The Potter's Field Part 2

"He cannot have harmed his wife," Eudo avowed st.u.r.dily. "He was already in the cloister, had been for three or four weeks, maybe more, while she was still there in the croft, before she went away. This is some other poor soul who fell foul of footpads, or some such sc.u.m, and was knifed or stabbed to death for the clothes she wore."

"Hardly that," said Hugh wryly. "She was clothed decently, laid out straight, and her hands folded on her breast over a little rough cross, cut from a hedge. As for the manner of her death, there's no mark on her, no bone broken. There may have been a knife. Who's to tell, now? But she was buried with some care and respect. That's the strangeness of it."

Eudo shook his head, frowning, over this growing wonder. "As a priest might?" he hazarded doubtfully. "If he found her dead? But then he would have cried it aloud, and had her taken to church, surely."

"There are some," said Hugh, "will soon be saying, "As a husband might, if they were in bitter contention, and she drove him to violence first, and remorse afterwards. No, no need to fret yet for Ruald, he has been in the company of a host of brothers since before his wife was last seen whole and well. We'll be patching together from their witness all his comings and goings since he entered his novitiate. And going back over the past few years in search of other women gone astray." He rose, eyeing the gathering dusk outside the door. "I'd best be getting back. I've taken too much of your time."

Eudo rose with him, willing and earnest. "No, you did right to look this way first. And I'll ask among my men, be sure. I still feel sometimes as though that field is my ground. You don't let go of land, even to the Church, without feeling you've left stray roots in it. I think I've stayed away from it to avoid despite, that it was left waste. I was glad to hear of the exchange, I knew the abbey would make better use of it. To tell the truth, I was surprised when my father made up his mind to give it to Haughmond, seeing the trouble they'd have turning it to account." He had followed Hugh towards the outer door, to see his guest out and mounted, when he halted suddenly, and looked back at the curtained doorway in a corner of the great hall.

"Would you look in for a moment, and say a neighbourly word to my mother, Hugh, while you're here? She can't get out at all now, and has very few visitors. She hasn't been out of the door since my father's burial. If you'd look in for a moment, it would please her."

"I will surely," said Hugh, turning at once.

"But don't tell her anything about this dead woman, it would only upset her, land that was ours so lately, and Ruald being our tenant... G.o.d knows she has enough to endure, we try to keep the world's ill news away from her, all the more when it comes so near home."

"Not a word!" agreed Hugh. "How is it with her since I saw her last?"

The young man shook his head. "Nothing changes. Only day by day she grows a little thinner and paler, but she makes no complaint. You'll see. Go in to her!" His hand was at the curtain, his voice lowered, to be heard only by Hugh. Plainly he was reluctant to go in with the guest, his vigorous youth was uneasy and helpless in the presence of illness, he could be excused for turning his eyes away. As soon as he opened the door of the solar and spoke to the woman within, his voice became unnaturally gentle and constrained, as to a stranger, difficult to approach, but to whom he owed affection. "Mother, here's Hugh Beringar paying us a visit."

Hugh pa.s.sed by him, and entered a small room, warmed by a little charcoal brazier set on a flat slab of stone, and lit by a torch in a sconce on the wall. Close under the light the dowager lady of Longner sat on a bench against the wall, propped erect with rugs and cus.h.i.+ons, and in her stillness and composure dominating the room. She was past forty-five and long, debilitating illness had aged her into a greyness and emaciation beyond her years. She had a distaff set up before her, and was twisting the wool with a hand that looked frail as a withered leaf, but was patient and competent as it teased out and twirled the strands. She looked up, at Hugh's entrance, with a startled smile, and let down the spindle to rest against the foot of the bench.

"Why, my lord, how good of you! It's a long time since I saw you last." That had been at her husband's funeral, seven months past now. She gave him her hand, light as a windflower in his, and as cold when he kissed it. Her eyes, which were huge and dusky blue, and sunk deeply into her head, looked him over with measured and shrewd intelligence. "Your office becomes you," she said. "You look well on responsibility. I am not so vain as to think you made the journey here to see me, when you have such weighty burdens on your time. Had you business with Eudo? Whatever brought you, a glimpse of you is very welcome."

"They keep me busy," he said, with considered reserve. "Yes, I had business of a sort with Eudo. Nothing that need trouble you. And I must not stay to tire you too long, and with you I won't talk business. How are you? And is there anything you need, or any way I can serve you?"

"All my needs are met before I can even ask," said Donata. "Eudo is a good soul, and I'm lucky in the daughter he's brought me. I have no complaints. Did you know the girl is already pregnant? And st.u.r.dy and wholesome as good bread, sure to get sons. Eudo has done well for himself. Perhaps I do miss the outside world now and then. My son is wholly taken up with making his manor worth a little more every harvest, especially now he looks forward to a son of his own. When my lord was alive, he looked beyond his own lands. I got to hear of every move up or down in the king's fortunes. The wind blew from wherever Stephen was. Now I labour behind the times. What is going on in the world outside?"

