The Heretic's Apprentice (24 page)

‘But if they had been made together,' objected Cadfael, ‘the book would not have been given the tabs at the spine. They would not have been needed.'

‘That could well be, though the maker may have added them simply as common practice. But the box may have been made for it later. If the book was commissioned first, scribe and binder would finish it in the usual fashion. But if it was the kind of book it may well have been, by the traces left behind, the owner may very well have had a casket made for it to his own wishes, afterwards, to keep it from being rubbed by being drawn in and out from a chest among others of less value.'

Cadfael was smoothing out under his fingers the scrap of purple vellum, teasing out the fringe of gossamer fluff along the torn edge. Minute threads clung to his fingers, motes of bluish mist. ‘I spoke to Haluin, who knows more about pigments and vellum than I shall ever know. I wish he had been here to see for himself. So does he! But he said what you have said. Purple is the imperial colour, gold on purple vellum should be a book made for an emperor. East or west, they both had such books made. Purple and gold were the imperial symbols.'

‘They still are. And here we have the purple, and traces of the gold. In old Rome,' said Anselm, ‘the Caesars used the same fashion, and were jealous of it. I doubt if any other dared so exalt himself. In Aachen or Byzantium, they've been known to follow the Caesars.'

‘And from which empire, supposing we are right about this book and the box that contained it, did these works of art come? Can you read the signs?'

‘You might do better than I can,' said Anselm. ‘You have been in those parts of the world, as I have not. Read your own riddle.'

‘The ivory was carved by a craftsman from Constantinople or near it, but it need not have been made there. There is traffic between the two courts, as there has been since Charles the Great. Strange that the box brings the two together as it does, for the carving of the wood is not eastern. The wood itself I cannot fathom, but I think it must be from somewhere round the Middle Sea. Perhaps Italy? How all these materials and talents come together from many places to create so small and rare a thing!'

‘And once it contained, perhaps, a smaller and rarer. And who knows who was the scribe who wrote – in gold throughout, do you think, on purple vellum? – whatever that text might be, or for what prince of Byzantium or Rome it was written? Or who was the painter who adorned it, and in which style, of the east or the west?'

Brother Anselm was gazing out across the sunny garth in a dream of treasure, the fashion of treasure that best pleased him, words and neums inscribed with loving care for the pleasure of kings, and ornamented with delicate elaborations of tendril and blossom.

‘It may well have been a marvel,' he said fondly.

‘I wonder,' said Cadfael, rather to himself than to any other, ‘where it is now.'

*

Fortunata came into Jevan's shop in the early evening and found him putting his tools tidily away, and laying aside on his shelves the skin he had just folded, creamy white and fine-textured. Three folds had made of it a potential sheaf of eight leaves, but he had not yet trimmed the edges. Fortunata came to his shoulder and smoothed the surface with a forefinger.

‘That would be the right size,' she said thoughtfully.

‘The right size for many purposes,' said Jevan. ‘But what made you say it? Right for what?'

‘To make a book to fit my box.' She looked up at him with wide, clear hazel eyes. ‘You know I went with Father to try and get them to release Elave, to live with us here until his case is heard? They wouldn't do it. But they took a great interest in the box. Brother Anselm, who keeps all the abbey books, wanted to examine it. Do you know, they think it must once have held a book. Because of the size being so right for a sheepskin folded three times. And the box being so fine, it must have been a very precious book. Do you think they could be right?'

‘All things are possible,' said Jevan. ‘I hadn't thought of it, but the size is certainly suggestive, now you speak of it. It would indeed make a splendid case for a book.' He looked down into her grave face with his familiar dark smile. ‘A pity it had lost its contents before Uncle William happened on it in Tripoli, but I daresay it had been through a great many changes of use and fortune by then. Those are troubled regions. Easier to plant a kingdom there for Christendom than to maintain it.'

‘Well, I'm glad,' said Fortunata, ‘that it was good silver coin in the box when it reached me, rather than some old book. I can't read, what use would a book be to me?'

‘A book would have its value, too. A high value if it was well penned and painted. But I'm glad you're content with what you have, and I hope it will bring you what you want.'

