The Devils Novice (3 page)

“Radiant,”
said Hugh with high content, “and asking after you. When times serves I’ll make
occasion to carry you off, and you shall see for yourself how she’s blossomed.”

“The
bud was rare enough,” said Cadfael. “And the imp Giles? Dear life, nine months
old, he’ll be quartering your floors like a hound-pup! They’re on their feet
almost before they’re out of your arms.”

“He’s
as fast on four legs,” said Hugh proudly, “as his slave Constance is on two.
And has a grip on him like a swordsman born. But God keep that time well away
from him many years yet, his childhood will be all too short for me. And God
willing, we shall be clear of this shattered time before ever he comes to
manhood. There was a time when England enjoyed a settled rule, there must be
another such to come.”

He
was a balanced and resilient creature, but the times cast their shadow on him
when he thought on his office and his allegiance.

“What’s
the word from the south?” asked Cadfael, observing the momentary cloud. “It
seems Bishop Henry’s conference came to precious little in the end.”

Henry
of Blois, bishop of Winchester and papal legate, was the king’s younger
brother, and had been his staunch adherent until Stephen had affronted,
attacked and gravely offended the church in the persons of certain of its
bishops. Where Bishop Henry’s personal allegiance now rested was matter for
some speculation, since his cousin the Empress Maud had actually arrived in
England and ensconced herself securely with her faction in the west, based upon
the city of Gloucester. An exceedingly able, ambitious and practical cleric
might well feel some sympathy upon both sides, and a great deal more
exasperation with both sides; and it was consistent with his situation, torn
between kin, that he should have spent all the spring and summer months of this
year trying his best to get them to come together sensibly, and make some
arrangement for the future that should appease, if not satisfy, both claims,
and give England a credible government and some prospect of the restoration of
law. He had done his best, and even managed to bring representatives of both
parties to meet near Bath only a month or so ago. But nothing had come of it.

“Though
it stopped the fighting,” said Hugh wryly, “at least for a while. But no,
there’s no fruit to gather.”

“As
we heard it,” said Cadfael, “the empress was willing to have her claim laid
before the church as judge, and Stephen was not.”

“No
marvel!” said Hugh, and grinned briefly at the thought. “He is in possession,
she is not. In any submission to trial, he has all to lose, she has nothing at
stake, and something to gain. Even a hung judgement would reflect she is no
fool. And my king, God give him better sense, has affronted the church, which
is not slow to avenge itself. No, there was nothing to be hoped for there.
Bishop Henry is bound away into France at this moment, he hasn’t given up hope,
he’s after the backing of the French King and Count Theobald of Normandy. He’ll
be busy these next weeks, working out some propositions for peace with them,
and come back armed to accost both these enemies again. To tell truth, he hoped
for more backing here than ever he got, from the north above all. But they held
their tongues and stayed at home.”

“Chester?”
hazarded Cadfael.

Earl
Ranulf of Chester was an independent-minded demi-king in a strong northern
palatine, and married to a daughter of the earl of Gloucester, the empress’s
half-brother and chief champion in this fight, but he had grudges against both
factions, and had kept a cautious peace in his own realm so far, without
committing himself to arms for either party.

“He
and his half-brother, William of Roumare. Roumare has large holdings in
Lincolnshire, and the two between them are a force to be reckoned with. They’ve
held the balance, up there, granted, but they could have done more. Well, we
can be grateful even for a passing truce. And we can hope.”

Hope
was in no very generous supply in England during these hard years, Cadfael
reflected ruefully. But do him justice, Henry of Blois was trying his best to
bring order out of chaos. Henry was proof positive that there is a grand career
to be made in the world by early assumption of the cowl. Monk of Cluny, abbot
of Glastonbury, bishop of Winchester, papal legate—a rise as abrupt and
spectacular as a rainbow. True, he was a king’s nephew to start with, and owed
his rapid advancement to the old king Henry. Able younger sons from lesser
families choosing the cloister and the habit could not all expect the mitre,
within or without their abbeys. That brittle youngster with the passionate
mouth and the green-flecked eyes, for instance—how far was he likely to get on
the road to power?

