To Play the Fool (29 page)

He stopped.

"I thought you might want your stick back," she said.

He did not answer and made no move to take the staff,- he said only, "Is there some place we can go for coffee?"

She carried the awkward pole through the halls, into the elevator,
out the doors, and down the street, finally threading it through the
door of the coffee shop to lean it against the greasy wall in back of
her chair, all the time wondering if he was going to leave the damned
thing with her and what on earth she would do with it.

The waitress came by with her pad, looking as tired and disheveled
as the chipped name tag pinned crookedly to her limp nylon uniform.

"Just coffee, thanks," Kate said.

Sawyer looked into her dark eyes and smiled. "I, too, would
like a cup of coffee, please, Elizabeth. Would you also be so kind as
to give me some cream and some sugar to go in it?"

The woman blinked, and Kate was aware of an odd gush of pleasure at
Sawyer's undisguised enjoyment of the words he was pronouncing.
He seemed to taste them before he let them go, and she thought she was
catching a glimpse of what Professor Whitlaw had meant when she
described his power as a public speaker.

Their coffee came quickly. Sawyer opened two envelopes of sugar,
stirred them and a large dollop of cream into the thick once-white mug,
and put the spoon down on the table.

"Beatrice's funeral is this afternoon," he said.

"I planned on going. Al, too."

"I asked Philip Gardner to take the service."

"Your license being expired," she said with a smile.

"I did not feel I had the right to the cassock."

It suddenly struck Kate that he was not wearing his wedding ring,
either. She set her cup down with a bang. "Now look, David, you
can't go around taking all the world's sins on your
shoulders. You didn't kill her, Thomas Darcy did. You're
less to blame than the newspaper reporter."

"I only intend to shoulder my own sins, Kate, I assure you."

"Then why--"

He put up a hand. "Please, Kate. This is something I must
wrestle with alone, although I do truly appreciate your willingness to
help me."

"Where will you go? Do you have a place to stay?"

"Eve wishes me to go to the house she is borrowing, after the
funeral. In fact, she has asked me to go with her to England, assuming
she can persuade the authorities to issue a passport to a man with no
identification papers."

"And will you?"

Sawyer let his eyes drift away from Kate until he was focusing on
the wall behind her. For a very long time, he studied the piece of
carved wood that stood there, and slowly, slowly his face began to
relax, to lose the taut, pinched look it had taken on with the news of
Beatrice's death. Eventually he tore his gaze away from the staff
and looked back at Kate, but he did not answer her question. Instead,
he asked, "Will your friend come to the funeral, as well?"

"My friend?" Do you mean Lee? I hadn't thought to
ask her. It's difficult for her to get around. She's in a
wheelchair."

"I know. Still, she might find it a good experience."

"Lee has been to a depressing number of funerals over the last
few years," she said flatly. He nodded his understanding,
finished his coffee, and stood up. Kate went to the cash register to
pay their bill, and when she turned back to the room, she saw that
Sawyer was standing outside the door. The staff was still leaning
against the wall. She retrieved it, followed him outside, and stood
beside him, looking at the familiar dingy street.

He was watching a filthy, decrepit, toothless individual pick
fastidiously through a garbage can on the other side of the street.
Kate waited to hear some apt quotation about the human condition, but
when he spoke, it was in his own words, about his own condition.
"Everything I told you, with the exception of seeing Thomas Darcy
in a car reading a map, would be discounted as hearsay evidence, come
the trial, would it not?"

"Some of it would, yes."

"Most everything, I think. You do not need my testimony."

"That depends on what forensics finds. If he covered his tracks carefully, we'll be up shit creek."

"With my scant evidence your only paddle."

"That's about it."

"Well. I don't imagine a defense counsel would permit it
to get by without considerable battering. We shall just have to trust
that more concrete evidence will be forthcoming.

"Thank you for your friendship, Kate Martinelli," he
said abruptly. "I shall see you at the church this
afternoon."

"Wait--David. Do you want your walking stick?"

He looked at it, then looked at her, and a smile came onto his face: a sweet smile, a dazzling smile--an Erasmus smile.

"Yes. Yes, I suppose I do," he said, and reached out his
hand for it. He cupped his palm briefly over the smooth place on top of
the carved head and then ran his hand down the shaft to the other worn
patch just below shoulder height, and then he turned and walked away.

To her surprise, when Kate got back to her desk, she found herself
phoning Lee to ask if she wanted to go to the funeral of this homeless
woman whom Lee had never met. To her greater surprise, Lee said yes.

Half a dozen photographers lounged around the steps to the church,
but Kate had expected them, so she continued on around the block to a
delivery entrance. The mortician's van was parked there, and she
pulled up behind it, extricated Lee and her chair from the car, and
they entered the church through the side entrance.

