The Potter's Field Read online

  The boy submitted, quivering, to the hand Cadfael laid on his shoulder, and subsided obediently on to the bench against the wall. “Father, I had great trouble in getting clear of de Mandeville’s lines, and so would any other envoy have. In particular a man on horseback, such as might be sent to take the word to the king’s sheriffs, would hardly get through alive. They are taking every horse, every beast, every bow or sword, from three shires, a mounted man would bring them down on him like wolves. I may well be the first, having nothing on me worth the trouble of killing me for it. Hugh Beringar may not know yet.”

  The simple use of Hugh’s name startled both Cadfael and Radulfus. The abbot turned sharply to take a longer look at the young face confidingly raised to his. “You know the lord sheriff here? How is that?”

  “It is the reason—it is one reason—why I am sent here, Father. I am native here. My name is Sulien Blount. My brother is lord of Longner. You will never have seen me, but Hugh Beringar knows my family well.”

  So this, thought Cadfael, enlightened, and studying the boy afresh from head to foot, this is the younger brother who chose to enter the Benedictine Order just over a year ago, and went off to become a novice at Ramsey in late September, about the time his father made over the Potter’s Field to Haughmond Abbey. Now why, I wonder, did he choose the Benedictines rather than his family’s favourite Augustinians? He could as well have gone with the field, and lived quietly and peacefully among the canons of Haughmond. Still, reflected Cadfael, looking down upon the young man’s tonsure, with its new fuzz of dark gold within the ring of damp brown hair, should I quarrel with a preference that flatters my own choice? He liked the moderation and good sense of human kindliness of Saint Benedict, as I did. It was a little disconcerting that this comfortable reflection should only raise other and equally pertinent questions. Why all the way to Ramsey? Why not here in Shrewsbury?

  “Hugh Beringar shall know from me, without delay,” said the abbot reassuringly, “all that you can tell me. You say de Mandeville has seized Ramsey. When did this happen? And how?”

  Sulien moistened his lips and put together, sensibly and calmly enough, the picture he had carried in his mind for seven days.

  “It was the ninth day back from today. We knew, as all that countryside knew, that the earl had returned to lands which formerly were his own, and gathered together those who had served him in the past and all those living wild, or at odds with law, willing to serve him now in his exile. But we did not know where his forces were, and had no warning of any intent towards us. You know that Ramsey is almost an island, with only one causeway dryshod into it? It is why it was first favoured as a place of retirement from the world.”

  “And undoubtedly the reason why the earl coveted it,” said Radulfus grimly. “Yes, that we knew.”

  “But what need had we ever had to guard that causeway? And how could we, being brothers, guard it in arms even if we had known? They came in thousands,” said Sulien, clearly considering what he said of numbers, and meaning his words, “crossed and took possession. They drove us out into the court and out from the gate, seizing everything we had but our habits. Some part of our enclave they fired. Some of us who showed defiance, though without violence, they beat or killed. Some who lingered in the neighbourhood though outside the island, they shot at with arrows. They have turned our house into a den of bandits and torturers, and filled it with weapons and armed men, and from that stronghold they go forth to rob and pillage and slay. No one for miles around has the means to till his fields or keep anything of value in his house. This is how it happened, Father, and I saw it happen.”

  “And your abbot?” asked Radulfus.

  “Abbot Walter is a valiant man indeed, Father. The next day he went alone into their camp and laid about him with a brand out of their fire, burning some of their tents. He has pronounced excommunication against them all, and the marvel is they did not kill him, but only mocked him and let him go unharmed. De Mandeville has seized all those of the abbey’s manors that lie near at hand, and given them to his fellows to garrison, but some that lie further afield he has left unmolested, and Abbot Walter has taken most of the brothers to refuge there. I left him safe when I broke through as far as Peterborough. That town is not yet threatened.”

  “How came it that he did not take you also with him?” the abbot questioned. “That he would send out word to any of the king’s liegemen I well understand, but why to this shire in particular?”

