The Heretic's Apprentice (23 page)

‘This is a beautiful thing! He was a true craftsman who made it. See the handling of the ivory, the great round brow, as if the carver had first drawn a circle to guide him, and then drawn in the lines of age and thought. I wonder what saint is pictured here? An elder, certainly. It could be Saint John Chrysostom.' He followed the whorls and tendrils of the vine leaves with a thin, appreciative fingertip. ‘Where did he pick up such a thing, I wonder?'

‘Elave told me,' said Cadfael, ‘that William bought it in a market in Tripoli, from some fugitive monks driven out of their monasteries, somewhere beyond Edessa, by raiders from Mosul. You think it was made there, in the east?'

‘The ivory may well have been,' said Anselm judicially. ‘Somewhere in the eastern empire, certainly. The full-faced gaze, the great, fixed eyes... Of the carving of the box I am not so sure. I fancy it came from nearer home. Not an English house – perhaps French or German. Have we your leave, daughter, to examine it inside?'

Fortunata's curiosity was already caught and held, she was leaning forward eagerly to follow whatever Anselm might have to demonstrate. ‘Yes, open it!' she said, and herself proffered the key.

Girard turned the key in the lock and raised the lid, to lift out the little felt bags that uttered their brief insect sound as he handled them. The interior of the box was lined with pale brown vellum. Anselm raised it to the light and peered within. One corner of the lining was curled up slightly from the wood, and a thin edge of some darker colour showed there, pressed between vellum and wood. He drew it out carefully with a fingernail, and unrolled a wisp of dark purple membrane, frayed from some larger shape, for one edge of it was fretted away into a worn fringe, where it had parted, the rest presented a clear, cut edge, the segment of a circle or half-circle. So small a wisp, and so inexplicable. He smoothed it out flat upon the desk. Hardly bigger than a thumbnail, but the cut side was a segment of a larger curve. The colour, though rubbed, and perhaps paler than it had once been, was nevertheless a rich, soft purple.

The pale lining in the base of the box seemed also to have the faintest of darker blooms upon its surface here and there. Cadfael drew a nail gently from end to end of it, and examined the fine dust of vellum he had collected, bluish rose, leaving a thin, clean line where he had scratched the membrane. Anselm stroked along the mark and smoothed down the ruffled pile, but the streak was still clear to be seen. He looked closely at his fingertip, and the faintest trace of colour was there, the translucent blue of mist. And something more, that made him look even more closely, and then take up the box again and hold it in full sunlight, tilting and turning it to catch the rays. And Cadfael saw what Anselm had seen, trapped in the velvety surface of the leather, invisible except by favour of the light, the scattered sparkle of gold dust.

Fortunata stood gazing curiously at the wisp of purple smoothed out upon the desk. A breath would have blown it away. ‘What can this have been? What was it part of?'

‘It is a fragment from a tongue of leather, the kind that would be stitched to the top and base of the spines of books, if they were to be stored in chests. Stored side by side, spine upwards. The tongues were an aid to drawing out a single book.'

‘Do you think, then,' she pursued, ‘that there was once a book kept in this box?'

‘It's possible. The box may be a hundred, two hundred years old. It may have been in many places, and used for many things before it found its way into the market in Tripoli.'

‘But a book kept in this would have no use for these tongues,' she objected alertly, her interest quickening. ‘It would lie flat. And it would lie alone. There is no room for more than one.'

‘True. But books, like boxes, may travel many miles and be carried in many ways before they match and are put together. By this fragment, surely it did once carry a book, if only for a time. Perhaps the monks who sold the box had kept their breviary in it. The book they would not part with, even when they were destitute. In their monastery it may have been one of many in a chest, and they could not carry all, when the raiders from Mosul drove them out.'

‘This leather tongue was well worn,' Fortunata continued her pursuit, fingering the frayed edge worn thin as gauze. ‘The book must have fitted very close within here, to leave this wisp behind.'

‘Leather perishes in the end,' said Girard. ‘Much handling can wear it away into dry dust, and the books of the office are constantly in use. If there's such a threat from these mamluks of Mosul, the poor souls round Edessa would have little chance to copy new service books.'

