The Heretic's Apprentice Read online

  ‘Robert,’ said Hugh, ‘is busy strengthening all his defences and turning the south-west into a fortress. And he and his sister between them are bringing up the lad she hopes to make king some day. Oh, yes, young Henry is still there in Bristol, but Stephen has no chance in the world of carrying his war that far, and even if he could, he would not know what to do with the boy when he had him. But neither can she get more good out of the child than the pleasure of his presence, though perhaps that’s benefit enough. In the end they’ll have to send him home again. The next time he comes – the next time it may be in earnest and in arms. Who knows?’

  The empress had sent over into France, less than a year ago, to plead for help from her husband, but Count Geoffrey of Anjou, whether he believed in his wife’s claim to the throne of England or not, had no intentions of sending over to her aid forces he himself was busy using adroitly and successfully in the conquest of Normandy, an enterprise which interested him much more than Maud’s pretensions. He had sent over, instead of the knights and arms she needed, their ten-year-old son.

  What sort of father, Cadfael wondered, could this Count of Anjou be? It was said that he set determined store upon the fortunes of his house and his successors, and gave his children a good education, and certainly he had every confidence, justifiably, in Earl Robert’s devotion to the child placed in his charge. But still, to send a boy so young into a country disrupted by civil war! No doubt he had Stephen’s measure, of course, and knew him incapable of harming the child even if he got him into his hands. And what if the child himself had a will of his own, even at so tender an age, and had urged the venture in his own right?

  Yes, an audacious father might well respect audacity in his son. No doubt, thought Cadfael, we shall hear more of this Henry Plantagenet who’s minding his lessons and biding his time in Bristol.

  ‘I must be off,’ said Hugh, rising and stretching lazily in the warmth of the sun. ‘I’ve had my fill of clerics for today – no offence to present company, but then, you’re no cleric. Did you never fancy taking minor orders, Cadfael? Just far enough to claim the benefit if ever one of your less seemly exploits came to light? Better the abbot’s court than mine, if ever it came to it!’

  ‘If ever it came to it,’ said Cadfael sedately, rising with him, ‘the likelihood is you’d need to keep your mouth tight shut, for you’d be in it with me nine times out of ten. Do you remember the horses you hid from the king’s round-up when –’

  Hugh flung an arm round his friend’s shoulders, laughing. ‘Oh, if you’re to start remembering, I can more than match you. Better agree to let old deeds rest. We were always the most reasonable of men. Come on, bear me company as far as the gatehouse. It must be getting round towards Vespers.’

  They made their way along the gravel path together without haste, beside the box hedge and through the vegetable garden to where the rose beds began. Brother Winfrid was just coming over the crest from the slope of the pease-field, striding springily with his spade over his shoulder.

  ‘Get leave soon, and come up and see your godson,’ said Hugh as they rounded the box hedge, and the hum and bustle of the court reached out to surround them like the busy sound of bees in swarm. ‘As soon as we reach town Giles begins asking for you.’

  ‘I will, gladly. I miss him when you go north, but he’s better there through the summer than here shut within walls. And Aline’s well?’ He asked it serenely, well aware that he would have heard of it at once if there had been anything amiss.

  ‘Blooming like a rose. But come and see for yourself. She’ll be expecting you.’

  They came round the corner of the guest-hall into the court, still almost as lively as a town square. One more horse was being led down to the stables, Brother Denis was receiving the arriving guest, dusty from the road, at the door of his domain; two or three attendant novices were running to and fro with brychans and candles and pitchers of water; visitors already settled stood watching the newcomers throng in at the gatehouse, greeting friends among them, renewing old acquaintances and embarking on new; while the children of the cloister, oblates and schoolboys alike, gathered in little groups, all eyes and ears, bouncing and shrilling like crickets, and darting about among the pilgrims as excitedly as dogs at a fair. The passing of Brother Jerome, scuttling up the court from the cloister towards the infirmary, would normally have subdued the boys into demure silence, but in this cheerful turmoil it was easy to avoid him.