“Hugh,”
said Cadfael, damping down his brazier with a turf to keep it live but sleepy,
in case he should want it later, “what do you know of the Aspleys of Aspley?
Down the fringe of the Long Forest, I fancy, no great way from the town, but
solitary.”

“Not
so solitary,” said Hugh, mildly surprised by the query. “There are three
neighbour manors there, all grown from what began as one assart. They all held
from the great earl, they all hold from the crown now. He’s taken the name
Aspley. His grandsire was Saxon to the finger-ends, but a solid man, and Earl
Roger took him into favour and left him his land. They’re Saxon still, but
they’d taken his salt, and were loyal to it and went with the earldom when it
came to the crown. This lord took a Norman wife and she brought him a manor
somewhere to the north, beyond Nottingham, but Aspley is still the head of his honour.
Why, what’s Aspley to you?”

“A
shape on a horse in the rain,” said Cadfael simply. “He’s brought us his
younger son, heaven-bent or hell-bent on the cloistered life. I wondered why,
that’s the truth of it.”

“Why?”
Hugh shrugged and smiled. “A small honour, and an elder brother. There’ll be no
land for him, unless he has the martial bent and sets out to carve some for
himself. And cloister and church are no bad prospects. A sharp lad could get
farther that way than hiring out a sword. Where’s the mystery?”

And
there, vivid in Cadfael’s mind, was the still young and vigorous figure of
Henry of Blois to point the judgement. But was that stiff and quivering boy the
stuff of government?

“What
like is the father?” he asked, sitting down beside his friend on the broad
bench against the wall of his workshop.

“From
a family older than Ethelred, and proud as the devil himself, for all he has
but two manors to his name. Princes kept their own local courts in content,
then. There are such houses still, in the hill lands and the forests. I suppose
he must be some years past fifty,” said Hugh, pondering placidly enough over
his dutiful studies of the lands and lords under his vigilance in these uneasy times.
“His reputation and word stand high. I never saw the sons. There’d be five or
six years between them, I fancy. Your sprig would be what age?”

“Nineteen,
so he’s reported.”

“What
frets you about him?” asked Hugh, undisturbed though perceptive; and he slanted
a brief glance along his shoulder at Brother Cadfael’s blunt profile, and
waited without impatience.

“His
tameness,” said Cadfael, and checked himself at finding his imagination, rather
than his tongue, so unguarded. “Since by nature he is wild,” he went on firmly,
“with a staring eye on him like a falcon or a pheasant, and a brow like an
overhanging rock. And folds his hands and dips his lids like a maidservant
scolded!”

“He
practises his craft,” said Hugh easily, “and studies his abbot. So they do, the
sharp lads. You’ve seen them come and go.”

“So
I have.” Ineptly enough, some of them, ambitious young fellows gifted with the
means to go so far and no farther, and bidding far beyond their abilities. He
had no such feeling about this one. That hunger and thirst after acceptance,
beyond rescue, seemed to him an end in itself, a measure of desperation. He
doubted if the falcon-eyes looked beyond at all, or saw any horizon outside the
enclosing wall of the enclave. “Those who want a door to close behind them,
Hugh, must be either escaping into the world within or from the world without.
There is a difference. But do you know a way of telling one from the other?”

Chapter Two

THERE
WAS A FAIR CROP OF OCTOBER APPLES that year in the orchards along the Gaye, and
since the weather had briefly turned unpredictable, they had to take advantage
of three fine days in succession that came in the middle of the week, and
harvest the fruit while it was dry. Accordingly they mustered all hands to the work,
choir monks and servants, and all the novices except the schoolboys. Pleasant
work enough, especially for the youngsters who were allowed to climb trees with
approval, and kilt their habits to the knee, in a brief return to boyhood.

