by Ellis Peters
Brother Cadfael's Penance
( Brother Cadfael - 19 )
Ellis Peters
BROTHER CADFAEL’S PENANCE
Ellis Peters
THE TWENTIETH CHRONICLE OF BROTHER CADFAEL
Chapter One
THE EARL OF LEICESTER’S courier came riding over the bridge that spanned the Severn, and into the town of Shrewsbury, somewhat past noon on a day at the beginning of November, with three months’ news in his saddle-roll.
Much of it would already be known, at least in general outline, but Robert Beaumont’s despatch service from London was better provided than anything the sheriff of Shropshire could command, and in a single meeting with that young officer the earl had marked him as one of the relatively sane in this mad world of civil war that had crippled England for so many years, and run both factions, king and empress alike, into exhaustion, without, unfortunately, bringing either sharply up against reality. Such able young men as Hugh Beringar, Earl Robert considered, were well worth supplying with information, against the day when reason would finally break through and put an end to such wasteful warfare. And in this year of the Lord, 1145, now drawing towards its close, chaotic events had seemed to be offering promise, however faint as yet, that even the two cousins battling wearily for the throne must despair of force and look round for another way of settling disputes.
The boy who carried the earl’s dispatches had made this journey once before, and knew his way across the bridge and up the curve of the Wyle, and round from the High Cross to the castle gates. The earl’s badge opened the way before him without hindrance. Hugh came out from the armoury in the inner ward, dusting his hands, his dark hair tangled by the funnelled wind through the archway, to draw the messenger within, and hear his news.
“There’s a small breeze rising,” said the boy, unloading the contents of his satchel upon the table in the anteroom of the gatehouse, “that has my lord snuffing the air. But warily, it’s the first time he’s detected any such stirring, and it could as easily blow itself out. And it has as much to do with what’s happening in the East as with all this ceding of castles in the Thames valley. Ever since Edessa fell to the paynims of Mosul, last year at Christmas, all Christendom has been uneasy about the kingdom of Jerusalem. They’re beginning to talk of a new Crusade, and there are lords on either side, here at home, who are none too happy about things done, and might welcome the Cross as sanctuary for their souls. I’ve brought you his official letters,” he said briskly, mustering them neatly at Hugh’s hand, “but I’ll give you the gist of it before I go, and you can study them at leisure, for there’s no date yet settled. I must return this same day, I have an errand to Coventry on my way back.”
“Then you’d best take food and drink now, while we talk,” said Hugh, and sent out for what was needed. They settled together confidentially to the tangled affairs of England, which had shifted in some disconcerting directions during the summer months, and now, with the shutter of the coming winter about to close down against further action, might at least be disentangled, and open a course that could be pursued with some hope of progress. “You’ll not tell me Robert Beaumont is thinking of taking the Cross? There are some powerful sermons coming out of Clairvaux, I’m told, that will be hard to resist.”
“No,” said the young man, briefly grinning, “my lord’s concerns are all here at home. But this same unease for Christendom is making the bishops turn their thoughts to enforcing some order here, before they make off to settle the affairs of Outremer. They’re talking of one more attempt to bring king and empress together to talk sense, and find a means of breaking out of this deadlock. You’ll have heard that the earl of Chester has sought and got a meeting with King Stephen, and pledged his allegiance? Late in the day, and no easy passage, but the king jumped at it. We knew about it before they ever met at Stamford, a week or so back, for Earl Ranulf has been preparing the ground for some time, making sweet approaches to some of Stephen’s barons who hold grudges for old wrongs, trying to buy acceptance into the fold. There’s land near his castle of Mountsorrel has been in dispute with my lord some years. Chester has made concessions now over that. A man must soften not only the king but all those who hold with the king if he’s to change sides. So Stamford was no surprise, and Chester is reconciled and accepted. And you know all that business of Faringdon and Cricklade, and Philip FitzRobert coming over to Stephen, in despite of father and empress and all, and with a strong castle in either hand.”