  ‘You’ll have your house full for the festival,’ said Hugh, halting to watch the coloured chaos, and taking pleasure in it as candidly as did the children.

  In the group gathered just within the gate there was a sudden ripple of movement. The porter drew back towards the doorway of his lodge, and on either side people recoiled as if to allow passage to horsemen, but there was no sharp rapping of hooves striking the cobbles under the arch of the gateway. Those who entered came on foot, and as they emerged into the court the reason for making such generous way for them became apparent. A long, flat handcart came creaking in, towed by a thickset, grizzled countryman before, and pushed by a lean and travel-stained young man behind. The load it carried was covered by a dun-coloured cloak, and topped with a bundle wrapped in sacking, but by the way the two men leaned and strained at it it was seen to be heavy, and the shape of it, a man’s height long and shoulder-wide, brought mortality to mind. A ripple of silence washed outward from it, and by degrees reached the spot where Hugh and Cadfael stood watching. The children looked on great-eyed, ears pricked, at once awestricken and inquisitive, intent on missing nothing.

  ‘I think,’ said Hugh quietly, ‘you have a guest who’ll need a bed somewhere else than in the guest-hall.’

  The young man had straightened up wincingly from stooping into the weight of the cart, and looked round him for the nearest authority. The porter came towards him, circling the cart and coffin with the circumspect bearing of one accustomed to everything, and not to be put out of countenance even by the apparition of death intruding like a morality play into the preparations for a festival. What passed between them was too soft, too earnest and private to be heard beyond the two of them, but it seemed that the stranger was asking lodging for both himself and his charge. His bearing was reverent and courteous, as was due in these surroundings, but also quietly confident. He turned his head and gestured with his hand towards the church. A young fellow of perhaps twenty-six or twenty-seven years, in clothes sun-faded and very dusty from the roads. Above average tall, thin and sinewy, large-boned and broad-shouldered, with a tangle of straw-coloured hair somewhat fairer than the deep tan of his forehead and cheeks, and a good, bold prow of a nose, thin and straight. A proud face, somewhat drawn with effort just now, and earnest with the gravity of his errand, but by nature, Cadfael thought, studying him across the width of the court, it should be an open, hopeful, good-natured countenance, ready to smile, and a wide-lipped mouth ready to confide at the first friendly invitation.

  ‘One of your flock from here in the Foregate?’ asked Hugh, viewing him with interest. ‘But no, by the look of him he’s been on the roads from somewhere a good deal more distant.’

  ‘But for all that,’ said Cadfael, shaking his head over an elusive likeness, ‘it seems to me I’ve seen that face before, somewhere, at some time. Or else he reminds me of some other lad I’ve known.’

  ‘The lads you’ve known in your time could come from half the world over. Well, you’ll find out, all in good time,’ said Hugh, ‘for it seems Brother Denis is giving his attention to the matter, and one of your youngsters is off into the cloister in haste to fetch somebody else.’

  The somebody else proved to be no less than Prior Robert himself, with Brother Jerome trotting dutifully at his heels. The length of Robert’s stride and the shortness of Jerome’s legs turned what should have been a busy, self-important bustle into a hasty shamble, but it would always get Jerome in time to any spot where there was something happening that might provide him with occasion for cu
riosity, censure or sanctimony.

  ‘Your strange visitors are acceptable,’ observed Hugh, seeing how the conference was proceeding, ‘if only on probation. I suppose he could hardly turn away a dead man.’

  ‘The fellow with the cart I do know,’ said Cadfael. ‘He comes from close under the Wrekin, I’ve seen him bringing goods in to market. Cart and man must be hired for this delivery. But the other has come from far beyond that, for sure. Now I wonder how far he’s brought his charge, hiring help along the way. And whether he’s reached the end of his journey here.’

