Doctor Mirabilis Read Online Free PDF Page A

doctorate in the sacred college? Dost know that
     will take thee sixteen full years after thou hast thy secular mastership? Canst thou do all that from the Frideswyde chest?
     And from such poor beginnings in humility?’
    ‘What’s this?’ Grosseteste said. He pushed himself painfully back on to his elbow and stared at Adam. ‘Hath the boy need of
     the chest? An ‘tis so, thou dost ill to mock it. Tell me the truth of this matter, Adam. If ‘tis true, wast ill concealed;
     much rides on this, as thou shouldst know all too well.’
    Adam looked down at the floor in his turn. Roger was as much astonished at his abasement and at the unforgiving condemnation
     in Grosseteste’s tone as he was at the revelation that Adam knew about the letter.
    ‘His family is suddenly afflicted,’ Adam said in a low voice. ‘He hath had a patrimony, but witteth not whether he hath it
     still. Whether or ne he needeth the chest I cannot say; ne no more can he.’
    And to be sure he could not. The chest in the priory church at St. Frideswyde, in whose dissolved nunnery and in that of Oseney
     Abbey Oxford had been founded more than a century ago, was a benefaction long established to help poor students; but was he
that
poor already? It was hardly likely; in extremis, he could always sell part of his library; but no, in the ensuing eighteen
     years with which Adam had mocked him, he would have to add to his manuscripts, and most expensively; he could not take from
     Peter to pay Paul. But did that bring him to the Frideswyde chest? It was impossible to know. It depended, he realized suddenly,
     on the peasant Wulf – and on the astuteness of the justiciar’s raiders. And to go all that long distance home to find out
     –seventy-five miles as the crow flies, and not by crow either, but on the back of the best horse he could hire, and that probably
     no courser’s prancing jack – he would need now to know just how much pocket money he had left, a thing he had never counted
     before in his life.
    ‘How knewest thou this, Adam?’ Grosseteste said. Roger looked gratefully toward him. It had been the very question he had
     wanted to ask, but could not.
    ‘’Tis common fame in the Faculty of Arts,’ Adam said. ‘The word was brought by a beggar who knew a little his alphabetum –
     enough, certes, to riddle out the pith of it. I have told thee before that Roger’s not held high among his peers; bath a high
     opinion of himself, and no will to conceal it. There are those who have hoped him some such misprision, and be not slow to
     spread the tidings.’
    ‘For which act their souls will suffer grievously, an they bring it not to their next confessions,’ Grosseteste said heavily.
     He was interrupted by a seizure of hacking, raw-edged coughs. Adam bent over him but was waved off. After a while, the lector
     seemed to have recovered, though his breathing was still alarmingly dry and rapid. Again, looking at the ceiling, he said:
    ‘The common rout customarily hateth and distrusteth the superior soul; ‘tis a sign to watch for. Boy, thou shalt have thy
     wish, an thou performst all thy tasks as faithfully as thou shouldst; and eke much more that thou dreamest not of now – though
     I see that no man may hazard a tithe of thy dreaming. First, thou must go home and find all the truth of this beggar’s message,
     and succour thy family an thou cant. The Frideswyde chest shall be opened for thee, I shall see on’t. Leave thy books in Oxford
     and all else but very necessaries; and when thy business in the south is done, return here incontinently and take thy degree.
     I shall promise thee no more but this: make Oxford and Aristotle thy washing-pot, and thou shalt cast thy shoe over many a
     farther league ere this night’s intelligence bath its full issue, an it be the will of God.’
    His voice died away in a whisper, and his eyes closed. Fora long passage of sand in the glass, neither Adam nor Roger moved or spoke; but at last