She did not sound to Hugh in need of any protection from the incursions of the outside world, near or far, but he stepped cautiously in consideration of her son's anxieties. "In our part of it, very little. The Earl of Gloucester is busy turning the south-west into a fortress for the Empress. Both factions are conserving what they have, and for the moment neither side is for fighting. We sit out of the struggle here. Lucky for us!"

"That sounds," she said, attentive and alert, "as if you have very different news from elsewhere. Oh, come, Hugh, now you are here you won't deny me a little fresh breeze from beyond the pales of Eudo's fences? He shrouds me in pillows, but you need not." And indeed it seemed to Hugh that even his unexpected company had brought a little wan colour to her fallen face, and a spark to her sunken eyes.

He admitted wryly: "There's news enough from elsewhere, a little too much for the king's comfort. At St. Albans there's been the devil to pay. Half the lords at court, it seems, accused the Earl of Ess.e.x of having traitorous dealings with the Empress yet again, and plotting the king's overthrow, and he's been forced to surrender his constables.h.i.+p of the Tower, and his castle and lands in Ess.e.x. That or the gallows, and he's by no means ready to die yet."

"And he has surrendered them? That would go down very bitterly with such a man as Geoffrey de Mandeville," she said, marvelling. "My lord never trusted him. An arrogant, overbearing man, he said. He has turned his coat often enough before, it may very well be true he had plans to turn it yet again. It's well that he was brought to bay in time."

"So it might have been, but once he was stripped of his lands they turned him loose, and he's made off into his own country and gathered the sc.u.m of the region about him. He's sacked Cambridge. Looted everything worth looting, churches and all, before setting light to the city."

"Cambridge?" said the lady, shocked and incredulous. "Dare he attack a city like Cambridge? The king must surely move against him. He cannot be left to pillage and burn as he pleases."

"It will not be easy," said Hugh ruefully. The man knows the Fen country like the lines of his hand, it's no simple matter to bring him to a pitched battle in such country."

She leaned to retrieve the spindle as a movement of her foot set it rolling. The hand with which she recoiled the yarn was languid and translucent, and the eyelids half-lowered over her hollow eyes were marble-white, and veined like the petals of a snowdrop. If she felt pain, she betrayed none, but she moved with infinite care and effort. Her lips had the strong set of reticence and durability.

"My son is there among the fens," she said quietly. "My younger son. You'll remember, he chose to take the cowl, in September of last year, and entered Ramsey Abbey."

"Yes, I remember. When he brought back your lord's body for burial, in March, I did wonder if he might have thought better of it by then. I wouldn't have said your Sulien was meant for a monk, from all I'd seen of him he had a good, sound appet.i.te for living in the world. I thought six months of it might have changed his mind for him. But no, he went back, once that duty was done."

She looked up at him for a moment in silence, the arched lids rolling back from still l.u.s.trous eyes. The faintest of smiles touched her lips and again faded. "I hoped he might stay, once he was home again. But no, he went back. It seems there's no arguing with a vocation."

It sounded like a muted echo of Ruald's inexorable departure from world and wife and marriage, and it was still ringing in Hugh's ears as he took his leave of Eudo in the darkening courtyard, and mounted and rode thoughtfully home. From Cambridge to Ramsey is barely twenty miles, he was reckoning as he went. Twenty miles, to the north-west, a little further removed from London and the head of Stephen's strength. A little deeper into the almost impenetrable world of the Fens, and with winter approaching. Let a mad wolf like de Mandeville once establish a base, islanded somewhere in those watery wastes, and it will take all Stephen's forces ever to flush him out again.

Brother Cadfael went up to the Potter's Field several times while the ploughing continued, but there were no more such unexpected finds to be made. The ploughman and his ox-herd had proceeded with caution at every turn under the bank, wary of further shocks, but the furrows opened one after another smooth and dark and innocent. The word kept coming to mind. Earth, Ruald had said, is innocent. Only the use we make of it can mar it. Yes, earth and many other things, knowledge, skill, strength, all innocent until use mars them. Cadfael considered in absence, in the cool, autumnal beauty of this great field, sweeping gently down from its ridge of bush and bramble and tree, hemmed on either side by its virgin headlands, the man who had once laboured here many years, and had uttered that vindication of the soil on which he laboured, and from which he dug his clay. Utterly open, decent and of gentle habit, a good workman and an honest citizen, so everyone who knew him would have said. But how well can man ever know his fellow-man? There were already plenty of very different opinions being expressed concerning Ruald, sometime potter, now a Benedictine monk of Shrewsbury. It had not taken long to change their tune.