  It was by no means certain that Prior Robert welcomed the sudden appearance of a coffin in the centre of a court thronged with pilgrims hoping for good omens and pleasurable excitement. In fact Prior Robert never showed an approving face to anything that in any way disrupted the smooth and orthodox course of events within the enclave. But clearly he could find no reason to refuse whatever was being requested here with due deference. If only on probation, as Hugh had said, they were to be permitted to remain. Jerome ran officiously to round up four sturdy brothers and novices, to hoist the coffin from the cart and bear it away towards the cloister, bound, no doubt, for the mortuary chapel within the church. The young man lifted the modest roll of his possessions, and trudged somewhat wearily along behind the cortege, to vanish into the south archway of the cloister. He walked as if he were stiff and footsore, but bore himself erect and steadily, with no studied show of grief, though his face remained thoughtfully solemn, preoccupied rather with what went on in his own mind than what those around him here might be thinking.

  Brother Denis came down the steps from the guest-hall and walked briskly down the court after this funereal procession, presumably to retrieve and house with decent friendliness the living guest. The onlookers stared after for a moment, and then returned to their interrupted occasions, and the hum and motion of activity resumed, at first softly and hesitantly, but very soon more vociferously than before, since they had now something pleasurably strange to talk about, once the moment of awe was over.

  Hugh and Cadfael crossed the court to the gatehouse in considering silence. The carter had taken the shafts of his lightened cart and hauled it back through the arch of the gatehouse into the Foregate. Evidently he had been paid for his trouble in advance, and was content with his hire.

  ‘It seems that one’s job is done,’ said Hugh, watching him turn into the street. ‘No doubt you’ll soon hear what’s afoot from Brother Denis.’

  Hugh’s horse, the tall grey he perversely favoured, was tethered at the gatehouse; no great beauty in looks or temperament, hard-mouthed, strong-willed and obstinate, with a profound contempt for all humanity except his master, and nothing more than the tolerant respect of an equal even for Hugh.

  ‘Come up soon,’ said Hugh with his toe in the stirrup and the reins gathered in his hand, ‘and bring me all the gossip. Who knows, in a day or so, you may be able to fit a name to the face.’

  Chapter 2

  CADFAEL CAME OUT from the refectory after supper into a light, warm evening, radiant with reflected brightness from a rosy sunset. The readings during the meal, probably chosen by Prior Robert in compliment to Canon Gerbert, had been from the writings of Saint Augustine, of whom Cadfael was not as fond as he might have been. There is a certain unbending rigidity about Augustine that offers little compassion to anyone with whom he disagrees. Cadfael was never going to surrender his private reservations about any reputed saint who could describe humankind as a mass of corruption and sin proceeding inevitably towards death, or one who could look upon the world, for all its imperfections, and find it irredeemably evil. In this glowing evening light Cadfael looked upon the world, from the roses in the garden to the wrought stones of the cloister walls, and found it unquestionably beautiful. Nor could he accept that the number of those predestined to salvation was fixed, limited and immutable, as Augustine proclaimed, nor indeed that the fate of any man was sealed and hopeless from his birth, or why not throw away all regard for others and rob and murder and lay waste, and indulge every anarchic appetite in this world, having nothing beyond to look forward to?

  In this undisciplined mood Cadfael proceeded to the infirmary, instead of to Collations, where the pursuit of Saint Augustine’s ferocious righteousness would certainly continue. Much better to go and check the contents of Brother Edmund’s medicine cupboard, and sit and gossip a little while with the few old brothers now too feeble to play a full part in the order of the monastic day.

  Edmund, a child of the cloister from his fourth year and meticulous in observation, had gone dutifully to the chapter-house to listen to Jerome’s reading. He came back to make his nightly rounds just as Cadfael was closing the doors of the medicine-cupboard, and memorising with silently moving lips the three items that needed replenishment.

  ‘So this is where you got to,’ said Edmund, unsurprised. ‘That’s fortunate, for I’ve brought with me someone who needs to borrow a sharp eye and a steady hand. I was going to try it myself, but your eyes are better than mine.’

  Cadfael turned to see who this late evening patient might be. The light within there was none too good, and the man who came in on Edmund’s heels was hesitant in entering, and hung back shyly in the doorway. Young, thin, and about Edmund’s own height which was above the average.

