The Devil's Novice Read online

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  The young man was introduced at chapter next day, to make his formal profession and be made welcome by those who were to be his brothers. During their probation novices took no part in the discussions in chapter, but might be admitted to listen and learn on occasions, and Abbot Radulfus held that they were entitled to be received with brotherly courtesy from their entry.

  In the habit, newly donned, Meriet moved a little awkwardly, and looked strangely smaller than in his own secular clothes, Cadfael reflected, watching him thoughtfully. There was no father beside him now to freeze him into hostility, and no need to be wary of those who were glad to accept him among them; but still there was a rigidity about him, and he stood with eyes cast down and hands tightly clasped, perhaps over-awed by the step he was taking. He answered questions in a low, level voice, quickly and submissively. A face naturally ivory-pale, but tanned deep gold by the summer sun, the flush of blood beneath his smooth skin quick to mantle on high cheekbones. A thin, straight nose, with fastidious nostrils that quivered nervously, and that full, proud mouth that had so rigorous a set to it in repose, and looked so vulnerable in speech. And the eyes he hid in humility, large-lidded under clear, arched brows blacker than his hair.

  “You have considered well,” said the abbot, “and now have time to consider yet again, without blame from any. Is it your wish to enter the cloistered life here among us? A wish truly conceived and firmly maintained? You may speak out whatever is in your heart.”

  The low voice said, rather fiercely than firmly: “It is my wish, Father.” He seemed almost to start at his own vehemence, and added more warily: “I beg that you will let me in, and I promise obedience.”

  “That vow comes later,” said Radulfus with a faint smile. “For this while, Brother Paul will be your instructor, and you will submit yourself to him. For those who come into the Order in mature years a full year’s probation is customary. You have time both to promise and to fulfil.”

  The submissively bowed head reared suddenly at hearing this, the large eyelids rolled back from wide, clear eyes of a dark hazel flecked with green. So seldom had he looked up full into the light that their brightness was startling and disquieting. And his voice was higher and sharper, almost dismayed, as he asked: “Father, is that needful? Cannot the time be cut short, if I study to deserve? The waiting is hard to bear.”

  The abbot regarded him steadily, and drew his level brows together in a frown, rather of speculation and wonder than of displeasure. “The period can be shortened, if such a move seems good to us. But impatience is not the best counsellor, nor haste the best advocate. It will be made plain if you are ready earlier. Do not strain after perfection.”

  It was clear that the young man Meriet was sensitive to all the implications of both words and tone. He lowered his lids again like shutters over the brightness, and regarded his folded hands. “Father, I will be guided. But I do desire with all my heart to have the fullness of my commitment, and be at peace.” Cadfael thought that the guarded voice shook for an instant. In all probability that did the boy no harm with Radulfus, who had experience both of passionate enthusiasts and those gradually drawn like lambs to the slaughter of dedication.

  “That can be earned,” said the abbot gently.

  “Father, it shall!” Yes, the level utterance did quiver, however briefly. He kept the startling eyes veiled.

  Radulfus dismissed him with somewhat careful kindness, and closed the chapter after his departure. A model entry? Or was it a shade too close to the feverish fervour an abbot as shrewd as Radulfus must suspect and deplore, and watch very warily hereafter? Yet a high-mettled, earnest youth, coming to his desired haven, might well be over-eager and in too much of a hurry. Cadfael, whose two broad feet had always been solidly planted on earth, even when he took his convinced decision to come into harbour for the rest of a long life, had considerable sympathy with the ardent young, who overdo everything, and take wing at a line of verse or a snatch of music. Some who thus take fire burn to the day of their death, and set light to many others, leaving a trail of radiance to generations to come. Other fires sink for want of fuel, but do no harm to any. Time would discover what young Meriet’s small, desperate flame portended.

