“I guess so.”

“Nothing in thy life has made thee think more about thy God than the time thou brokest His rule. If thou hadst chosen a God with more commandments, or made more vows to Him which thou wouldst then suffer to keep or suffer more by breaking, thy faith would have grown even stronger for it.”

The Cousin realized now that she was hugging herself, and felt strong enough to stop. “You really were a monk once, weren’t you, Dominic? A real monk?”

“I am thy sensayer, and may not speak to thee of my religion.”

Again Dominic’s hands stirred deep in his sleeves, but I recognized the gesture from when he does the same in his public costume, for even lace cuffs cannot conceal the fidgeting as he fingers on the skin around his wrists. There are no scars now, but there were when I first faced Dominic in that same cell. It was sincere, that session when I let you hear Dominic ‘confess’ to Julia his weekly sins, breaking his vow of chastity. Sincere too was young Dominic’s conviction when he took his monastic oath: obedience, poverty, chastity too, to seal away forever that appetite which Madame had raised him to wield as a master swordsman wields his blade. At fifteen Dominic could already break a man with ease, but he determined to sacrifice his pleasures to honor his Lord with a life of pious deprivation. Madame would not permit such wastage. After he took his vows, she granted Dominic one month of his new life, just enough to feel the habits taking hold, then she had him dragged from his cell, and sodomized, and tormented until he unleashed his wrath and now-forbidden appetites upon his tormenters. So, calculating mother, she taught Dominic how much more powerful he was now that his lust was charged with guilt, the fire of his flesh channeling the burn of his Master Jehovah’s disapproving gaze. You cannot call Madame’s order a ‘crime’—they were all Blacklaws. You can call it abuse, but Dominic would not wish away his past, and the powers it gives him, any more than would Eureka, Toshi Mitsubishi, or Voltaire.

“There is no need now, Foster,” Dominic continued, “to pretend that thou wishest thy God to be a Clockmaker. He has answered thy secret prayer, and proved that He is not. That was thy true prayer, was it not?” Dominic did wait, but Carlyle hid behind tears, and let her sensayer finish for her. “He gave thee Bridger. He has shown Himself to thee, to us, to we two fallen creatures out of all the priests and faithful of the Earth. A window to speak to our Maker is in our hands, not those of the untainted sensayers thou hast long envied. Ours.” Dominic’s eyes led Carlyle’s to the corner of the room, where Bridger’s No-No Box sat open on the table, with its crucifix, its Buddha statue, and its black rubber ball. “This Universe’s God has recognized the special fervor of thy devotion since thy fall, and He has heard thy prayers above all others.”