But most of the floor space was taken up by a huge bed that looked to be solid padding eighteen inches thick, the softest and most inviting bed I've ever seen. For that matter, the whole room was one big invitation, and I didn't see how any man could ever summon the resolution to leave.
Which made it all the more stark a contrast, to have a high writing desk and a stool over against one window, a roll of parchment bathed in a ray of sunlight that lanced down over the shoulder of the brownrobed monk who sat there, industriously scratching away with a quill pen.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I stared.
He must have felt my gaze - or heard us enter, and what man could keep from looking up at Thyme' But he saw me, and Frisson the hollow-cheeked and Gilbert the gaunt, right behind me. He stared in surprise. His face was round and pleasant, but creased with lines of strain. There were a few gray hairs mixed in with the brown around the bald circle of his tonsure. His face broke into a glad smile.
"Why, 'tis company! How welcome are they!"
"Scarcely at all." Thyme pouted. "Are you so easily distracted from me, man of letters,"'
"Nay." He turned a fond gaze on her.
"Naught could command my attention for long while you are with me, lovely one - nor is any company lacking. Yet novelty is always pleasant, and new company stimulating."
She flushed with pleasure and lowered her gaze. I had to give him points for gallantry - and for diplomacy. That mention of "stimulation" ought to win him her willing cooperation in having a chat with us. Poor thing, she didn't realize that the stimulation he meant was purely mental.
"Sit down, sit down!" He gestured toward the low table. "They may, may they not, mine hostess?"
"Aye," she said unwillingly, "though not for overlong - for there are matters I wish to speak of with you, the two of us alone."
Which was, no doubt, the topic she always wished to speak about - the two of them being alone together. Very much together.
"To be sure, to be sure!" he climbed down off his stool and joined us as we folded ourselves tailor-fashion around the taboret. Gruesome slouched in the doorway, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other and blocking the view.
I glanced at the writing desk - current research was always a good conversation topic, even if you didn't understand the answer. "What are you working on there?"
"Only copying out my breviary," he said, and must have seen the look of blank incomprehension on my face, because he went on to explain, " 'Tis the book that contains my office - the prayers that I must read every day, and which I must contemplate."
"Really," I said. "How long does that take you? Per day, I mean?"
He shrugged. "Scarcely an hour."
An hour? A full hour of prayer every day? I tried to hide a shudder and thought up another question. "Why are you copying it out?"
"Why, for that I fear I will wear it out, if fair Thyme keeps me here overlong.
"I shall." She made a face. "You have ever your nose thrust in that small dusty volume!"
"Alas!" he agreed, almost meeting her eyes - and suddenly, I understood. Saying his office was about all that was keeping him from giving in to her temptations. I figured he was probably reading a lot more than one hour each day.
"Drink, my guest," Thyme putted, setting a flask of amber liquid on the low table. Gold glinted within its depths, and the light shimmered on its surface. If it wasn't an aphrodisiac, it should have been, just by its looks.
"How good of you," the monk said. "Will you pour, pretty one?"
Thyme leaned forward with the bottle - which brought a gasp from Gilbert, as he quickly averted his eyes, and a whine of agony from Frisson - and poured with ill grace. "They shall have to share one cup, good man, whiles you and I share the other - for I have only the two."
"Oh, we'll manage," I assured her, and lifted the cup for a sip. It hit my stomach with a jolt, bounced, and felt as if it blew the back of my head off. Coconut milk? Sure! Fermented coconut milk, to the point where it must have been a hundred proof at least. Sort of a natural pifia colada - and come to think of it, there was an overtone of citrus to it.
Frisson reached for the cup, but just in time, I remembered what any beverage in Thyme's house might do, and covered the cup with a palm. "No, pal, you've got it bad enough already." That won me a dirty look from Thyme.
The monk ignored it. "What brings you to this island?"
"An ill wind," I quipped, "but I made it blow good." I expected puzzlement and a suspicious glance, but the monk only nodded, as if he understood. "You are a wizard, then." I felt a chill down my back; this guy understood too much, too quickly. "No, not really. In fact, I don't even believe in magic. I just pretend when I have to, toss out a few rhymes when I've run out of any other way out."
He smiled, amused. I felt a flash of irritation, but I had to admit it was mostly shame - it sounded pretty hollow, even to me.
"You may equivocate with yourself, Sir," the monk said softly, "but you cannot equivocate between God and Satan."
"Now, hold on!" I bridled. "You trying to say there's no middle way? That you're either a hundred percent good, or a hundred percent evil? Well, I don't buy it, brother! " His gaze stilled totally, and he looked so intently into my eyes that I thought he was trying to see into my brain. "Why would you think I had not taken my final vows?"
Now it was my turn to go on the ropes. I stared at him, thinking fast, churning up what I could from my medieval history course. It didn't help that I wasn't Catholic - but I did seem to remember something about the difference between a monk and a priest. I'd said "brother," and held thought I was using his title - or what I thought was his title. Or what he wanted Thyme to think was his title.
That's right, a brother hadn't taken his final vows yet. Maybe that included the vow of celibacy?
Well, I wasn't about to blow his cover. "All right, so you're a father. But not my father, Reverend!"
"Certainly any priest is your father in faith."
"Only if I belong to your church - and I don't."
Gilbert recoiled. "Paynim!"
The monk held up his hand, eyes never leaving mine. "Nay, good brother - for so I see you are, by your tonsure. Nay, our friend may be a Christian indeed, but of an eastern church. Is that not so, Wizard?" I thought fast again. How far east did he want? After all, my parents' church had sort of started out in New England - well, England, really, and that was plenty far east from where I was living just now - if you went all the way around the globe. "Another sect," I said. "Another branch of Christianity. That's what I was raised in. Sure."
He frowned, catching the equivocation again, but all he said was, "I cannot continue to call you naught but 'wizard.' I am Friar Ignatius. And yourself?"
"He is the Wizard Saul." Thyme leaned forward, taking the opportunity to intrude herself into the conversation - far more of herself than was good for Friar Ignatius' peace of mind. "His comrades are Squire Gilbert and the madcap Frisson - and that huge monster who lurks in the doorway, he calls 'Gruesome.'
"Rightly, too." The monk took the excuse to glance away from Thyme and the primrose path, and look up at the troll. "How comes he to your service?"
"He tried to ambush me when I was crossing a bridge," I said.
"Being new to your country, I didn't know any better. By accident, I called on the fairies, and they enchanted him so that he no longer wants to eat people, and they bound him to my service."