Monk's Hood (23 page)

“An
easy year so far,” said Brother Simon, viewing his leggy, tough hill-sheep with
satisfaction. Sheep as Welsh as Brother Cadfael gazed towards the southwest,
where the long
ridge of Berwyn rose in the distance; long,
haughty, inscrutable faces, and sharp ears, and knowing yellow eyes that could
outstare a saint. “Plenty of good grazing still, what with the grass growing so
late, and the good pickings they had in the stubble after harvest. And we have
beet-tops, they make good fodder, too. There’ll be better fleeces than most
years, when next they’re shorn, unless the winter turns cruel later on.”

From
the crest of the hill above the walled folds Brother Cadfael gazed towards the
south-west, where the long ridge dipped towards lower land, between the hills.
“This manor of Mallilie will be somewhere in the sheltered land there, as I
judge.”

“It
is. Three miles round by the easy track, the manor-house drawn back between the
slopes, and the lands open to the south-east. Good land for these parts. And
main glad I was to know we had a steward there, when I needed a messenger. Have
you an errand there, brother?”

“There’s
something I must see to, when Brother Barnabas is safely on the way to health
again, and I can be spared.” He turned and looked back towards the east. “Even
here we must be a good mile or more the Welsh side of the old boundary dyke. I
never was here before, not being a sheep man. I’m from Gwynedd myself, from the
far side of Conwy. But even these hills look like home to me.”

Gervase
Bonel’s manor must lie somewhat further advanced into Welsh land even than
these high pastures. The Benedictines had very little hold in Wales. Welshmen
preferred their own ancient Celtic Christianity, the solitary hermitage of the
self-exiled saint and the homely little college of Celtic monks rather than the
shrewd and vigorous foundations that looked to Rome. In the south, secular
Norman adventurers had penetrated more deeply, but here Mallilie must, indeed,
as Brother Rhys had said, be lodged like a single thorn deep in the flesh of
Wales.

“It
does not take long to ride to Mallilie,” said Brother Simon, anxiously helpful.
“Our horse here is elderly, but strong, and gets little enough work as a rule.
I could very well manage now, if you want to go tomorrow.”

“First
let’s see,” said Cadfael, “how Brother Barnabas progresses by tomorrow.”

Brother
Barnabas progressed very well once he had the fever out of him. Before
nightfall he was sick of lying in his bed, and insisted on rising and trying
his enfeebled legs about the room. His own natural strength and stout heart
were all he needed now to set him up again, though he swallowed tolerantly
whatever medicines Cadfael pressed upon him, and consented to have his chest
and throat anointed once again with the salve.

“No
need to trouble yourself for me now,” he said. “I shall be hale as a hound pup
in no time. And if I can’t take to the hills again for a day or two—though I
very well could, if you would but let me!—I can see to the house here, and the
hens and the cow, for that matter.”

The
next morning he rose to join them for Prime, and would not return to his bed,
though when they both harried him he agreed to sit snugly by the fire, and
exert himself no further than in baking bread and preparing dinner.

“Then
I will go,” said Cadfael, “if you can manage alone for the day, Simon. If I
leave now I shall have the best of the daylight, and be back with you in time
for the evening work.”

Brother
Simon went out with him to where the track branched, and gave him directions.
After the hamlet of Croesau Bach he would come to a cross roads, and turn
right, and from that point he would see how the hills were cleft ahead of him,
and making straight for that cleft he would come to Mallilie, beyond which the
track continued westward to Llansilin, the central seat of the commote of
Cynllaith.

