by Ellis Peters
‘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 w
hat 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.’
‘But if they had been made together,’ objected Cadfael, ‘the book would not have been given the tabs at the spine. They would not have been needed.’
‘That could well be, though the maker may have added them simply as common practice. But the box may have been made for it later. If the book was commissioned first, scribe and binder would finish it in the usual fashion. But if it was the kind of book it may well have been, by the traces left behind, the owner may very well have had a casket made for it to his own wishes, afterwards, to keep it from being rubbed by being drawn in and out from a chest among others of less value.’
Cadfael was smoothing out under his fingers the scrap of purple vellum, teasing out the fringe of gossamer fluff along the torn edge. Minute threads clung to his fingers, motes of bluish mist. ‘I spoke to Haluin, who knows more about pigments and vellum than I shall ever know. I wish he had been here to see for himself. So does he! But he said what you have said. Purple is the imperial colour, gold on purple vellum should be a book made for an emperor. East or west, they both had such books made. Purple and gold were the imperial symbols.’
‘They still are. And here we have the purple, and traces of the gold. In old Rome,’ said Anselm, ‘the Caesars used the same fashion, and were jealous of it. I doubt if any other dared so exalt himself. In Aachen or Byzantium, they’ve been known to follow the Caesars.’
‘And from which empire, supposing we are right about this book and the box that contained it, did these works of art come? Can you read the signs?’
‘You might do better than I can,’ said Anselm. ‘You have been in those parts of the world, as I have not. Read your own riddle.’
‘The ivory was carved by a craftsman from Constantinople or near it, but it need not have been made there. There is traffic between the two courts, as there has been since Charles the Great. Strange that the box brings the two together as it does, for the carving of the wood is not eastern. The wood itself I cannot fathom, but I think it must be from somewhere round the Middle Sea. Perhaps Italy? How all these materials and talents come together from many places to create so small and rare a thing!’
‘And once it contained, perhaps, a smaller and rarer. And who knows who was the scribe who wrote – in gold throughout, do you think, on purple vellum? – whatever that text might be, or for what prince of Byzantium or Rome it was written? Or who was the painter who adorned it, and in which style, of the east or the west?’
Brother Anselm was gazing out across the sunny garth in a dream of treasure, the fashion of treasure that best pleased him, words and neums inscribed with loving care for the pleasure of kings, and ornamented with delicate elaborations of tendril and blossom.
‘It may well have been a marvel,’ he said fondly.
‘I wonder,’ said Cadfael, rather to himself than to any other, ‘where it is now.’
*
Fortunata came into Jevan’s shop in the early evening and found him putting his tools tidily away, and laying aside on his shelves the skin he had just folded, creamy white and fine-textured. Three folds had made of it a potential sheaf of eight leaves, but he had not yet trimmed the edges. Fortunata came to his shoulder and smoothed the surface with a forefinger.
‘That would be the right size,’ she said thoughtfully.
‘The right size for many purposes,’ said Jevan. ‘But what made you say it? Right for what?’
‘To make a book to fit my box.’ She looked up at him with wide, clear hazel eyes. ‘You know I went with Father to try and get them to release Elave, to live with us here until his case is heard? They wouldn’t do it. But they took a great interest in the box. Brother Anselm, who keeps all the abbey books, wanted to examine it. Do you know, they think it must once have held a book. Because of the size being so right for a sheepskin folded three times. And the box being so fine, it must have been a very precious book. Do you think they could be right?’
‘All things are possible,’ said Jevan. ‘I hadn’t thought of it, but the size is certainly suggestive, now you speak of it. It would indeed make a splendid case for a book.’ He looked down into her grave face with his familiar dark smile. ‘A pity it had lost its contents before Uncle William happened on it in Tripoli, but I daresay it had been through a great many changes of use and fortune by then. Those are troubled regions. Easier to plant a kingdom there for Christendom than to maintain it.’
‘Well, I’m glad,’ said Fortunata, ‘that it was good silver coin in the box when it reached me, rather than some old book. I can’t read, what use would a book be to me?’
‘A book would have its value, too. A high value if it was well penned and painted. But I’m glad you’re content with what you have, and I hope it will bring you what you want.’
She was running a hand along a shelf, and frowning at the faint fur of dust she found on her palm. Just as the monks had smoothed at the lining of the box, and found something significant in whatever minute residue it left upon the skin. She had caught the tiny flashes of gold in the sunlight, but the rest she had not understood. She studied her own hand, and wiped away the almost imperceptible velvety dust. ‘It’s time I cleaned your rooms for you,’ she said. ‘You keep everything so neatly, but it does need dusting.’
