by Ellis Peters
After its merciless fashion it was a good answer. The abbot pondered, eyeing the stony, assured face.
“The letter of the rule is much, I grant you, but the spirit is more. And you might well have jeopardised your own soul to ensure that of a newborn child. An office interrupted can be completed without sin, if the cause be urgent enough. And there is also the matter of the girl Eluned, who went to her death afterI say after, mark, I do not say because!you turned her away from the church. It is a grave thing to refuse confession and penance even to the greatest sinner.”
“Father Abbot,” said Ailnoth, with the first hot spurt of passion, immovable in righteousness, “where there is no penitence there can be neither penance nor absolution. The woman had pleaded penitence and vowed amendment time after time, and never kept her word. I have heard from others all her reputation, and it is past amendment. I could not in conscience confess her, for I could not take her word. If there is no truth in the act of contrition, there is no merit in confession, and to absolve her would have been deadly sin. A whore past recovery! I do not repent me, whether she died or no. I would do again what I did. There is no compromise with the pledges by which I am bound.”
“There will be no compromise with the answer you must make for two deaths,” said Radulfus solemnly, “if God should take a view different from yours. I bid you recall, Father Ailnoth, that you are summoned to call not the righteous, but sinners to repentance, the weak, the fallible, those who go in fear and ignorance, and have not your pure advantage. Temper your demands to their abilities, and be less severe on those who cannot match your perfection.” He paused there, for it was meant as irony, to bite, but the proud, impervious face never winced, accepting the accolade. “And be slow to lay your hand upon the children,” he said, “unless they offend of malicious intent. To error we are all liable, even you.”
“I study to do right,” said Ailnoth, “as I have always, and always shall.” And he went away with the same confident step, vehement and firm, the skirts of his gown billowing like wings in the wind of his going.
“A man abstemious, rigidly upright, inflexibly honest, ferociously chaste,” said Radulfus in private to Prior Robert. “A man with every virtue, except humility and human kindness. That is what I have brought upon the Foregate, Robert. And now what are we to do about him?”
Dame Diota Hammet came on the twenty-second day of December to the gatehouse of the abbey with a covered basket, and asked meekly for her nephew Benet, for whom she had brought a cake for his Christmas, and a few honey buns from her festival baking. The porter, knowing her for the parish priest’s housekeeper, directed her through to the garden, where Benet was busy clipping the last straggly growth from the box hedges.
Hearing their voices, Cadfael looked out from his workshop, and divining who this matronly woman must be, was about to return to his mortar when he was caught by some delicate shade in their greeting. A matter-of-fact affection, easy-going and undemonstrative, was natural between aunt and nephew, and what he beheld here hardly went beyond that, but for all that there was a gloss of tenderness and almost deference in the woman’s bearing towards her young kinsman, and an unexpected, childish grace in the warmth with which he embraced her. True, he was already known for a young man who did nothing by halves, but here were certainly aunt and nephew who did not take each other for granted.
Cadfael withdrew to his work again and left them their privacy. A comely, well-kept woman was Mistress Hammet, with decent black clothing befitting a priest’s housekeeper, and a dark shawl over her neat, greying hair. Her oval face, mildly sad in repose, brightened vividly in greeting the boy, and then she looked no more than forty years old, and perhaps, indeed, she was no more. Benet’s mother’s sister? wondered Cadfael. If so, he took after his father, for there was very little resemblance here. Well, it was none of his business!
Benet came bounding into the workshop to empty the basket of its good things, spreading them out on the wooden bench. “We’re in luck, Brother Cadfael, for she’s as good a cook as you’d find in the King’s own kitchen. You and I can eat like princes.”
And he was off again as blithely to restore the empty basket. Cadfael looked out after him through the open door, and saw him hand over, besides the basket, some small thing he drew from the breast of his cotte. She took it, nodding earnestly, unsmiling, and the boy stooped and kissed her cheek. She smiled then. He had a way with him, no question. She turned and went away, and left him looking after her for a long moment, before he also turned, and came back to the workshop. The engaging grin came back readily to his face.
