A Rare Benedictine Read online

  Jacob of Bouldon was a sturdy, square-set young fellow from the south of the shire, with a round, amiable face, large, candid eyes, and a ready smile. He came with a vellum leaf doubled in one hand, and a pen behind his ear, in every particular the eager, hard-working clerk. A little too open to any man’s approaches, perhaps, as his master had said. The lanky, narrow-headed fellow attentive at his side had a very different look about him, weather-beaten, sharp-eyed and drab in hard-wearing dark clothes, with a leather jerkin to bear the rubbing of a heavy pack. The back of the left shoulder was scrubbed pallid and dull from much carrying, and his hat was wide and drooping of brim, to shed off rain. A travelling haberdasher with a few days’ business in Shrewsbury, no novelty in the commoners’ guest-hall of the abbey. His like were always on the roads, somewhere about the shire.

  The pedlar louted to Master William with obsequious respect, said his goodday, and made off to his lodging. Early to be home for the night, surely, but perhaps he had done good business and come back to replenish his stock. A wise tradesman kept something in reserve, when he had a safe store to hand, rather than carry his all on every foray.

  Master William looked after him with no great favour. “What had that fellow to do thus with you, boy?” he questioned suspiciously. “He’s a deal too curious, with that long nose of his. I’ve seen him making up to any of the household he can back into a corner. What was he after in the scriptorium?”

  Jacob opened his wide eyes even wider. “Oh, he’s an honest fellow enough, sir, I’m sure. Though he does like to probe into everything, I grant you, and asks a lot of questions…”

  “Then you give him no answers,” said the steward firmly.

  “I don’t, nothing but general talk that leaves him no wiser. Though I think he’s but naturally inquisitive and no harm meant. He likes to curry favour with everyone, but that’s by way of his trade. A rough-tongued pedlar would not sell many tapes and laces,” said the young man blithely, and flourished the leaf of vellum he carried. “I was coming to ask you about this carucate of land in Recordine—there’s an erasure in the leiger book, I looked up the copy to compare. You’ll remember, sir, it was disputed land for a while, the heir tried to recover it…”

  “I do recall. Come, I’ll show you the original copy. But have as little to say to these travelling folk as you can with civility,” Master William adjured earnestly. “There are rogues on the roads as well as honest tradesmen. There, you go before, I’ll follow you.”

  He looked after the jaunty figure as it departed smartly, back to the scriptorium. “As I said, Cadfael, too easily pleased with every man. It’s not wise to look always for the best in men. But for all that,” he added, reverting morosely to his private grievance, “I wish that scamp of mine was more like him. In debt already for some gambling folly, and he has to get himself picked up by the sergeants for a street brawl, and fined, and cannot pay the fine. And to keep my own name in respect, he’s confident I shall have to buy him clear. I must see to it tomorrow, one way or the other, when I’ve finished my rounds in the town, for he has but three days left to pay. If it weren’t for his mother… Even so, even so, this time I ought to let him stew.”

  He departed after his clerk, shaking his head bitterly over his troubles. And Cadfael went off to see what feats of idiocy or genius Brother Oswin had wrought in the herb garden in his absence.

  *

  In the morning, when the brothers came out from Prime, Brother Cadfael saw the steward departing to begin his round, the deep leather satchel secured to his locked belt, and swinging by two stout straps. By evening it would be heavy with the annual wealth of the city rents, and those from the northern suburbs outside the walls. Jacob was there to see him go, listening dutifully to his last emphatic instructions, and sighing as he was left behind to complete the bookwork. Warm Harefoot, the packman, was off early, too, to ply his trade among the housewives either of the town or the parish of the Foregate. A pliable fellow, full of professional bows and smiles, but by the look of him all his efforts brought him no better than a meagre living.

  So there went Jacob, back to his pen and inkhorn in the cloisters, and forth to his important business went Master William. And who knows, thought Cadfael, which is in the right, the young man who sees the best in all, and trusts all, or the old one who suspects all until he has probed them through and through? The one may stumble into a snare now and then, but at least enjoy sunshine along the way, between falls. The other may never miss his footing, but seldom experience joy. Better find a way somewhere between!

