A Morbid Taste For Bones bc-1 Page 4

  “It is hardly important, surely?” said Prior Robert with ominous mildness. “Your bishop and your prince have made their views plain. The parishioners need not be consulted.”

  That, too, Cadfael interpreted, Urien choosing to remain neutral and mute.

  “Impossible!” said Huw firmly, knowing himself on secure ground. “In such a grave matter affecting the whole parish, nothing can be done without calling together the assembly of the free men, and putting the case to them fully and publicly. Doubtless the will of prince and bishop will prevail, but even so, these must be put to the people before they can say yes or no to them. I shall call such an assembly tomorrow. Your case can only be vindicated absolutely by public acceptance.”

  “He says truly,” said Urien, holding the prior’s austere and half affronted eyes. “You will do well to get the goodwill of Gwytherin, however many blessings you already have. They respect their bishop, and are very content with their king and his sons. I doubt if you need grudge the delay.”

  Prior Robert accepted both the warning and the reassurance, and felt the need of a period of quietude in which to review his strategy and prepare his persuasions. When Urien rose to take his leave, his errand punctiliously completed, the Prior also rose, half a head taller than the tallest there, and folded his long white hands in submissive resignation.

  “We have yet two hours or more to Vespers,” he said, eyeing the angle of the sun. “I should like to withdraw into your church and spend some while in meditation, and prayer for right guidance. Brother Cadfael, you had better remain with Father Huw, and help him in any arrangements he needs to make, and you, Brother John, bestow the horses as he directs, and see them cared for. The rest will join me in intercession, that we may conduct this enterprise rightly.”

  He swept away, elongated and silvery and majestic, and had to stoop his head to enter under the low round arch of the church door. Brother Richard, Brother Jerome, Brother Columbanus vanished within on his heels. Not all the time they were together there would be spent in prayer. They would be considering what arguments would be most likely to carry the day with Father Huw’s free assembly, or what oblique ecclesiastical threats daunt them into submission.

  Brother John looked after the lofty silver head until it stooped with accurate dignity just low enough to pass under the stone, and let out something between a sigh and an arrested gurgle of laughter, as though he had been praying for a miscalculation. What with the journey, and the exercise, and the outdoor living, he looked ruddier and healthier and more athletic than ever.

  “I’ve been hoping all this while for a chance to get my leg over that dapple-gray,” he said. “Richard rides him like a badly-balanced woolsack. I hope Father Huw’s stabling is a mile or more away.”

  Father Huw’s plans for them, it seemed, involved two of the nearer and more prosperous members of his flock, but even so, in the scattered Welsh way, their houses were dispersed in valley and forest.

  “I shall give up my own house to the prior and sub-prior, of course,” he said, “and sleep in the loft above my cow. For the beasts, my grazing here is too small, and I have no stable, but Bened the smith has a good paddock above the water-meadows, and stabling with a loft, if this young brother will not mind being lodged the better part of a mite from his fellows. And for you and your two companions, Brother Cadfael, there is open house half a mile from here through the woods, with Cadwallon, who has one of the biggest holdings in these parts.”

  Brother Cadfael considered the prospect of being housed with Jerome and Columbanus, and found it unattractive. “Since I am the only one among us who has fluent Welsh,” he said diplomatically, “I should remain close to Prior Robert’s side. With your goodwill, Huw, I’ll share your loft above the cow-byre, and be very comfortable there.”

  “If that’s your wish,” said Huw simply, “I shall be glad of your company. And now I must set this young man on his way to the smithy.”

  “And I,” said Cadfael, “if you don’t need me along with you — and yonder boy will make himself understood in whatever language, or none! — will go a piece of the way back with Urien. If I can pick up an acquaintance or so among your flock, so much the better, for I like the took of them and their valley.”

  Brother John came out from the tiny paddock leading the two tall horses, the mules following on leading reins. Huw’s eyes glowed almost as bright as John’s, caressing the smooth lines of neck and shoulder.