The
morning was faintly misty, but with the sun bright through the mist, and the
turf wet and sparkling with the hint of rime already melting. He had chosen to
ride the horse from the grange rather than his mule, since the mule had had
lengthy exercise on the way north, and was entitled to a rest. The horse was an
ungainly bay, of homely appearance but amiable disposition and stout heart,
willing and ready for work. It was pleasant to be riding here alone in a fine
winter morning on cushioned turf, between hills that took him back
to his youth, with no routine duties and no need for talk, beyond
the occasional greeting for a woman splitting kindling in her yard, or a man
moving sheep to a new pasture, and even that was a special pleasure because he
found himself instinctively calling his good-day in Welsh. The holdings here
were scattered and few until he came through Croesau into lower and richer
ground, where the patterns of ordered tillage told him he was already entering
Mallilie land. A brook sprang into life on his right hand, and accompanied him
towards the cleft where the hill-slopes on either side drew close together.
Within a mile it was a little river, providing level meadows on either bank,
and the dark selions of ploughed land beyond. Trees clothed the upper slopes,
the valley faced south-east into the morning sun; a good place, its tenant
holdings sheltered and well found. Well into the defile, drawn back into a fold
of the slope on his right, and half-circled with arms of woodland, he came to
the manor-house.

A
timber stockade surrounded it, massive and high, but the house stood on rising
ground, and showed tall above it. Built of local stone, granite grey, with a
great long roof of slates, gleaming like fish-scales in the sun as the frost on
them turned to dew. When he had crossed the river by a plank-bridge and ridden
in at the open gate of the stockade, the whole length of the house lay before
him, a tall stone stair leading up to the main door of the living floor at the
left-hand end. At ground level three separate doors, wide enough to take in
country carts, led into what was evidently a vaulted under-croft, with storage
room enough for a siege. Judging by the windows in the gable end, there was yet
another small room above the kitchen. The windows of hall and solar were
stone-mullioned and generous. Round the inner side of the stockade there were
ample outhouses, stables, mews and stores. Norman lordlings, promised heirs,
Benedictine abbeys might well covet such a property. Richildis had indeed
married out of her kind.

The
servants here would be Bonel’s servants, continuing their functions under a new
rule. A groom came to take
Cadfael’s bridle, feeling no need
to question one who arrived in a Benedictine habit. There were few people
moving about the court, but those few assured in their passage; and impressive
though the house was, it could never have needed a very numerous body to run
it. All local people, surely, and that meant Welsh people, like the
serving-maid who had warmed her lord’s bed and borne him a disregarded son. It
happened! Bonel might even have been an attractive man then, and given her
pleasure, as well as a child; and at least he had kept her thereafter, and the
child with her, though as mere indulged dependents, not members of his family,
not his kin. A man who did not take more than he felt to be legally his, but
would not forgo any item of what fell within that net. A man who let an
unclaimed villein holding go to a hungry younger son from a free family, on
terms of customary service, and then, with the law firmly behind him, claimed
that questionable tenant as villein by reason of the dues rendered between
them, and his progeny as unfree by the same code.

In
this disputed borderland of soil and law, Cadfael found his heart and mind
utterly Welsh, but could not deny that the Englishman had just as passionately
held by his own law, and been sure that he was justified. He had not been an
evil man, only a child of his time and place, and his death had been murder.

Properly
speaking, Cadfael had no business at this house but to observe, as now he had
observed. But he went in, nevertheless, up the outdoor stair and into the passage
screened off from the hail. A boy emerging from the kitchen louted to him and
passed, accepting him as one of the breed, who would know his way here. The
hall was lofty and strongly beamed. Cadfael passed through it to the solar.
This must be where Bonel had intended to install the panelling commissioned
from Martin Bellecote, the transaction which had first caused him to set eyes
and heart on Richildis Gurney, who had once been Richildis Vaughan, daughter of
an honest, unpretentious tradesman.

Martin
had done good work, and fitted it into place here with skill and love. The
solar was narrower than the hall,
there being a garderobe off
it, and a tiny chapel. It glowed and was scented with the polished and sparely
carved oak panelling, the suave silvery grain glinting in the light from the
wide window. Edwin had a good brother and a good master. He need not repine if
he missed the illusory heritage.

“Your
pardon, brother!” said a respectful voice at Cadfael’s back. “No one told me
there was a messenger here from Shrewsbury.”

Cadfael
turned, startled, to take a look at the abbey’s steward here; a layman, a
lawman, young enough to be deferential to his employers, mature enough to be in
command of his own province.

