“She—it was very beautiful. No wonder you go. But you’ll not forget your absolution, John?”
“Surely.” This was a precaution John no more omitted on the eve of his travels than he did the recutting of the tonsure which he had provided himself with in his youth, somewhere near Ghent. The mark gave him privilege of clergy at a pinch, and a certain consideration on the road always.
“You’ll not forget, either, what we need in the Scriptorium. There’s no more true ultramarine in this world now. They mix it with that German blue. And as for vermilion——”
“I’ll do my best always.”
“And Brother Thomas (this was the Infirmarian in charge of the monastery hospital) he needs——”
“He’ll do his own asking. I’ll go over his side now, and get me re-tonsured.”
John went down the stairs to the lane that divides the hospital and cook-house from the back-cloisters. While he was being barbered, Brother Thomas (St. Illod’s meek but deadly persistent Infirmarian) gave him a list of drugs that he was to bring back from Spain by hook, crook, or lawful purchase. Here they were surprised by the lame, dark Abbot Stephen, in his fur-lined night-boots. Not that Stephen de Sautré was any spy; but as a young man he had shared an unlucky Crusade, which had ended, after a battle at Mansura, in two years’ captivity among the Saracens at Cairo where men learn to walk softly. A fair huntsman and hawker, a reasonable disciplinarian but a man of science above all, and a Doctor of Medicine under one Ranulphus, Canon of St. Paul’s, his heart was more in the monastery’s hospital work than its religious. He checked their list interestedly, adding items of his own. After the Infirmarian had withdrawn he gave John generous absolution, to cover lapses by the way; for he did not hold with chance-bought Indulgences.
“And what seek you this journey?” he demanded, sitting on the bench beside the mortar and scales in the little warm cell for stored drugs.
“Devils, mostly,” said John, grinning.
“In Spain? Are not Abana and Pharphar——?”