“Perhaps! He would not,” said Matthew sourly, “have far to go, as monks are in these days, to stand apart and above. My point is that you cannot make him ecstatic. So far it is beyond me to set the mill running! He hath been ill, and his body hath arrived at emaciation. I have given him that elixir you wot of. Usually it sets the fancy skipping, brews a kind of wild readiness at seeing, hearing! And, if I read him aright, he wants heaven to descend upon him. I provided him to hear and see one who told him he was Saint Willebrod. Brother Anselm, you know, whom I took from among the players, and is—God pardon us!—as dog to my hand—” He spread out his hands.
The Abbot groaned. “The end that we propose is good!”
“Assuredly it is! It all goes into the homely bag of homely deceits necessary in this poor world. But the end is that as yet we have done naught!”
The Abbot sighed. “Could we take him into counsel?”
“No!”
“Then what shall we do? You have heard that Saint Leofric healed the French Knight? He gave candlesticks of pure gold. Shall we give it all up, Matthew?”
“Not yet. If I could find his true heart and mind—then might we beckon appearances that corresponded. He seems interested in a far land and in somehow going there—and going has to be bodily, all of him! What appears will have to strike him down, like Saint Paul on Damascus road—clean him of doubt, be a blaze to him, a burning bush!”
The Abbot sighed. Prior Matthew sat fixed, with cloudy brows, seeking inspiration.
He returned to Westforest. The next day, sitting in Prior’s stall in the cold, small church, he kept his eyes fast upon the monk Richard. He noted his turning, he noted his uplifted, now bloodless face, and his eyes directed to the copy of the Silver Cross picture. Prior Matthew half closed his own eyes, covered, as was his wont when he was playing chess, his mouth with his hand.