Cædmon

An assumed name, surely, but the resemblance is striking. An amber-eyed poet who emerged from the wilderness speaking the lord’s word. According to Cædmon, he lost his abbey and brothers to the Lincolnshire rising; and turned toward London for a sign. There he found his house in disarray and chaos. Scores lost to the royal father and daughters alike, and not one godly man with the strength to bring the church together against their “flock.” Despite openly disdaining Protestants in his midst and lavishing favoritism on the Keepers of the Word, Cædmon has an uncanny way with words. Perhaps it’s the wine, or Kindred simply drunk on fellowship, but penitents seem to come away from his communion believing he spoke to them personally, sanctifying actions so compelling they couldn’t wait to set them into motion.

His bloody-minded devotion is keeping the fracturing Lancea et Sanctum together, but Cædmon is finding religious leadership more complicated than he’d anticipated. He never really stopped being a monk, and finds the diplomacy and logistics required of him to be a useless distraction from The Work. He and Æthelgifu have the barest of détentes, born out of a mutual need to crush The School of Night; but neither truly respects the other and a stiff breeze would shatter that frail bond. It is a wedge that Richard Bithewaye is eager to exploit.