Doctor Mirabilis Read Free Page B

most quietly, he is asleep, or so I think. But
     would talk with thee.’
    Roger stirred, painfully; his bones were almost frozen. He cleared his throat, but his whisper was still harsh when it came
     forth:
    ‘Adam, if he is so ill—’
    Certes he is ill, but would see thee all the same. He asked for thee, Roger. Come in quickly, this plaudering lets the chill
     in, too, and he needs warmth.’
    Roger moved quickly then, fighting the stiffness, and Adam shut the door behind him with a miraculous soundlessness. If the
     room had been chilled during their briefexchange, Roger could not detect it; the air seemed almost hot to him, and the heat from the ardent coals in the fireplace
     beat against his cheeks and made his eyes tighten. Though there were two candles on a lectern against the wall to the left,
     and two more on an age-blackened, book-heaped table butting a wardrobe just to the right of the door, the room was quite dark
     all along its peripheries; the light and heat made an island in the centre, between the door and the hearth, where the low
     narrow bed was drawn up, parallel with the low stone mantel. The bed was deep in disordered robes and blankets.
    The matter of the letter and his patrimony fled tracelessly from his mind the moment he saw the massive head of the lector
     upon the bolster, its bushy grey monk’s tonsure in a tangle under a blue woollen skullcap, the veined eyelids closed in deep-shadowed
     sockets, the skin of the face as tight and semi-transparent as parchment over the magnificent leonine cheekbones. Bending
     over Robert Grosseteste and listening with cat-still intentness to his breathing was a fierce-looking swarthy man in mouse-coloured
     breeches and a saffron tunic; the ear that was tipped down to the lector was bare, but from the other a gold earring lay along
     the cord of his neck. As Roger made an involuntary half-step forward, the swarthy man held up one palm with all the command
     of a lord.
    ‘Very well,’ the swarthy man said. ‘A will stay on live, an his stars permit it. But these are mischancy times. Give him of
     the electuary when a wakens:-
    ‘What is it he bath with him?’ Adam said with an equal intensity.
    ‘Not the consumption,’ the Jew said. ‘Beyond that I am as ignorant as any man. If there’s a crisis, call me no more; I have
     done what I could.’
    ‘And for that all thanks,’ Adam said, ‘and my purse. Would God might send thee His grace as well as His wisdom.’
    The physician straightened, his eyes burning sombrely. ‘Keep thy purse,’ he said between startlingly white teeth. The purse
     struck the stone floor almost at Roger’s feet and burst,scattering coins among the rushes and the alder leaves spread to trap fleas. ‘Thou payest me ill enough already with thy blessing.
     I spit on thee.’
    For a moment it seemed to Roger that he might actually do just that, but instead, he strode past them both with an odd, stoop-shouldered,
     loping gait and was gone. Adam stared after him; he seemed stunned.
    ‘What did I say?’ the Franciscan murmured.
    ‘What matter?’ Roger said in a hoarse whisper. He was having difficulty in keeping himself from tallying the spatter of coins
     in the rushes; he felt as though the parchment in his pocket had suddenly been set afire. ‘’Tis but a Jew.’
    ‘As were three of the nine worthies of the world,’ Adam said gently, ‘and among Christians there were eke but three, as among
     the paynims. Since Our Lord was a Jew as well, that giveth the Jews somewhat the advantage.’
    Roger shrugged convulsively. This was an ill time, it seemed to him, to be resurrecting the Nine Worthies.
    ‘Thou’dst talk nonsense on the day of wrath could it be mathematical nonsense, Master Marsh,’ he said edgily. The words, as
     they came out, appalled him; suddenly, it seemed as though he were giving voice to the self for the first time in all his
     guarded life – here in the presence of an undoubted elected saint, and