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It was too late to er immortal He was dead!

I hadn't even realized that I was assu all this time, all this time, as we talked and his story poured out, that I could, if I wanted to, actually bring hi on But suddenly I rehost! I was talking to a man as already dead

The situation was so hideously painful and frustrating and utterly abnorroan, if I hadn't had to cover it up so that he would go on

"What's the matter with you?" he asked

"Nothing Talk s Dora says "

"She talks about the sterility of now, and how people need the ineffable She points to raion where nobody hurts anybody else It's the American dream She knows Scripture inside and out, she's covered all the Pseudepigrapha, Apocrypha, the works of Augustine,Marcion, Moses Maiainst sex destroyed Christianity, which is hardly original with her, of course, and certainly appeals to the women who listen to her, you know"

"Yes, I understand all that, but she must have felt some sympathy for Wynken "

"Wynken's books weren't a series of visions to her as they are to me "

"I see "

"And by the way, Wynken's books are not merely perfect, they are unique in a number of ways Wynken did his work in the last twenty-five years before the Gutenberg printing press Yet Wynken did everything He was scribe, rubicator, that is, the maker of the fancy letters, and also thein Eden and the ivy and vine crawling over every page He had to do every step himself at a time when scriptoria divided up these functions

"Let o to Wynken Yeah, you have to get those books "

"Great," I said dismally

"Letto love those books, even if Dora never does I have all twelve of his books, as I think I told you He was Rhineland Catholic, forced into the Benedictines as a young man, and was in love with Blanche de Wilde, his brother's wife She ordered the books done in the scriptorium and that's how it all started, her secret link with her monk lover I have letters between Blanche and her friend Eleanor I have some incidents decoded from the poems themselves

"Most sad of all, I have the letters Blanche wrote to Eleanor after Wynken was put to death She had the letters sled out to Eleanor, and then Eleanor sent them on to Diane, and there was another wo in her hand

"This is ent down They used to arden of the De Wilde castle to perforarden at all, as I'd once supposed How Wynken got there I don't know, but there are a few mentions in some of the letters that indicate he simply slipped out of the monastery and followed a secret way into his brother's house