A Real Priest.

In the Prologue to Cornwell's The Archer's Tale, we receive a description of a priest--a fleeting character who suffers a painful death only a few pages further but who proves, in the care taken to bring him life, to be an important presence in the plot. However, it is not the character's turn in wielding a tale that gives me pause; instead, it's his lovely description:

Father Ralph was a frightening man even when he was not angry, but in his temper he was a wild-haired fiend, and his flaring anger protected the treasure, though Father Ralph himself believed that ignorance was its best protection...

They were all too scared of him, but he did his duty to them; he christened them, churched them, married them, heard their confessions, absolved them, scolded them and buried them, but he did not pass the time with them. He walked alone, grim-faced, hair awry and eyes glowering, but the villagers were still proud of him. Most country churches suffered ignorant, pudding-faced priests who were scarce more educated than their parishioners, but Hookton, in Father Ralph, had a proper scholar, too clever to be sociable, perhaps a saint, maybe of noble birth, a self-confessed sinner, probably mad, but undeniably a real priest. (4-5)

Undeniably a real priest. It is strange but, by instinct, I understand what this statement means though it remains a concept difficult to explain. What is a real priest? Is this a question of character, of belief--? Is it something in the personage or gait? When I think of a real priest I think of someone absurdly human and certainly detached but who, in his every move and make, exudes a faith in the heart of what he's preaching. He is not perfect, not the saintly vision of Bishop or monk, but hard-worked and hard-lived, gritty, uncompromising, undoubtedly miserable, much learned, with a burden that everyone notices but no one has the balls to ask about (not unlike the hesitation in Hawthorne's The Minister's Black Veil). This is not a priest I would like to sit in mass with, however, but the sort of priest who reminds me that I am a flawed human being, and weak, and perhaps not as devout as I should be. He is, in short, the sort of priest I would trust my conscience with and one who would convince me, with only a glance, that Hell really can exist.

He is also a rotten, nasty son of a bitch who's too smart for his own good. What more should a man want from a priest?

All this said, I've spent far too much time bordering on theological descriptors; Father Ralph meets a violent, untimely death (someone had to die), and the story continues with Thomas, Father Ralph's illegitimate son (by his housekeeper, whom he truly loved):

"I reckon they's been drinking too much," Edward said.
"I sees angels when I drink," John said.
"That be Jane," Edward said. "Looks like an angel, she does."
"Don't behave like one," John said. "Lass is pregnant," and all four men looked at Thomas, who stared innocently up at the treasure hanging from the rafters. (8)

And, my most favorite:

Thomas thrived on life, and Skeat had learned that lad was clever, certainly clever enough to know better than to fall asleep one night when he should have been standing guard and, for that offense Skeat had thumped the daylights out of him. "You were goddamn drunk!" he had accused Thomas, then beat him thoroughly, using fists like blacksmith's hammers. He had broken Thomas's nose, cracked a rib and called him a stinking piece of Satan's shit, but at the end of it Will Skeat saw that the boy was still grinning... (33)

What I enjoy most about Cornwell, apart from his battle scenes, some famously introduced: "Thomas stood, needing to piss, and the first awful screams sounded from the village. For Easter had come, Christ was risen and the French were ashore" (10), are his characters. They are deliciously flawed and, in so-being, tremendously realistic. Cornwell is unforgiving. You are not reading the cookie-cutter fantasy hero with the heart of gold or the clever historian who saves the Queen; no, you are reading about men who could have, perhaps should have, existed in history, who have agendas and faults and round-out with 'bastard' being the kindest thing you can call them. Yet they are likable--not in the sense that you wish them well and cheer them on, necessarily, but in the way that you wish, were you going to the pub, that these would be your drinking buddies.

The Archer's Tale is not moving as quickly as The Winter King did, but it is far more subtle--and that is what I am enjoying right now. Give it a go, and perhaps you will enjoy it, too.