  “How long it is,” he said wistfully, “since I was on a good horse!”

  “Come on, then, Father,” urged Brother John, understanding the look if not the words, “up with you! Here’s a hand, if you fancy the roan. Lead the way in style!” And he cupped a palm for the priest’s lifted foot, and hoisted him, dazed and enchanted, into the saddle. Up himself on the grey, he fell in alongside, ready if the older man should need a steadying hand, but the brown knees gripped happily He had not forgotten how. “Bravely!” said John, hugely laughing. “We shall get on famously together, and end up in a race!”

  Urien, checking his girth, watched them ride away out or the gentle bowl of the clearing “There go two happy men,” he said thoughtfully.

  “More and more I wonder,” said Cadfael, “how that youngster ever came to commit himself to the monastic life.”

  “Or you, for instance?” said Urien, with his toe in the stirrup. “Come, if you want to view the ground, we’ll take the valley way a piece, before I leave you for the hills.”

  They parted at the crest of the ridge, among the trees but where a fold of the ground showed them the ox-team still doggedly labouring at a second strip, continuing the line of the first, above the richer valley land. Two such strips in one day was prodigious work.

  “Your prior will be wise,” said Urien, taking his leave, “to take a lesson from yonder young fellow. Leading and coaxing pays better than driving in these parts. But I need not tell you — a man as Welsh as myself.”

  Cadfael watched him ride away gently along the cleared track until he vanished among the trees. Then he turned back towards Gwytherin, but went steeply downhill towards the river, and at the edge of the forest stood in green shadow under an oak tree, gazing across the sunlit meadows and the silver thread of river to where the team heaved and strained along the last furrow. Here there was no great distance between them, and he could see clearly the gloss of sweat on the pelts of the oxen, and the heavy curl of the soil as it heeled back from the share. The ploughman was dark, squat and powerful, with a salting of grey in his shaggy locks, but the ox-caller was tall and slender, and the curling hair that tossed on his neck and clung to his moist brow was as fair as flax. He managed his backward walking without a glance behind, feeling his way light-footed and gracefully, as if he had eyes in the back of his heels. His voice was hoarse and tired with long use now, but still clear and merry, more effective than any goad, as he cajoled his weary beasts along the final furrow, calling and luring and praising, telling them they had done marvels, and should get their rest and their meed for it, that in moments now they would be going home, and he was proud of them and loved them, as if he had been talking to Christian souls. And the beasts heaved and leaned, throwing their weight into the yokes and keeping their eyes upon him, and plainly would do anything in their power to please him. When the plough curved to the end and halted, and the steaming oxen stood with lowered heads, the young man came and flung an arm over the neck of the near leader, and scrubbed with brisk knuckles in the curly hair on the other’s brow, and Cadfael said aloud: “Bravely! But, my friend, how did you stray into Wales?”

  Something small, round and hard dropped rustling through the leaves above him, and hit him neatly in the middle of his weather-beaten tonsure. He clapped a hand to his crown, and said something unbecoming his habit. But it was only one of last year’s oak-balls, dried out by a winter’s weathering to the hardness of a pebble. He looked up into the foliage above his head, already thick and turning rich green from its early gold, and i
t seemed to him that the tremor of leaves where there was no wind required more explanation than the accidental fall of one small remnant of a dead year. It stilled very quickly, and even its stillness, by contrast, seemed too careful and aware. Cadfael removed himself a few yards, as if about to walk on, and doubled round again behind the next barrier of bushes to see if the bait had been taken.

  A small bare foot, slightly strained with moss and bark, reached down out of the branches to a toe-hold on the trunk. Its fellow, stretched at the end of a long, slim leg, swung clear, as the boy prepared to drop. Brother Cadfael, fascinated, suddenly averted his eyes in haste, and turned his back, but he was smiling, and he did not, after all, withdraw, but circled his screen of bushes and reappeared innocently in view of the bird that had just flown down out of its nest. No boy, as he had first supposed, but a girl, and a most personable girl, too, now standing decorously in the grass with her skirts nobly disposed round her, and even the small bare feet concealed.