” ‘On no account’,” quoted Cadfael, straight-faced, ” ‘may a monk accept small presents of any kind, from his parents or anyone else, without the abbot’s permission’. That, sweet son, is in the Rule.”
“Lucky you, then, and lucky I,” said the boy gaily, “that I’ve taken no vows. She makes the best honey cakes ever I tasted.” And he sank even white teeth into one of them, and reached to offer another to Cadfael.
” ‘
nor may the brethren exchange them, one with another,” said Cadfael, and accepted the offering. “Lucky, indeed! Though I transgress in accepting, you go sinless in offering. Have you quite abandoned your inclination to the cloistered life, then?”
“Me?” said the youth, startled out of his busy munching, and open-mouthed. “When did I ever profess any?”
“Not you, lad, but your sponsor on your account, when he asked work for you here.”
“Did he say that of me?”
“He did. Not positively promising it, mark you, but holding out the hope that you might settle to it one day. I grant you I’ve never seen much sign of it.”
Benet thought that over for a moment, while he finished his cake and licked the sticky crumbs from his fingers. “No doubt he was anxious to get rid of me, and thought it might make me more welcome here. My face was never in any great favour with himtoo much given to smiling, maybe. No, not even you will pen me in here for very long, Cadfael. When the time comes I’ll be on my way. But while I’m here,” he said, breaking into the bountiful smile that might well strike an ascetic as far too frivolous, “I’ll do my fair share of the work.”
And he was off back to his box hedge, swinging the shears in one large, easy hand, and leaving Cadfael gazing after him with a very thoughtful face.
Chapter Four
Dame diota hammet presented herself later that afternoon at a house near Saint Chad’s church, and asked timidly for the lord Ralph Giffard. The servant who opened the door to her looked her up and down and hesitated, never having seen her before.
“What’s your business with him, mistress? Who sends you?”
“I’m to bring him this letter,” said Diota submissively, and held out a small rolled leaf fastened with a seal. “And to wait for an answer, if my lord will be so good.”
He was in two minds about taking it from her hand. It was a small and irregularly shaped slip of parchment, with good reason, since it was one of the discarded edges from a leaf Brother Anselm had trimmed to shape and size for a piece of music, two days since. But the seal argued matter of possible importance, even on so insignificant a missive. The servant was still hesitating when a girl came out into the porch at his back, and seeing a woman unknown but clearly respectable, stayed to enquire curiously what was to do. She accepted the scroll readily enough, and knew the seal. She looked up with startled, intent blue eyes into Diota’s face, and abruptly handed the scroll back to her.
“Come in, and deliver this yourself. I’ll bring you to my step-father.”
The master of the house was sitting by a comfortable fire in a small solar, with wine at his elbow and a deer-hound coiled about his feet. A big, ruddy, sinewy man of fifty, balding and bearded, very spruce in his dress and only just beginning to put on a little extra flesh after an active life, he looked what he was, the lord of two or three country manors and this town house, where he preferred to spend his Chris
tmas in comfort. He looked up at Diota, when the girl presented her, with complete incomprehension, but he comprehended all too well when he looked at the seal that fastened the parchment. He asked no questions, but sent the girl for his clerk, and listened intently as the content was read to him, in so low a voice that it was plain the clerk understood how dangerous its import could be. He was a small, withered man, grown old in Giffard’s service, and utterly trustworthy. He made an end, and watched his master’s face anxiously.
“My lord, send nothing in writing! Word of mouth is safer, if you want to reply. Words said can be denied, to write them would be folly.”
Ralph sat pondering for a while in silence, and eyeing the unlikely messenger, who stood patiently and uneasily waiting.
“Tell him,” he said at last, “that I have received and understood his message.”
She hesitated, and ventured at last to ask: “Is that all, my lord?”
“It’s enough! The less said the better, for him and for me.”
