“I have no Greek,” said John stiffly. Roger of Salerno had been giving them a good deal of it, at dinner.
“Then I’ll come to you in Latin. Ovid hath it neatly. ‘Utque malum late solet immedicabile cancer——’ but doubtless you know the rest, worthy Sir.”
“Alas! My school-Latin’s but what I’ve gathered by the way from fools professing to heal sick women. ‘Hocus-pocus——’ but doubtless you know the rest, worthy Sir.”
Roger of Salerno was quite quiet till they regained the dining-room, where the fire had been comforted and the dates, raisins, ginger, figs, and cinnamon-scented sweetmeats set out, with the choicer wines, on the after-table. The Abbot seated himself, drew off his ring, dropped it, that all might hear the tinkle, into an empty silver cup, stretched his feet towards the hearth, and looked at the great gilt and carved rose in the barrel-roof. The silence that keeps from Compline to Matins had closed on their world. The bull-necked Friar watched a ray of sunlight split itself into colours on the rim of a crystal salt-cellar; Roger of Salerno had re-opened some discussion with Brother Thomas on a type of spotted fever that was baffling them both in England and abroad; John took note of the keen profile, and—it might serve as a note for the Great Luke—his hand moved to his bosom. The Abbot saw, and nodded permission. John whipped out silver-point and sketch-book.
“Nay—modesty is good enough—but deliver your own opinion,” the Italian was urging the Infirmarian. Out of courtesy to the foreigner nearly all the talk was in table-Latin; more formal and more copious than monk’s patter. Thomas began with his meek stammer.
“I confess myself at a loss for the cause of the fever unless—as Varro saith in his De Re Rustica—certain small animals which the eye cannot follow enter the body by the nose and mouth, and set up grave diseases. On the other hand, this is not in Scripture.”
Roger of Salerno hunched head and shoulders like an angry cat. “Always that!” he said, and John snatched down the twist of the thin lips.
“Never at rest, John,” the Abbot smiled at the artist. “You should break off every two hours for prayers, as we do. St. Benedict was no fool. Two hours is all that a man can carry the edge of his eye or hand.”
“For copyists—yes. Brother Martin is not sure after one hour. But when a man’s work takes him, he must go on till it lets him go.”
“Yes, that is the Demon of Socrates,” the Friar from Oxford rumbled above his cup.