  It was a curious chance that seated him next to Brother Eutropius at breakfast, for what did anyone know about Brother Eutropius? He had come to the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul of Shrewsbury only two months ago, from a minor grange of the order. But in two months of Brother Oswin, say, that young man would have been an open book to every reader, whereas Eutropius contained himself as tightly as did his skin, and gave out much less in the way of information. A taciturn man, thirty or so at a guess, who kept himself apart and looked solitary discontent at everything that crossed his path, but never complained. It might be merely newness and shyness, in one naturally uncommunicative, or it might be a gnawing inward anger against his lot and all the world. Rumour said, a man frustrated in love, and finding no relief in his resort to the cowl. But rumour was using its imagination, for want of fuel more reliable.

  Eutropius also worked under Brother Matthew, the cellarer, and was intelligent and literate, but not a good or a quick scribe. Perhaps, when Brother Ambrose fell ill, he would have liked to be trusted to take over his books. Perhaps he resented the lay clerk being preferred before him. Perhaps! With Eutropius everything, thus far, was conjecture. Some day someone would pierce that carapace of his, with an unguarded word or a sudden irresistible motion of grace, and the mystery would no longer be a mystery, or the stranger a stranger.

  Brother Cadfael knew better than to be in a hurry, where souls were concerned. There was plenty of elbow-room in eternity.

  *

  In the afternoon, returning to the grange court to collect some seed he had left stored in the loft, Cadfael encountered Jacob, his scribing done for the moment, setting forth importantly with his own leather satchel into the Foregate.

  “So he’s left you a parcel to clear for him,” said Cadfael.

  “I would gladly have done more,” said Jacob, mildly aggrieved and on his dignity. He looked less than his twenty-five years, well-grown as he was, with that cherubic face. “But he says I’m sure to be slow, not knowing the rounds or the tenants, so he’s let me take only the outlying lanes here in the Foregate, where I can take my time. I daresay he’s right, it will take me longer than I think. I ‘m sorry to see him so worried about his son,” he said, shaking his head. “He has to see to this business with the law, he told me not to worry if he was late returning today. I hope all goes well,” said the loyal subordinate, and set forth sturdily to do his own duty towards his master, however beset he might be by other cares.

  Cadfael took his seed back to the garden, put in an hour or so of contented work there, washed his hands, and went to check on the progress of Brother Ambrose, who was just able to croak in his ear, more audibly than yesterday: “I could rise and help poor William—such a day for him…!”

  He was halted there by a large, rough palm. “Lie quiet,” said Cadfael, “like a wise man. Let them see how well they can fend without you, and they’ll value you the better hereafter. And about time, too!” And he fed his captive bird again, and returned to his labours in the garden.

  At Vespers, Brother Eutropius came late and in haste, and took his place breathing rapidly, but as impenetrable as ever. And when they emerged to go to supper in the refectory, Jacob of Bouldon was just coming in at the gatehouse with his leather satchel of rents jealously guarded by one hand and looking round hopefully for his master, who had not yet returned. Nor had he some twenty minutes later, when supper was over; but in the gathering dusk Wa
rin Harefoot trudged wearily across the court to the guest-hall, and the pack on his shoulder looked hardly lighter than when he had gone out in the morning.

  *

  Madog of the Dead-Boat, in addition to his primary means of livelihood, which was salvaging dead bodies from the River Severn at any season, had a number of seasonal occupations that afforded him sport as well as a living. Of these the one he enjoyed most was fishing, and of all the fishing seasons the one he liked best was the early Spring run up-river of the mature salmon, fine, energetic young males which had arrived early in the estuary, and would run and leap like athletes many miles upstream before they spawned. Madog was expert at taking them, and had had one out of the water this same day, before he paddled his coracle into the thick bushes under the castle’s water-gate, a narrow lane running down from the town, and dropped a lesser line into the river to pick up whatever else offered. Here he was in good, leafy cover, and could stake himself into the bank and lie back to drowse until his line jerked him awake. From above, whether castle ramparts, town wall or upper window, he could not be seen.