  They stood looking at each other with candid curiosity, neither at all abashed. She might have been eighteen or nineteen years old, possibly younger, for there was a certain erect assurance about her that gave her the dignity of maturity even when newly dropped out of an oak tree. And for all her bare feet and mane of unbraided dark hair, she was no villein girl. Everything about her said clearly that she knew her worth. Her gown was of fine homespun wool, dyed a soft blue, and had embroidery at neck and sleeves. No question but she was a beauty. Her face was oval and firm of feature, the hair that fell in wild waves about her shoulders was almost black, but black with a tint of dark and brilliant red in it where the light caught, and the large, blacklashed eyes that considered Brother Cadfael with such frank interest were of almost the same colour, dark as damsons, bright as the sparkles of mica in the river pebbles.

  “You are one of the monks from Shrewsbury,” she said with certainty. And to his astonishment she said it in fluent and easy English.

  “I am,” said Cadfael. “But how did you come to know all about us so soon? I think you were not among those who made it their business to walk along Huw’s garden fence while we were talking. There was one very young girl, I remember, but not a black lass like you.”

  She smiled. She had an enchanting smile, sudden and radiant. “Oh, that would be Annest. But everybody in Gwytherin knows by now all about you, and what you’ve come for. Father Huw is right, you know,” she warned seriously, “we shan’t like it at all. Why do you want to take Saint Winifred away? When she’s been here so long, and nobody ever paid any attention to her before? It doesn’t seem neighbourly or honest to me.”

  It was an excellent choice of words, he thought, and marvelled how a Welsh girl came by it, for she was using English as if she had been born to it, or come to it for love.

  “I question the propriety of it myself, to be truthful,” he agreed ruefully. “When Father Huw spoke up for his parish, I confess I found myself inclining to his side of the argument.” That made her look at him more sharply and carefully than before, frowning over some sudden doubt or suspicion in her own mind. Whoever had informed her had certainly witnessed all that went on in Father Huw’s garden. She hesitated a moment, pondering, and then launched at him unexpectedly in Welsh: “You must be the one who speaks our language, the one who translated what Father Huw said.” It seemed to trouble her more than was reasonable. “You do know Welsh! You understand me now.”

  “Why, I’m as Welsh as you, child,” he admitted mildly, “and only a Benedictine in my middle years, and I haven’t forgotten my mother-tongue yet, I hope. But I marvel how you’ve come to speak English as well as I do myself, here in the heart of Rhos.”

  “Oh, no,” she said defensively, “I’ve only learned a very little. I tried to use it for you, because I thought you were English. How was I to know you’d be just that one?” Now why should his being bilingual cause her uneasiness? he wondered. And why was she casting so many rapid, furtive glances aside towards the river, brightly glimpsed through the trees? Where, as he saw in a glance just as swift as hers, the tall, fair youngster who was no Welshman, and was certainly the finest ox-caller in Gwynedd, had broken away from his placidly-drinking team, and was wading the river thigh-deep towards this particular tall oak, in a flurry of sparkling spray. The girl had been ensconced in this very tree, whence, no doubt, she had a very good view of the ploughing. And came down as soon as it was finished! “I’m shy of my English,” she said, pleading and vulnerable. “Don’t tell anyone!”

  She was wishing him away from here, and demanding his discretion at the same time. His presence, he gathered, was inconvenient.

  “I’ve known the same trouble myself,” he said comfortably, “when first I tried getting my tongue round English. I’ll never call your efforts into question. And now I’d better be on my way back to our lodgings, or I shall be late for Vespers.”

  “God go with you, then, Father,” she said, radiant and relieved.

  “And with you, my child.”