There was a surprisingly large congregation. Kate recognized many of
the faces in the pews from the investigation, most of them street
people, a few store owners in Beatrice's home area of the Haight.
Krishna and Leila from Sentient Beans were sitting in the front row,-
the three veterans, with the damaged Tony in the middle, looking ready
to bolt, sat in the last pew back. News reporters swelled the ranks and
added contrast in the form of clean neckties and intact jackets. Al
Hawkin sat almost directly across the church from them.

But no David Sawyer.

Kate took all this in as she was pushing Lee into a place along the
side aisle. Then she took a seat beside her at the end of the pew.

She became aware of Philip Gardner's voice coming from the altar.

"We thank you for giving her to us," he was saying,
"her family and friends, to know and love as a companion on our
earthly pilgrimage. In your boundless compassion, console us who
mourn."

A movement caught Kate's eye, one of the white-gowned deacons
at Dean Gardner's side. It took a moment for her to realize it
was David Sawyer. It took a while longer for her to recognize him, to
her astonishment, as Brother Erasmus.

The service flowed past them. People stood up and read, haltingly or
fluently. A hymn was sung, and another, and then Philip Gardner was
raising his hands in blessing and declaring that the Lord would guide
our feet into the way of peace, and it was over. The cassocks and
surplices fluttered up the aisle, people began to shuffle in their
wake, and then Sawyer, or perhaps Erasmus, was sitting in the pew ahead
of Kate, with Lee's hand in his. The ring, Kate noticed, was back
on his hand. She made the introductions, although they hardly seemed
necessary.

"The wounded healer," he said quietly in response to Lee's name.

"I might say the same of you," Lee answered.

"Ah. Answer a fool according to his folly," he said with a grin.

"And are you? A fool, that is?" Lee leaned forward in
the chair to study the old face opposite her. "Am I speaking with
Brother Erasmus, or David Sawyer?"

"I am Fortune's fool," he admitted. "An old
doting fool with one foot already in the grave. A lunatic, lean-witted
fool. How well white hairs become a fool and jester."

"I think white hairs suit a fool very well. How does it go?
"This fellow's wise enough to play the fool." "

The old man looked, of all things, embarrassed, and he seemed
grateful for the interruption when Al Hawkin joined them. He stood up
to shake Hawkin's hand.

"Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms? Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?"

The detective laughed. "Never that. I just wanted to thank you for your help and wish you well."

"All's well that ends well." He turned to Kate,
and she waited for his smile and his words, taken from someone else but
made his own, and they came: "May the Lord bless you and keep you
_;
may the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and grant you peace."

"I take it you're planning on going back onto the streets?" she asked.

"It is better never to begin a good work than, having begun it, to stop," he said quietly.

"You're getting old, David," she said bluntly.
"It's a young man's life. Talk to Philip Gardner. You
can do your good work at the seminary."

He nearly laughed. "Amongst all these stirs of discontented strife. O, let me lead an academic life!"

Kate had not heard Professor Whitlaw's approach until the
English voice came from behind her, sounding both disappointed and sad.

"He was a scholar," she said, stressing the past tense, "and a ripe and good one."

Brother Erasmus focused his gaze over Kate's shoulder but only shook his head gently.

"Well," Kate said, "for God's sake, take
care of yourself and don't do anything stupid like you tried that
day with the young drunk. You could get hurt."

His face relaxed into amusement, and something more. They could see,
shining clear as day, the regained source of his serenity. "The
Lord is my light and my salvation," he said simply. "Whom
shall I fear?"

Yet the friends of St. Francis have really contrived

to leave behind a portrait, something almost

resembling a devout and affectionate caricature.

Brother Erasmus, he who once was the Reverend Professor David
Matthew Sawyer, spent the next twelve days with his old friend Eve
Whitlaw at the house she had borrowed in Noe Valley. When Easter
morning dawned, however, he was not at her house,- he was not even in
San Francisco.

Neither Kate nor Al ever saw him after that. But among the homeless,
the marginal, the discarded citizens of a number of large cities, the
people of the street talk about Brother Erasmus. They say that he was a
rich man who humbled himself, and that he had a small black-and-white
dog, a sort of familiar spirit, who was killed by a demon man, who in
turn was vanquished by Erasmus. They say that he healed a sick boy,
that he foretold the future, that he transported himself magically
across the waters.

They say he is dead. They also say that he lives and walks the
streets unrecognized. Some call him a saint. Others say he was a fool.

These things they say about the man who called himself Brother Erasmus.

And they are all true.