Clifford Simak: Enchanted Pilgrimage

The rafter goblin spied on the hiding monk, who was spying on the scholar. The goblin hated the monk and had reason for the hate. The monk hated no one and loved no one; he was bigoted and ambitious. The scholar was stealing what appeared to be a manuscript he had found hidden behind the binding of a book.

The hour was late and the library hushed. Somewhere a mouse scrabbled furtively. The candle standing on the desk over which the scholar crouched guttered, burning low.

The scholar lifted the manuscript and tucked it inside his shirt. He closed the book and put it back on the shelf. He snuffed out the candle with a finger and a thumb. Pale moonlight, shining through tall windows that reached almost to the rafters, lit the interior of the library with a ghastly radiance.

The scholar turned from the desk and made his way among the tables of the study room, heading for the foyer. The monk shrank further back into the shadows and let him go. He made no move to stop him. The goblin watched, full of hate for the monk, and scratched his head in perplexity.

Mark Cornwall was eating cheese and bread when the knock came at the door. The room was small and cold; a tiny blaze of twigs burning in the small fireplace did little to warm it.

He rose and brushed crumbs of cheese off his coat before he went to the door. When he opened it a small, wizened creature stood before it — scarcely three feet tall, he was dressed in tattered leathern breeches. His feet were bare and hairy and his shirt was a worn crimson velvet. He wore a peaked cap. "I am the goblin of the rafters," he said. "Please, may I come in?"

"Certainly," said Cornwall. "I have heard of you. I thought you were a myth."

The goblin came in and scurried to the fire. He squatted in front of it, thrusting his hands out toward the blaze.

"Why did you think of me as a myth?" he asked petulantly. "You know that there are goblins and elves and others of the Brotherhood. Why should you doubt me?"

"I don't know," said Cornwall. "Because I have never seen you, perhaps. Because I have never known anyone who has. I thought it was a student story."

"I keep well hidden," said the goblin. "I stay up in the rafters. There are hiding places there and it is hard to reach me. Some of those monkish characters in the library are unreasonable. They have no sense of humor."

"Would you have some cheese?" asked Cornwall.

"Of course I'd have some cheese. What a foolish question."

He left the fire and hoisted himself onto the rough bench that stood before the table. He looked around the room. "I take it," he said, "that you have no easy life. There is no softness here. It is all hard and sparse."

"I get along," said Cornwall. He took the dagger from the scabbard at his belt and cut a slice of cheese, then sawed a slice off the loaf of bread and handed it to his visitor.

"Rough fare," said the goblin.

"It is all I have. But you didn't come for cheese and bread."

"No," the goblin said. "I saw you tonight. I saw you steal the manuscript."

"Okay," said Cornwall. "What is it that you want?"

"Not a thing," the goblin said. He took a bite of cheese. "I came to tell you that the monk, Oswald, also was watching you."

"If he had been watching, he would have stopped me. He would have turned me in."

"It seems to me," the goblin said, "that there is a peculiar lack of remorse on your part. You do not even make an effort to deny it."

"You saw me," Cornwall said, "and yet you did not turn me in. This business must go deeper than it seems."

"Perhaps," the goblin said. "You have been a student here how long?"

"Almost six years."

"You are no longer a student, then. A scholar."

"There is no great distinction between the two."

"I suppose not," the goblin agreed, "but it means you are no shiny-faced schoolboy. You are beyond simple student pranks."

"I think I am," said Cornwall, "but I don't quite see your point…»

"The point is that Oswald saw you steal it and yet he let you go. Could he have known what you stole?"

"I would rather doubt it. I didn't know what it was myself until I saw it. I wasn't looking for it. I didn't even know that it existed. I noticed when I got the book down that there was something rather strange about the binding on the back cover. It seemed too thick. It gave beneath one's fingers, as if something might be hidden there, between the binding and the board."

"If it was so noticeable," asked the goblin, "how is it that no one else had found it? How about another chunk of cheese?"

Cornwall cut another slice of cheese and gave it to him. "I think there is an easy answer to your question. I imagine I may have been the first one in a century or more who had taken down that book."

"An obscure tome," said the goblin. 'There are many such. Would you mind telling me what it was?"

"An old traveler's tale," said Cornwall. "Written many years ago, several hundred years ago. In very ancient script. Some monk of long ago made it a thing of beauty when he copied it, with intricate and colorful initial letters and pretty conceits in the margins. But if you ask me, it was a waste of time. By and large, it is a pack of lies."

"Then why did you go looking for it?"

"Sometimes from many falsehoods one may garner certain truths. I was looking for the mention of one specific thing."

"And you found it?"

"Not in the book," said Cornwall. "In the hidden manuscript. I'm inclined to think the book is the original copy of the tale. Perhaps the only one. It is not the sort of thing that would have been copied extensively. The old monk in the scriptorium probably worked from the traveler's own writings, copying it in style, making it a splendid book that one might be rightly proud of."

"The manuscript?"

"Not really a manuscript. Only a single page of parchment. A page from the traveler's original manuscript. It had something in it that the monk left out."

"You think his conscience bothered him and he compromised by binding the page from which he had deleted something under the back cover of the book."

"Something like that," said Cornwall. "Now let us talk about what you came here for."

"The monk," the goblin said. "You do not know this monk, Oswald, as I do. Of all the scruffy crew, he is by far the worst. No man is safe from him, no thing is sacred. Perhaps it has crossed your mind he might have had a purpose in not apprehending you, in not raising an outcry."

"My theft does not seem to perturb you," Cornwall pointed out.

"Not at all," the goblin said. "I am rather on your side. For years this cursed monk has tried his best to make my life a misery. He has tried to trap me; he has tried to hunt me down. I have cracked his shins aplenty and have managed, in one way or another, to pay him back for every shabby trick, but he still persists. I bear him no goodwill. Perhaps you've gathered that."

"You think he intends to inform on me?"

"If I know him," the goblin said, "he intends to sell the information."

"To whom would he sell it? Who would be interested?"

"Consider," said the goblin, "that a hidden manuscript has been filched from its hiding place in an ancient book. The fact that it seemed important enough to be hidden—and important enough to be filched—would be intriguing, would it not?"

"I suppose you're right."

"There are in this town and the university," said the goblin, "any number of unprincipled adventurers who would be interested."

"You think that it will be stolen from me?"

"I think there is no question that it will. In the process your life will not be entirely safe."

Cornwall cut another slice of cheese and handed it to him. "Thank you," said the goblin, "and could you spare me another slice of bread?"