“That,” said Hugh flatly, “I shall never understand. He, of all people! Gloucester’s own son, and Gloucester has been the empress’s prop and stay as good as singlehanded throughout, and now his son turns against him and joins the king! And no half-measures, either. By all accounts, he’s righting for Stephen as fiercely as he ever fought for Maud.”
“And bear in mind, Philip’s sister is wife to Ranulf of Chester,” the courier pointed out, “and these two changes of heart chime together. Which of them swept the other away with him, or what else lies behind it, God he knows, not I. But there’s the plain fact of it. The king is the fatter by two new allies and a very respectable handful of castles.”
“And I’d have said, in no mood to make any concessions, even for the bishops,” observed Hugh shrewdly. “Much more likely to be encouraged, all over again, to believe he can win absolute victory. I doubt if they’ll ever get him to the council table.”
“Never underestimate Roger de Clinton,” said Leicester’s squire, and grinned. “He has offered Coventry as the meeting-place, and Stephen has as good as agreed to come and listen. They’re issuing safe conducts already, on both sides. Coventry is a good centre for all, Chester can make use of Mountsorrel to offer hospitality and worm his way into friendships, and the priory has housing enough for all. Oh, there’ll be a meeting! Whether much will come of it is another matter. It won’t please everyone, and there’ll be those who’ll do their worst to wreck it. Philip FitzRobert for one. Oh, he’ll come, if only to confront his father and show that he regrets nothing, but he’ll come to destroy, not to placate. Well, my lord wants your voice there, speaking for your shire. Shall he have it? He knows your mind,” said the young man airily, “or thinks he does. You rank somewhere in the list of his hopes. What do you say?’ “Let him send me word of the day,” said Hugh heartily, “and I’ll be there.”
“Good, I’ll tell him so. And for the rest, you’ll know already that it was only the handful of captains, with Brien de Soulis at their head, who sold out Faringdon to the king, and made prisoner all the knights of the garrison who refused to change sides. The king handed them out like prizes to some of his own followers, to profit by their ransom. My lord has got hold from somewhere of a list of those doled out, those among them who have been offered for ransom, and those already bought free. Here he sends you a copy, in case any names among them concern you closely, captors or captives. If anything comes of the meeting at Coventry their case will come up for consideration, and it’s not certain who holds the last of them.”
“I doubt there’ll be any there known to me,” said Hugh, taking up the sealed roll thoughtfully. “All those garrisons along the Thames might as well be a thousand miles from us. We do not even hear when they fall or change sides until a month after the event. But thank Earl Robert for his courtesy, and tell him I’ll trust to see him in the priory of Coventry when the day comes.”
He did not break the seal of Robert Beaumont’s letter until the courier had departed, to make for Coventry and Bishop Roger de Clinton’s presence on his way back to Leicester. In the last few years the bishop had made Coventry the main seat of his diocese, though Lichfield retained its cathedral status, and the see was referr
ed to impartially by either name. The bishop was also titular abbot of the Benedictine monastery in the town, and the head of the household of monks bore the title of prior, but was mitred like an abbot. Only two years previously the peace of the priory had been sadly disturbed, and the monks temporarily turned out of their quarters, but they had been firmly reinstalled before the year ended, and were unlikely to be dispossessed again.
