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“What’s in my way she may send here for, and welcome. Here you are, Aelfric, lad, here’s a bunch of either. Is she a good mistress, your lady?”

  “She’s that!” said the youth, and closed upon it, as he had upon mention of the maid. He brooded, frowning into mixed and confused thoughts. “She was a widow when she wed him.” He took the bunches of herbs, fingers gripping hard on the stems. On a throat? Whose, then, since he melted at mention of his mistress? “I thank you kindly, brother.”

  He drew back, lissome and silent. The door opening and closing took but a moment. Cadfael was left gazing after him very thoughtfully. There was still an hour before Vespers. He might well go over to the infirmary, and pour the sweet sound of Welsh into Brother Rhys’s old, dulled ears, and dig the monk’s-hood oil deep into his aching joints. It would be a decent deed.

  But that wild young thing, caged with his grievances, hurts and hatreds, what was to be done for him? A villein, if Cadfael knew one when he saw one, with abilities above his station, and some private anguish, maybe more than one. He remembered that mention of the maid, bitten off jealousy between set teeth.

  Well, they were but newly come, all four of them. Let the time work for good. Cadfael washed his hands, with all the thoroughness he recommended to his patrons, reviewed his sleeping kingdom, and went to visit the infirmary.

  *

  Old Brother Rhys was sitting up beside his neatly made bed, not far from the fire, nodding his ancient, grey-tonsured head. He looked proudly complacent, as one who has got his due against all the odds, stubbly chin jutting, thick old eyebrows bristling in all directions, and the small, sharp eyes beneath almost colourless in their grey pallor, but triumphantly bright. For he had a young, vigorous, dark-haired fellow sitting on a stool beside him, waiting on him good-humouredly and pouring voluble Welsh into his ears like a mountain spring. The old man’s gown was stripped down from his bony shoulders, and his attendant was busily massaging oil into the joints with probing fingers, drawing grunts of pleasure from his patient.

  “I see I’m forestalled,” said Cadfael into Brother Edmund’s ear, in the doorway.

  “A kinsman,” said Brother Edmund as softly. “Some young Welshman from up in the north of the shire, where Rhys comes from. It seems he came here today to help the new tenants move in at the house by the mill-pond. He’s connected somehow—journeyman to the woman’s son, I believe. And while he was here he thought to ask after the old man, which was a kind act. Rhys was complaining of his pains, and the young fellow offered, so I set him to work. Still, now you’re here, have a word. They’ll neither of them need to speak English for you.”

  “You’ll have warned him to wash his hands well, afterwards?”

  “And shown him where, and where to stow the bottle away safely when he’s done. He understands. I’d hardly let a man take risks with such a brew, after your lecture. I’ve told him what the stuff could do, misused.”

  The young man ceased his ministrations momentarily when Brother Cadfael approached, and made to stand up respectfully, but Cadfael waved him down again. “No, sit, lad, I won’t disturb you. I’m here for a word with an old friend, but I see you’ve taken on my work for me, and doing it well, too.”

  The young man, with cheerful practicality, took him at his word, and went on kneading the pungent oils into Brother Rhys’s aged shoulders. He was perhaps twenty-four or twenty-five years old, sturdily built and strong; his square, good-natured face was brown and weathered, and plentifully supplied with bone, a Welsh face, smooth-shaven and decisive, his hair and brows thick, wiry and black. His manner towards Brother Rhys was smiling, merry, almost teasing, as it probably would have been towards a child; and that was engaging in him, and won Brother Cadfael’s thoughtful approval, for Brother Rhys was indeed a child again. Livelier than usual today, however, the visitor had done him a deal of good.

  “Well, now, Cadfael!” he piped, twitching a shoulder pleasurably at the young man’s probing. “You see my kinsmen remember me yet. Here’s my niece Angharad’s boy come to see me, my great-nephew Meurig. I mind the time he was born… Eh, I mind the time she was born, for that matter, my sister’s little lass. It’s many years since I’ve seen her—or you, boy, come to think of it, you could have come to see me earlier. But there’s no family feeling in the young, these days.” But he was very complacent about it, enjoying handing out praise one moment and illogical reproof the next, a patriarch’s privilege. “And why didn’t the girl come her-self? Why didn’t you bring your mother with you?”