  It was beginning to grow dusk when he was startled wide awake by the hollow splash of something heavy plunging into the water, just upstream. Alert in a moment, he shoved off a yard or so from shore to look that way, but saw nothing to account for the sound, until an eddy in midstream showed him a dun-coloured sleeve breaking surface, and then the oval pallor of a face rising and sinking again from sight. A man’s body turned slowly in the current as it sailed past. Madog was out after it instantly, his paddle plying. Getting a body from river into a coracle is a tricky business, but he had practised it so long that he had it perfect, balance and heft and all, from his first grasp on the billowing sleeve to the moment when the little boat bobbed like a cork and spun like a drifting leaf, with the drowned man in-board and streaming water. They were halfway across the river by that time, and there were half a dozen lay brothers just leaving their work in the vegetable gardens along the Gaye, on the other side, the nearest help in view. Madog made for their shore, and sent a halloo ahead of him to halt their departure and bring them running.

  He had the salvaged man out on the bank by the time they reached him, and had turned him face-down into the grass and hoisted him firmly by the middle to shake the water out of him, squeezing energetically with big, gnarled hands.

  “He’s been in the river no more than a breath or two, I heard him souse into the water. Did you see ought over there by the water-gate?” But they shook their heads, concerned and anxious, and stooped to the drenched body, which at that instant heaved in breath, choked, and vomited the water it had swallowed. “He’s breathing. He’ll do. But he was meant to drown, sure enough. See here!”

  On the back of the head of thick, greying hair blood slowly seeped, along a broken and indented wound.

  One of the lay brothers exclaimed aloud, and kneeled to turn up to the light the streaked and pallid face. “Master William! This is our steward! He was collecting rents in the town… See, the pouch is gone from his belt! Two rubbed and indented spots showed where the heavy satchel had bruised the leather beneath, and the lower edge of the stout belt itself showed a nick from a sharp knife, where the thongs had been sliced through in haste. “Robbery and murder!”

  “The one, surely, but not the other—not yet,” said Madog practically. “He’s breathing, you’ve not lost him yet. But we’d best get him to the nearest and best-tended bed, and that’ll be in your infirmary, I take it. Make use of those hoes and spades of yours, lads, and here’s a coat of mine to spare, if some of you will give up yours…”

  They made a litter to carry Master William back to the abbey, as quickly and steadily as they could. Their entry at the gatehouse brought out porters, guests and brothers in alarm and concern. Brother Edmund the infirmarer came running and led the way to a bed beside the fire in the sick quarters. Jacob of Bouldon, rushing to confirm his fears, set up a distressed cry, but recovered himself gallantly, and ran for Brother Cadfael. The sub-prior, once informed of the circumstances by Madog, who was too accustomed to drowned and near-drowned men to get excited, sensibly sent a messenger hot-foot into the town to tell provost and sheriff what had happened, and the hunt was up almost before the victim was stripped of his soaked clothes, rolled in blankets and put to bed.

  The sheriff’s sergeant came, and listened to Madog’s tale, with only a momentary narrowing of eyes at the fleeting suspicion that the tough old Welsh waterman might be adept at putting men into the water, as well as pulling them out. But in that case he would have been more likely to make sure that his victim went under, unless he was certain he could not name or identify his attacker. Madog saw the moment of doubt, and grinned scornfully.

  “I get my living better ways. But if you need to question, there must be some among those gardeners from the Gaye who saw me come downriver and drop my line in under the trees there, and can tell you I never set foot ashore until I brought this one over, and shouted them to come and help with him. Maybe you don’t know me, but these brothers here do.”

  The sergeant, surely one of the few new enough to service in Shrewsbury castle to be ignorant of Madog’s special position along the river, accepted Brother Edmund’s warm assurances, and shrugged off his doubts.