The girl, who had remained unobtrusive but attentive in a corner of the room, followed Diota out to the shadow of the porch, with doors closed behind them.
“Mistress,” she said softly in Diota’s ear, “where is he to be foundthis man who sent you?”
By the brief, blank silence and the doubtful face of the older woman she understood her fears, and made impatient haste to allay them, her voice low and vehement. “I mean him no harm, God knows! My father was of the same partydid you not see how well I knew the seal?”
“You can trust me, I won’t say word to any, nor to him, either, but I want to know how I may know him, where I may find him, in case of need.”
“At the abbey,” said Diota as softly and hurriedly, making up her mind. “He’s working in the garden, by the name of Benet, under the herbalist brother.”
“Oh, Brother CadfaelI know him!” said the girl, breathing satisfaction. “He treated me once for a bad fever, when I was ten years old, and he came to help my mother, three Christmases ago, when she fell into her last illness. Good, I know where his herbarium is. Go now, quickly!”
She watched Diota scurry hastily out of the small courtyard, and then closed the door and went back to the solar, where Giffard was sitting sunk in anxious consideration, heavy-browed and sombre.
“Shall you go to this meeting?”
He had the letter still in his hand. Once already he had made an impulsive motion towards the fire, to thrust the parchment into it and be rid of it, but then had drawn back again, rolled it carefully and hid it in the breast of his cotte. She took that for a sign favourable to the sender, and was pleased. It was no surprise that he did not give her a direct answer. This was a serious business and needed thought, and in any case he never paid any great heed to his step-daughter, either to confide in her or to regulate her actions. He was indulgent rather out of tolerant indifference than out of affection.
“Say no word of this to anyone,” he said. “What have I to gain by keeping such an appointment? And everything to lose! Have not your family and mine lost enough already by loyalty to that cause? How if he should be followed to the mill?”
“Why should he be? No one has any suspicion of him. He’s accepted at the abbey as a labourer in the gardens, calling himself Benet. He’s vouched for. Christmas Eve, and by night, there’ll be no one abroad but those already in the church. Where’s the risk? It was a good time to choose. And he needs help.”
“Well
” said Ralph, and drummed his fingers irresolutely on the small cylinder in the breast of his cotte. “We have two days yet, we’ll watch and wait unTil the time comes.”
Benet was sweeping up the brushings from the hedge, and whistling merrily over the work, when he heard brisk, light steps stirring the moist gravel on the path behind him, and turned to behold a young woman in a dark cloak and hood advancing upon him from the great court. A small, slender girl of erect and confident bearing, the outline of her swathed form softened and blurred by the faint mist of a still day, and the hovering approach of dusk. Not until she was quite near to him and he had stepped deferentially aside to give her passage could he see clearly the rosy, youthful face within the shadow of the hood, a rounded face with apple-blossom skin, a resolute chin, and a mouth full and firm in its generosity of line, and coloured like half-open roses. Then what light remained gathered into the harebell blue of her wide-set eyes, at once soft and brilliant, and he lost sight of everything else. And though he had made way for her to pass him by, and ducked his head to her in a properly servant-like reverence, she did not pass by, but lingered, studying him closely and candidly, with the fearless, innocent stare of a cat. Indeed there was something of the kitten about the whole face, wider at the brow and eyes than its length from brow to chin, tapered and tilted imperiously, as a kitten confronts the world, never having experienced fear. She looked him up and down gravely, and took her time about it, in a solemn inspection that might have been insolent if it had not implied a very serious purpose. Though what interest some noble young woman of the county or well-to-do merchant daughter of the town could have in him was more than Benet could imagine.
Only when she was satisfied of whatever had been in question in her mind did she ask, in a clear, firm voice: “Are you Brother Cadfael’s new helper here?”
“Yes, my lady,” said the dutiful labourer bashfully, shuffling his feet and somehow even contriving a blush that sat rather oddly on so positive and cheerful a countenance.
She looked at the trimmed hedge and the newly weeded and manured flower beds, and again at him, and for a dazzling instant he thought she smiled, but in the flicker of an eyelash she was solemn again.
