Free The Road to Damietta by Scott O’Dell Page B

countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely.
    Behold thou art fair, my love; behold thou art fair; thou hast dove's eyes within thy locks; thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from Mount Gilead.
    Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn which came up from the washing.
    Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely; thy temples are like a piece of pomegranate within thy locks.
    Thy neck is like the tower of David budded for an armoury, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men.
    The voice of my beloved! Behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.
    I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots.
    I was turning to another page of the Bible when a voice sounded in the hallway and a loud knock echoed through the room. I spread out the Bible to conceal the parchment I had written upon, hurried to the door, and slid the bolt. Count Luzzaro stood in the doorway, puffing out his cheeks in an expansive grin.
    "I have heard you were a scholar," he said in a sober voice, though he had consumed a flagon of wine at supper, "but I could scarcely believe this to be true, since you're such a light-hearted miss."
    "Not a scholar," I said. "A copyist. I write what scholars have already written. I have never had a thought in my life worth writing down."
    "How charming!" he said. "How fortunate! Girls should never, never think. Their minds should waft gaily hither and yon on a summer's breeze, in tune with lithesome dreams. They can think in times to come, when they are women and have more to think about and more need to think. Youth is far too brief a time to squander."
    He glanced over my shoulder at the narrow room and the shelves crowded with books and reams of parchment.
    "There's a quiet room in Castello Catanio that would be just right for a library," he said. "You've seen it. You have danced there. Remember?"
    "No," I said, though I did remember, vividly.
    "You are cramped here. You can't move without running into yourself," he observed, choosing to ignore my cold reply. "Papers strewn about like a raging snowstorm."
    He shivered and hugged himself, as if an icy blast had struck him, and playfully pushed past me into the room. His gaze fastened upon the bench where I had been working, the Bible that lay on the table, and the sheet of parchment half-filled with words from the Song of Solomon.
    "Your pen moves like a spider spinning a web," he said, taking a light from the table to hold close to the parchment. "It's all circles and curlicues and spidery lines wandering up and down. Beautiful to behold, but most difficult to read."
    Difficult for you, most powerful count of the Assisi commune, because your Latin is not very good, I said to myself. He had told me once that he'd read the whole story of Abelard and Heloise, but this I doubted. Most likely he had heard it from a troop of wandering players.
    "Song of Solomon," he said, rolling the three round words on his tongue, casting his green eyes lightly upon me. "Well, well."
    "So, well, well," I said to have him understand that I was not embarrassed. "From the Bible, the Old Testament." I added the fiery warning Bishop Pelagius had flung from his high loft in San Rufino on Palm Sunday months ago: "Freezing hail and devouring fire await those who mock the Lord, those who use this song for a worldly purpose."
    "Ho! Protect us against devastating hail and devouring fire—
Grando nec ignis edax peprimat hos nec mala pestis,
" his lordship exclaimed in halting Latin. Shining his candle on the open page, he gave me a daring, conspiratorial glance and began to read:
    "'By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth. The joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman. Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor. Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins. His