Free Shannon by Frank Delaney

a prince, and I would also become a prince of the Church.”
    The archbishop had hands as big as garden spades, with chewed fingernails. His incapacity to speak briefly stemmed from his love of authority. Robert, even though emotionally less than complete, had learned how to nip in when the big man paused for breath.
    “I understand, Your Grace.”
    “Therefore, when I was about to be ordained, I took advantage of the seminary's offer of time for contemplation before final vows. I decided to go to Warsaw, to the big city. This was not, as you might immediately think, an essay to test myself against the pleasures of a brighter life. I sought the journey more than I needed the destination. So I walked. I walked and I walked. A long journey: many days, many hours, many nights and mornings. That is, in part, why I believe that you should undertakethis travel to Ireland. I, in my peregrination, had but a month. You shall have as long as you need.”
    A sharper Robert might have found a delicate way to bring the archbishop to the point, but as it was he merely listened.
    “In my walking I contemplated— as I had intended— my vocation. And in my walking I met and examined people, ordinary people of Poland— good people. I looked at them closely; I observed what they did. More important, I tried to measure”—he paused—”measure. To measure. Music is measured. Yes, measure. I tried to measure how they did what they did. Did I know what I was seeking from them? Looking for? In them? Yes, I think so. I was seeking to measure commitment. Vocation, if you like. Yes, vocation. Calling.”
    He leaned forward. Robert returned his gaze with, as ever, the trust of a child.
    “I see that you understand me, Robert. This is wonderful.”
    Sevovicz had always wept easily, and now he shed a tear.
    “Go on your journey, Robert. Go to Ireland. Go to your holy river. Think of vocation. Big letters.” He raised his voice a little, but carefully, given Robert's antipathy to noise. “V-O-C-A-T-I-O-N, Robert. Vocation. And measure your vocation against those whom you meet. Observe the ordinary people in their ordinary callings. I did; they taught me. You will see what I mean. They will teach you.”
    Robert Shannon had always possessed a good stride. In the army it improved when he marched all day. Since then he had gained further strength, which could keep him going for miles. The archbishop had trained him in this. Those long walks they took, many miles at random and then regular afternoons, building up pace first, to establish confidence, and then distance, to establish stamina— Anthony Sevovicz put major faith in the powers of walking and its rhythms.
    It helped that he and Robert had similarly long legs. And it helped that Sevovicz had been a considerable track athlete, his seminary's middle-distance champion. Sevovicz had a naive psychology of walking. “Walking takes us forward, Robert. We cannot slip back while we are moving forward.”
    After Tarbert, then, Robert strode onward in a northeasterly direction,up toward the heart of Ireland. He had no cultural sense of where he was going. He knew nothing of the textures waiting ahead. He would only— for the moment— tick off place-names on a map.
    In the first quarter hour he ate all the food that Molly had packed for him. Rarely did he take his eyes off the river. He walked and he looked and he looked and he walked. A traveler to his rear, observing him from a few yards’ distance, would have seen this tall thin walker's impressive stride and would have strained to keep up with him.
    Carried by that stride, Robert reached a long natural archway of trees, whose cathedral shade he relished. As he cleared the arches he saw, just ahead on his right, an elaborate miniature castle. It turned out to be a gateway with a pair of towers and a crust of battlements along the top. Through this structure he saw its parent, a full-blown castle with a façade as stretched as a parade that