the innkeeper knew from experience that kobra could often be impatient and peremptory, but could also, when the mood took him, be talkative and desirous of an audience, and that when he was, there was no hurrying or abandoning him.
kobra had told the innkeeper many tales of his life, a number of them seeming to conflict with each other. now he launched on another version.
you may wonder , my friend, how i came to this pass - the most wanted man in the empire, but at the same time, one with that empire almost within his grasp!
it all began, as so many tales do, with a woman - in this case, my mother.
i had a brother and five sisters. my mother had little time for, or interest in the sisters, except to try to get them married, and they need not concern us here.
for my brother snd myself she had great hopes and dreams.
my brother was some years older than i. older than the five girls, where i was younger than all but one of them.
he was strong, and i was weak.
mother wanted both he and i to be great champions of the church. andrew, like his namesake, was to be a great missionary and go forth to convert great legions of the heathen. although i do not think mother had any clear idea of who the “heathen” were. the natives of distant lands, who lived in tents and caves and grass huts? or the godless and godforsaken masses of the great modern cities, huddled in their taverns and opium dens and flophouses?
i was a walk and sickly child, not given to the rough games and pastimes of youth, and mother’s plan for me was to embrace a profession whose very existence has been largely forgotten in today’s world - that of a theologian.
mother herself had only the most obscure idea of what a theologian was, except that she wished me to obtain glory by becoming one.
we lived in the great capital, in humble though far from wretched surroundings, in the narrow streets surrounding many of the great old churches and cathedrals, as well as the buildings housing the rabbit warrens of the new imperial bureaucracy.
the great imperial library, already falling into neglect and disuse even then, was located only a few streets away, and as a child i frequented it, especially on winter days, when it provided some warmth, and in the heat of summer, when shade could be found in its cavernous depths.
of course most of the ancient manuscripts and handwritten books were kept out of the reach of the ordinary patrons, let alone to a child, but newer and humbler productions were available to all who entered, under the indifferent eyes of the librarians, who all seemed to be dozing behind their desks.
books could be taken from the shelves and read at long wooden tables.
i preferred books with brightly colored pictures, and was largely indifferent to the words in them.
but one winter day, my mind wandered to mother’s repeated injunctions that i should become a theologian, and on an impulse i decided to ask one of the elderly librarians if they had any books on the subject of theology.
the ancient crone i approached seemed at first perplexed, then amused, by my request.
“we get few requests for that subject, young man, and i do not ever recall one from so young as yourself,” she smiled at me.
i was a little nettled at her attitude, for although it was meant kindly enough, i have never been able to bear being laughed at, even in the slightest degree.
but look here, innkeeper, fill my glass if you please, and your own as well.
the innkeeper, who had been keeping his eyes open with difficulty during this long preamble - though the bandit’s reminder that he “had never been able to bear being laughed at” had aroused a measure of alertness - sprang to his task.
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