  “It’s a long journey from the north of the shire,” said the young man Meurig, easily, “and always more than enough to be done at home. But I’m nearer now, I work for a carpenter and carver in the town here, you’ll be seeing more of me. I’ll come and do this for you again—have you out on a hillside with the sheep yet, come spring.”

  “My niece Angharad,” murmured the old man, benignly smiling, “was the prettiest little thing in half the shire, and she grew up a beauty. What age would she be now? Five and forty, it may be, but I warrant she’s still as beautiful as ever she was—don’t you tell me different, I never yet saw the one to touch her…”

  “Her son’s not likely to tell you any different,” agreed Meurig comfortably. Are not all one’s lost nieces beautiful? And the weather of the summers when they were children always radiant, and the wild fruit they gathered then sweeter than any that grows now? For some years Brother Rhys had been considered mildly senile, his wanderings timeless and disorganised; memory failed, fantasy burgeoned, he drew pictures that never had existed on sea or land. But somewhere else, perhaps? Now, with the stimulus of this youthful and vigorous presence and the knowledge of their shared blood, he quickened into sharp remembrance again. It might not last, but it was a princely gift while it lasted.

  “Turn a little more to the fire—there, is that the spot?” Rhys wriggled and purred like a stroked cat, and the young man laughed, and plied deep into the flesh, smoothing out knots with a firmness that both hurt and gratified.

  “This is no new skill with you,” said Brother Cadfael, observing with approval.

  “I’ve worked mostly with horses, and they get their troubles with swellings and injuries, like men. You learn to see with your fingers, where to find what’s bound, and loose it again.”

  “But he’s a carpenter now,” Brother Rhys said proudly, “and working here in Shrewsbury.”

  “And we’re making a lectern for your Lady Chapel,” said Meurig, “and when it’s done—and it soon will be—I’ll be bringing it down to the abbey myself. And I’ll come and see you again while I’m here.”

  “And rub my shoulder again? It gets winterly now, towards Christmas, the cold gets in my bones.”

  “I will so. But that’s enough for now, I’ll be making you too sore. Have up your gown again, uncle—there, and keep the warmth in. Does it burn?”

  “For a while it prickled like nettles, now there’s a fine, easy glow. I don’t feel any pain there now. But I’m tired…”

  He would be, tired and drowsy after the manipulation of his flesh and the reviving of his ancient mind. “That’s right, that’s well. Now you should lie down and have a sleep.” Meurig looked to Cadfael to support him. “Isn’t that best, brother?”

  “The very best thing. That’s hard exercise you’ve been taking, you should rest after it.”

  Rhys was well content to be settled on his bed and left to the sleep that was already overtaking him. His drowsy farewells followed them towards the door, to fade into silence before they reached it. “Take my greetings to your mother, Meurig. And ask her to come and see me… when they bring the wool to Shrewsbury market… I’m fain to see her again…”

  “He set great store by your mother, it seems,” said Cadfael, watching as Meurig washed his hands where Brother Edmund had shown him, and making sure that he was thorough about it. “Is there a hope that he may see her again?”

  Meurig’s face, seen in profile as he wrung and scrubbed a
t his hands, had a gravity and brooding thoughtfulness that belied the indulgent gaiety he had put on for this old man. After a moment he said: “Not in this world.” He turned to reach for the coarse towel, and looked Cadfael in the eyes fully and steadily. “My mother has been dead for eleven years this Michaelmas past. He knows it—or he knew it—as well as I. But if she’s alive to him again in his dotage, why should I remind him? Let him keep that thought and any other that can pleasure him.”

  They went out together in silence, into the chilly air of the great court, and there separated, Meurig striking across briskly towards the gatehouse, Cadfael making for the church, where the Vesper bell could be only a few minutes delayed.

  “God speed!” said Cadfael in parting. “You gave the old man back a piece of his youth today. The elders of your kinship, I think, are fortunate in their sons.”

  “My kinship,” said Meurig, halting in mid-stride to stare back with great black eyes, “is my mother’s kinship, I go with my own. My father was not a Welshman.”

