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Chapter 25
On the third morning in Charleville, Leiras awoke to find Marshall already left the other small bed in the room. As the man lay back in their new accommodations, he listened to the bells clanging above them. The little townhouse owned by the Church sat next door to the cathedral. Their host, a religious scholar, carried a profound interest in the monk’s travels in the Holy Land.
Leiras met Charles Dryden at the tavern during the night of heavy drinking with Marshall. The two visitors accepted the scholar’s offer to stay with him until they completed their business. In the last two days, Leiras spent most of his time regaling their host with his tales of adventures among the Ottomans. Marshall pointed out their new host was probably looking for another patron. The angel used some of their money to purchase food and wine for Dryden. He considered it a way to keep the man interested in his tales until the Duke of Sully arrived.
After struggling to get out of the sagging bed, Leiras put on his robe before heading downstairs. He found the pirate captain standing at the parlor window. Marshall remained quiet and stared at the light snow coming down outside.
Dryden was in the room as well. At his desk, the short, pudgy man wore simple black clothes. His hook-like nose wrinkled absently as he wrote in his leather journal. A precarious stack of papers shook next to him. Along the wall, shelves held his impressive array of books. When Leiras first arrived, Dryden proudly went through his display of bound writings by Church scholars.
Dryden studied and stayed in France, and his sponsor, the bishop, employed him as an archivist. However, his goal of becoming a philosopher at a university remained out of reach. The man complained to Leiras that his services mostly focused upon English translations of the great Catholic stories. When Leiras asked the reason, the man smiled.
“My bishop still hopes that the English crown will return to the Church. It’s a quite mad idea, of course. But he lets me work on my rebuttal to Jean-Pierre de Crousaz’s wretched Treatise on Beauty.”
Leiras went to the kitchen where the old woman who worked as the housekeeper and cook sighed. The gray-haired lady then pulled a plate from a shelf. The angel rubbed his palms together as he watched the woman fill his plate.
Just after Leiras finished his breakfast, a young boy wearing little more than rags arrived at the front door. He excitedly informed the lodgers that Maximilien Gabriel’s trekschuit had just landed. After receiving several copper deniers from Leiras, the skinny lad hurried away.
Dryden offered to introduce the men to Gabriel.
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