  ‘Come in to the lamp,’ said Edmund, ‘and show Brother Cadfael your hand.’ And to Cadfael, as the young man drew near in silence: ‘Our guest is newly come today, and has had a long journey. He must be in good need of his sleep, but he’ll sleep the better if you can get the splinters out of his flesh, before they fester. Here, let me steady the lamp.’

  The rising light cast the young man’s face into sharp and craggy relief, fine, jutting nose, strong bones of cheek and jaw, deep shadows emphasising the set of the mouth and the hollows of the eyes under the high forehead. He had washed off the dust of travel and brushed into severe order the tangle of fair, waving hair. The colour of his eyes could not be determined at this moment, for they were cast down beneath large, arched lids at the right hand he was obediently holding close to the lamp, palm upturned. The young man who had brought with him into the abbey a dead companion, and asked shelter for them both.

  The hand he proffered deprecatingly for inspection was large and sinewy, with long, broad-jointed fingers. The damage was at once apparent. In the heel of his palm, in the flesh at the base of the thumb, two or three ragged punctures had been aggravated by pressure into a small inflamed wound. If it was not already festering, without attention it very soon would be.

  ‘Your porter keeps his cart in very poor shape,’ said Cadfael. ‘How did you impale yourself like this? Pushing it out of a ditch? Or was he leaving you more than your share of the work to do, safe with his harness in front there? And what have you been using to try and dig out the splinters? A dirty knife?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ said the young man. ‘I didn’t want to bother you with it. It was a new shaft he’d just fitted, not yet smoothed off properly. And it did make a very heavy load, what with having to line and seal it with lead. The slivers have run in deep, there’s wood still in there, though I did prick out some.’

  There were tweezers in the medicine cupboard. Cadfael probed carefully in the inflamed flesh, narrowing his eyes over the young man’s palm. His sight was excellent, and his touch, when necessary, relentless. The rough wood had gone deep, and splintered further in the flesh. He coaxed out fragment after fragment, and flexed and pressed the place to discover if any still remained. There was no telling from the demeanour of his patient, who stood placid and unflinching, taciturn by nature, or else shy and withdrawn here in a place still strange to him.

  ‘Do you still feel anything there within?’

  ‘No, only the soreness, no pricking,’ said the youth, experimenting.

  The path of the longest splinter showed dark under the skin. Cadfael reached into the cupboard for a lotion to cleanse the wound, comfrey and cleavers and woundwor
t, which had got its name for good reason. ‘To keep it from taking bad ways. If it’s still angry tomorrow, come to me and we’ll bathe it again, but I think you have good healing flesh.’

  Edmund had left them, to make the round of his elders, and refill the little constant lamp in their chapel. Cadfael closed the cupboard, and took up the lamp by which he had been working, to restore it to its usual place. It showed him his patient’s face fully lit from before, close and clear. The deep-set eyes, fixed unwaveringly on Cadfael, must surely be a dark but brilliant blue by daylight; now they looked almost black. The long mouth with its obstinate set suddenly relaxed into a wide boyish smile.

  ‘Now I do know you!’ said Cadfael, startled and pleased. ‘I thought when I saw you come in at the gatehouse I’d seen that face somewhere before. Not your name! If ever I knew that, I’ve forgotten it years since. But you’re the boy who was clerk to old William of Lythwood, and went off on pilgrimage with him, long ago now.’

  ‘Seven years,’ said the boy, flashing into animation at being remembered. ‘And my name’s Elave.’

  ‘Well, well, so you’re safe home after your wanderings! No wonder you had the look of having come half across the world. I remember William bringing his last gift to the church here, before he set out. He was bent on getting to Jerusalem, I recall at the time I half wished I could go with him. Did he reach the city indeed?’

  ‘He did,’ said Elave, growing ever brighter. ‘We did! Lucky I was that ever I took service with him, I had the best master a man could have. Even before he took the notion to take me with him on his journey, not having a son of his own.’

  ‘No, no more he had,’ agreed Cadfael, looking back through seven years. ‘It’s his nephews took over his business. A shrewd man he was, and a good patron to our house. There are many here among the brothers will remember his benefits…’