Stephen the Abbot cocked an eyebrow toward John.
“How think you?” said he.
“I’m no doctor,” John returned, “but I’d say Apuleius in all these years might have been betrayed by his copyists. They take shortcuts to save ’emselves trouble. Put case that Apuleius wrote the soul seems to leave the body laughing, after this poison. There’s not three copyists in five (my judgment) would not leave out the ‘seems to.’ For who’d question Apuleius? If it seemed so to him, so it must be. Otherwise any child knows cut-leaved buttercup.”
“Have you knowledge of herbs?” Roger of Salerno asked curtly.
“Only, that when I was a boy in convent, I’ve made tetters round my mouth and on my neck with buttercup-juice, to save going to prayer o’ cold nights.”
“Ah!” said Roger. “I profess no knowledge of tricks.” He turned aside, stiffly.
“No matter! Now for your own tricks, John,” the tactful Abbot broke in. “You shall show the doctors your Magdalene and your Gadarene Swine and the devils.”
“Devils? Devils? I have produced devils by means of drugs; and have abolished them by the same means. Whether devils be external to mankind or immanent, I have not yet pronounced.” Roger of Salerno was still angry.
“Ye dare not,” snapped the Friar from Oxford. “Mother Church makes Her own devils.”
“Not wholly! Our John has come back from Spain with brand-new ones.” Abbot Stephen took the vellum handed to him, and laid it tenderly on the table. They gathered to look. The Magdalene was drawn in palest, almost transparent, grisaille, against a raging, swaying background of woman-faced devils, each broke to and by her special sin, and each, one could see, frenziedly straining against the Power that compelled her.