Chapter 9 The High Priest’s Penance
The High Priest’s Penance
SHAI VISHAL
The High Priest of Upaja, Shai Vishal, had never been the sort of man that children would eagerly run up to with smiles and flowers and chattering.
Several of his junior priests were more charismatic; Shai Nanda was the honorary scandalous auntie to half the city that wasn’t already of auntie-vintage, and to those who were auntie-aged, Shai Madhur’s smiling sweetness tempted them into so much pinching of his round cheeks that he’d learned to duck behind a cauldron or a pillar whenever certain matrons got a particular glint in the eye and a twitch in the fingers.
So it was a bit unusual, but not entirely surprising, to find that Shai Madhur was surrounded by chattering children patting him and each other and tucking flowers in each other’s hair as he gave them blossoms and little treats from among the offerings left in Upaja’s statue’s hands and lap.
It was not at all surprising that the flock of children took assessing looks at Shai Vishal and Shai Jyoti as they approached the cauldrons to relieve Madhur and Nanda during the change from the morning shift to the afternoon shift.
Shai Jyoti was unusually lean for a priest of Upaja, and Shai Vishal understood himself to be unusually forbidding. So the children scattered like a flock of pigeons when Jyoti took Nanda’s palta at the cauldron of kheer and Vishal took Madhur’s palta at the cauldron of lauki dal.
The kittens didn’t scatter; kittens knew with supreme confidence that nothing would dare trouble them in Bastet’s Temple, and some of them took impertinent glee in sprawling in the most inconvenient spots on the sun-warmed stone.
Shai Vishal gently nudged one out from underfoot despite the irritated yowl, and said, “You know you would hate dal drips in your fur even more, scamp.” He looked around.
Several aunties were rinsing travel-dust from the fresh green broadleaves that would receive ladles of food for the community; they took volunteer bowl-folding time as an excuse to gossip in a sun-drenched nook between the vast entrance pillars that supported the Temple roof, watching playful kittens scampering after dust-motes.
The after-lunch refilling of the cauldrons for which he’d been grinding more spices and chopping more gourds and onions must have gone according to schedule; both cauldrons were full and gently simmering, not quite cooked through enough yet for the likely number of after-shift meal-seekers who would arrive in a gradual flood over the next couple of hours.
Three smaller kettles that were nestled between the cauldrons kept the morning’s leftovers simmering and the grilled pigeons warm until the next batch could cook through for the dinner rush.
Shai Nanda wiped her brow and said, “Did anyone tell you about a new flock of mendicants gone journeying, Vishal?”
“Not since last fall,” Shai Vishal said. “Why?”
“Apparently, one of us fed half the younglings of the Catsprowl sweets this morning before their lessons, and a handful more are at it in the alleys and the markets. They’ve got to be new, or they’d have learned not to admit they’ve got sweets around that many half-feral free-range treat-hunters.”
“Definitely new,” Shai Vishal agreed, leaning into the palta to be certain he’d stirred all the way to the bottom. “Likely coming for the Convocation. Well, they’ll learn once the Sisters give them an earful about sweets-vibrating, wall-bouncing students who are not learning their lessons.”
One particularly bold little tabby kitten edged around the back side of Upaja’s statue to scamper over to Shai Madhur. Piri had clearly identified him as the softest touch among the priests and the gossiping aunties, with justification. She patted his belly and asked, “Can I have a rahat sweet?”
“I’m afraid I don’t have any of those, but would you like a date ball?”
“Fiiine,” she sighed, and took a bite of the treat he offered her, gnawing vigorously to pull a bit free. Chewing, she told him, “Vey stick im my teef.”
“I’ll see what I can do for next time?”
“No you will not, young man,” Shai Vishal said firmly.
“We depend on the generosity of our community to feed all our people in need. If we are fortunate enough to receive the makings of date balls, then we will share date balls. And if you dislike date balls that much, Piri, you could choose to decline.”
Piri stuck her tongue out at him and scampered off.
“I’m sorry, your Reverence,” Shai Madhur said, chastened. Vishal sighed.
“That sermon wasn’t aimed at you. But this one is: We do our best with what we are given. You are not to blame yourself if what we are given is not always to everyone’s taste.”
“Yes, your Reverence.” Shai Madhur cupped his hands at his brow, head bent, in the acceptance of a gift received. He still looked guilty.
