Quoted By:
In time, as the seconds drawn into minutes and the minutes into hours, you become lost within yourself. You could not say whether it is day or night as time marches on, but even in the quietest hours you are not alone. The hooded Comitas remains at his post, if he has been relieved you’ve not realised it, but other devout pilgrims remain. A group of the strange southern men are gathered in a circle in the corner, reading the same verse together in silence in the dim candlelight. Another set of pilgrims do not pray as most do, instead pressing their foreheads against the wall and whispering into the stone. Harmless, but enough to distract you until they are gone. There are distractions yes, the shuffle of the crowd behind you, a soreness in the knees or the solitary cough of a pilgrim somewhere in the halls, but so deeply absorbed in prayer and thought are you that these fall to the wayside as your vigil goes on. For the most part, so far as you are concerned, the entirety of the outside world removed from this scene of holy creation may as well not exist.
Adam and Cain were outspoken against the cruelties of the City and the mistreatment of the vast multitudes of slaves even before the Almighty revealed himself, so much so that it led to their exile from the City. Salve Reginae was imprisoned in the dungeons of the Crescent Palace when she refused to betray them, weeping as one loyal friend and follower to the brothers after another was gruesomely and publicly executed before her very eyes. That was only the beginning of her suffering. But here, in these hallowed halls, they were happy years.
While apparently not slaves themselves, the Faith teaches that the Brothers were humble in their origins. Perhaps they were descended from slaves, their freedom recently bought, or resting somewhere solidly in the lower to middle class of freemen in the City. Certainly there is no mention of their father, and even on a widow’s stipend or income from some family business these meagre means would have led to a life of privation and scarcity for the holy mother. It was not an upbringing of luxury, food was plain and soft comforts were few. But here, in these hallowed halls, they were content.
The conflicts that preceded the great liberation of Cathagi’s masses, the wars that followed the brothers arrival on the shores of Cantôn, the undoing of Adam’s works and Cain’s never-ending crusade. According to scripture, Adam always abhorred the evils of war other than as a last resort. Perhaps even Cain was weary of battle by the end, who could say? War and bloodshed, however just and necessary it may be, would follow the Brothers in one form or another to the end of their days. But here, in these hallowed halls, there was peace.
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