The Devils Novice (2 page)

A
conclusion with which no one had then any reason to quarrel. The anarchy of a
country distracted by civil war between cousins had constricted monastic
revenues, kept pilgrims huddled cautiously at home, and sadly diminished the
number of genuine postulants seeking the cloister, while frequently greatly
increasing the numbers of indigent fugitives seeking shelter there. The promise
of a mature entrant already literate, and eager to begin his novitiate, was
excellent news for the abbey.

Afterwards,
of course, there were plenty of wiseacres pregnant with hindsight, listing
portents, talking darkly of omens, brazenly asserting that they had told
everyone so. After every shock and reverse, such late experts proliferate.

It
was only by chance that Brother Cadfael witnessed the arrival of the new
entrant, two days later. After several days of clear skies and sunshine for
harvesting the early apples and carting the new-milled flour, it was a day of
miserable downpour, turning the roads to mud, and every hollow in the great
court into a treacherous puddle. In the carrels of the scriptorium copiers and
craftsmen worked thankfully at their desks. The boys kicked their heels
discontentedly indoors, baulked of their playtime, and the few invalids in the
infirmary felt their spirits sink as the daylight dimmed and went into
mourning. Of guests there were few at that time. There was a breathing-space in
the civil war, while earnest clerics tried to bring both sides together in
agreement, but most of England preferred to stay at home and wait with held
breath, and only those who had no option rode the roads and took shelter in the
abbey guest-halls.

Cadfael
had spent the first part of the afternoon in his workshop in the herbarium. Not
only had he a number of concoctions working there, fruit of his autumn harvest
of leaves, roots and berries, but he had also got hold of a copy of Aelfric’s
list of herbs and trees from the England of a century and a half earlier, and
wanted peace and quiet in which to study it. Brother Oswin, whose youthful
ardour was Cadfael’s sometime comfort and frequent anxiety in this his private
domain, had been excused attendance, and gone to pursue his studies in the
liturgy, for the time of his final vows was approaching, and he needed to be word-perfect.

The
rain, though welcome to the earth, was disturbing and depressing to the mind of
man. The light lowered; the leaf Cadfael studied darkened before his eyes. He
gave up his reading. Literate in English, he had learned his Latin laboriously
in maturity, and though he had mastered it, it remained unfamiliar, an alien
tongue. He went the round of his brews, stirred here and there, added an
ingredient in a mortar and ground until it blended into the cream within, and
went back in scurrying haste through the wet gardens to the great court, with
his precious parchment in the breast of his habit.

He
had reached the shelter of the guest-hall porch, and was drawing breath before
splashing through the puddles to the cloister, when three horsemen rode in from
the Foregate, and halted under the archway of the gatehouse to shake off the
rain from their cloaks. The porter came out in haste to greet them, slipping
sidelong in the shelter of the wall, and a groom came running from the
stable-yard, splashing through the rain with a sack over his head.

So
that must be Leoric Aspley of Aspley, thought Cadfael, and the son who desires
to take the cowl here among us. And he stood to gaze a moment, partly out of
curiosity, partly out of a vain hope that the downpour would ease, and let him
cross to the scriptorium without getting wetter than he need.

A
tall, erect, elderly man in a thick cloak led the arrivals, riding a big grey
horse. When he shook off his hood he uncovered a head of bushy, grizzled hair
and a face long, austere and bearded. Even at that distance, across the wide
court, he showed handsome, unsmiling, unbending, with a high-bridged, arrogant
nose and a grimly proud set to his mouth and jaw, but his manner to porter and
groom, as he dismounted, was gravely courteous. No easy man, probably no easy
parent to please. Did he approve his son’s resolve, or was he accepting it only
under protest and with displeasure? Cadfael judged him to be in the
mid-fifties, and thought of him, in all innocence, as an old man, forgetting
that his own age, to which he never gave much thought, was past sixty.

He
gave rather closer attention to the young man who had followed decorously a few
respectful yards behind his father, and lighted down from his black pony
quickly to hold his father’s stirrup. Almost excessively dutiful, and yet there
was something in his bearing reminiscent of the older man’s stiff
self-awareness, like sire, like son. Meriet Aspley, nineteen years old, was
almost a head shorter than Leoric when they stood together on the ground; a
well-made, neat, compact young man, with almost nothing to remark about him at
first sight. Dark-haired, with his forelocks plastered to his wet forehead, and
rain streaking his smooth cheeks like tears. He stood a little apart, his head
submissively bent, his eyelids lowered, attentive like a servant awaiting his
lord’s orders; and when they moved away into the shelter of the gatehouse he
followed at heel like a well-trained hound. And yet there was something about
him complete, solitary and very much his own, as though he paid observance to
these formalities without giving away anything more, an outward and scrupulous
observance that touched no part of what he carried within. And such distant
glimpses as Cadfael had caught of his face had shown it set and composed as
austerely as his sire’s and deep, firm hollows at the corners of a mouth at
first sight full-lipped and passionate.

No,
thought Cadfael, those two are not in harmony, that’s certain. And the only way
he could account satisfactorily for the chill and stiffness was by returning to
his first notion, that the father did not approve his son’s decision, probably
had tried to turn him from it, and held it against him grievously that he would
not be deterred. Obstinacy on the one hand and frustration and disappointment
on the other held them apart. Not the best of beginnings for a vocation, to
have to resist a father’s will. But those who have been blinded by too great a
light do not see, cannot afford to see, the pain they cause. It was not the way
Cadfael had come into the cloister, but he had known it happen to one or two,
and understood its compulsion.

They
were gone, into the gatehouse to await Brother Paul, and their formal reception
by the abbot. The groom who had ridden in at their heels on a shaggy forest
pony trotted down with their mounts to the stables, and the great court was
empty again under the steady rain. Brother Cadfael tucked up his habit and ran
for the shelter of the cloister, there to shake off the water from his sleeves
and cowl, and make himself comfortable to continue his reading in the
scriptorium. Within minutes he was absorbed in the problem of whether the
“dittanders” of Aelfric was, or was not, the same as his own “dittany”. He gave
no more thought then to Meriet Aspley, who was so immovably bent on becoming a
monk.

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.