For the story of the woman found buried in the Potter's Field had soon become common knowledge, and the talk of the district, and where should gossip look first but to the woman who had lived there fifteen years, and vanished without a word to anyone at the end of it? And where for the guilty man but to her husband, who had forsaken her for a cowl?

The woman herself, whoever she might be, was already reburied, by the abbot's grace, in a modest corner of the graveyard, with all the rites due to her but the gift of a name. Parochially, the situation of the whole demesne of Longner was peculiar, for it had belonged earlier to the bishops of Chester, who had bestowed all their local properties, if close enough, as outer and isolated dependencies of the parish of Saint Chad in Shrewsbury. But since no one knew whether this woman was a paris.h.i.+oner or a pa.s.sing stranger, Radulfus had found it simpler and more hospitable to give her a place in abbey ground, and be done with one problem, at least, of the many she had brought with her.

But if she was finally at rest, no one else was.

"You've made no move to take him in charge," said Cadfael to Hugh, in the privacy of his workshop in the herb garden, at the close of a long day. "Nor even to question him hard."

"No need yet," said Hugh. "He's safe enough where he is, if ever I should need him. He'll not move. You've seen for yourself, he accepts all as, at worst, a just punishment laid on him by G.o.d-oh, not necessarily for murder, simply for all the faults he finds newly in himself-or at best as a test of his faith and patience. If we all turned on him as guilty he would bear it meekly and with grat.i.tude. Nothing would induce him to avoid. No, rather I'll go on piecing together all his comings and goings since he entered here. If ever it reaches the case where I have cause to suspect him in good earnest, I know where to find him."

"And as yet you've found no such cause?"

"No more than I had the first day, and no less. And no other woman gone from where she should be. The place, the possible time, the contention between them, the anger, all speak against Ruald, and urge that this was Generys. But Generys was well alive after he was here within the enclave, and I have found no occasion when he could have met with her again, except with Brother Paul, as both have told us. Yet is it impossible that he should, just once, have been on some errand alone, and gone to her, against all orders, for I'm sure Radulfus wanted an end to the bitterness. The frame," said Hugh, irritated and weary, "is all too full of Ruald and Generys, and I can find no other to fit into it."

"But you do not believe it," Cadfael deduced, and smiled.

"I neither believe nor disbelieve. I go on looking. Ruald will keep. If tongues are wagging busily against him, he's safe within from anything worse. And if they wag unjustly, he may take it as Christian chastis.e.m.e.nt, and wait patiently for his deliverance."

Chapter Four.

ON THE EIGHTH DAY OF OCTOBER the morning began in a grey drizzle, hardly perceptible on the face, but wetting after a while. The working folk of the Foregate went about their business hooded in sacking, and the young man trudging along the highway past the horse-fair ground had his cowl drawn well forward over his forehead, and looked very much like any other of those obliged to go out this labouring morning despite the weather. The fact that he wore the Benedictine habit excited no attention. He was taken for one of the resident brothers on some errand between the abbey and Saint Giles, and on his way back to be in time for High Ma.s.s and chapter. He had a long stride, but trod as though his sandalled feet were sore, as well as muddy, and his habit was kilted almost to the knee, uncovering muscular, well-shaped legs, smooth and young, mired to the ankles. It seemed he must have walked somewhat further than to the hospital and back, and on somewhat less frequented and seemly roads than the Foregate.

He was moderately tall, but slender and angular in the manner of youth still not quite accomplished in the management of a man's body, as yearling colts are angular and springy, and to see such a youngster putting his feet down resolutely but tenderly, and thrusting forward with effort, struck Brother Cadfael as curious. He had looked back from the turn of the path into the garden on his way to his workshop, just as the young man turned in at the gatehouse wicket, and his eye was caught by the gait before he noticed anything else about the newcomer. Belated curiosity made him take a second glance, in time to observe that the man entering, though manifestly a brother, had halted to speak to the porter, in the manner of a stranger making civil enquiry after someone in authority. Not a brother of this house, seemingly. And now that Cadfael was paying attention, not one that he knew. One rusty black habit is much like another, especially with the cowl drawn close against the rain, but Cadfael could have identified every member of this extensive household, choir monk, novice, steward or postulant, at greater distance than across the court, and this lad was none of them. Not that there was anything strange in that, since a brother of another house in the Order might very well be sent on some legitimate business here to Shrewsbury. But there was something about this visitor that set him apart. He came on foot: official envoys from house to house more often rode. And he had come on foot a considerable distance, to judge by his appearance, shabby, footsore and weary.

