LITMIR.BIZ

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I am sure is more than likely—I ask a mere five ducats a month for myself. Or, if you should prefer a nice, quiet marriage—as I know many of your fellow priests do—deal with me in the place of her parents.”

      Felipe looked again at the lady, then back to her procurer. “Other men, alas! would no doubt find your offer a sore temptation. But my love and loyalty have been pledged already, to a lady as good and beautiful as she is unattainable. For her sake, I have made myself a spiritual Abelard.”

      The Italian stared at him. “What tale is this? If you wish to haggle over the trifling little price I ask—”

      “No tale, my friend.”

      “Then… Then why in God’s name did you not say so at once? You have made me waste my time!”

      “Let me speak for a moment as a priest,” Don Felipe replied, allowing a bit of unction to flow into his voice. “Your time was much better wasted in talking with me, than spent in successful pandering. God made both your soul and the lady’s for better things.”

      Still gaping at him, the Italian sat back, took another swallow of wine, and then started laughing, so suddenly that he snorted up a noseful and so violently that even the need to spew it out hardly interrupted his mirth. “So now, I suppose,” he said at last, still choking a little, “you will want us both to sit down and hear you preach at us concerning our sins?”

      “That sounds a profitable way of spending our evening.”

      “Profitable in heavenly coin only.” Chuckling again, the Italian pulled out a tattered handkerchief and began to wipe the wine as best he could from his face, hands, garments, and the table. “Well, it is my bad luck. Or the malice of the gods. Friend priest, that man is indeed a wealthy fruiterer of the city, but the blonde lady is his wife and the dark one, I believe, either his sister or hers. I know them only by having seen them and asked folk about them. They know me not in the slightest. You were the first on whom I tried this pleasant little scheme, and see what it has earned me!”

      “You would have taken my three ducats,” Don Felipe mused, “and then slipped away at once. You would have had to enjoy the ensuing jest in your imagination only. You could hardly have risked staying to watch it.”

      “I would have taken your money, pretended to arrange an assignation for the pair of you, then gone to their table, paid her some such little compliment as any lady may accept even from a complete stranger, nodded in your direction, and so out the door, leaving her none the wiser and you to cool your heels at your choice of Rome’s lovely fountains, or whatever trysting place you had named, from Vespers until…dawn, if your patience lasted so long.”

      “And suppose that I had insisted on meeting her here, at once?”

      “Why, in that case I would have taken your money, played out my little dumbshow, and slipped away as above stated, to enjoy the ensuing jest in my imagination only. And now, by your kind leave…” The Italian started to stand.

      The priest darted one arm forth to catch him by the sleeve. The state of this fellow’s handkerchief had not escaped his eye, nor the frayed and threadbare areas that pocked his faded garments, nor the fact that the fabric had never been of the best. “Stay a moment. Dine with me, at my expense. I may try to save your soul, but I will not report you, either to the secular authorities or the spiritual.”

      The fellow hesitated no more than a heartbeat or two before laughing again and reseating himself. “I see I did not choose my mark too badly, after all. Enough such failures, and I could become a fat man.”

      Not until near the end of their meal, when the Italian seemed sufficiently mellowed with food and wine that the priest judged him reasonably likely to speak truth in the matter, did Felipe ask his name and personal history.

      “Francesco di Gubbio. A scamp in my native town, a sometimes successful—and sometimes not—rogue here in Rome.”

      “By your leave, I shall call you Gubbio. Another San Francesco you are not. But have you considered, friend Gubbio, that your efforts might more often meet with success if they were directed in honest pursuits?”

      “For another bottle of wine and a plateful of fruit and cheese, I will consider whatever you like.”

      It was the only meal they were ever to eat as equals. Another bottle of wine and two plates of fruit later, Felipe had not only a benefice and a secretarial post with the bishop of Daroca awaiting him in Aragon, but his own personal manservant to accompany him there.

      Chapter 6

      The Dream of Hypatia

      He stood on something slippery as ice, in the midst of swirling black fog. Somewhere, a woman’s voice was calling: “Grandson! Great-grandson!”

      At length he discerned a brightening of the fog in the direction of her voice. Sliding his feet with extreme caution, he inched his way into the beam of light. Mist still clouded his vision, as though he swam through milk; but now, at least, he saw that the light had a source. He climbed toward that more than toward the voice, which he recognized and feared.

      “Great-grandson!” she called one last time.

      The fog fell away, and he found himself on the edge of a sort of raft of icy stuff, near the outer wall of some great building. The top of the wall was roughly even with his waist, but between his raft and the stonework was a deep chasm. His heretic ancestress waited at the edge of the stonework, extending her hand to him across the gulf.

      He drew back.

      “Will you drift?” she pleaded.

      “How anchor myself to heresy?”

      “Great-great-grandson! You are anchored in your priesthood, and your bishop has named you his Ordinary, to tie him with the Inquisition. Are you so loosely anchored in your own Faith that the mere touch of my hand might shake free your soul?”

      The chasm was widening. His choice was to accept her help or drift back into darkness. Reluctantly, he stretched forth his arm.

      She clasped it. There came a kind of soft, creeping shudder, and he stood beside her, his feet firm on the stone. Her touch was warm, human, and very gentle. Horrified in himself to find it so—should not a heretic’s touch burn the skin?—he pulled free of her and stepped back.

      “Beware,” she cried sadly.

      He saw that he had stepped too near the edge. One of his heels rested on empty air. Stepping forward again, though keeping his distance from her, he peered around.

      The place where they stood was like a piazza overlooking a great seacoast city. Sunlight danced in large bright flakes on the blue water, and salt breezes blew the commonplace stenches of any great city away inland. Distant roaring, as of mobs or the sea, reached his ears; but up here all seemed peaceful.

      On the other side of the piazza white smoke rose, swirling in the breeze, from a huge basin he guessed to be some roasting pit or giant incense burner. Indeed, the smell of incense teased his nostrils. Many people, most of them brown-robed monks, stood grouped about the basin. Several bent over their work at something that Don Felipe could not see. The rest chanted a strange chant, like none he had ever heard, but clearly meant for Christian rites.

      He walked forward for a closer look.

      One of the workers stood up, waving something above his head. It appeared to be a small white hand. He threw it into the basin. The smoke turned dark, and cheering interrupted the chant.

      Now Felipe saw one tall monk, cowl pushed back upon his shoulders, standing at a pulpit raised above the burning pit.

      “Bless you, my brothers!” this monk declaimed. “God blesses you, Christ and His great Mother Mary most holy bless you, for this holy work which you have done today in purifying our city of the Pagan philosopher and her baneful teaching!”

      In a few steps, Felipe covered the remaining distance and gazed down between the workers. He beheld a woman’s body, naked, bruised, and covered

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