  He withdrew by a carefully chosen route that evaded any risk of bumping into the fair young man. And she watched him go for a long moment, before she turned eagerly to meet the ox-caller as he came splashing through the shallows and climbed the bank. Cadfael thought that she was perfectly aware how much he had observed and understood, and was pleased by his reticence. Pleased and reassured. A Welsh girl of status, with embroidery along the hems of her gown, had good need to go softly if she was meeting an outlander, a man landless and rootless here in a clan society, where to be without place in a kinship was to be without the means of living. And yet a very pleasing, comely young man, good at his work and feeling for his beasts. Cadfael looked back, when he was sure the bushes covered him, and saw the two of them draw together, still and glad, not touching, almost shy of each other. He did not look back again.

  Now what I really need here, he thought as he walked back towards the church of Gwytherin, is a good, congenial acquaintance, someone who knows every man, woman and child in the parish, without having to carry the burden of their souls. A sound drinking companion with good sense is what I need.

  Chapter Three

  He found not one of what he wanted, but three at one stroke, after Compline that evening, when he walked back with Brother John in the twilight to the smithy and croft at the edge of the valley fields. Prior Robert and Brother Richard had already withdrawn for the night into Huw’s house, Jerome and Columbanus were on their way through the woods to Cadwallon’s holding, and who was to question whether Brother Cadfael had also gone to his pallet in the priest’s loft, or was footloose among the gossips of Gwytherin? The lodging arrangements were working out admirably. He had never felt less inclined for sleep at this soft evening hour, nor was anyone going to rouse them at midnight here for Matins. Brother John was delighted to introduce him into the smith’s household, and Father Huw favoured the acquaintance for his own reasons. It was well that others besides himself should speak for the people of the parish, and Bened the smith was a highly respected man, like all of his craft, and his words would carry weight. There were three men sitting on the bench outside Bened’s door when they arrived, and the mead was going round as fast as the talk. All heads went up alertly at the sound of their steps approaching, and a momentary silence marked the solidarity of the local inhabitants. But Brother John seemed already to have made himself welcome, and Cadfael cast them a greeting in Welsh, like a fisherman casting a line, and was accepted with something warmer than the strict courtesy the English would have found. Annest with the light-brown, sunflecked hair had spread word of his Welshness far and wide. Another bench was pulled up, and the drinking-horns continued their circling in a wider ring. Over the river the light was fading gradually, the dimness green with the colours of meadow and forest, and threaded through with the string of silver water.

  Bened was a thickset, muscular man of middle years, bearded and brown. Of his two companions the younger was recognisable as the ploughman who had followed t
he ox-team that day, and no wonder he was dry after such labour. And the third was a grey-headed elder with a long, smoothly-trimmed beard and fine, sinewy hands, in an ample homespun gown that had seen better days, perhaps on another wearer. He bore himself as one entitled to respect, and got it.

  “Padrig, here, is a good poet and a fine harpist,” said Bened, “and Gwytherin is lucky to have him staying a while among us, in Rhisiart’s hall. That’s away beyond Cadwallon’s place, in a forest clearing, but Rhisiart has land over this way, too, both sides the river. He’s the biggest landowner in these parts. There are not many here entitled to keep a harp, or maybe we’d be honoured with more visits from travelling bards like Padrig. I have a little harp myself — I have that privilege — but Rhisiart’s is a fine one, and kept in use, too. I’ve heard his girl play on it sometimes.”

  “Women cannot be bards,” said Padrig with tolerant scorn. “But she knows how to keep it tuned, and well looked after, that I will say. And her father’s a patron of the arts, and a generous, open-handed one. No bard goes away disappointed from his hall, and none ever leaves without being pressed to stay. A good household!”

  “And this is Cai, Rhisiart’s ploughman. No doubt you saw the team cutting new land, when you came over the ridge today.”

  “I did and admired the work,” said Cadfael heartily. “I never saw better. A good team you had there, and a good caller, too.”

  “The best,” said Cai without hesitation. “I’ve worked with a good many in my time, but never known one with the way Engelard has with the beasts. They’d die for him. And as good a hand with all cattle, calving or sick or what you will. Rhisiart would be a sorry man if ever he lost him. Ay, we did a good day’s work today.”