  “I have told it everywhere as I came, Father. But my abbot sent me here to you for my own sake, for I have a trouble of my own. I had taken it to him, in duty bound,” said Sulien, with hesitant voice and lowered gaze, “and since this disruption fell upon us before it could be resolved, he sent me here to submit myself and my burden to you, and take from you counsel or penance or absolution, whatever you may judge my due.”

  Then that is between us two,” said the abbot briskly, “and can wait. Tell me whatever more you can concerning the scope of this terror in the Fens. We knew of Cambridge, but if the man now has a safe base in Ramsey, what places besides may be in peril?”

  “He is but newly installed,” said Sulien, “and the villages nearby have been the first to suffer. There is no cottage too mean but they will wring some tribute out of the tenant, or take life or limb if he has nothing besides. But I do know that Abbot Walter feared for Ely, being so rich a prize, and in country the earl knows so well. He will stay among the waters, where no army can bring him to battle.”

  This judgement was given with a lift of the head and a glint of the eye that bespoke rather the apprentice to arms than the monastic novice. Radulfus had observed it, too, and exchanged a long, mute glance with Cadfael over the young man’s shoulder.

  “So, we have it! If that is all you can furnish, let’s see it fully delivered to Hugh Beringar at once. Cadfael, will you see that done? Leave Brother Sulien here with me, and send Brother Paul to us. Take a horse, and come back to us here when you return.”

  *

  Brother Paul, master of the novices, delivered Sulien again to the abbot’s parlour in a little over half an hour, a different youth, washed clean of the muck of the roads, shaven, in a dry habit, his hair, if not yet properly trimmed of its rebellious down of curls, brushed into neatness. He folded his hands submissively before the abbot, with every mark of humility and reverence, but always with the same straight, confident stare of the clear blue eyes.

  “Leave us, Paul,” said Radulfus. And to the boy, after the door had closed softly on Paul’s departure: “Have you broken your fast? It will be a while yet before the meal in the frater, and I think you have not eaten today.”

  “No, Father, I set out before dawn. Brother Paul has given me bread and ale. I am grateful.”

  “We are come, then, to whatever it may be that troubles you. There is no need to stand, I would rather you felt at ease, and able to speak freely. As you would with Abbot Walter, so speak with me.”

  Sulien sat, submissive of orders, but still stiff within his own youthful body, unable quite to surrender from the heart what he offered ardently in word and form. He sat with straight back and eyes lowered now, and his linked fingers were white at the knuckles.

  “Father, it was late September of last year when I entered Ramsey as a postulant. I have tried to deliver faithfully what I promised, but there have been troubles I never foresaw, and things asked of me that I never thought to have to face. After I left my home, my father went to join the king’s forces, and was with him at Wilton. It may be all this is already known to you, how he died there with the rearguard, protecting the king’s retreat. It fell to me to go and redeem his body and bring him home for burial, last March. I had leave from my abbot, and I returned strictly to my day. But… It is hard to have two homes, when the first is not yet quite relinquished, and the second not yet quite accepted, and then to be forced to make the double journey over again. And lately there have also been contentions at Ramsey that have torn us apart.
For a time Abbot Walter gave up his office to Brother Daniel, who was no way fit to step into his sandals. That is resolved now, but it was disruption and distress. Now my year of novitiate draws to an end, and I know neither what to do, nor what I want to do. I asked my abbot for more time, before I take my final vows. When this disaster fell upon us, he thought it best to send me here, to my brothers of the order here in Shrewsbury. And here I submit myself to your rule and guidance, until I can see my way before me plain.”

  “You are no longer sure of your vocation,” said the abbot.

  “No, Father, I am no longer sure. I am blown by two conflicting winds.”

  “Abbot Walter has not made it simpler for you,” remarked Radulfus, frowning. “He has sent you where you stand all the more exposed to both.”