Never underestimate Roger de Clinton, Robert Beaumont’s squire had said, no doubt echoing his formidable patron. Hugh already had a healthy respect for his bishop; and if a prelate of this stature, with the peril of Christendom on his mind, could draw to him a magnate like the Earl of Leicester, and others of similar quality and sense, from either faction or both, then surely in the end some good must come of it. Hugh unrolled the earl’s despatches with a cautiously hopeful mind, and began to read the brief summary within, and the list of resounding names. The sudden and violent breach between Robert, earl of Gloucester, the Empress Maud’s half-brother and loyal champion, and his younger son Philip, in the heat of midsummer, had startled the whole of England, and still remained inadequately explained or understood. In the desultory but dangerous and explosive battlefield of the Thames valley Philip, the empress’s castellan of Cricklade, had been plagued by damaging raids by the king’s men garrisoned in Oxford and Malmesbury, and to ease the load had begged his father to come and choose a site for another castle, to try and disrupt communications between the two royal strongholds, and put them, in turn, on the defensive. And Earl Robert had duly selected his site at Faringdon, built his castle and garrisoned it. But as soon as the king heard of it he came with a strong army and laid siege to the place. Philip in Cricklade had sent plea after plea to his father to send reinforcements at all costs, not to lose this asset barely yet enjoyed, and potentially so valuable to the hard-pressed garrison of his son’s command. But Gloucester had paid no heed, and sent no aid. And suddenly it was the talk of the south that the castellan of Faringdon, Brien de Soulis, and his closest aides within the castle, had made secret compact with the besiegers, unknown to the rest of the garrison, let in the king’s men by night, and delivered over Faringdon to them, with all its fighting men. Those who accepted the fiat joined Stephen’s forces, as most of the ranks did, seeing their leaders had committed them; those who held true to the empress’s salt were disarmed and made prisoner. The victims had been distributed among the king’s followers, to be held to ransom. And no sooner was this completed than Philip FitzRobert, the great earl’s son, in despite of his allegiance and his blood, had handed over Cricklade also to the king, and this time whole, with all its armoury and all its manpower intact. As many considered, it was his will, if not his hand, which had surrendered the keys of Faringdon, for Brien de Soulis was known to be as close to Philip as twin to twin, at all times in his councils. And thereafter Philip had turned to, and fought as ferociously against his father as once he had fought for him.
But as for why, that was hard to understand. He loved his sister, who was married to Earl Ranulf of Chester, and Ranulf was seeking to inveigle himself back into the king’s favour, and would be glad to take another powerful kinsman with him, to assure his welcome. But was that enough? And Philip had asked for Faringdon, and looked forward to the relief it would give his own forces, only to see it left to its fate in spite of his repeated appeals for help. But was even that enough? It takes an appalling load of bitterness, surely, to cause a man, after years of loyalty and devotion, to turn and rend his own flesh and blood.
But he had done it. And here in Hugh’s hand was the tale of his first victims, some thirty young men of quality, knights and squires, parcelled out among the king’s supporters, to pay dearly for their freedom at best, or to rot in captivity unredeemed if they had fallen into the wrong hands, and were sufficiently hated.
Robert Beaumont’s clerk had noted, where it was known, the name of the captor against that of the captive, and marked off those who had already been bought free by their kin. No one else was likely to raise an exorbitant sum for the purchase of a young gentleman in arms, as yet of no particular distinction. One or two of the ambitious young partisans of the empress might be left languishing unfathered and without patron in obscure dungeons, unless this projected conference at Coventry produced some sensible agreement that must, among its details, spare a thought to insist on their liberation.
At the end of the scroll, after many names that were strange to him, Hugh came to one that he knew.
“Known to have been among those overpowered and disarmed, not known who holds him, or where. Has not been offered for ransom. Laurence d’Angers has been enquiring for him without result: Olivier de Bretagne.”
Hugh went down through the town with his news, to confer with Abbot Radulfus over this suddenly presented opportunity to put an end to eight years of civil strife. Whether the bishops would allow an equal voice to the monastic clergy only time would tell; relations between the two arms of the Church were not invariably cordial, though Roger de Clinton certainly valued the abbot of Shrewsbury. But whether invited to the conference or not, when the time came, Radulfus would need to be prepared for either success or failure, and ready to act accordingly. And there was also another person at the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul who had every right to be told the content of Robert Beaumont’s letter.
