Free Arcanum by Simon Morden Page A

the hallway. “There’s something else?”
    Thaler dragged his fingers through his thinning hair. “It’s been a strange day, Mr Morgenstern.”
    “You and me both, Mr Thaler.” Morgenstern reclosed the bolts on the door. “I’ll go and get the book,” he said. “Go through to the kitchen.”
    Morgenstern headed up the narrow stairs on unsteady legs, and Thaler was left to creak along the corridor to the back room.
    “Miss Morgenstern,” said Thaler. He pulled back a chair from the long table and sat heavily.
    “Mr Thaler,” said Sophia, without turning around. She had her hair tied back and uncovered, with floury splashes down her apron. “Do sit down.”
    “I …” He’d done so already. “Thank you.”
    Wielding a long-handled wooden paddle, she delved deep into an alcove next to the fire. Then she pulled the paddle back out and deposited a round loaf on the table in front of Thaler.
    “Eaten, Mr Thaler?” She knocked the oven door closed with her elbow and stowed the paddle.
    “Actually, no. I haven’t found the time.” He hadn’t, either. What with one thing and another.
    Sophia tutted. “That’s not like you, Mr Thaler. You have to look after yourself. So, some cheese with your bread?” She wiped her hands on her apron. She had a small smudge of flour on her nose.
    Disarmed, Thaler acquiesced. “That will be…”
    “Acceptable?” She laid three platters on the table and slipped a board under the cooling loaf. Its crust, previously smooth and brown, had just started to shrink and crack. “I’m sure Father will join us shortly.”
    The ceiling sounded with slow footsteps, and Sophia went into the larder to find the cheese and the butter.
    Thaler looked at the low-burning fire, at the sparks rising up the chimney and out into the night.
    Why did they do that? he wondered. Everything solid fell to the ground, but fire rose. Like the hexmasters and their levitation spells. Perhaps it was magic. Perhaps some types of wood were more magical than others.
    Aaron Morgenstern shuffled into the room, and carefully laid the leather-bound book next to Thaler’s place-setting. “The Maimonides.”
    The boards were rigid, unwarped and well cut, covered with a dark brown calfskin, tanned and stretched and nailed and tooled. He nodded with appreciation, then opened the book and ran a finger down the binding. Nice tight stitching. No loose leaves there. The frontispiece was clear and uncluttered, a Latin script with tightly controlled serifs.
    “Good copy,” said Thaler. “Berber Spain?”
    “I believe so. It’s no more than twenty years old, with very few corrections and marginalia.”
    Thaler turned the first page of stiff, fibrous paper. “Ah ha.”
    The text was interlinear Latin and Hebrew: he’d not seen that before. The Latin, Thaler could read, and his lips twitched as he muttered the opening syllables. Over the top, Morgenstern spoke the Hebrew, because he could understand both.
    When they next looked up, Sophia was sitting opposite Thaler, a wedge of bread on her plate and a chunk of yellow cheese in her mouth. “What?”
    “The blessing, child?” said Morgenstern. “Serving our guest first?”
    “I swear I’d have starved to death before you two stopped.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and poured some watered wine from the pitcher into her cup. “Anyway, a reading from Rabbi Maimonides is blessing enough for a feast, let alone a simple supper.”
    To prove the point, she dipped her bread and chewed the end of it off.
    “My daughter behaves more like a goy every day.” Morgenstern threw his hands in the air. “Marriage. It’s the only thing that’ll be the saving of her.”
    Sophia smiled and dunked her bread in her wine again. “Can I get you anything, Mr Thaler?”
    Thaler looked to her father for a lead, but he just shrugged and muttered in Yiddish as he took his seat at the head of the table, where he could warm his bones with the heat from the