A Medieval Alien Saint, Chapter 1

Frankie

“Just because people say someone is Saint doesn’t mean the someone is a Saint,” Phillipe Jorgensen said.

“Except that’s precisely how canonization works,” Will said, amused as he always was by Phillipe.

Phillipe couldn’t hear Will, and he would have barreled on anyway.

“The story of the Laidly Wyrm is just that. Story. Fable. Oral histories are not reliable evidence.”

“Troy turned out to be a real city,” Xavier Jones said. “The Iliad wasn’t entirely invented.”

“Troy was discovered after years of excavations. There is still no definite proof of a Trojan War.”

“A big wooden horse stored under someone’s bed,” Will muttered.

Will was a Cubus, an invisible being on his way to corporeality. Currently, only Francesca Paraclete, the Congregation’s Promoter of the Faith or Devil's Advocate, could hear and see Will, and she could only see him in her dreams.  

Which didn’t mean Phillipe wasn’t aware of Will’s possible opinion. Francesca was tagged. Her link to Will was official. Eventually, Will would become fully human and presumably remain by her side.

Francesca would believe such unlikely loyalty when she literally saw it.

She said, “Lady Margaret would be the first non-human saint.”

“I’m aware,” Phillipe said curtly.

At the end of the table, Victor Federov grinned, and Justin Pereira sighed. Victor and Justin usually handled the more tangible, forensical side of the Congregation’s investigations: interviewing devotees, proving miracles, testing relics and such. Phillipe handled related documents.

Phillipe said, “There are plenty of current Catholic Siphons. There’s no need to fall back on the medieval era.”

Four sentient species occupied Earth: humans, Anthros, Cubi, and Siphons. The non-human species came forward nearly a hundred years earlier when Mars’ colonization began in earnest. Space travel apparently called up images of bug-eyed aliens playing instruments in a bar. The reasoning seemed to be that since travel to other planets had begun, "aliens" would be more easily accepted.

If only life were that easy.

Until the last thirty years, the non-human species had held onto their “alien” identities. Anthros and Siphons, at least. Cubi never bothered. The history of incubae and succubae was too embedded in human history to disentangled. Alien or not, Cubi had been around a long time and even now weren’t trusted.

Quite recently, Siphons had begun to argue that they (at least) evolved on Earth. Siphons should be permitted to enter various human-only communities: help colonize Mars; become Catholic clerics.

Offer up a Saint.

Frankie knew Phillipe well enough by now to not assume prejudice on his part. Phillipe would reject King Arthur if the name was offered. Shoddy scholarship offended Phillipe.

I borrowed Phillipe's look

from Semantic Error & sulky

Regency young man.

The other members of the Congregation knew Phillipe pretty well by now too. Justin and Victor leaned back to watch the show.

Xavier Jones said, “Lady Margaret’s postulator guarantees the existence of relics.”

Xavier was a mouthpiece from the Vatican, so not entirely one of “them.” Frankie tried to meet all his statements with equanimity, to not to send Phillipe a warning glance. His Holiness wanted the canonization to go forward. The College of Cardinals was less sure. Frankie didn’t know yet who precisely had assigned Xavier to the Congregation.

Phillipe said to Frankie, not Xavier, “Supposedly there are relics. And a relic is hardly enough—even if DNA testing proves that the remains come from a Siphon,” he added before Justin could chime in.

However testy and officious, Phillipe was one of theirs now—he’d joined the Congregation for the Mars’ canonization—so Justin merely shrugged.

Phillipe threw a look at Frankie that she could almost call pleading if not for the jutting underlip.

“If any celebrity with a following gets to be a Saint, every Saint gets called into question,” he said. “Sainthood becomes whim, superstition. Wishful thinking.” 

“Except that’s how Saints have always begun,” Frankie said.

She didn’t need to point out the history to Phillipe, that the first Saints—also from the early medieval era—were Saints within their communities before they were acknowledged Saints by a central authority. They gained shrines and prayers. The canonization process came about relatively late, historically speaking.

