A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller [62]
“In here,” came a sleepy voice from the fourth room.
Dom Paulo sighed with relief. The goat went on munching greens. Now that had been a hideous thought, indeed.
The Poet lay sprawled across the bed with a bottle of wine within easy reach; he blinked irritably at the light with his one good eye. “I was asleep,” he complained, adjusting his black eyepatch and reaching for the bottle.
“Then wake up. You’re moving out of here immediately. Tonight. Dump your possessions in the hall to let the suite air out. Sleep in the stable boy’s cell downstairs if you must. Then come back in the morning and scrub this place out.”
The Poet looked like a bruised lily for a moment, then made a grab for something under the blankets. He brought out a fist and stared at it thoughtfully. “Who used these quarters last?” he asked.
“Monsignor Longi. Why?”
“I wondered who brought the bedbugs.” The Poet opened his fist, pinched something out of his palm, cracked it between his nails, and flipped it away. “Thon Taddeo can have them. I don’t want them. I’ve been eaten up alive ever since I moved in. I was planning on leaving, but now that you’ve offered me my old cell back, I’ll be happy-”
“I didn’t mean-”
“-to accept your kind hospitality a little longer. Only until my book is finished, of course.”
“What book? But never mind. Just get your things out of here.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
“Good. I don’t think I could stand these bugs another night.” The Poet rolled out of bed, but paused for a drink.
“Give me the wine,” the abbot ordered.
“Sure. Have some. It’s a pleasant vintage.”
“Thank you, since you stole it from our cellars. It happens to be sacramental wine. Did that occur to you?”
“It hasn’t been consecrated.”
“I’m surprised you thought of that.” Dom Paulo took the bottle.
“I didn’t steal it anyway. I-”
“Never mind the wine. Where did you steal the goat?”
“I didn’t steal it,” the Poet complained.
“It just-materialized?”
“It was a gift, Reverendissime.”
“From whom?”
“A dear friend, Domnissime.”
“Whose dear friend?”
“Mine, Sire.”
“Now there’s a paradox. Where, now, did you-”
“Benjamin, Sire.”
A flicker of surprise crossed Dom Paulo’s face. “You stole it from old Benjamin?”
The Poet winced at the word. “Please, not stole.”
“Then what?”
“Benjamin insisted that I take it as a gift after I had composed a sonnet in his honor.”
“The truth!”
The Poet-sirrah! swallowed sheepishly. “I won it from him at mumbly-peg.”
“I see.”
“It’s true! The old wretch nearly cleaned me out, and then refused to allow me credit. I had to stake my glass eye against the goat. But I won everything back.”
“Get the goat out of the abbey.”
“But it’s a marvelous species of goat. The milk is of an unearthly odor and contains essences. In fact it’s responsible for the Old Jew’s longevity.”
“How much of it?”
“All fifty-four hundred and eight years of it.”
“I thought he was only thirty-two hundred and-” Dom Paulo broke off disdainfully. “What were you doing up on Last Resort?”
“Playing mumbly-peg with old Benjamin.”
“I mean-” The abbot steeled himself. “Never mind. Just get yourself moved out. And tomorrow get the goat back to Benjamin.”
“But I won it fairly.”
“We’ll not discuss it. Take the goat to the stable, then. I’ll have it returned to him myself.”
“Why?”
“We have no use for a goat. Neither have you.”
“Ho, ho,” the Poet said archly.
“What did that mean, pray?”
“Thon Taddeo is coming. There’ll be need of a goat before it’s finished. You can be sure of that.” He chuckled smugly to himself.
The abbot turned away in irritation. “Just get out,” he added superfluously, and then went to wrestle with contention in the basement, where the Memorabilia now reposed.
14
The vaulted basement had been dug during the centuries of nomadic infiltration from the north, when the Bayring Horde had overrun most of the Plains and desert, looting and vandalizing all villages that lay in their path. The Memorabilia, the abbey’s small patrimony of knowledge out of the past, had been walled up in underground vaults to protect the priceless writings