How the Bishop Sailed to Inniskeen
Gene Wolfe
This is the story Hogan told us as we sat before our fire in the unroofed chapel, looking up at the niche above the door—the niche that had held the holy stone.
“ ’Twas Saint Cian’s pillow,” said Hogan, “an’ rough when he got it—rough as a pike’s kiss. Smooth it was when he died, for his head had smoothed it sixty years. Couldn’t a maid have done it nicer, an’ where the stone had worn away was the Virgin. Her picture, belike, sir, in the markin’s that’d been in the stone.”
It sounded as if he meant to talk no more, so I said, “What would he want with a stone pillow, Pat?” This, though I knew the answer, simply because the night and the lonesome wind sweeping in off the Atlantic had made me hungry for a human voice.
“Not for his own sins, sure, for he’d none. But for yours, sir, an’ mine. There was others, too, that come to live on this island.”
“Other hermits, you mean?”
. . .