  *

  Hugh Beringar, deputy-sheriff of Shropshire, came down from his manor of Maesbury to take charge in Shrewsbury, for his superior, Gilbert Prestcote, had departed to join King Stephen at Westminster for his half-yearly visit at Michaelmas, to render account of his shire and its revenues. Between the two of them they had held the county staunch and well-defended, reasonably free from the disorders that racked most of the country, and the abbey had good cause to be grateful to them, for many of its sister houses along the Welsh marches had been sacked, pillaged, evacuated, turned into fortresses for war, some more than once, and no remedy offered. Worse than the armies of King Stephen on the one hand and his cousin the empress on the other—and in all conscience they were bad enough—the land was crawling with private armies, predators large and small, devouring everything, wherever they were safe from any force of law strong enough to contain them. In Shropshire the law had been strong enough, thus far, and loyal enough to care for its own.

  When he had seen his wife and baby son installed comfortably in his town house near St. Mary’s church, and satisfied himself of the good order kept in the castle garrison, Hugh’s first visit was always to pay his respects to the abbot. By the same token, he never left the enclave without seeking out Brother Cadfael in his workshop in the garden. They were old friends, closer than father and son, having not only that easy and tolerant relationship of two generations, but shared experiences that made of them contemporaries. They sharpened minds, one upon the other, for the better protection of values and institutions that needed defence with every passing day in a land so shaken and disrupted.

  Cadfael asked after Aline, and smiled with pleasure even in speaking her name. He had seen her won by combat, along with high office for so young a man as his friend, and he felt almost a grandsire’s fond pride in their firstborn son, to whom he had stood godfather at his baptism in the first days of this same year.

  “Radiant,” said Hugh with high content, “and asking after you. When times serves I’ll make occasion to carry you off, and you shall see for yourself how she’s blossomed.”

  “The bud was rare enough,” said Cadfael. “And the imp Giles? Dear life, nine months old, he’ll be quartering your floors like a hound-pup! They’re on their feet almost before they’re out of your arms.”

  “He’s as fast on four legs,” said Hugh proudly, “as his slave Constance is on two. And has a grip on him like a swordsman born. But God keep that time well away from him many years yet, his childhood will be all too short for me. And God willing, we shall be clear of this shattered time before ever he comes to manhood. There was a time when England enjoyed a settled rule, there must be another such to come.”

  He was a balanced and resilient creature, but the times cast their shadow on him when he thought on his office and his allegiance.

  “What’s the word from the south?” asked Cadfael, observing the momentary cloud. “It seems Bishop Henry’s conference came to precious little in the end.”

  Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester and papal legate, was the king’s younger brother, and had been his staunch adherent until Stephen had affronted, attacked and gravely offended the church in the persons of certain of its bishops. Where Bishop Henry’s personal allegiance now rested was matter for some speculation, since his cousin the Empress Maud had actually arrived in England and ensconced herself securely with her faction in the west, based upon the city of Gloucester. An exceedingly able, ambitious and practical cleric might well feel some sympathy upon both sides, and a great deal more exasperation with both sides; and it was consistent with his situation, torn between kin, that he should have spent all the spring and summer months of this year trying his best to get them to come together sensibly, and make some arrangement
for the future that should appease, if not satisfy, both claims, and give England a credible government and some prospect of the restoration of law. He had done his best, and even managed to bring representatives of both parties to meet near Bath only a month or so ago. But nothing had come of it.

  “Though it stopped the fighting,” said Hugh wryly, “at least for a while. But no, there’s no fruit to gather.”

  “As we heard it,” said Cadfael, “the empress was willing to have her claim laid before the church as judge, and Stephen was not.”

  “No marvel!” said Hugh, and grinned briefly at the thought. “He is in possession, she is not. In any submission to trial, he has all to lose, she has nothing at stake, and something to gain. Even a hung judgement would reflect she is no fool. And my king, God give him better sense, has affronted the church, which is not slow to avenge itself. No, there was nothing to be hoped for there. Bishop Henry is bound away into France at this moment, he hasn’t given up hope, he’s after the backing of the French King and Count Theobald of Normandy. He’ll be busy these next weeks, working out some propositions for peace with them, and come back armed to accost both these enemies again. To tell truth, he hoped for more backing here than ever he got, from the north above all. But they held their tongues and stayed at home.”

