All characters thus far mentioned are mine, but the Church of God Awaiting, the Duchy of Ernhart and the rest of Safehold are David Weber's.

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2.

Abide with me; fast falls the even-tide.

The darkness deepens, Lord with me abide.

When other helpers fail and comforts flee,

Help of the helpless O abide with me.

I was very confused to find that weeks were five days long, and church held on Wednesdays. I had been regaining my strength over several five-days, and it seemed I hadn't been eating properly for some time before I woke up. I filled out quickly, mostly on stew, potatoes and bread. Father Tohmas was baffled at my insistence on going for runs around the village, and I chose to restrict my press-ups, pull-ups and other exercises to times when he was visiting his parishioners. In much of my remaining time I learned from the Father, who was diligent in instructing me in the creed of the Church of God Awaiting, but also more than happy to tell me about the world around me.

The seasons turned swiftly; I had awoken in September, and by late October there was snow on the ground, and much of village life had come to a halt. Except for church, and that was why I was singing a hymn that seemed oddly familiar.

I stood amongst the people of Greendale, singing with a better voice than I thought I really deserved. I stumbled over the words of the second verse, as though I had known them differently. Neither Franceihn, on my left, nor Maikel, on my right, appeared surprised at the tripping of my tongue. Father Tohmas had told them my story, and asked if they would look after me while he was taking the service; and there weren't any hymnals for me to read from.

The sermon quoted the Book of Langhorne, "For how will a man profit if he gains all the world's power, but loses his soul?"

Two of my internal voices conflicted, one crying that was from the book of Matthew, and the other that there was no such thing as a soul. The first one I didn't understand, and the second was dangerous, so I squashed both, and instead listened in on Maikel's hushed agreement with his neighbour, that Father Tohmas had chosen his text today to make a point to two local farmers engaged in a boundary dispute. I was torn between respecting the Father's dedication to getting through to his congregation, and feeling the epic sweep of the verse of scripture was undermined a little by applying it to the location of a fence-line.

After the service, I went with Franceihn and Maikel to join them for a meal. Like the rest of Greendale, they were honest, hardworking, plain-spoken...and crushingly parochial. They knew little about events elsewhere in Ernhart, let alone further afield; they knew what was happening in the next villages over, and had a vague sense of what was happening in the market town of Nidder.

The mosaic of my memory still had more gaps than tiles, but I could tell that the good people of Greendale were not my people. They might welcome me, but I didn't belong here, and I resolved to leave when the snows cleared.

I continued to attend church loyally on Wednesdays, both to respect my host and make him feel that his religious instruction was successful. It wasn't just Abide With Me, or the one quote from the Book of Langhorne; most of the oldest hymns, and many of the most poetic parts of Holy Writ were familiar to me. That part of my mind which was currently sitting on all my memories whispered "Church of England" to me, then ran from me when I asked for more detail.

I mentioned an edited version of my memory when Father Tohmas and I were sitting over dinner one Wednesday night.

"Cal, that's marvellous!"

"Father?"
"I have wondered how you would have stood before God and the Archangels if you had died in the mountains. Had you repented of all your sins to that point? Of course we hope that you had, but your remembering passages of the Writ, and hymns from the liturgy, is a hint that you have always done your duty by Mother Church."

"I suppose so, Father. I feel fairly sure I have always wanted to do my duty."

I carefully changed the subject.

As time turned towards November, it was apparently reaching the end of the year, and the festival of Winternight.

I grew aware of the fact that gift-giving was a custom at Winternight, and I decided I ought to gift something both to Father Tohmas and to Elaiyn, his housekeeper. Lack of ideas and resources drove it to the back of my mind for a while, though I began helping out at with some of the work in the village to rectify the latter.

Within my own mind, I had several personal freakouts over the fact that for all my lack of memory, parts of the world around me seemed Wrong, with no idea of what would have been right, but kept coming back to Gendlin:

What is true is already so.

Owning up to it doesn't make it worse.

Not being open about it doesn't make it go away.

And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with.

Anything untrue isn't there to be lived.

People can stand what is true,

for they are already enduring it.

Gendlin saved me; if all the evidence was that this was Safehold, believing it was Earth (what was Earth!? I knew not) might have destroyed me. I might never find all the answers, but I could try.

I suppressed the additional question of who Gendlin was.

For all the Greendalers' parochialism I began to piece together more about how Safehold worked.

