Simon noticed a single deep crease between the great Dominican's eyebrows. His forehead bulged on either side of the crease, as if the muscles that made him frown had grown from much exercise. The brows themselves were so fair and sparse as to seem almost invisible.
Fra Tomasso laid a broad right hand on the scroll to hold it open, picked up a feather pen with his left hand, dipped the sharpened tip into a tiny ink jar, and began making small, rapid marks on a piece of parchment. Simon watched with interest. Since his university days, he rarely saw people reading and writing, and could not remember ever seeing anyone write with his left hand. When the pen ran dry, Fra Tomasso happened to glance up as he dipped it again.
"Dear Lord, forgive me," he said, his eyes round with surprise. "Friends, I did not hear you enter. Please pardon my rudeness." Simon was gratified to hear him speak French and impressed by his fluency.
"It is we who are guilty of rudeness, Fra Tomasso," said Friar Mathieu, "for interrupting your work."
"My brothers in Christ are more important than books," said the stout Dominican, gesturing to them to take seats on his bed.
His cell was a circular room occupying the top floor of a tower in the compound that housed his order in Orvieto. The curved walls of the room were painted as white as Fra Tomasso's robe. A black wooden cross surmounted by a white ivory figure of Jesus hung over the bed. Fra Tomasso sat, his chair hidden by his great bulk, with his back to a window, at a large trestle table with stacks of books and boxes of scrolls on either side of him. His bed was a wide, sturdy wooden platform covered with a straw-filled mattress and a blanket the size of a galley's sail. A giant could lie on that bed, Simon thought.
"I must admit this scroll is a great treasure, and I am reluctant to tear my eyes from it," he said. "A hitherto lost treatise of Aristotle on the composition and movements of the heavenly bodies. This copy might be over six hundred years old. In Greek. You are familiar with the philosopher?" He looked from Friar Mathieu to Simon eagerly.
"I did study for a year at Père Sorbonne's college in Paris, Your Reverence," said Simon. "We read the works of several philosophers."
Fra Tomasso smiled indulgently. "I always refer to Aristotle as the philosopher because I can learn more from him than from any other ancient or modern thinker. Do you not agree, Reverend Father?" He turned to Friar Mathieu. "Or are you, like so many of your fellow Franciscans, uninterested in philosophy?"
Oh, God, he scorns Franciscans, thought Simon with dread. We're sure to fail.