Thomas left before dawn. Martin's parents walked with him to the village gate, and Martin watched them go from the doorway of the house. His father had a hand on his uncle's shoulder, and they were speaking in voices too low to carry. When Thomas climbed onto his cart and drove away, Martin's mother stood for a long time in the road, watching until the cart was nothing but a speck in the gray light.
On the way back, Martin saw something in his father he had never seen before. The old man walked differently. His shoulders were back, his head high. When a neighbor called out to him from across the street, he answered with a voice that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than his chest. The lines in his face had not disappeared, but they had softened. He looked, Martin thought, like a man who had been carrying something heavy for a very long time and had just put it down.
The news spread through the village faster than Martin would have thought possible. By midday, everyone knew that Allen Lynn was going to be presented to the Holy See's chapter. Women came to the house with cakes and preserves. Men stopped Martin's father in the street to clap him on the back. The schoolmaster came by to say that he had always known the boy would go far, and if anyone asked, he would be happy to say that Martin had been his best student.
The days that followed were a blur of visitors. People came from villages Martin had never heard of, bringing gifts that his parents could not refuse. They came to see the boy who might be a saint, and they looked at him as though he were already something more than a boy.
"The Lynns have produced a fine one," they said. "He'll be a credit to the family."
"I remember when he was just a babe. Anyone could see he was different."
"When you're a saint, Allen, you'll remember us, won't you? You'll come back and see us sometimes?"
Martin's parents smiled at all of them. They gave back more than they received—his father insisted on it. "The boy can't be in anyone's debt," he said. "Not now. He's going to be something. He can't be tied down by favors."
Even the Lynn family sent word. Thomas had given up his own son's place for the boy, and now the family wanted to see for themselves what kind of boy was worth that sacrifice. Some of them came out of genuine curiosity. Some came because they wanted to see the branch of the family that had been forgotten, the second son who had made good. Some came, Martin's father said, because they wanted to make sure the boy was not better than their own.
The feast was held in the village square. Long tables were set up under the old oaks, and lanterns hung from the branches. Nearly everyone who had come to see the boy stayed for it, and the square was full of voices and laughter and the smell of roasting meat.
Martin stood at the gate with his parents, greeting the visitors as they arrived. His father took him by the shoulder and guided him forward when an old man in a threadbare coat climbed down from a cart.
"Your great-uncle," his father said in a low voice. "He was the only one who helped me when I left the family. He gave me tools when I had nothing. He found me work. Remember that, Martin."
Martin bowed to the old man, and the old man looked at him with eyes that had seen too many years.
"He's got her look," the old man said. "The grandmother. She would have wanted this."
Martin's father stood a little straighter. "He'll do more than I ever did, Uncle. You'll see."
The old man nodded slowly and moved on toward the tables. Martin's father watched him go, and his jaw tightened.
"That old man," he said quietly, "had nothing to say to me when I was young. When they pushed me out, he didn't raise his voice. Now he can't say enough. That's family for you."
Martin did not understand, but he nodded.
More carriages arrived. From one of them stepped a man who looked like Martin's father, but older, sharper, with a mouth that seemed to have forgotten how to smile. Behind him came a boy of sixteen or seventeen, handsome and confident, who looked at Martin the way a cat looks at something it might eat.
"Second Brother," the man said.
Martin's father inclined his head. "First Brother."
The man's eyes moved to Martin and lingered there. "So this is the boy," he said. "He looks healthy enough. Perhaps he'll do better than we expect."
"He will do well," Martin's father said.
The boy behind the man laughed. "The trials aren't so easily passed," he said. "The Holy See doesn't take every village boy who thinks he's clever. The envoy has already marked me for training. Has anyone marked this one?"
The man—Martin's uncle, his father's older brother—did not correct the boy. He looked at Martin with something that might have been satisfaction.
Martin said nothing. He had learned, in the past weeks, that some words were better left unsaid. He looked at the boy, at his uncle, and he stored them away in the back of his mind, where he kept the things he did not yet understand but knew he would need someday.
The old man—his great-uncle—had already moved on. Martin's father was looking at the man who was his older brother, and his face was closed and still. The boy with the sharp tongue was still watching Martin, his smile thin and knowing.
"Come," Martin's father said, and his voice was quiet. "The food is getting cold."
