, but a mortal sin, the sin of pride.”
“P-p-pride?” Marco stuttered in confusion.
Brother Mascoli nodded. “Pride. The pride of a man who would believe that he knows better than God. God has seen fit to give me this gift, and gifts are meant to be used for the good of all. To be shared. To refuse to do so is to refuse God’s blessings, and to do so out of selfishness. And that,” he added, examining his fingertips for a moment, “would be yet another sin. Sloth, perhaps—that one was too lazy to exert oneself? Avarice, that one wished to keep one’s energies all for oneself? I suppose that it all would depend on the motive behind the selfishness.”
Marco wasn’t going to cave in that easily to this facile Petrine. “Use of magic should remain in the hands of anointed priests, who won’t be tempted by such power.”
“What in heaven’s name makes you think that priests can resist the temptations of power?” the Sibling retorted.
“All the more reason then—”
“Marco,” Mascoli said sharply. “Give over for a moment! Allow someone who has actually studied magic to speak, will you?”
Marco snapped his mouth shut, flushing.
“Magic, as even the most rigorous Pauline practices it, is prayer. Nothing less, but certainly nothing more. We hedge it round with ritual, we beg angels to attend us and fence our work off from the outside world and the interference of the Evil One, but when it all comes down to cases, it is nothing but intensely focused prayer. God allows us to use our own strengths to accomplish some tasks, and grants us His strength or that of his angels to accomplish those that are beyond our strength, but we never force, we only ask, for these graces.” Mascoli’s rabbity face took on a distinctly mulish look. “Now if you can find me, anywhere in Scripture or Holy Writ, a place where the faithful are told that only anointed priests may pray to God, I beg you to show it to me. That will certainly be a revelation to every Christian alive or dead.”