Son of the Morning Read Online Free PDF

maybe with a daughter of his own. His father, however, had insisted on the monastery to curb his lustful ways. It hadn’t worked out. At all.
    ‘Are these effectif ?’ A goodwife in a loose fitting kirtle had approached him, looking down at the long roll of cloth where he displayed his wares. Osbert noted that her dress was not of the modern, tailored sort and, as everyone dressed up to come to market, this meant the woman was not worth much. Still, she’d dropped a French word into her conversation, effectif, so she clearly fancied herself above the common herd. He could use that. He’d hardly had a sale all morning, so he needed to get whatever he could from her.
    ‘I swear by them. I have worn them these ten years and have suffered neither an evil death nor a lightning strike. They work very well.’
    ‘Hmm, my son is going on a voyage and I would like to buy him some protection.’
    ‘These are a shilling, madam.’
    ‘That is too much.’
    ‘For a woman like you? Surely not. Is it the king’s business your son does?’
    ‘A penny, and no more for flattery.’ Clearly the woman’s pretentions ended at the point she had to put her hand into her purse.
    ‘To aid a noble voyager, why not? It has been a slack morning or I would not sell such powerful magic so cheap.’
    He took the woman’s penny and passed her a scrap of vellum, on which was drawn a magic circle. ‘That contains the secret names of God,’ he said, ‘and now they are known to you.’
    The woman went on her way and the pardoner went back to shouting out his pitch.
    ‘I am a master of tetragrammation, of the ananizapta cure for fits, of devices angelic, cosmologic and hermetic. Here sir, will you take an angelic cure? If you have a thickheaded son or apprentice, it’s just the thing. It is the seal of the archangel Samhil who takes away stupidity.’
    ‘Don’t sell too many of those, pardoner, or you’ll be out of business.’ A young man in a fashionable short tunic stood looking at him.
    ‘My business is the forgiveness of sin; while men sin I shall never go hungry.’
    ‘Likely why you’re so fat!’
    ‘Laugh your way to Hell if you will, boy. You’ll find the Devil a poor audience for your jokes!’
    ‘If I go to Hell, pardoner, you’ll be keeping me company!’ The young man laughed and passed on.
    ‘Do not be as the ass who lies all day in the barren field, be up and ready for the …’ Osbert wasn’t entirely sure where he was going with that biblical quotation, or even if it was a biblical quotation. He crouched to rearrange his wares. He noticed he was running low on teeth of St Odo and reminded himself that he would need to visit his contact at the poor hospital to get a few more.
    A skull landed in the middle of the pardoner’s roll of amulets and papers.
    He looked up to see a big, red-faced farmer glaring down at him. Then another, smaller skull landed next to the first – this from a soldier, a Welsh bowman by his dark looks and muscular frame.
    ‘Careful friends, it is the names of the Lord and his angels that you crush.’
    The farmer spoke. ‘Last week you sold me the skull of St Anthony, for protection against evil and for certain guarantee of a long and prosperous life.’
    ‘It was my blessing to come by such a thing and my charity to allow it to be sold to you for such a price.’
    ‘Three shillings,’ said the farmer.
    ‘So low? Does a vision of the saint instruct you to return and pay more?’
    ‘No, pardoner, it does not. I fell to drinking near to here and struck up conversation with this fine fellow of Wales.’
    ‘God bless our bowmen and the deliverance they brought us from the Scots.’
    ‘It seems he too has been sold the skull of St Anthony – for two shillings.’
    ‘Well,’ said the pardoner, noticing the farmer had a number of fit looking young men assembling behind him and the bowman a number more, ‘that one is smaller, if you’re worried about the difference in