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muddled in my thinking. The church had done nothing to aid me when I was accused of my parents’ murder and exiled, although I had beseeched Rome on many occasions. I worked for over ten years, putting together all my worldly goods. This, in order to see my brother brought to justice for something I knew in my heart he was incapable of having done.
    “I knew I hadn’t killed our father and mother, but Richard was the only other person close at hand. I tried to imagine him capable of the act, but knew full well it was impossible. But I came anyway and was defeated by him, as you well know. But the defeat came in so many ways far deeper than the obvious.”
    Tancred grew silent for a moment in memory. “Arianne prayed for me. She told me so. She told me that she saw a remnant of good left over from the past. It gave her hope that I could be changed. She pleaded with my brother for my worthless life, for she knew my soul was condemned.”
    Devon smiled. He could well imagine his sister’s meddling. “She has a tender heart.”
    “Aye,” Tancred responded softly. “Would that all men could know the love of one such as she.”
    Devon nodded. “She is more dear to me than life itself.”
    “Arianne’s words haunted me these last months. I knew I was without hope. I could not bear to share my heart, even with the priest, for fear of hearing confirmation that I was completely unsaveable.”
    “And did your philosopher see the error of your thought?”
    The ship pitched against the waves and both men gripped the railing for support. Tancred could nearly smell the English soil, and all that was in him cried for the sights of home.
    “Artimas,” he said, fixing his eyes on the landed horizon, “told me of his own teacher. A man of great intellect. His name is Thomas Aquinas. Artimas was on his way to meet with his master when he took his comfort with me.” Tancred chuckled in memory. “Of course there was plainly little of comfort in that hovel you found me in, but Artimas made it seem unimportant.
    “He asked me of my life, and I laughed at the man. I truly had no will to live and plainly told him so.”
    “And what did he say?”
    “He told me that the will was the single strongest source of motivation to all the other powers of the soul.”
    “Meaning exactly what?” Devon asked, now fully curious of this man’s philosophy.
    “That without will, nothing can be done.” Devon nodded in understanding, but waited for Tancred to continue. “Artimas believes that faith is the one thing that gives power to the will.”
    “And where does faith find birth when a man has no desire to live?”
    Tancred smiled. “Through action and reason. Faith and reason are dependent upon each other. Aquinas teaches that reason without faith is meaningless, but then so, too, is faith without reason. Faith is that substance that causes a man to say, ‘Yea, I will believe even though it is impossible,’ while reason finds a way to make the impossible happen.”
    “Spoken like a true philosopher!” Devon declared.
    “In the second century after the death and resurrection of Christ, people heard St. Justin proclaim that God had given philosophy to the Greeks even as He had given his Law to the Jewish people. I believe philosophy is not without merit.”
    “But what of the argument that you can either be a philosopher or a Christian? If Christianity contains the truth, then all else must surely not contain it. I’ve always been given over to the thought that it is not our place to join them together, but to choose one or the other,” Devon said with honest interest in the matter.
    Tancred nodded. “I’ve heard it said as well. People fear that to question and reason that which causes them difficulty might in fact nullify their faith, and faith is most necessary to please God. The Scriptures make this clear.”
    “Sine fide impossibile est placere Deo —without faith it is impossible to please God,” Devon remembered from