One
of the tradesmen of the town had a hut close to the corner of the abbey lands
along the Gaye, where he kept goats and bees, and he had leave to cut fodder
for his beasts under the orchard trees, his own grazing being somewhat limited.
He was out there that day with a sickle, brushing the longer grass, last cut of
the year, from round the boles, where the scythe could not be safely used.
Cadfael passed the time of day with him pleasantly, and sat down with him under
an apple tree to exchange the leisured civilities proper to such a meeting.
There were very few burgesses in Shrewsbury he did not know, and this good man
had a flock of children to ask after.

Cadfael
had it on his conscience afterwards that it might well have been his
neighbourly attentions that caused his companion to lay down his sickle under
the tree, and forget to pick it up again when his youngest son, a frogling
knee-high, came hopping to call his father to his midday bread and ale. However
that might be, leave it he did, in the tussocky grass braced against the bole.
And Cadfael rose a little stiffly, and went to the picking of apples, while his
fellow-gossip hoisted his youngest by standing leaps back to the hut, and
listened to his chatter all the way.

The
straw baskets were filling merrily by then. Not the largest harvest Cadfael had
known from this orchard, but a welcome one all the same. A mellow, half-misty,
half-sunlit day, the river running demure and still between them and the high,
turreted silhouette of the town, and the ripe scent of harvest, compounded of
fruit, dry grasses, seeding plants and summer-warmed trees growing sleepy
towards their rest, heavy and sweet on the air and in the nose; no marvel if
constraints were lifted and hearts lightened. The hands laboured and the minds
were eased. Cadfael caught sight of Brother Meriet working eagerly, heavy
sleeves turned back from round, brown, shapely young arms, skirts kilted to
smooth brown knees, the cowl shaken low on his shoulders, and his untonsured
head shaggy and dark and vivid against the sky. His profile shone clear, the
hazel eyes wide and unveiled. He was smiling. No shared, confiding smile, only
a witness to his own content, and that, perhaps, brief and vulnerable enough.

Cadfael
lost sight of him, plodding modestly ahead with his own efforts. It is
perfectly possible to be spiritually involved in private prayer while working
hard at gathering apples, but he was only too well aware that he himself was
fully absorbed in the sensuous pleasure of the day, and from what he had seen
of Brother Meriet’s face, so was that young man. And very well it suited him.

It
was unfortunate that the heaviest and most ungainly of the novices should
choose to climb the very tree beneath which the sickle was lying, and still
more unfortunate that he should venture to lean out too far in his efforts to
reach one cluster of fruit. The tree was of the tip-bearing variety, and the
branches weakened by a weighty crop. A limb broke under the strain, and down
came the climber in a flurry of falling leaves and crackling twigs, straight on
to the upturned blade of the sickle.

It
was a spectacular descent, and half a dozen of his fellows heard the crashing
fall and came running, Cadfael among the first. The young man lay motionless in
the tangle of his habit, arms and legs thrown broadcast, a long gash in the
left side of his gown, and a bright stream of blood dappling his sleeve and the
grass under him. If ever a man presented the appearance of sudden and violent
death, he did. No wonder the unpracticed young stood aghast with cries of
dismay on seeing him.

Brother
Meriet was at some distance, and had not heard the fall. He came in innocence
between the trees, hefting a great basket of fruit towards the riverside path.
His gaze, for once open and untroubled, fell upon the sprawled figure, the slit
gown, the gush of blood. He baulked like a shot horse, starting back with heels
stuttering in the turf. The basket fell from his hands and spilled apples all
about the sward.

He
made no sound at all, but Cadfael, who was kneeling beside the fallen novice,
looked up, startled by the rain of fruit, into a face withdrawn from life and
daylight into the clay-stillness of death. The fixed eyes were green glass with
no flame behind them. They stared and stared unblinking at what seemed a
stabbed man, dead in the grass. All the lines of the mask shrank, sharpened,
whitened, as though they would never move or live again.