  “Father, I believe he thought it only fair. My home is here, but he did not say: Go home. He sent me where I may still be within the discipline I chose, and yet feel the strong pull of place and family. Why should it be made simple for me,” said Sulien, suddenly raising his wide blue stare, unwaveringly gallant and deeply troubled, “so the answer at the end is the right one? But I cannot come to any decision, because the very act of looking back makes me ashamed.”

  “There is no need,” said Radulfus. “You are not the first, and will not be the last, to look back, nor the first nor the last to turn back, if that is what you choose. Every man has within him only one life and one nature to give to the service of God, and if there was but one way of doing that, celibate within the cloister, procreation and birth would cease, the world would be depeopled, and neither within nor without the Church would God receive worship. It behoves a man to look within himself, and turn to the best dedication possible those endowments he has from his Maker. You do no wrong in questioning what once you held to be right for you, if now it has come to seem wrong. Put away all thought of being bound. We do not want you bound. No one who is not free can give freely.”

  The young man fronted him earnestly in silence for some moments, eyes as limpidly light as harebells, lips very firmly set, searching rather his mentor than himself. Then he said with deliberation: “Father, I am not sure even of my own acts, but I think it was not for the right reasons that I ever asked admission to the Order. I think that is why it shames me to think of abandoning it now.”

  “That in itself, my son,” said Radulfus, “may be good reason why the Order should abandon you. Many have entered for the wrong reasons, and later remained for the right ones, but to remain against the grain and against the truth, out of obstinancy and pride, that would be a sin.” And he smiled to see the boy’s level brown brows draw together in despairing bewilderment. “Am I confusing you still more? I do not ask why you entered, though I think it may have been to escape the world without rather than to embrace the world within. You are young, and of that outer world you have seen as yet very little, and may have misjudged what you did see. There is no haste now. For the present take your full place here among us, but apart from the other novices. I would not have them troubled with your trouble. Rest some days, pray constantly for guidance, have faith that it will be granted, and then choose. For the choice must be yours, let no one take it from you.”

  *

  “First Cambridge,” said Hugh, tramping the inner ward of the castle with long, irritated strides as he digested the news from the Fen country, “now Ramsey. And Ely in danger! Your young man’s right there, a rich prize that would be for a wolf like de Mandeville. I tell you what, Cadfael, I’d better be going over every lance and sword and bow in the armoury, and sorting out a few good lads ready for action. Stephen is slow to start, sometimes, having a vein of laziness in him until he’s roused, but he’ll have to take action now against this rabble. He should have wrung de Mandeville’s neck while he had him, he was warned often enough.”

  “He’s unlikely to call on you,” Cadfael considered judicially, “even if he does decide to raise a new force to flush out the wolves. He can call on the neighbouring shires, surely. He’ll want men fast.”

  “He shall have them fast,” said Hugh grimly, “for I’ll be ready to take the road as soon as he gives the word. True, he may not need to fetch men from the border here, seeing he trusts Chester no more than he did Essex, and Chester’s turn will surely come. But whether or no, I’ll be ready for him. If you’re bound back, Cadfael, take my thanks to the abbot for his news. We’ll set the armourers and the fletchers to work, and make certain of our horses. No matter if they turn out not to be needed, it does the garrison no harm to be alerted in a hurry now and then.” He turned towards the outer ward and the gatehouse with his departing friend, still frowning thoughtfully over this new complexity in England’s already confused and troublous situation. “Strange how great and little get their lives tangled together, Cadfael. De Mandeville takes his revenge in the east, and sends this lad from Longner scurrying home again here to the Welsh border. Would you say fate had done him any favour? It could well be. You never knew him until now, did you? He never seemed to me a likely postulant for the cloister.”

  “I did gather,” said Cadfael cautiously, “that he may not yet have taken his final vows. He said he came with a trouble of his own unresolved, that his abbot charged him bring with him here to Radulfus. It may be he’s taken fright, now the time closes upon him. It happens! I’ll be off back and see what Radulfus intends for him.”

