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"What about the copy?"
"I made it myself. Please, sir, it took me fifteen years. It's nothing to you.
Please--you wouldn't take fifteen years of a man's life--for no reason?"
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"Fifteen years?" The robber threw back his head and howled with laughter. "You
spent fifteen years making that?"
"Oh, but--" Francis was suddenly silent. His eyes swung toward the robber's
stubby forefinger. The finger was tapping the original blueprint.
"That took you fifteen years? And it's almost ugly beside the other."
He slapped his paunch and between guffaws kept pointing at the relic. "Ha!
Fifteen years! So that's what you do way out there! Why? What is the dark
ghost-image good for? Fifteen years to make that! Ho ho! What a woman's work!"
Brother Francis watched him in stunned silence. That the robber should mistake
the sacred relic itself for the copy of the relic left him too shocked to
reply.
Still laughing, the robber took both documents in his hands and prepared to
rip them both in half.
"Jesus, Mary, Joseph!" the monk screamed and went to his knees in the trail.
"For the love of God, sir!"
Heh-heh, said the robber, and arose to reclaim his knife and roll up the
documents.
Hands folded as if in prayer, Brother Francis crept after him on his knees,
begging at the top of his lungs. "Please, then, take only one, not both!
Please!"
"You've got to buy it back now," the robber chortled. "I won them fair
enough."
"I have nothing, I am poor!"
"That's all right, if you want them that bad, you'll get gold. Two heklos of
gold, that's the ransom. Bring it here any time. I'll tuck your things in my
shanty. You want them back, just bring the gold."
"Listen, they're important to other people, not to me. I was taking them to
the Pope. Maybe they'll pay you for the important one. But let me have the
other one just to show them. It's of no importance at all."
The robber laughed over his shoulder. "I believe you'd kiss a boot to get it
back."
Brother Francis caught up with him and fervently kissed his boot.
This proved too much for even such a fellow as the robber. He shoved the monk
away with his foot, separated the two papers, and flung one of them in
Francis' face with a curse. He climbed aboard the monk's donkey and started
riding it up the slope toward the ambush. Brother Fran-
cis snatched up the precious document and hiked along beside the robber,
thanking him profusely and blessing him repeatedly while the robber guided the
ass toward the shrouded archers.
"Fifteen years!" the robber snorted, and again shoved Francis away with his
foot. "Begone!" He waved the illuminated splendor aloft in the sun-
light. "Remember--two heklos of gold'll ransom your keepsake. And tell your
Pope I won it fair."
Francis stopped climbing. He sent a glowing cross of benediction after the
departing bandit and quietly praised God for the existence of such selfless
robbers, who could make such an ignorant mistake. He fondled the original
blueprint lovingly as he hiked away down the trail. The robber was
memoration.
Cloistered as he had been, Francis had become unaccustomed to the ways of the
outside world, to its harsh habits and curt attitudes. He found his heart
deeply troubled by the robber's mockery. He thought of
Brother Jeris' gentler mockery of earlier years. Maybe Brother Jeris had been
right.
His head hung low in his hood as he traveled slowly on.
At least there was the original relic. At least.
11
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The hour had come. Brother Francis, in his simple monk's habit, had never felt
less important than at that moment, as he knelt in the majes-
tic basilica before the beginning of the ceremony. The stately movements, the
vivid swirls of color, the sounds which accompanied the ceremonious
preparations for ceremony, already seemed liturgical in spirit, making it
difficult to bear in mind that nothing of importance was happening yet.
Bishops, monsignori, cardinals, priests, and various lay-functionaries in
elegant, antiquated dress moved to and fro in the great church, but their
comings and goings were graceful clockwork which never paused, stum-
bled, or changed its mind to rush in the other direction. A sampetrius en-
tered the basilica; so grandly was he attired that Francis at first mistook
the cathedral workman for a prelate. The sampetrius carried a footstool. He
carried it with such casual pomp that the monk, if he had not been kneeling,
might have genuflected as the object drifted by. The sampetrius dropped to one
knee before the high altar, then crossed to the papal throne where he
substituted the new footstool for one which seemed to have a loose leg;
thereupon, he departed by the same route as he had come. Brother Fran- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]