She was running a hand along a shelf, and frowning at the faint fur of dust she found on her palm. Just as the monks had smoothed at the lining of the box, and found something significant in whatever minute residue it left upon the skin. She had caught the tiny flashes of gold in the sunlight, but the rest she had not understood. She studied her own hand, and wiped away the almost imperceptible velvety dust. ‘It's time I cleaned your rooms for you,' she said. ‘You keep everything so neatly, but it does need dusting.'

‘Whenever you wish!' Jevan took a detached look about the room, and agreed placidly: ‘It does build up, even here with the finished membranes there's a special dust. I live in it, I breathe it, so it slips my notice. Yes, dust and polish if you want to.'

‘It must be much worse in your workshop,' she said, ‘with all the scraping of the skins, and going back and forth to the river, coming in with muddy feet, and then the skins, when you bring them first to soak, and all the hair... It must smell, too,' she said, wrinkling her nose at the very thought.

‘Not so, my lady!' Jevan laughed at her fastidious countenance. ‘Conan cleans my workshop for me as often as it needs it, and makes a good job of it, too. I could even teach him the trade, if he was not needed with the sheep. He's no fool, he knows a deal already about the making of vellum.'

‘But Conan is shut up in the castle,' she reminded him seriously. ‘The sheriff is still hunting for anyone who can show just where he went and what he did before he went out to the pastures, that day that Aldwin was killed. You don't believe, do you, that he really could kill?'

‘Who could not,' said Jevan indifferently, ‘given the time and the place? But no, not Conan. They'll let him go in the end. He'll be back. It won't hurt him to sweat for a few days. And it won't hurt my workshop to wait a while for its next cleaning. Now, madam, are you ready for supper? I'll shut the shop, and we'll go in.'

She was paying no attention. Her eyes were roaming the length of his shelves, and the rack where the largest finished membranes were draped, cut and trimmed to order into the great bifolia intended for some massive lectern Bible. These she passed by to dwell upon the eight-leaved gatherings of the size that fitted her box.

‘Uncle, you have some books this same size, haven't you?'

‘It's the most usual,' he said. ‘Yes, the best thing I have is of that measure. It was made in France. God knows how it ever found its way to the abbey fair here in Shrewsbury. Why did you ask?'

‘Then it would fit into my box. I'd like you to have it. Why not? If it's so fine, and has a value, it should stay in the household, and I'm unlettered, and have no book to put in it, and besides,' she said, ‘I'm happy with my dowry, and grateful to Uncle William for it. Let's try it, after supper. Show me your books again. I may not be able to read, but they're beautiful to look at.'

Jevan stood looking down at her from his lean height, solemn and still. Thus motionless, everything about him seemed a little more elongated than usual, like a saint carved into the vertical moulding of a church porch, from his narrow, scholarly face to the long-toed shoes on his thin, sinewy feet, and the lean, clever, adept's hands. His deep eyes searched her face. He shook his head at such rash and thoughtless generosity.

‘Child, you should not so madly give away everything you have, before you know the value of it, or what need you may have of it in the future. Do nothing on impulse, you may pay for it with regret.'

‘No,' said Fortunata. ‘Why should I regret giving a thing for which I have no use to someone who will make good and proper use of it? And dare you tell me that you don't want it?' Certainly his black eyes were glittering, if not with covetousness, with unmistakeable longing and pleasure. ‘Come to supper, and afterwards we'll try how they match together. And I'll get Father to mind my money for me.'

*

The French breviary was one of seven manuscripts Jevan had acquired over the years of his dealings with churchmen and other patrons. When he lifted the lid of the chest in which he kept them Fortunata saw them ranged side by side, spines upward, leaning towards one side because he had not quite enough as yet to fill the space neatly. Two had fading titles in Latin inscribed along the spine, one was in a cover dyed red, the rest had all originally been bound in ivory leather drawn over thin wooden boards, but some were old enough to have mellowed into the pleasant pale brown of the lining of her box. She had seen them several times before, but had never paid them such close attention. And there at head and foot of every spine were the little rounded tongues of leather for lifting them in and out.

