Chương 174: CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-FOUR: THE PRIOR

Prior Bertrand asked to speak on the morning of the third day. He had not spoken in two days. The advisory chair carried no obligation to speak. Kessling granted it without comment, which Calla recorded as itself significant — the magistrate had been expecting it. Bertrand rose slowly. He was seventy-one years old, it emerged later, and he had been prior at Vellenmoor for thirty-three years.

"I have read the records," he said. He did not raise his voice. The room went completely silent to hear him, which Calla suspected was a thing that had been happening to him for thirty-three years and that he had long ago stopped noticing.

"I have read the translation of forty-one entries, which the defence provided and which I asked for more of, and which they provided also." He paused.

"I asked for more because I did not believe the four they selected were representative. I assumed they had chosen the best." He turned slightly toward Holloway.

"They had not chosen the best," he said.

"The best are worse than the ones they chose." Holloway said nothing.

"The entries the defence read to this court were the ones that served the argument," Bertrand said.

"The entries they did not read include a woman with an obstructed labour in the fifth year, whom she saved, and about whom she wrote three pages of self-examination because she had been unable to decide for an hour whether to intervene and believed the delay had cost the child. It had. She wrote that down." He paused.

"They include a child of six in the seventh year, whom she did not save, and about which she wrote one line, and the line was: I do not have the words for this in any language and I will not try." Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. The room did not move.

"I have been thirty-three years in this township," Bertrand said.

"I have overseen the healing arts here as the charter requires. I have sanctioned four practitioners in that time and disciplined one." He paused.

"I have never read anything like these records. Not from a sanctioned healer. Not from any healer. Not from myself." He turned to face the magistrate directly.

"My concern in this matter has been from the first day the same concern," he said.

"An unsanctioned healer answers to nobody. I have held that position for thirty-three years and I hold it now. It is a correct position and I will not abandon it because I have been moved." He paused.

"But I am obliged to say to this court that the young advocate has stated my concern more accurately than I have ever stated it, and has then shown me four hundred and eleven documents which answer it in a manner I did not anticipate and cannot dismiss." He was quiet for a moment.

"The woman kept a record of her failures," he said.

"For nine years. With no one to show it to and no one to punish her for it." He looked, for the first time in three days, directly at Denise Okonkwo.

"I have known men in holy orders who could not do that for nine months." He turned back to the magistrate.

"I advise the court as follows. The prohibition exists to prevent unaccountable practice. It does not exist to prevent healing. Where the two can be separated, the charter's purpose is served by separating them." He paused.

"The undertaking offered by the northern establishment appears to me sufficient in form. I would wish to inspect it — not today, and not as a condition of this ruling, but in the coming year, and I would expect them to permit it." He paused a final time.

"I would add one further thing, which is outside my advisory role, and which the court may disregard." He paused.

"The defence stated that this family could not pay the priory's fee. That is true. I have known it was true of a great many families in this township for thirty-three years and I have not adequately addressed it." He paused.

"That is a matter for me and not for this court. But it should be said aloud once, in a room where the family can hear it." He sat down. The grandmother in the front bench put her face in her hands.