  “Chester?” hazarded Cadfael.

  Earl Ranulf of Chester was an independent-minded demi-king in a strong northern palatine, and married to a daughter of the earl of Gloucester, the empress’s half-brother and chief champion in this fight, but he had grudges against both factions, and had kept a cautious peace in his own realm so far, without committing himself to arms for either party.

  “He and his half-brother, William of Roumare. Roumare has large holdings in Lincolnshire, and the two between them are a force to be reckoned with. They’ve held the balance, up there, granted, but they could have done more. Well, we can be grateful even for a passing truce. And we can hope.”

  Hope was in no very generous supply in England during these hard years, Cadfael reflected ruefully. But do him justice, Henry of Blois was trying his best to bring order out of chaos. Henry was proof positive that there is a grand career to be made in the world by early assumption of the cowl. Monk of Cluny, abbot of Glastonbury, bishop of Winchester, papal legate—a rise as abrupt and spectacular as a rainbow. True, he was a king’s nephew to start with, and owed his rapid advancement to the old king Henry. Able younger sons from lesser families choosing the cloister and the habit could not all expect the mitre, within or without their abbeys. That brittle youngster with the passionate mouth and the green-flecked eyes, for instance—how far was he likely to get on the road to power?

  “Hugh,” said Cadfael, damping down his brazier with a turf to keep it live but sleepy, in case he should want it later, “what do you know of the Aspleys of Aspley? Down the fringe of the Long Forest, I fancy, no great way from the town, but solitary.”

  “Not so solitary,” said Hugh, mildly surprised by the query. “There are three neighbour manors there, all grown from what began as one assart. They all held from the great earl, they all hold from the crown now. He’s taken the name Aspley. His grandsire was Saxon to the finger-ends, but a solid man, and Earl Roger took him into favour and left him his land. They’re Saxon still, but they’d taken his salt, and were loyal to it and went with the earldom when it came to the crown. This lord took a Norman wife and she brought him a manor somewhere to the north, beyond Nottingham, but Aspley is still the head of his honour. Why, what’s Aspley to you?”

  “A shape on a horse in the rain,” said Cadfael simply. “He’s brought us his younger son, heaven-bent or hell-bent on the cloistered life. I wondered why, that’s the truth of it.”

  “Why?” Hugh shrugged and smiled. “A small honour, and an elder brother. There’ll be no land for him, unless he has the martial bent and sets out to carve some for himself. And cloister and church are no bad prospects. A sharp lad could get farther that way than hiring out a sword. Where’s the mystery?”

  And there, vivid in Cadfael’s mind, was the still young and vigorous figure of Henry of Blois to point the judgement. But was that stiff and quivering boy the stuff of government?

  “What like is the father?” he asked, sitting down beside his friend on the broad bench against the wall of his workshop.

  “From a family older than Ethelred, and proud as the devil himself, for all he has but two manors to his name. Princes kept their own local courts in content, then. There are such houses still, in the hill lands and the forests. I suppose he must be some years past fifty,” said Hugh, pondering placidly enough over his dutiful studies of the lands and lords under his vigilance in these uneasy times. “His reputation and word stand high. I never saw the sons. There’d be five or six years between them, I fancy. Your sprig would be what age?”

  “Nineteen, so he’s reported.”

  “What frets you about him?” asked Hugh, undisturbed though perceptive; and he slanted a brief glance along his shoulder at Brother Cadfael’s blunt profile, and waited without impatience.

  “His tameness,” said Cadfael, and checked himself at finding his imagination, rather than his tongue, so unguarded. “Since by nature he is wild,” he went on firmly, “with a staring eye on him like a falcon or a pheasant, and a brow like an overhanging rock. And folds his hands and dips his lids like a maidservant scolded!”