“It’s
I who should ask your pardon,” said Cadfael, “for walking in upon you without
ceremony. Truth to tell, I have no errand here, but being in the neighbourhood
I was curious to see our new manor.”

“If
it is indeed ours,” said the steward ruefully, and looked about him with a
shrewd eye, assessing what the abbey might well be losing. “It seems to be in
doubt at the moment, though that makes no difference to my commission here, to
maintain it in good order, however the lot falls in the end. The place has been
run well and profitably. But if you are not sent to join us here, brother,
where is your domicile? As long as we hold the manor, we can well offer you
lodging, if it please you to stay.”

“That
I can’t,” said Cadfael. “I was sent from Shrewsbury to take care of an ailing
brother, a shepherd at the folds by Rhydycroesau, and until he’s restored I
must take on his duties there.”

“Your
patient is mending, I trust?”

“So
well that I thought I might use a few hours to come and see what manner of
property may be slipping through our fingers here. But have you any immediate
reason for feeling that our tenure may be threatened? More than the obvious
difficulty of the charter not being sealed in time?”

The
steward frowned, chewing a dubious lip. “The situation is strange enough, for
if both the secular heir and the abbey lose their claim, the future of Mallilie
is a very open
question. The earl of Chester is the overlord,
and may bestow it as he pleases, and in troublous times like these I doubt if
he’ll want to leave it in monastic hands. We could appeal to him, true, but not
until Shrewsbury has an abbot again, with full powers. All we can do in the
meantime is manage this land until there’s a legal decision. Will you take your
dinner here with me, brother? Or at least a cup of wine?”

Cadfael
declined the offer of a midday meal; it was yet early, and he had a use for the
remaining hours of daylight. But he accepted the wine with pleasure. They sat
down together in the panelled solar, and the dark Welsh kitchen-boy brought
them a flagon and two horns.

“You’ve
had no trouble with the Welsh to west of you?” asked Cadfael.

“None.
They’ve been used to the Bonels as neighbours for fifty years now, and no bad
blood on either side. Though I’ve had little contact except with our own Welsh
tenants. You know yourself, brother, both sides of the border here there are
both Welsh and English living cheek by jowl, and most of those one side have
kin on the other.”

“One
of our oldest brothers,” said Cadfael, “came from this very region, from a
village between here and Llansilin. He was talking of his old kinship when he
knew I was coming to Rhydycroesau. I’d be glad to carry his greetings, if I can
find his people. Two cousins he mentioned, Cynfrith and Owain ap Rhys. You
haven’t encountered either? And a brother by marriage, one Ifor ap Morgan…
though it must be many years since he had any contact with any of them, and for
ought I know this Ifor ap Morgan may be dead long ago. He must be round about
Rhys’s own age, and few of us last so long.”

The
steward shook his head doubtfully. “Cynfrith ap Rhys I’ve heard spoken of, he
has a holding half a mile or so west of here. Ifor ap Morgan… no, I know
nothing of him. But I tell you what, if he’s living the boy will know, he’s
from Llansilin himself. Question him when you leave, and do it in Welsh, for
all he knows English well enough. You’ll get more out of him in Welsh… and all
the more readily,” he
added with a wry grin, “if I’m not with
you. They’re none of them ill-disposed, but they keep their own counsel, and
it’s wonderful how they fail to understand English when it suits them to shut
the alien out.”

“I’ll
try it,” said Cadfael, “and my thanks for the good advice.”

“Then
you’ll forgive me if I don’t accompany you to the gate and give you God-speed.
You’ll do better alone.”

Cadfael
took the hint and his leave, there in the solar, and went out through the hail
and by the screened way into the kitchen. They boy was there, backing red-faced
from the oven with a tray of new loaves. He looked round warily as he set down
his burden on the clay top to cool gradually. It was neither fear nor distrust,
but the wariness of a wild creature alert and responsive to every living thing,
curious and ready to be friendly, sceptical and ready to vanish.