Cadfael had begun thoughtfully restoring the felt bags of coins to the casket, packing them solidly. Before the base was covered he drew a finger along the vellum again, and studied the tip in the sunlight, and the invisible grains of gold caught the light, became visible for a fleeting instant, and vanished again as he flexed his hand. Girard closed the lid and turned the key, and picked up the box to tuck it under his arm. Cadfael had rolled up the bags tightly to muffle all movement, but even so, when the box was tilted, he caught the very faint and brief clink as silver pennies shifted.

‘I'm grateful to you for letting me see so fine a piece of craftmanship,' said Anselm, relaxing with a sigh. ‘It's the work of a master, and you are a fortunate lady to possess it. Master William had an eye for quality.'

‘So I've told her,' Girard agreed heartily. ‘If she should wish to part with it, it would fetch her in a fair sum to add to what is inside.'

‘It might well fetch more than the sum it holds,' Anselm said seriously. ‘I am wondering if it was made to hold relics. The ivory suggests it, but of course it may not be so. The maker took pleasure in embellishing his work, whatever its purpose.'

‘I'll go with you to the gatehouse,' said Cadfael, stirring out of his private ponderings as Girard and Fortunata turned to walk along the north range on their way out. He fell in beside Girard, the girl going a pace or two ahead of them, her eyes on the flap of the walk, her lips set and brows drawn, somewhere far from them in a closed world of her own thoughts. Only when they were out in the great court and approaching the gate, and Cadfael halted to take leave of them, did she turn and look at him directly. Her eyes lit on what he was still carrying in his hand, and suddenly she smiled.

‘You've forgotten to put away the key to Elave's cell. Or,' she wondered, her smile deepening and warming from lips to eyes, ‘are
you
thinking of letting him out?'

‘No,' said Cadfael. ‘I am thinking of letting myself in. There are things Elave and I have to talk about.'

*

Elave had quite lost by this time the sharp, defensive, even aggressive front he had first presented to anyone who entered his cell. No one visited him regularly except Anselm, Cadfael, and the novice who brought his food, and with all these he was now on strangely familiar terms. The sound of the key turning caused him to turn his head, but at sight of Cadfael re-entering, and so soon, his glance of rapid enquiry changed to a welcoming smile. He had been reclining on his bed with his face uplifted to the light from the narrow lancet window, but he swung his feet to the floor and moved hospitably to make way for Cadfael on the pallet beside him.

‘I hardly thought to see you again so soon,' he said. ‘Are they gone? God forbid I should ever hurt her, but what else could I do? She will not admit what in her heart she knows! If I ran away I should be ashamed, and so would she, and that I won't bear. I am not ashamed now, I have nothing to be ashamed of. Do
you
think I'm a fool for refusing to take to my heels?'

‘A rare kind of fool, if you are,' said Cadfael. ‘And every practical way, no fool at all. And who should know everything there is to be known about that box you brought for her, so well as you? So tell me this – when she plumped it in your arms a while ago, what did you note about it that surprised you? Oh, I saw you handle it. The moment the weight was in your hands it jarred you, for all you never said a word. What was there new to discover about it? Will you tell me, or shall I first tell you? And we shall see if we both agree.'

Elave was gazing at him along his shoulder, with wonder, doubt and speculation in his eyes. ‘Yes, I remember you handled it once before, the day I took it up into the town. Should that be enough for you to notice so small a difference when you had it in your hands again?'

‘It was not that,' said Cadfael. ‘It was you who made it clear to me. You knew the weight of it from carrying it, from living with it and handling it all the way from France. When she laid it in your hands you knew what to expect. Yet as you took it your hands rose. I saw it, and saw that you had recorded all that it meant. For then you tilted it, this way and then that. And you know what you heard. That the box should be lighter by some small measure than when you last held it, that startled you as it startled me. That it should give forth the clinking of coin was no surprise to me, for we had just been told at chapter that it held five hundred and seventy silver pence. But I saw that it was a surprise to you, for you repeated the test. Why did you say nothing then?'

