The Heretic's Apprentice by Ellis Peters Read Free Book Online Page B

closely.
    â€˜I have to take it by way of a dowry for the girl. When he grew too ill to go on he thought of her, seeing he’d taken her into his household from the day she was born. So he gave me this to bring to Girard, to be used for her when she marries. It’s a poor lookout for a girl with no dowry when it comes to getting a husband.’
    â€˜I remember there was a little girl,’ said Cadfael, turning the box in his hands with admiration. It was enough to excite the artist in any man. Fashioned from some dark eastern wood, about a foot long by eight inches wide and four deep, the lid flawlessly fitted, with a small, gilded lock. The under surface was plain, polished to a lustrous darkness almost black, the upper surface and the edges of the lid beautifully and intricately carved in a tracery of vine leaves and grapes, and in the centre of the lid a lozenge containing an ivory plaque, an aureoled head, full-face, with great Byzantine eyes. It was so old that the sharp edges had been slightly smoothed and rounded by handling, but the lines of the carving were still picked out in gold.
    â€˜Fine work!’ said Cadfael, handling it reverently. He balanced it in his hands, and it hung like a solid mass of wood, nothing shifting within. ‘You never wondered what was in it?’
    Elave looked faintly surprised, and hoisted indifferent shoulders. ‘It was packed away, and I had other things to think about I’ve only this past half-hour got it out of the baggage-roll. No, I never did wonder. I took it he’d saved up some money for her. I’m just handing it over to Girard as I was told to do. It’s the girl’s, not mine.’
    â€˜You don’t know where he got it?’
    â€˜Oh, yes, I know where he bought it. From a poor deacon in the market in Tripoli, just before we took ship for Cyprus and Thessalonika on our way home. There were Christian fugitives beginning to drift in then from beyond Edessa, turned out of their monasteries by mamluk raiders from Mosul. They came with next to nothing, they had to sell whatever they’d contrived to bring with them in order to live. William drove shrewd bargains among the merchants, but he dealt fairly with those poor souls. They said life was becoming hard and dangerous in those parts. The journey out we made the slow way, by land. William wanted to see the great collection of relics in Constantinople. But coming home we started by sea. There are plenty of Greek and Italian merchant ships plying as far as Thessalonika, some even all the way to Bari and Venice.’
    â€˜There was a time,’ mused Cadfael, drawn back through the years, ‘when I knew those seas very well. How did you fare for lodging on the way out, all those miles afoot?’
    â€˜Now and then we went a piece in company, but mostly it was we two alone. The monks of Cluny have hospices all across France and down through Italy, even close by the emperor’s city they have a house for pilgrims. And as soon as you reach the Holy Land the Knights of Saint John provide shelter everywhere. It’s a great thing to have done,’ said Elave, looking back in awe and wonder. ‘Along the way a man lives a day at a time, and looks no further ahead than the next day, and no further behind than the day just passed. Now I see it whole, and it is wonderful.’
    â€˜But not all good,’ said Cadfael. ‘That couldn’t be, we couldn’t ask it. Remember the cold and the rain and the hunger at times, and losses by thieves now and then, and a few knocks from those who prey on travellers – oh, never tell me you met none! And the weariness, and the times when William fell ill, the bad food, the sour water, the stones of the road. You’ve met all that. Every man who travels that far across the world has met it all.’
    â€˜I do remember all that,’ said Elave sturdily, ‘but it is still wonderful.’
    â€˜Good! So it