  He went, lengthening a lusty stride, the square shape of his shoulders cleaving the dusk. And Cadfael wondered about him, as he had wondered about the villein Aelfric, as far as the porch of the church, and then abandoned him for a more immediate duty. These people are, after all, responsible for themselves, and none of his business.

  Not yet!

  Chapter 2

  IT WAS NEARING MID-DECEMBER before the dour manservant Aelfric came again to the herb-gardens for kitchen herbs for his mistress. By that time he was a figure familiar enough to fade into the daily pattern of comings and goings about the great court, and among the multifarious noise and traffic his solitary silence remained generally unremarked. Cadfael had seen him in the mornings, passing through to the bakery and buttery for the day’s loaves and measures of ale, always mute, always purposeful, quick of step and withdrawn of countenance, as though any delay on his part might bring penance, as perhaps, indeed, it might. Brother Mark, attracted to a soul seemingly as lonely and anxious as his own had once been, had made some attempt to engage the stranger in talk, and had little success.

  “Though he does unfold a little,” said Mark thoughtfully, kicking his heels on the bench in Cadfael’s workshop as he stirred a salve. “I don’t think he’s an unfriendly soul at all, if he had not something on his mind. When I greet him he sometimes comes near to smiling, but he’ll never linger and talk.”

  “He has his work to do, and perhaps a master who’s hard to please,” said Cadfael mildly.

  “I heard he’s out of sorts since they moved in,” said Mark. “The master, I mean. Not really ill, but low and out of appetite.”

  “So might I be,” opined Cadfael, “if I had nothing to do but sit there and mope, and wonder if I’d done well to part with my lands, even in old age. What seems an easy life in contemplation can be hard enough when it comes to reality.”

  “The girl,” said Mark judiciously, “is pretty. Have you seen her?”

  “I have not. And you, my lad, should be averting your eyes from contemplation of women. Pretty, is she?”

  “Very pretty. Not very tall, round and fair, with a lot of yellow hair, and black eyes. It makes a great effect, yellow hair and black eyes. I saw her come to the stable with some message for Aelfric yesterday. He looked after her, when she went, in such a curious way. Perhaps she is his trouble.”

  And that might well be, thought Cadfael, if he was a villein, and she a free woman, and unlikely to look so low as a serf, and they were rubbing shoulders about the household day after day, in closer quarters here than about the manor of Mallilie.

  “She could as well be trouble for you, boy, if Brother Jerome or Prior Robert sees you conning her,” he said briskly. “If you must admire a fine girl, let it be out of the corner of your eyes. Don’t forget we have a reforming rule here now.”

  “Oh, I’m careful!” Mark was by no means in awe of Brother Cadfael now, and had adopted from him somewhat unorthodox notions of what was and was not permissible. In any case, this boy’s vocation was no longer in doubt or danger. If the times had been less troublesome he might well have sought leave to go and study in Oxford, but even without that opportunity, Cadfael was reasonably certain he would end by taking orders, and become a priest, and a good priest, too, one aware that women existed in the world, and respectful towards their presence and their worth. Mark had come unwillingly and resisting into the cloister, but he had found his rightful place. Not everyone was so fortunate.

  Aelfric came to the hut in the afternoon of a cloudy day, to ask for some dried mint. “My mistress wants to brew a mint cordial for my master.”

  “I hear he’s somewhat out of humour and health,” said Cadfael, rustling the linen bags that gave forth such rich, heady scents upon the air. The young man’s nostrils quivered and widened with pleasure, inhaling close sweetness. In the soft light within, his wary face eased a little.

  “There’s not much ails him, more of the mind than the body. He’ll be well enough when he plucks up heart. He’s out of sorts with his kin most of all,” said Aelfric, growing unexpectedly confiding.

  “That’s trying for you all, even the lady,” said Cadfael.

  “And she does everything woman could do for him, there’s nothing he can reproach her with. But this upheaval has him out with everybody, even himself. He’s been expecting his son to come running and eat humble pie before this, to try and get his inheritance back, and he’s been disappointed, and that sours him.”

  Cadfael turned a surprised face at this. “You mean he’s cut off a son, to give his inheritance to the abbey? To spite the young man? That he couldn’t, in law. No house would think of accepting such a bargain, without the consent of the heir.”