The Church was huge, with a priest in every village, monasteries scattered across the land and vast secular estates, including an entire nation - the Temple Lands. Priests belonged to different orders, each with their specialism, such as the Order of Pasquale for medicine, or the Order of Schueler for the Inquisition. An immediate mental note to avoid the latter; the word Inquisition sounded all sorts of alarms in my skull. Father Tohmas was a Bedardist, whose specialism was the human mind.

There was a hierarchy going up through upper-priests, bishops, archbishops to the Grand Vicar and Council of Vicars who were substitutes for Langhorne and the Archangels. I refrained from commenting that despite around half the archangels having been women all the priests seemed to be men.

The archangels had, so the story went, made Safehold under God's direction, but Shan-Wei had fallen into lust for power and commenced a war against Langhorne, who had destroyed her with rakurai from the heavens. Seemed mighty convenient, and my memory told me to remember Paradise Lost – if only I could - but I had to admit that whoever wrote the Holy Writ had known a fair amount; they had mapped the whole world, and given instructions for cultivation, animal husbandry, and so on. It was definitely a puzzle.

The villagers all seemed to believe implicitly, and tithed to the Church; nay, double-tithed, an average of perhaps one fifth of their income. They also treated Tohmas with genuine respect and reverence.

The fact that we were in the Duchy of Ernhart seemed to figure much less in daily life than Mother Church; certainly Father Tohmas did a lot for his flock, and I saw no representative of the Duke before winter set in. Greendale had a mayor, but he mostly did what Father Tohmas suggested.

"Have you remembered any more of your past, Cal?"

"Very little, Father."

"There is one thing that occurred to me. You are literate, are you not?"

"Yes, Father."

"Do you feel any spark of a vocation, my son? If you may have been a priest, you will want to take care," Tohmas gazed at me fixedly, looking concerned.

"Why is that, Father?"

"Once a priest, always a priest. If you have ever taken the vows, you are still bound by them, whether you remember them or nay."

"I think I would have remembered being ordained, Father, surely?"

"But would you not have remembered having a child? Being married? Being initiated into a guild? You are old enough to have done any or all of those things."

He may have kept talking, but I lost him completely. Lost my surroundings. Focussed back on one word.

Married.

Fuck.

Where is she, and how do I get home to her?

Fuck!

What is her NAME?

A vague sensation of movement, of laughter. A wash of dark hair, a wicked look in deep brown eyes.

"Miranda," I breathed. "Miranda, Miranda, Miranda." I realised I was rocking backwards and forwards a little, and couldn't bring myself to stop.

"Cal, are you alright?"

I dragged some of my awareness off the litany, and glanced at Tohmas.

"Cal?"

"It - it just came back to me Father. I was - am - married. Miranda, that was her name."

"Miranda? Is that a Siddarmarkian name, or perhaps from the out-islands?"

I looked blankly at him.

"It seems you may have to travel, Cal. If you are married, you must try to return to your wife! I am not sure where you need to go, but Miranda is not a name I have ever heard in Ernhart, and I don't think it is from the Temple Lands either, so your best start is probably Siddarmark."

"I will need to work my way, Father, or I won't get very far."

"That is true. In springtime there will be some travellers going to Siddarmark; there always are. I will put in a good word for you, and perhaps Allain will help also."

Allain the mayor would do what Tohmas asked, but I still appreciated how oblivious the priest seemed to his own power in the village.

"Thank you, Father," I gasped out, as the word Miranda kept flowing through my head.

I was still learning dogmas of the church from the priest. And I was still grieving for my lost wife, whom I barely remembered, and cursing my mind for failing me so abominably. I threw myself into physical work and kept exercising; it didn't help my memory, but I still felt that I was reclaiming something I had lost.

By the time Spring rolled around in March - December and January had disappeared from the calendar, and I declined to ask anyone about them - I had got to know most people in the village, at least of those who were vaguely sociable. I could never really relax with them though - I knew I didn't belong in Greendale, and they had all known one another from childhood. They were, at least, all in favour of helping me to get on my way. One even said that searching for your lost wife was a worthy start to a story. I seared off his head with my glare, and he didn't talk to me much afterward.

Perhaps I shouldn't find it too ironic that he was the one who found me a place with a mixed caravan of traders and returning pilgrims. It was late March of Year of God 890, and I was leaving the Duchy of Ernhart to find my place on Safehold.

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