Doctor Mirabilis by James Blish Read Free Book Online

that inn called the Oxen by the serf Wulf
     (there were four or five inns by that name in Ilchester, at least two in Northover to Roger’s knowledge) without being recognized
     for what he was by some soldier of Will of Howlake. To do so without being seen by some such man was out of the question,
     but Roger was reasonably sure he could pass any casual inspection – after all, his breeches and coarse surcoat were just like
     those of a thousand other young men from the anonymous poor, except that they were slightly less threadbare. Unless he was
     incautious in his curiosity about the manse, he would probably not be picked up at all; and even if he were seized and searched
     thoroughly enough to turn up the manuscript in his gear, he could feign to be a goliard – one of the many raggle-taggle vagabond
     scholars who, eager enough for learning but utterly impatient of university routines, wandered from teacher to teacher and
     monastery to monastery, themselves teaching or writing anew the text of one or another of the Miracle plays in return for
     their instruction and keep. He would get by with such a deception if he had to practise it. The danger did not lie there.
     It lay in the good possibility that someone in Northover, someone who belonged there, would recognize him under the eye of
     someone of Howlake or de Burgh, and speak too soon and too loudly.
    He dug one heel into John Blund; the horse moved reluctantly, and just as reluctantly Roger gave it its head, for the side
     here, though only half as steep as a roof, offered no road – he had quitted that before topping the crest out of elementary
     caution – but instead slippery outcroppings of rock and moss, giving way farther down to a tumble of rubble, like a talus-slope
     at the foot of a cliff, full of incipient shifts and slides and glistening menacingly with frost. No man could presume to
     guide a horse over such ground, but instead, must let him put each of his four feet where he chose and as delicately as he
     could manage, until he showed himself willing to resume his gait.
    And, in fact, to Roger’s faint surprise, John Blundmanaged the sliding course without even a serious stumble, though there was one rock-tumble moment when he seemed certain
     to break a foreleg, and probably to pash his awn and Roger’s brains out as well. It was over in half the time it would have
     taken to say a pater noster, however (and in actuality, it had doubtless taken no more than ten pulse-beats); and then the
     horse was clump-clumping across rimed brown grass in a complacent trot he had decided to undertake all on his own. Roger found
     himself grinning. A lifetime of intimacy with horses had convinced him that nothing else on four legs can be BO stupid, but
     so frequently and humanly overwhelmed by its own good opinion of itself.
    He had, as well, good reason to be pleased with himself, for as he resumed the reins, he found himself and John Blund crossing
     a frozen ditch into a broad ploughland which he recognized at once as bordering on the west vineyard of Yeo Manse. He could
     hardly have arrived at a safer quarter of the estate, this time of year, for, to begin with, it had always been the poorest
     cot in
itsfisc,
secondly, the most remote from the seigniorial manse and hence from Will of Howlake, thirdly, the cot (if Roger’s memory,
     dim here, could be trusted) of the serf Wulf (who could be presumed to be haunting some tavern in Northover to the detriment
     of his week work), and finally (though this, at least, could be laid to no foreplanning on Roger’s part) today was obviously
     a boon-work day: for on the other side of the vineyards, where the little group of sod houses belonging to this and three
     other cots were huddled, Roger could see a group of small hunched figures assembling, most of them carrying axes, mattocks
     and adzes – a wood-cutting gang – and hear the shouts of a dean, one of Tom the steward’s overseers, distant but clear.