  *

  What Radulfus had in mind for the troubled soul was made plain when Cadfael returned, as bidden, to the abbot’s parlour. The abbot was alone at his desk by this time, the new entrant sent away with Brother Paul to rest from his long journey afoot and take his place, with certain safeguards, among his peers, if not of them.

  “He has need of some days of quietude,” said Radulfus, “with time for prayer and thought, for he is in doubt of his vocation, and truth to tell, so am I. But I know nothing of his state of mind and his behaviour when he conceived his desire for the cloister, and am in no position to judge how genuine were his motives then, or are his reservations now. It is something he must resolve for himself. All I can do is ensure that no further shadow or shock shall fall upon him, to distract his mind when most he needs a clear head. I do not want him perpetually reminded of the fate of Ramsey, nor, for that matter, upset by any talk of this matter of the Potter’s Field. Let him have stillness and solitude to think out his own deliverance first. When he is ready to see me again, I have told Brother Vitalis to admit him at once. But in the meantime, it may be as well if you would take him to help you in the herb garden, apart from the brothers except at worship. In frater and dortoir Paul will keep a watchful eye on him, during the hours of work he will be best with you, who already know his situation.”

  “I have been thinking,” said Cadfael, scrubbing reflectively at his forehead, “that he knows Ruald is here among us. It was some months after Ruald’s entry that this young fellow made up his mind for the cloister. Ruald was Blount’s tenant lifelong, and close by the manor, and Hugh tells me this boy Sulien was in and out of that workshop from a child, and a favourite with them, seeing they had none of their own. He has not spoken of Ruald, or asked to see him? How if he seeks him out?”

  “If he does well, he has that right, and I do not intend to hedge him in for long. But I think he is too full of Ramsey and his own trouble to have any thought to spare for other matters as yet. He has not yet taken his final vows,” said Radulfus, pondering with resigned anxiety over the complex agonies of the young. “All we can do is provide him a time of shelter and calm. His will and his acts are still his own. And as for this shadow that hangs over Ruald—what use would it be to ignore the threat?—if the relations between them were as Hugh says, that will be one more grief and disruption to the young man’s mind. As well if he is spared it for a day or so. But if it comes, it comes. He is a man grown, we cannot take his rightful burdens from him.”

  *

  It was on the morning of the second day after his arrival that Sulien encoun
tered Brother Ruald face to face at close quarters and with no one else by except Cadfael. At every service in church he had seen him among all the other brothers, once or twice had caught his eye, and smiled across the dim space of the choir, but received no more acknowledgement than a brief, lingering glance of abstracted sweetness, as if the older man saw him through a veil of wonder and rapture in which old associations had no place. Now they emerged at the same moment into the great court, converging upon the south door of the cloister, Sulien from the garden, with Cadfael ambling a yard or two behind him, Ruald from the direction of the infirmary. Sulien had a young man’s thrusting, impetuous gait, now that his blistered feet were healed, and he rounded the corner of the tall box hedge so precipitately that the two almost collided, their sleeves brushing, and both halted abruptly and drew back a step in hasty apology. Here in the open, under a wide sky still streaked with trailers of primrose gold from a bright sunrise, they met like humble mortal men, with no veil of glory between them.

  “Sulien!” Ruald opened his arms with a warm, delighted smile, and embraced the young man briefly cheek to cheek. “I saw you in church the first day. How glad I am that you are here, and safe!”

  Sulien stood mute for a moment, looking the older man over earnestly from head to foot, captivated by the serenity of his thin face, and the curious air he had of having found his way home, and being settled and content here as he had never been before, in his craft, in his cottage, in his marriage, in his community. Cadfael, holding aloof at the turn of the box hedge, with a shrewd eye on the pair of them, saw Ruald briefly as Sulien was seeing him, a man secure in the rightness of his choice, and radiating his unblemished joy upon all who drew near him. To one ignorant of any threat or shadow hanging over this man, he must seem the possessor of perfect happiness. The true revelation was that, indeed, so he was. A marvel!