Free A Stolen Tongue by Sheri Holman Page A

her to Cyprus,where we would surely stop for provisions. What better place to spot her than at the docks?
    But John does not know the way a devotee’s mind works.
    Katherine’s last relic before Sinai, the easternmost tip of her a pilgrim might venerate without crossing the Great Wasteland, lodges in this little church of Saint Paul at the center of Venus’s pleasure garden.
    Wouldn’t Saint Katherine’s Tongue come to see Saint Katherine’s tongue?
    How greatly can we praise the tongue? It is perhaps her most precious organ, even more than the hand or the ear, for with it a saint first glorifies the Lord. Had Katherine been mute, she still might have written down her love for Christ, she might still have convinced the Fifty Philosophers on paper; but the common man, the thresher of wheat, the shepherdess with piebald dog, would never have understood. Why, how else could the unlettered citizens of Alexandria have made sense of that beautiful woman’s torture? Why she was beheaded or translated to Sinai? They might still be wandering in the darkness had Katherine not had a tongue.
    I expect the Tongue to steal the tongue.
    This part I have not shared with John or Constantine; it is a secret between us alone, brothers. As I lay awake last night, agonizing over this painful sequence of events, I realized only one possibility existed: Saint Katherine would never deliberately avoid her devoted husband of twenty years; she is purposefully being withheld by sinister forces. If someone is stealing my wife, she is in dire need of a champion.
    Now, before you upbraid me, brothers, before you call me puffed-up priest and knight-errant friar, let me explain. I do not claim to understand why Saint Katherine allowed herself to be stolen in the first place. Perhaps she was distracted by long months of intercession and exhaustive charity, which selflessly led her to take fewer pains about her physical remains. Or perhaps in her dutiful humility she was fulfilling the psalm, “And God hath scattered the bones of them that please themselves,” for nothing pleases Katherine more than being attentive and kind to mortals. We would slight her tobelieve she could not have saved herself had she only been more alert. Over the centuries, hundreds of thieves have succeeded in robbing the tombs of saints; Saint Benedict was stolen from Monte Cassino and translated to Fleury, but only because Monte Cassino was in decline and the saint no longer desired to reside there. By contrast, when a wicked monk attempted to spirit away the body of Saint Martin, he was foiled by Abbot Hilarius, to whom the threatened saint appeared in a vision. Could anything then be clearer, brothers? Saint Katherine warned me in a dream after her hand was stolen in Candia. She swam behind the boat, begging my help. I was so beguiled on Rhodes, I did not see the thief before me, though her guilty conscience had all but driven her to suicide. The woman Arsinoë took Saint Katherine’s ear, and Constantine the merchant has some suspicion of it; I’m convinced. Had he not been of my same mind, if he did not suspect his wife might make an attempt on Katherine’s tongue, why else would he have consented to come here? As John urged, the docks are by far the more logical place to search. But she will come, brothers, of this I am certain.
    And we will be waiting.
    I gather up the pilgrims and go inside. I must accept my charge and fly Saint Katherine of Alexandria’s colors like a noble champion.
    Inside, the church is whitewashed and bare, bereft of any decoration save a stiff, crooked icon of a shiny-pated Saint Paul. Twelve rows of plain cedar benches, split by the center aisle, lead forward to a wobbly altar. A young, well-formed priest rises from his prayers when we enter.
    My first fear—that the merchant’s wife might have beaten us here—is quickly put to rest. Beside the altar crucifix, the reliquary sits in plain