He did not wait for an answer. He put his hand on Martin's shoulder and turned him toward the tables. Behind them, he heard his brother's footsteps on the packed earth, the boy's lighter step beside them. He did not look back.
The square was full now, the tables crowded with neighbors and strangers, with family that had not spoken to him in years and family that had never spoken to him at all. They turned when he passed, and he saw the way their eyes moved to Martin and then away, measuring, weighing. He had done the same thing himself, years ago, when he was young and still believed that the family's approval was something worth having.
He found places at the end of a table, where the lantern light did not reach quite so brightly. He sat with his back to the noise and pulled Martin down beside him. His wife sat across from them, her hands folded in her lap, her face smooth and pleasant.
"Eat," he said to Martin. "You'll need your strength for the journey."
Martin picked up his spoon, but his eyes kept drifting to the head of the table, where his brother sat with the family elders. The boy with the sharp tongue was beside him, and they were laughing at something one of the old men had said.
"Father," Martin said. "That boy—"
"His name is Victor," his father said. "He's your cousin."
"He said the envoy has already marked him."
His father did not answer immediately. He cut a piece of bread from the loaf and spread it with butter, taking his time. "There are different kinds of marks," he said at last. "Some are given. Some are taken. Some—" He shrugged. "Some are imagined."
Across the table, Martin's mother reached out and touched her husband's hand. "Eat," she said softly. "It's a feast."
He smiled at her, the first real smile Martin had seen on his face all evening, and took a bite of the bread.
The feast went on until the moon was high and the lanterns were burning low. Martin's father drank more than he should have, and by the end of the night, he was laughing with men he had not spoken to in years. Martin stayed close to his mother, watching the crowd thin, watching the last of the family climb into their carriages and disappear down the dark road.
His brother was the last to leave. He stood by his carriage with his hand on Victor's shoulder, and he looked at Martin's father with something that might have been regret.
"Second Brother," he said. "If the boy doesn't pass—"
"He'll pass," Martin's father said.
His brother nodded slowly. "If he doesn't," he said, "there will be a place for him in the family business. A carpenter's son can always find work."
Martin's father did not answer. He stood with his hand on Martin's shoulder, and he watched the carriage roll away into the darkness.
When it was gone, he knelt down beside his son. The lantern light caught the gray in his hair, the lines that the day's smiles had not erased.
"That man," he said, "your uncle. He pushed me out of the family when I was your age. He said I was not good enough. He said my children would be nothing." He touched Martin's face, his rough fingers gentle. "You are not nothing. You will never be nothing."
He stood up, his joints cracking, and put his arm around his wife. They walked back toward the house, leaving Martin in the square with the empty tables and the dying lanterns.
The month passed quickly after that. Thomas sent word that he would come for Martin on the last day of the month, and Martin's mother began packing his bundle. She packed his warm coat, his best shirt, the shoes his father had made him for feast days. She packed bread and cheese and the dried apples, and then she unpacked them and packed them again.
Martin's father worked in the yard, planing wood for a table that no one had ordered. He worked from dawn until dusk, and when Martin came to help, he shook his head.
"This is my work," he said. "You have your own."
On the last night, he sat Martin down in the yard and gave him a small wooden box, carved with a design Martin had never seen before.
"I made this for you," he said. "Open it."
Inside, on a bed of cloth, lay a small carving of a man with his arms raised to heaven. The face was not clear, but there was something about the posture that made Martin think of the stories he had read about the saints.
"It's not finished," his father said. "I'm not sure it ever will be. But you can take it with you. It might remind you—" He stopped. He did not finish the sentence.
Martin held the carving in his hands and felt the grain of the wood, the places where his father's knife had caught and gone deep.
"I'll keep it," he said.
His father nodded. He reached out and touched Martin's hair, the way he had done when Martin was small.
"Tomorrow," he said, "you leave."
The cart came for him at dawn. Thomas was alone this time, and he helped Martin up onto the seat without speaking. Martin's mother stood in the gateway with her hand pressed to her mouth. His father was beside her, his arm around her shoulders.
Martin looked back as the cart began to move. He saw the house where he had been born, the yard where his father worked, the path where he had sat and dreamed of the world beyond the hills. He saw his mother's face, wet with tears, and his father's face, closed and still.
He did not look away. He watched until the mist swallowed them, and then he turned and faced the road ahead.