“I came to ask Brother Cadfael for some herbs for my kitchen forcemeats. Do you know were I shall find him?”
“He’s in his workshop within,” said Benet. “Please to walk through into the walled garden there.”
“I remember the way,” she said, and inclined her head to him graciously, as noble to simple, and swept away from him through the open gate into the walled enclosure of the herbarium.
It was almost time for Vespers, and Benet could well have quit his labours and gone to make himself ready, but he prolonged his sweeping quite unnecessarily, gathering the brushings into a pile of supererogatory neatness, scattering them a little and massing them again, in order to get another close glimpse of her when she came blithely back with a bunch of dried herbs loosely wrapped in a cloth and carried carefully in her hands. She passed him this time without a glance, or seemed to do so, but still he had the feeling that those wide and wide-set eyes with their startling blueness took him in methodically in passing. The hood had slipped back a little from her head, and showed him a coiled braid of hair of an indefinable spring colour, like the young fronds of bracken when they are just unfolding, a soft light brown with tones of green in the shadows. Or hazel withies, perhaps! Hazel eyes are no great rarity, but how many women can boast of hazel hair?
She was gone, the hem of her cloak whisking round the box hedge and out of his sight. Benet forsook his broom in haste, left his pile of brushings lying, and went to pick Brother Cadfael’s brains.
“Who was that lady?” he asked, point-blank.
“Is that a proper question for a postulant like you to be asking?” said Cadfael placidly, and went on cleaning and putting away his pestle and mortar.
Benet made a derisive noise, and interposed his sturdy person to confront Cadfael eye to eye, with no pretence whatsoever to notions of celibacy. “Come, you know her, or at least she knows you. Who is she?”
“She spoke to you?” Cadfael wondered, interested.
“Only to ask me where she would find you. Yes, she spoke to me!” he said, elated. “Yes, she stopped and looked me up and down, the creature, as though she found herself in need of a page, and thought I might do, given a little polishing. Would I do for a lady’s page, Cadfael?”
“What’s certain,” said Cadfael tolerantly, “is that yo
u’ll never do for a monk. But no, I wouldn’t say a lady’s service is your right place, either.” He did not add: “Unless on level terms!” but that was what was in his mind. At this moment the boy had shed all pretence of being a poor widow’s penniless kinsman, untutored and awkward. That was no great surprise. There had been little effort spent on the imposture here in the garden for a week past, though the boy could reassume it at a moment’s notice with others, and was still the rustic simpleton in Prior Robert’s patronising presence.
“Cadfael
” Benet took him cajolingly by the shoulders and held him, tilting his curly head coaxingly, with a wilfully engaging intimacy. Given the occasion, he was well aware he could charm the birds from the trees. Nor did he have any difficulty in weighing up elder sympathisers who must once have shared much the same propensities. “Cadfael, I may never speak to her again, I may never see her againbut I can try! Who is she?”
“Her name,” said Cadfael, capitulating rather from policy than from compulsion, “is Sanan Berničres. Her father held a manor in the north-east of the shire, which was confiscated when he fought for his overlord FitzAlan and the Empress at the siege here, and died for it. Her mother married another vassal of FitzAlan, who had suffered his losses, toothe faction holds together, though they’re all singing very small and lying very low here now. Giffard spends his winters mainly in his house in Shrewsbury, and since her mother died he brings his step-daughter to preside at his table-head. That’s the lady you’ve seen pass by.”
“And had better let pass by?” said Benet, ruefully smiling in acknowledgement of a plain warning. “Not for me?” He burst into the glowing grin to which Cadfael was becoming accustomed, and which sometimes gave him such qualms on behalf of his protégé, who was far too rash in the indulgence of his flashing moods. Benet laughed, and flung his arms about his mentor in a bear’s hug. “What will you wager?”
Cadfael freed an arm, without much ado, and held off his boisterous aggressor by a fistful of his thick curls.