  “It’s not his own son.” Aelfric shrugged, shaking his head. “It’s his wife’s son by a former marriage, so the lad has no legal claims on him. It’s true he’d made a will naming him as his heir, but the abbey charter wipes that out—or will when it’s sealed and witnessed. He has no remedy in law. They fell out, and he’s lost his promised manor, and that’s all there is to it.”

  “For what fault could he deserve such treatment?” Cadfael wondered.

  Aelfric hoisted deprecating shoulders, lean shoulders but broad and straight, as Cadfael observed. “He’s young and wayward, and my lord is old and irritable, not used to being crossed. Neither was the boy used to it, and he fought hard when he found his liberty curbed.”

  “And what’s become of him now? For I recall you said you were but four in the house.”

  “He has a neck as stiff as my lord’s, he’s taken himself off to live with his married sister and her family, and learn a trade. He was expected back with his tail between his legs before now, my lord was counting on it, but never a sign, and I doubt if there will be.”

  It sounded, Cadfael reflected ruefully, a troublous situation for the disinherited boy’s mother, who must be torn two ways in this dissension. Certainly it accounted for an act of spleen which the old man was probably already regretting. He handed over the bunch of mint stems, their oval leaves still well formed and whole, for they had dried in honest summer heat, and had even a good shade of green left. “She’ll need to rub it herself, but it keeps its flavour better so. If she wants more, and you let me know, I’ll crumble it fine for her, but this time we’ll not keep her waiting. I hope it may go some way towards sweetening him, for his own sake and hers. And yours, too,” said Cadfael, and clapped him lightly on the shoulder.

  Aelfric’s gaunt features were convulsed for a moment by what might almost have been a smile, but of a bitter, resigned sort. “Villeins are there to be scapegoats,” he said with soft, sudden violence, and left the hut hurriedly, with only a hasty, belated murmur of thanks.

  *

  With the approach of Christmas it was quite usual for many of the merchants of Shrewsbury, and the lords of many small manors close by, to give a guilty thought to the welfare of their souls, and their standing as devout and
ostentatious Christians, and to see small ways of acquiring merit, preferably as economically as possible. The conventual fare of pulse, beans, fish, and occasional and meagre meat benefited by sudden gifts of flesh and fowl to provide treats for the monks of St. Peter’s. Honey-baked cakes appeared, and dried fruits, and chickens, and even, sometimes, a haunch of venison, all devoted to the pittances that turned a devotional sacrament into a rare indulgence, a holy day into a holiday.

  Some, of course, were selective in their giving, and made sure that their alms reached abbot or prior, on the assumption that his prayers might avail them more than those of the humbler brothers. There was a knight of south Shropshire who was quite unaware that Abbot Heribert had been summoned to London to be disciplined, and sent for his delectation a plump partridge, in splendid condition after a fat season. Naturally it arrived at the abbot’s lodging to be greeted with pleasure by Prior Robert, who sent it down to the kitchen, to Brother Petrus, to be prepared for the midday meal in fitting style.

  Brother Petrus, who seethed with resentment against him for Abbot Heribert’s sake, glowered at the beautiful bird, and seriously considered spoiling it in some way, by burning it, or drying it with over-roasting, or serving it with a sauce that would ruin its perfection. But he was a cook of pride and honour, and he could not do it. The worst he could do was prepare it in an elaborate way which he himself greatly loved, with red wine and a highly spiced, aromatic sauce, cooked long and slow, and hope that Prior Robert would not be able to stomach it.

  The prior was in high content with himself, with his present eminence, with the assured prospect of elevation to the abbacy in the near future, and with the manor of Mallilie, which he had been studying from the steward’s reports, and found a surprisingly lavish gift. Gervase Bonel had surely let his spite run away with his reason, to barter such a property for the simple necessities of life, when he was already turned sixty years, and could hardly expect to enjoy his retirement very long. A few extra attentions could be accorded him at little cost. Brother Jerome, always primed with the news within and without the pale, had reported that Master Bonel was slightly under the weather, with a jaded appetite. He might appreciate the small personal compliment of a dish from the abbot’s table. And there was enough, a partridge being a bird of ample flesh.