Jevan drew out his favourite, its binding still almost virgin white, and opened it at random, and the brilliant colours sprang out as if they were just freshly applied, a right-hand border the length of the page, very narrow and delicate, of twining leaves and tendrils and flowers, the rest of the page written in two columns, with one large initial letter, and five smaller ones to open later paragraphs, each one using the letter as a frame for vivid miniatures of flower and fem. The precision of the painting was matched by the limpid lucidity of the blues and reds and golds and greens, but the blues in particular filled and satisfied the eyes with a translucent coolness that was pure pleasure.

‘It's in such mint condition,' said Jevan, stroking the smooth binding lovingly, ‘that I fancy it was stolen, and brought well away from the place where it belonged before the merchant dared sell it. This is the beginning of the Common of the Saints, hence the large initial. See the violets, and how true their colour is!'

Fortunata opened her box on her knees. The colour of the lining blended softly with the paler colour of the breviary's binding. The book fitted comfortably within. When the lid was closed on it the soft clinging of the lining held the book secure.

‘You see?' she said. ‘How much better that it should have a use! And truly it does seem that this is the purpose for which it was made.'

There was room for the box within the chest. Jevan closed that lid also over his library, and kneeled for a moment with both long hands pressed upon the wood, caressing and reverent. ‘Very well! At least you may be sure it will be valued.' He rose, to his feet, his eyes still lingering upon the chest that held his treasure, a shadowy private smile of perfect contentment playing round his lips. ‘Do you know, chick, that I've never locked this before? Now I have your gift within it I shall keep it locked for safety.'

They turned towards the door together, his hand on her shoulder. At the head of the stairs that went down into the hall she halted, and turned her face up to him suddenly. ‘Uncle, you know you said Conan had learned a great deal about your business, through helping you there sometimes? Would he know what value to set on books? Would he recognise it, if by chance he lit on one of immense value?'

On the twenty-sixth day of June Fortunata rose early, and with her first waking thought recalled that it was the day of Aldwin's funeral. It was taken for granted that the entire household would attend, so much was owed to him, for many reasons, years of service, undistinguished but conscientious, years of familiarity with his harmless, disconsolate figure about the place, and the pity and the vague sense of having somehow failed him, now that he had come to so unexpected an end. And the last words she had ever said to him were a reproach! Deserved, perhaps, but now, less reasonably, reproaching her.

Poor Aldwin! He had never made the most of his blessings, always feared their loss, like a miser with his gold. And he had done a terrible thing to Elave in his haunting fear of being discarded. But he had not deserved to be stabbed from behind and cast into the river, and she had him somehow on her conscience in spite of her anxiety and dread for Elave, whom he had injured. On this of all mornings he filled Fortunata's mind, and drove her on along a road she was reluctant to take. But if justice is to be denied to the inadequate, grudging and sad, to whom then is it due?

Early as she was, it seemed that someone else was earlier. The shop would remain closed all this day, shuttered and dim, so there was no occasion for Jevan to be up so early, but he had risen and gone out before Fortunata came down into the hall.

‘He's off to his workshop,' said Margaret, when Fortunata asked after him. ‘He has some fresh skins to put into the river to soak, but he'll be back in good time for poor Aldwin's funeral. Were you wanting him?'

‘No, nothing that won't wait,' said Fortunata. ‘I missed him, that's all.'

She was glad that the household was fully occupied with the preparations for one more memorial gathering, so soon after the first, the evening of Uncle William's wake when this whole cycle of misfortune had begun. Margaret and the maid were busy in the kitchen, Girard, as soon as he had broken his fast, was out in the yard arranging Aldwin's last dignified transit to the church he had neglected in life. Fortunata went into the shuttered shop, and without more light than filtered through the joints of the shutters, began swiftly and silently to search along the shelves among the array of uncut skins, tools, every corner of a neat, sparsely furnished room. Everything was open to view. She had scarcely expected to find anything alien in here, and did not spend much time on it. She closed the door again upon the shadowy interior, and went back into the empty hall, and up the staircase to Jevan's bedchamber, over the entry from the street.