‘Whenever you wish!’ Jevan took a detached look about the room, and agreed placidly: ‘It does build up, even here with the finished membranes there’s a special dust. I live in it, I breathe it, so it slips my notice. Yes, dust and polish if you want to.’
‘It must be much worse in your workshop,’ she said, ‘with all the scraping of the skins, and going back and forth to the river, coming in with muddy feet, and then the skins, when you bring them first to soak, and all the hair… It must smell, too,’ she said, wrinkling her nose at the very thought.
‘Not so, my lady!’ Jevan laughed at her fastidious countenance. ‘Conan cleans my workshop for me as often as it needs it, and makes a good job of it, too. I could even teach him the trade, if he was not needed with the sheep. He’s no fool, he knows a deal already about the making of vellum.’
‘But Conan is shut up in the castle,’ she reminded him seriously. ‘The sheriff is still hunting for anyone who can show just where he went and what he did before he went out to the pastures, that day that Aldwin was killed. You don’t believe, do you, that he really could kill?’
‘Who could not,’ said Jevan indifferently, ‘given the time and the place? But no, not Conan. They’ll let him go in the end. He’ll be back. It won’t hurt him to sweat for a few days. And it won’t hurt my workshop to wait a while for its next cleaning. Now, madam, are you ready for supper? I’ll shut the shop, and we’ll go in.’
She was paying no attention. Her eyes were roaming the length of his shelves, and the rack where the largest finished membranes were draped, cut and trimmed to order into the great bifolia intended for some massive lectern Bible. These she passed by to dwell upon the eight-leaved gatherings of the size that fitted her box.
‘Uncle, you have some books this same size, haven’t you?’
‘It’s the most usual,’ he said. ‘Yes, the best thing I have is of that measure. It was made in France. God knows how it ever found its way to the abbey fair here in Shrewsbury. Why did you ask?’
‘Then it would fit into my box. I’d like you to have it. Why not? If it’s so fine, and has a value, it should stay in the household, and I’m unlettered, and have no book to put in it, and besides,’ she said, ‘I’m happy with my dowry, and grateful to Uncle William for it. Let’s try it, after supper. Show me your books again. I may not be able to read, but they’re beautiful to look at.’
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Jevan stood looking down at her from his lean height, solemn and still. Thus motionless, everything about him seemed a little more elongated than usual, like a saint carved into the vertical moulding of a church porch, from his narrow, scholarly face to the long-toed shoes on his thin, sinewy feet, and the lean, clever, adept’s hands. His deep eyes searched her face. He shook his head at such rash and thoughtless generosity.
‘Child, you should not so madly give away everything you have, before you know the value of it, or what need you may have of it in the future. Do nothing on impulse, you may pay for it with regret.’
‘No,’ said Fortunata. ‘Why should I regret giving a thing for which I have no use to someone who will make good and proper use of it? And dare you tell me that you don’t want it?’ Certainly his black eyes were glittering, if not with covetousness, with unmistakeable longing and pleasure. ‘Come to supper, and afterwards we’ll try how they match together. And I’ll get Father to mind my money for me.’
*
The French breviary was one of seven manuscripts Jevan had acquired over the years of his dealings with churchmen and other patrons. When he lifted the lid of the chest in which he kept them Fortunata saw them ranged side by side, spines upward, leaning towards one side because he had not quite enough as yet to fill the space neatly. Two had fading titles in Latin inscribed along the spine, one was in a cover dyed red, the rest had all originally been bound in ivory leather drawn over thin wooden boards, but some were old enough to have mellowed into the pleasant pale brown of the lining of her box. She had seen them several times before, but had never paid them such close attention. And there at head and foot of every spine were the little rounded tongues of leather for lifting them in and out.
Jevan drew out his favourite, its binding still almost virgin white, and opened it at random, and the brilliant colours sprang out as if they were just freshly applied, a right-hand border the length of the page, very narrow and delicate, of twining leaves and tendrils and flowers, the rest of the page written in two columns, with one large initial letter, and five smaller ones to open later paragraphs, each one using the letter as a frame for vivid miniatures of flower and fem. The precision of the painting was matched by the limpid lucidity of the blues and reds and golds and greens, but the blues in particular filled and satisfied the eyes with a translucent coolness that was pure pleasure.