Brother Cadfael was standing in the middle of his walled herb-garden, looking pensively about him at the autumnal visage of his pleasance, where all things grew gaunt, wiry and sombre. Most of the leaves were fallen, the stems dark and clenched like fleshless fingers holding fast to the remnant of the summer, all the fragrances gathered into one scent of age and decline, still sweet, but with the damp, rotting sweetness of harvest over and decay setting in. It was not yet very cold, the mild melancholy of November still had lingering gold in it, in falling leaves and slanting amber light. All the apples were in the loft, all the corn milled, the hay long stacked, the sheep turned into the stubble fields. A time to pause, to look round, to make sure nothing had been neglected, no fence unrepaired, against the winter.
He had never before been quite so acutely aware of the particular quality and function of November, its ripeness and its hushed sadness. The year proceeds not in a straight line through the seasons, but in a circle that brings the world and man back to the dimness and mystery in which both began, and out of which a new seed-time and a new generation are about to begin. Old men, thought Cadfael, believe in that new beginning, but experience only the ending. It may be that God is reminding me that I am approaching my November. Well, why regret it? November has beauty, has seen the harvest into the barns, even laid by next year’s seed. No need to fret about not being allowed to stay and sow it, someone else will do that. So go contentedly into the earth with the moist, gentle, skeletal leaves, worn to cobweb fragility, like the skins of very old men, that bruise and stain at the mere brushing of the breeze, and flower into brown blotches as the leaves into rotting gold. The colours of late autumn are the colours of the sunset: the farewell of the year and the farewell of the day. And of the life of man? Well, if it ends in a flourish of gold, that is no bad ending.
Hugh, coming from the abbot’s lodging, between haste to impart what he knew, and reluctance to deliver what could only be disturbing news, found his friend standing thus motionless in the middle of his small, beloved kingdom, staring rather within his own mind than at the straggling, autumnal growth about him. He started back to the outer world only when Hugh laid a hand on his shoulder, and visibly surfaced slowly from some secret place, fathoms deep in the centre of his being.
“God bless the work,” said Hugh, and took him by the arms, “if any’s been done here this afternoon. I thought you had taken root.”
“I was pondering the circular nature of human life,” said Cadfael, almost apologetically, “and the seasons of the year and the hours of the day. I never heard you come. I was not expecting to see you today.”
“Nor would you h
ave seen me, if Robert Bossu’s intelligencers had been a little less busy. Come within,” said Hugh, “and I’ll tell you what’s brewing. There’s matter concerning all good churchmen, and I’ve just come from informing Radulfus. But there’s also an item that will come close home to you. As indeed,” he owned, thrusting the door of Cadfael’s workshop open with a gusty sigh, “it does to me.”
“You’ve heard from Leicester?” Cadfael eyed him thoughtfully from the threshold. “Earl Robert Bossu keeps in touch? He views you as one of his hopefuls, Hugh, if he’s keeping that road open. What’s he about now?”
“Not he, so much, though he’ll be in it to the throat, whether he quite believes in it or not. No, it’s certain of the bishops have made the first move, but there’ll be some voices on either side, like Leicester’s, to back their efforts.”
Hugh sat down with him under the dangling bunches of drying herbs, stirring fragrantly along the beams in the draught from the open door, and told him of the proposed meeting at Coventry, of the safe conducts already being issued on either part, and of such prospects as existed of at any rate partial success.
“God he knows if either of them will so much as shift a foot. Stephen is exalted at having got Chester on his side, and Gloucester’s own son into the bargain, but Maud knows her menfolk have made very sure of Normandy, and that will sway some of our barons who have lands over there to safeguard, as well as here. I can see more and more of the wiser sort paying mouth allegiance still, but making as little move in the martial kind as they can contrive. But by all means let’s make the attempt. Roger de Clinton can be a powerful persuader when he’s in good earnest, and he’s in good earnest now, for his real quarry is the Atabeg Zenghi in Mosul, and his aim the recovery of Edessa. And Henry of Winchester will surely add his weight to the scale. Who knows? I’ve primed the abbot,” said Hugh dubiously, “but I doubt if the bishops will call on the monastic arm, they’d rather keep the reins in their own hands.”