‘There was no certainty,' said Elave, shaking his head. ‘How could I be sure? I knew what I heard, but since last I had the box in my hands it has been opened, perhaps something not replaced when they put back what was in it, more wrappings, no longer needed... Enough to change the weight, and let the coins within move, that were tight-packed before, and could not shift. I needed time to think. And if you had not come...'

‘I know,' said Cadfael, ‘You would have put it out of your mind as of no importance, a mistaken memory. After all, you delivered your charge where it was sent, Fortunata had her money, what possible profit to waste time and thought over a morsel of weight and a few coins jingling? Especially for a man with graver matters on his mind. And you have just accounted for all, very sensibly. But now here am I, stirring the depths that were just beginning to settle. Son, I have just been handling that box again myself. I won't say I noted the difference in weight, except when it jarred you as it did. But what I do most clearly remember is how solid, how stable was that weight. Nothing moved in it when first I held it. It might have been a solid mass of wood in my hands. It is not so now. I doubt if any discarded wrappings of felt could quite have silenced the coins that are in it now, for I have just packed it again myself – six small felt bags, rolled up tightly and pressed in, and still I heard them chink when the box was taken up and carried. No, you were not mistaken. It is lighter than it was, and it has lost that solidity that formerly it had.'

Elave sat silent for a long moment, accepting what was set before him, but dubious of its sense or relevance. ‘But I do not see,' he said slowly, ‘of what use it is to know these things, even to think them, even to wonder. What bearing has it on anything? Even if it is all true,
why
should it be so? It's not worth solving so small a mystery, since no one is the better or the worse whether we fathom it or not.'

‘Everything that is not what it seems, and not what it reasonably should be,' said Cadfael firmly, ‘must have significance. And until I know what that significance is, in particular if it manifests itself in the middle of murder and malice, I cannot be content. Thank God, no one now supposes that you had any part in Aldwin's death, but
someone
killed him, and whatever his own faults and misdoings, worse was done to him, and he has a right to justice. I grant it was but natural that most people should take it as certain his sudden death had to do with you and the accusation he made against you. But now, with you out of the reckoning, is not that out of the reckoning, too? Who else in that quarrel had any cause to kill him? So is it not logic to look for another cause? Nothing to do with you and your troubles? But something, nevertheless, to do with your return here. Death came within days of your coming. And whatever is strange, whatever cannot be explained, during these few days since your return may indeed have a bearing.'

‘And the box came with me,' said Elave, following this path to its logical ending. ‘And here is something strange about the box, something that cannot be explained. Unless you will now tell me that you have an explanation for it?'

‘A possible one, yes. For consider... We have just been examining the box, emptied of its bags of pence, inside and out. And in the vellum lining of the base there are traces of gold leaf, powdered into a fine dust, but the light finds them. And on the deep ivory vellum there is a fine blue bloom, as on a plum. And I think, and so I know does Brother Anselm, though we have not yet spoken of it, that it is the delicate frettings of another vellum once in constant contact with it, and dyed purple. And pressed into a corner there was a fragment of purple vellum frayed from an end-tag such as we use on the spines of books in our chests in the library.'

‘You are saying,' said Elave, watching him in bright-eyed speculation, ‘that what the box contained at some time was a book – or books. A book that had formerly been kept among others in a chest. That could well be true, but need it mean anything to us, now? The thing is old, it could have been used in many ways since it was made. It could be a hundred years since it held a book.'

‘So it could,' agreed Cadfael, ‘but for this one thing. That both you and I handled it only five days ago, and have handled it again today, and found it to be lighter in weight, changed in balance, and filled with something that rings audibly when it is tilted or shaken. What I am saying, Elave, is that what it held, not a hundred years ago, but five short days ago, on the twentieth day of this very month of June, is not what it holds now, on the twenty-fifth.'

*

‘A standard size,' said Brother Anselm, demonstrating with his hands on the desk before him. ‘The skin folded to make eight leaves – it would fit the box exactly. Most probably the box was made for it.'