  “But sorry I am,” allowed Madog, mollified, “that I neither saw nor heard anything until he plumped into the water, for I was drowsing. All I can say is that he went in upstream of me, but not far—I’d say someone slid him in from the cover of the water-gate.”

  “A narrow, dark place, that,” said the sergeant.

  “And a warren of passages above. And the light fading, though not far gone… Well, maybe when he comes round he’ll be able to tell you something—he may have seen the man that did it.”

  The sergeant settled down resignedly to wait for Master William to stir, which so far he showed no sign of doing. Cadfael had cleaned and bandaged the wound, dressing it with a herbal salve, and the steward lay with eyes closed and sunken, mouth painfully open upon snoring breath. Madog reclaimed his coat, which had been drying before the fire, and shrugged into it placidly. “Let’s hope nobody’s thought the time right to help himself to my fish while my back was turned.” He had wrapped his salmon in an armful of wet grass and covered it with his upturned boat. “I’ll bid you goodnight, brothers, and wish your sick man hale again—and his pouch recovered, too, though that I doubt.”

  From the infirmary doorway he turned back to say: “You have a patient lad here sitting shivering on the doorstep, waiting for word. Can he not come in and see his master, he says. I’ve told him the man’s likely to live his old age out with no worse than a dunt on the head to show for it, and he’d best be off to his bed, for he’ll get nothing here as yet. Would you want him in?”

  Cadfael went out with him to shoo away any such premature visits. Jacob of Bouldon, pale and anxious, was sitting with arms folded closely round his drawn-up knees, hunched against the chill of the night. He looked up hopefully as they came out to him, and opened his mouth eagerly to plead. Madog clouted him amiably on the shoulder as he passed, and made off towards the gatehouse, a squat, square figure, brown and crusty as the bole of an oak.

  “You’d best be off, too, into the warm,” said Brother Cadfael, not unkindly. “Master William will recover well enough, but he’s likely to be without his wits some time yet, no call for you to catch your death here on the stone.”

  “I couldn’t rest,” said Jacob earnestly. “I told him, I begged him, take me with you, you should have someone. But he said, folly, he had collected rents for the abbey many years, and never felt any need for a guard. And now, see… Could I not come in and sit by him? I’d make no sound, never trouble him… He has not spoken?”

  “Nor will for some hours yet, and even then I doubt he can tell us much. I’m here with him in case of need, and Brother Edmund is on call. The fewer about him, the better.”

  “I’ll wait a little while yet,” said Jacob, fr
etting, and hugged his knees the tighter.

  Well, if he would, he would, but cramp and cold would teach him better sense and more patience. Cadfael went back to his vigil, and closed the door. Still, it was no bad thing to encounter one lad whose devotion gave the lie to Master William’s forebodings concerning the younger generation.

  Before midnight there was another visitor enquiring. The porter opened the door softly and came in to whisper that Master William’s son was here, asking after his father and wanting to come in and see him. Since the sergeant, departing when it seemed certain his vigil was fruitless until morning, had pledged himself to go and reassure Mistress Rede that her man was alive, well cared for, and certain to make a good recovery, Cadfael might well have gone out to bid the young man go home and take care of his mother rather than waste his time here, if the young man had not forestalled him by making a silent and determined entry on his herald’s heels. A tall, shock-headed, dark-eyed youth, hunched of shoulder just now, and grim of face, but admittedly very quiet in movement, and low-voiced. His look was by no means tender or solicitous. His eyes went at once to the figure in the bed, sweaty-browed now, and breathing somewhat more easily and naturally. He brooded, glaring, and wasting no time on question or explanation, said in a level whisper: “I will stay.” And with aggressive composure stayed, settling himself on the bench beside his father’s bed, his two long, muscular hands gripped tightly between his knees.

  The porter met Cadfael’s eye, hoisted his shoulders, and went quietly away. Cadfael sat down on the other side of the bed, and contemplated the pair, father and son. Both faces looked equally aloof and critical, even hostile, yet there they were, close and quiet together.