A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Read Free Book Online Page B

glanced down at the box near his feet. “I found some things that belonged to the Blessed Leibowitz. I started to tell him, but he didn’t believe me. He wouldn’t let me explain. He-”
    “You found what?” Fingo smiled his disbelief, then dropped to his knees and opened the box while the novice watched nervously. The monk stirred the whiskered cylinders in the trays with one finger and whistled softly. “Hill-pagan charms, aren’t they? This is old, Francisco, this is really old.” He glanced at the note in the lid. “What’s this gibberish?” he asked, squinting up at the unhappy novice.
    “Pre-Deluge English.”
    “I never studied it, except what we sing in choir.”
    “It was written by the Beatus himself.”
    “This?” Brother Fingo stared from the note to Brother Francis and back to the note. He shook his head suddenly, clamped the lid back on the box, and stood up. His grin had become artificial. “Maybe Father’s right. You better hike back and have Brother Pharmacist brew you up one of his toad-stool specials. That’s the fever, Brother.”
    Francis shrugged, “Perhaps.”
    “Where did you find this stuff?”
    The novice pointed. “Over that way a few mounds. I moved some rocks. There was a cave-in, and I found a basement. Go see for yourself.”
    Fingo shook his head. “I’ve got a long ride ahead.”
    Francis picked up the box and started toward the abbey while Fingo returned to his donkey, but after a few paces the novice stopped and called back.
    “Brother Spots-could you take two minutes?”
    “Maybe,” answered Fingo; “What for?”
    “Just walk over there and look in the hole.”
    “Why?”
    “So you can tell Father Cheroki if it’s really there.”
    Fingo paused with one leg half across his donkey’s back.
    “Ha!” He withdrew the leg. “All right. If it’s not there, I’ll tell you.”
    Francis watched for a moment while the gangling Fingo strode out of sight among the mounds; then he turned to shuffle down the long dusty trail toward the abbey, intermittently munching corn and sipping from the waterskin. Occasionally he glanced back. Fingo was gone much longer than two minutes. Brother Francis had ceased to watch for his reappearance by the time he heard a distant bellow from the ruins far behind him. He turned. He could make out the distant figure of the woodcarver standing atop one of the mounds. Fingo was waving his arms and vigorously nodding his head in affirmation. Francis waved back, then hiked wearily on his way.
    Two weeks of near-starvation had exacted their tribute. After two or three miles he began to stagger. When still nearly a mile from the abbey, he fainted beside the road. It was late afternoon before Cheroki, riding back from his rounds, noticed him lying there, hastily dismounted, and bathed the youth’s face until he gradually brought him around. Cheroki had encountered the supply donkeys on his way back and had paused to hear Fingo’s account, confirming Brother Francis’ find. Although he was not prepared to believe that Francis had discovered anything of real importance, the priest regretted his earlier impatience with the boy. Having noticed the box lying nearby with its contents half-spilled in the road, and having glanced briefly at the note in the lid, while Francis sat groggy and confused at the edge of the trail, Cheroki found himself willing to regard the boy’s earlier babblings as the result of romantic imagination rather than of madness or delirium. He had neither visited the crypt nor closely examined the contents of the box, but it was obvious, at least, that the boy had been misinterpreting real events rather than confessing hallucinations.
    “You can finish your confession as soon as we get back,” he told the novice softly, helping him to climb up behind the saddle on the mare. “I think I can absolve you if you don’t insist on personal messages from the saints. Eh?”
    Brother Francis was too weak at the moment to insist