It was not altogether Cadfael's besetting sin of curiosity that made him abandon his immediate intent and cross the great court to the gatehouse. It was almost time to get ready for Ma.s.s, and because of the rain everyone who must venture out did so as briefly and quickly as possible and scurried back to shelter, so that there was no one else visible at this moment to volunteer to bear messages or escort pet.i.tioners. But it must be admitted that curiosity also had its part. He approached the pair at the gate with a bright eye and a ready tongue. "You need a messenger, Brother? Can I serve?"

"Our brother here says he's instructed," said the porter, "to report himself first to the lord abbot, in accordance with his own abbot's orders. He has matter to report, before he can take any rest."

"Abbot Radulfus is still in his lodging," said Cadfael, "for I left him there only a short while since. Shall I be your herald? He was alone. If it's so grave he'll surely see you at once."

The young man put back the wet cowl from his head, and shook the drops that had slowly penetrated it from a tonsure growing somewhat long for conformity, and a crown covered with a strange fuzz of new growth, curly and of a dark, brownish gold. Yes, he had certainly been a long time on the way, pressing forward doggedly on foot from that distant cloister of his, wherever it might be. His face was oval, tapering slightly from a wide brow and wide-set eyes to a stubborn, probing jaw, covered at this moment by a fine golden down to match his unshaven crown. Weary and footsore he might be, but his long walk seemed to have done him no harm otherwise, for his cheeks had a healthy flush, and his eyes were of clear, light blue, and confronted Cadfael with a bright, unwavering gaze.

"I shall be glad if he will," he said, "for I do need to get rid of the dirt of travel, but I'm charged to unburden to him first, and must do as I'm bid. And yes, it's grave enough for the Order-and for me, though that's of small account," he added, shrugging off with the moisture of his cowl and scapular the present consideration of his own problems.

"He may not think it so," said Cadfael. "But come, and we'll put it to the test." And he led the way briskly down the great court towards the abbot's lodging, leaving the porter to retire into the comfort of his own lodge, out of the clinging rain.

"How long have you been on the road?" asked Cadfael of the young man limping at his elbow.

"Seven days." His voice was low-pitched and clear, and matched every other evidence of his youth. Cadfael judged he could not yet be past twenty, perhaps not even so much.

"Sent out alone on so long an errand?" said Cadfael, marvelling.

"Brother, we are all sent out, scattered. Pardon me if I keep what I have to say, to deliver first to the lord abbot. I would as soon tell it only once, and leave all things in his hands."

"That you may do with confidence," Cadfael a.s.sured him, and asked nothing further. The implication of crisis was there in the words, and the first note of desperation, quietly constrained, in the young voice. At the door of the abbot's lodging Cadfael let them both in without ceremony into the ante-room, and knocked at the half-open parlour door. The abbot's voice, preoccupied and absent, bade him enter. Radulfus had a folder of doc.u.ments before him, and a long forefinger keeping his place, and looked up only briefly to see who entered.

"Father, there is here a young brother, from a distant house of our Order, come with orders from his own abbot to report himself to you, and with what seems to be grave news. He is here at the door. May I admit him?"

Radulfus looked up with a lingering frown, abandoning whatever had been occupying him, and gave his full attention to this unexpected delivery.

"From what distant house?"

"I have not asked," said Cadfael, "and he has not said. His instructions are to deliver all to you. But he has been on the road seven days to reach us."

"Bring him in," said the abbot, and pushed his parchments aside on the desk.

The young man came in, made a deep reverence to authority, and as though some seal on his mind and tongue had been broken, drew a great breath and suddenly poured out words, crowding and tumbling like a gush of blood.

"Father, I am the bearer of very ill news from the abbey of Ramsey. Father, in Ess.e.x and the Fens men are become devils. Geoffrey de Mandeville has seized our abbey to be his fortress, and cast us out, like beggars on to the roads, those of us who still live. Ramsey Abbey is become a den of thieves and murderers."

He had not even waited to be given leave to speak, or to allow his news to be conveyed by orderly question and answer, and Cadfael had barely begun to close the door upon the pair of them, admittedly slowly and with p.r.i.c.ked ears, when the abbot's voice cut sharply through the boy's breathless utterance.

"Wait! Stay with us, Cadfael. I may need a messenger in haste." And to the boy he said crisply: "Draw breath, my son. Sit down, take thought before you speak, and let me hear a plain tale. After seven days, these few minutes will scarcely signify. Now, first, we here have had no word of this until now. If you have been so long afoot reaching us, I marvel it has not been brought to the sheriff's ears with better speed. Are you the first to come alive out of this a.s.sault?"

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 s.h.i.+res, 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 rea.s.suringly, "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 p.r.o.nounced 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 s.h.i.+re 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d receive wors.h.i.+p. 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 s.h.i.+res, 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 Ess.e.x, 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 wors.h.i.+p. 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."