If Shai Vishal had been a more charismatic man, he would have known what to say to coax a smile from his drooping young priest. If he had been a more playful man, he would have known how to tease as Shai Nanda and Shai Jyoti did.
Stirring the kheer cauldron, Shai Jyoti said, “I like date balls. If the cats don’t like them sticking in their teeth and fur, I can take care of the extras for you.”
There, that was a furtive little smile tugging at Shai Madhur’s dimpled cheeks. “Would you like one now?”
Shai Jyoti tilted his head back and pointed at his open mouth, making strangled “‘ere, ‘ight ‘ere, aaaaaah!” noises.
Giggling, Shai Madhur tossed a date ball into Shai Jyoti’s mouth.
“Thank you,” Shai Vishal murmured to him, under the cover of the fire crackling.
“Mmmmph?” Shai Jyoti chewed emphatically to free his teeth. (Piri hadn’t been wrong that they were sticky.) “For what?”
The High Priest of Upaja couldn’t confess in front of the gossiping aunties that he sometimes regretted his lack of charm.
He had to be as impervious and solid as stone and unquestionably above reproach.
He had to lead with dignity and respect.
It wasn’t easy to lead with dignity when much of the city saw his distinctive garment and his notable girth as an excuse for predictable jokes.
It wasn’t easy to say that he struggled to balance the weight of the city’s needs and the necessary appearances with the lightness of touch that had brightened Shai Madhur’s smile again. He would have to bring it up at his next cleansing of the spirit.
“Just… thank you,” Shai Vishal said, and kept stirring.
As he stirred and contemplated the meditative familiarity of the movement, the matter whose weight dragged upon Shai Vishal’s thoughts revolved around Shai Madhur’s sweet and earnest and much too young desire to personally serve all needs for all souls himself.
The question of the mendicant priests had mostly slipped his mind.
Shai Vishal struggled with how to suggest to Madhur that the fault was not in him, gently enough not to wilt the blossoming of his joy, yet still firmly enough to be believed.
He would have suggested that anyone else struggling with such a dilemma speak with Shai Madhur himself for a taste of his comforting compassion, except…
clearly, speaking with a replica of himself was not an option for Madhur, short of more sorcery than Vishal cared to consider.
Well, and Vishal couldn’t suggest Madhur speak with himself in a mirror either; he would blush and stammer and be distracted by his appearance.
Aside from Shai Jyoti, all of Upaja’s human priests were as roundly built as their God, and Madhur had always taken the community’s body-teasings so very personally.
So when the handsome young courtesan of several names walked into the Temple to make his offerings to Bastet and Upaja, Shai Vishal truly hadn’t thought it at all unusual.
Bastet was as fond of perfumes and incense as She was of prey-things; a courtesan of the House of Jasmines who had sworn himself never to take a life would find perfumes and flowers a less fraught offering than pigeons.
Shai Vishal never quite had understood why the young man still felt such clear devotion to Upaja as well. Offerings to Bastet made sense for a courtesan who earned his living through beauty and sensuality and indulgent play and fragrant bath-oils. Upaja, though…
Well, Shai Vishal had fed him meals for years now.
Once upon a time, that charming man of many names had been a gangly-limbed boy called Ashar who hadn’t yet grown into his mature beauty.
But Shai Vishal had fed hundreds of gangly-limbed children over his own years of service at the cauldrons.
Few of them offered such lasting devotion to the fat god of generosity once they found their own places and their own faiths among the city’s gods and market-stalls.
Those who did tended to be the cooks and the taverna-brewers, those who found their life’s calling in food-services.
Bath-services were intimately body-indulgent, though. Perhaps Upaja’s approval of both generosity and indulgence found an echo in the young man’s heart. Today he had brought—
“Oh,” Shai Vishal said, looking at the sugared cubes of several flavors of rahat al-hulqum and the dozen little silk pouches in the courtesan’s basket.
He felt a strange time-echo, as though somehow he had seen this before, or said this before, or would possibly say it in the future: “I should have known you’d be behind all this. ”
The young man actually flinched.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, and that echoed strangely as well.
“You’re sorry?” Shai Vishal frowned, because he had never known the young man to feel anything like shame or guilt; he had never known him to have need of it. He set the palta against the edge of the cauldron. “What have you done that you regret?”
“That’s the problem,” the courtesan said. “I don’t regret it. But I’m almost certain I should, because I didn’t mean to cause as much trouble as I have. Have the children been asking you for sweets already?”