  “He practises his craft,” said Hugh easily, “and studies his abbot. So they do, the sharp lads. You’ve seen them come and go.”

  “So I have.” Ineptly enough, some of them, ambitious young fellows gifted with the means to go so far and no farther, and bidding far beyond their abilities. He had no such feeling about this one. That hunger and thirst after acceptance, beyond rescue, seemed to him an end in itself, a measure of desperation. He doubted if the falcon-eyes looked beyond at all, or saw any horizon outside the enclosing wall of the enclave. “Those who want a door to close behind them, Hugh, must be either escaping into the world within or from the world without. There is a difference. But do you know a way of telling one from the other?”

  Chapter 2

  THERE WAS A FAIR CROP of October apples that year in the orchards along the Gaye, and since the weather had briefly turned unpredictable, they had to take advantage of three fine days in succession that came in the middle of the week, and harvest the fruit while it was dry. Accordingly they mustered all hands to the work, choir monks and servants, and all the novices except the schoolboys. Pleasant work enough, especially for the youngsters who were allowed to climb trees with approval, and kilt their habits to the knee, in a brief return to boyhood.

  One of the tradesmen of the town had a hut close to the corner of the abbey lands along the Gaye, where he kept goats and bees, and he had leave to cut fodder for his beasts under the orchard trees, his own grazing being somewhat limited. He was out there that day with a sickle, brushing the longer grass, last cut of the year, from round the boles, where the scythe could not be safely used. Cadfael passed the time of day with him pleasantly, and sat down with him under an apple tree to exchange the leisured civilities proper to such a meeting. There were very few burgesses in Shrewsbury he did not know, and this good man had a flock of children to ask after.

  Cadfael had it on his conscience afterwards that it might well have been his neighbourly attentions that caused his companion to lay down his sickle under the tree, and forget to pick it up again when his youngest son, a frogling knee-high, came hopping to call his father to his midday bread and ale. However that might be, leave it he did, in the tussocky grass braced against the bole. And Cadfael rose a little stiffly, and went to the picking of apples, while his fellow-gossip hoisted his youngest by standing leaps back to the hut, and listened to his chatter all the way.

  The straw baskets were filling merrily by then. Not the largest harvest Cadfael had known from this orchard, but a welcome one all the same. A mellow, half-misty, half-sunlit day, the river running demure and still
between them and the high, turreted silhouette of the town, and the ripe scent of harvest, compounded of fruit, dry grasses, seeding plants and summer-warmed trees growing sleepy towards their rest, heavy and sweet on the air and in the nose; no marvel if constraints were lifted and hearts lightened. The hands laboured and the minds were eased. Cadfael caught sight of Brother Meriet working eagerly, heavy sleeves turned back from round, brown, shapely young arms, skirts kilted to smooth brown knees, the cowl shaken low on his shoulders, and his untonsured head shaggy and dark and vivid against the sky. His profile shone clear, the hazel eyes wide and unveiled. He was smiling. No shared, confiding smile, only a witness to his own content, and that, perhaps, brief and vulnerable enough.

  Cadfael lost sight of him, plodding modestly ahead with his own efforts. It is perfectly possible to be spiritually involved in private prayer while working hard at gathering apples, but he was only too well aware that he himself was fully absorbed in the sensuous pleasure of the day, and from what he had seen of Brother Meriet’s face, so was that young man. And very well it suited him.

  It was unfortunate that the heaviest and most ungainly of the novices should choose to climb the very tree beneath which the sickle was lying, and still more unfortunate that he should venture to lean out too far in his efforts to reach one cluster of fruit. The tree was of the tip-bearing variety, and the branches weakened by a weighty crop. A limb broke under the strain, and down came the climber in a flurry of falling leaves and crackling twigs, straight on to the upturned blade of the sickle.