Free Behold a Pale Horse by Peter Tremayne

urgently, trying not to show she had noticed. ‘To my right by those tall trees on the rock. I can’t see a weapon though.’
    Magister Ado looked up quickly, suddenly tense. Then he immediately relaxed – and raised his hand as if to wave it in greeting to the figure high above them.
    ‘It’s old Aistulf,’ he said to her. ‘Aistulf the Hermit.’
    The figure above them had turned abruptly and went scurrying off among the trees. She caught sight of a bent back and white, long hair.
    ‘He’s not a friendly soul,’ she commented dryly.
    Magister Ado chuckled. ‘That is the nature of a hermit. Old Aistulf lives alone in a cave somewhere up in those hills. He came to our valley only a few years ago, at the end of the wars which brought Grimoald to power. He is a friend of our abbot, Abbot Servillius. I have never seen him up close. No one has, except Abbot Servillius and, I think, Sister Gisa. They sometimes go up into the hills and see him. Aistulf wanders these mountains. I know nothing more about him except that he means no harm.’
    ‘He is elderly,’ Fidelma observed. ‘He needs more than someone keeping check on him now and again. In Hibernia our laws about the care of the elderly are very strict.’
    ‘Sister Gisa often visits the old man. There is some talk that Aistulf is a member of her family. Gisa was born in this valley.’
    Fidelma glanced back towards Sister Gisa. She seemed engrossed with the injured Brother Faro and had obviously not noticed the old man on the hill.
    ‘Tell me about Tolosa. What is it like?’ she asked, trying to find a subject to speak of rather than not talk at all.
    Not for the first time she became aware of a passing look of suspicion in the elderly man’s eyes.
    ‘Why are you interested?’ he countered.
    ‘Among my people we have a saying that knowledge comes by asking questions. It is because I have never been to that city that I would know something of it.’
    Magister Ado considered for a moment and then said, ‘It is a city in ruins, as Radoald observed, though not as desolate as he believed. The great basilica, the abbey, still stands with its library. However, if it were not for the want of our library, I might never have been persuaded to make the journey.’
    ‘I don’t understand.’
    ‘Our scriptor Brother Eolann heard that the abbey in Tolosa had a copy of the Life of the Blessed Martyr Saturnin , who founded the abbey there. He persuaded me to take a copy of the Life of Columbanus and exchange it for the book on Saturnin. Bobium has one of the greatest libraries in Christendom, and we are justly proud of it. Our wealth is in our books.’
    ‘Would your enemies know that you had travelled to Tolosa to get this book? Is it as valuable to them as it is to your abbey?’
    ‘I declare, you are a vexatious young lady, to keep dwelling on this question.’
    ‘Questions, as I have said, are a path to knowledge.’
    ‘And sometimes knowledge can be dangerous. Especially when there are people about with evil intent.’
    ‘Better is knowledge of evil than evil without knowledge,’ countered Fidelma.
    Magister Ado began to frown in annoyance, and then, unexpectedly, threw back his head and burst into laughter.
    ‘Being away from Bobium, I had forgotten the method of argument of my Hibernian brethren. Is this truly the way that you are taught in your land?’
    ‘By question and answer?’
    ‘By taking one answer and forming another question from it?’
    ‘An answer always leads to another question. There is no ultimate answer, for if there was, we would never have progress.’
    Magister Ado exhaled with resignation and, somewhat irritably, conceded: ‘It seems all those born in Hibernia are philosophers.’
    ‘Not all of us,’ Fidelma replied dryly. ‘Though all of us think we are.’
    They continued on in silence for a while. Behind them, Brother Faro and Sister Gisa sometimes murmured together while the warriors and the two farmers were generally