Will, the oldest being in the room, murmured, “Celebrity cults have always existed. They make centralized organizations excessively uneasy. Poor Saint Christopher.”

Saint Christopher carried the Christ child across a river. So said the legend. His feast was dropped when Pope Paul VI released Mysterii Paschalis, an apostolic letter rearranging the liturgical calendar.

Another rearrangement was currently in process with input from Monseigneur Rhys, who oversaw the Mars’ diocese. More feasts and saints to add and drop.

Frankie didn’t repeat Will’s remark. She was never entirely sure if Phillipe even agreed with the making of Saints, let alone the required checklist of achievements and attributes. He advocated for the “total life experience,” which meant not only tracking down proof of a saint’s existence but documents about everything and anything that possibly impinged on or near the prospective saint.

For all Frankie knew, Phillipe would challenge the Sainthood of Pope Paul VI as bureaucratic rubber-stamping from the twenty-first century. And Phillipe’s skepticism was not the take-away Frankie wanted Xavier to carry back to the cardinals or to the pope. 

Neither did she want to remind Xavier of her Cubus. Xavier was an Anthro of the feline variety (Frankie tried not to think “cunning feline” variety), being sleek with a long tail. Cubus attached themselves to humans rather than to Anthros; some Anthros considered the human vulnerability to Cubi (yet another) indication of human unsteadiness.

Not that Frankie was alone in having a Cubus companion. Most higher-ups in the Vatican hierarchy were trailed by several Cubi spies. The pope had a small staff, whom Frankie suspected he consulted more than he would ever admit.

Humans didn't like the reminder, even in the Congregation. If Frankie said, “By the way, Will thinks—” Phillipe would likely disagree on principle. Any tagged human, Phillipe believed, was automatically influenced by that human’s registered Cubus. Not brainwashed. But swayed.

Frankie never bothered to explain to Phillipe how much Will refused to sway her.

She said, “Let’s take one step at a time. Lady Margaret’s relics need to be retrieved.”

“She wasn’t buried in the ocean?” Justin said.

“Second generation Siphon with human ancestry. That’s the claim at least.” Victor tapped one of his plastic sheets.

“Is that even possible? A Siphon-human child?”

“Technically. According to the geneticists, it’s remotely possible. Like the whole homo sapiens-Neanderthal debate.”

“Which just means humans will sleep with anyone,” Victor said.

Will laughed. So did Xavier, bright, white (sharp) teeth showing in a wide mouth beneath a snub nose. Frankie gave Victor a stern look.

“Which means,” she said, “that Will and I will visit Bamburgh Castle.”

Victor gave her a raised brow. Ordinarily, he would begin the investigation, the general “what have we here?” overview, which entailed asking questions of the saint’s devotees. Victor was tactful—he didn’t voice objections now, for instance—but his interviews, like Justin’s examination of medical evidence, were preliminaries, a way to catalog potential problems.

Frankie already knew the potential problems here: Does the Vatican have the right to question a Saint already chosen by its people? Siphons can now become priests—isn’t that blessing enough? Isn’t making a Siphon a Saint giving in to political demands? Shouldn’t a Saint speak to all members of a church?

His Holiness wanted the boat to not rock. He wanted Frankie to be quick, to push, to use her natural impatience to the Church’s advantage. Approve Lady Margaret’s sainthood before the detractors could build up steam.   

Frankie’s job to keep her little committee on track. They did love their tangents, and the resulting conversations could be quite interesting. Sometimes, she let the queries and ponderings unwind as members dived into discussions of anything from evolutionary psychology to weather anticipation systems to spaceship engineering.

Sometimes. Right now, her personality and views were asserting themselves. A time frame was at stake. She and Will needed to travel to Northumbria and learn more about The Laidly Wyrm.

“Ah, yes,” Xavier said with a wide smile (Frankie tried not to think “a tigerish smile”). “I’ll be accompanying you.”