The Devils Novice (11 page)

Thus,
then, was Meriet explained? Frantic to escape from his frustrated love into a
world without women, perhaps also anxious to remove from his brother’s
happiness the slightest shadow of grief or reproach—did that account for him?
But he had taken the symbol of his torment into the cloister with him—was that
sensible?

The
small sound of the mule’s neat hooves in the dry grass of the track and the
small stones had finally reached the ears of the girl. She looked up and saw
the rider approaching, and said a soft word into her companion’s ear. The young
man checked for a moment in his stride, and stared with reared head to see a
Benedictine monk in the act of riding away from the gates of Aspley. He was
very quick to connect and wonder. The light smiled faded instantly from his
face, he drew his hand from the girl’s hold, and quickened his pace with the
evident intention of accosting the departing visitor.

They
drew together and halted by consent. The elder son, close to, loomed even
taller than his sire, and improbably good to look upon, in a world of
imperfection. With a large but shapely hand raised to the mule’s bridle, he
looked up at Cadfael with clear brown eyes rounded in concern, and gave short
greeting in his haste.

“From
Shrewsbury, brother? Pardon if I dare question, but you have been to my
father’s house? There’s news? My brother—he has not…” He checked himself there
to make belated reverence, and account for himself. “Forgive such a rough
greeting, when you do not even know me, but I am Nigel Aspley, Meriet’s
brother. Has something happened to him? He has not done—any foolishness?”

What
should be said to that? Cadfael was by no means sure whether he considered
Meriet’s conscious actions to be foolish or not. But at least there seemed to
be one person who cared what became of him, and by the anxiety and concern in
his face suffered fears for him which were not yet justified.

“There’s
no call for alarm on his account,” said Cadfael soothingly. “He’s well enough
and has come to no harm, you need not fear.”

“And
he is still set—He has not changed his mind?”

“He
has not. He is as intent as ever on taking vows.”

“But
you’ve been with my father! What could there be to discuss with him? You are
sure that Meriet…” He fell silent, doubtfully studying Cadfael’s face. The girl
had drawn near at her leisure, and stood a little apart, watching them both
with serene composure, and in a posture of such natural grace that Cadfael’s
eyes could not forbear straying to enjoy her.

“I
left your brother in stout heart,” he said, carefully truthful, “and of the same
mind as when he came to us. I was sent by my abbot only to speak with your
father about certain doubts which have arisen rather in the lord abbot’s mind
than in Brother Meriet’s. He is still very young to take such a step in haste,
and his zeal seems to older minds excessive. You are nearer to him in years
than either your sire or our officers,” said Cadfael persuasively. “Can you not
tell me why he may have taken this step? For what reason, sound and sufficient
to him, should he choose to leave the world so early?”

“I
don’t know,” said Nigel lamely, and shook his head over his failure. “Why do
they do so? I never understood.” As why should he, with all the reasons he had
for remaining in and of this world? “He said he wanted it,” said Nigel.

“He
says so still. At every turn he insists on it.”

“You’ll
stand by him? You’ll help him to have his will? If that is truly what he
wishes?”

“We’re
all resolved,” said Cadfael sententiously, “on helping him to his desire. Not
all young men pursue the same destiny, as you must know.” His eyes were on the
girl; she was aware of it, and he was aware of her awareness. Another coil of
red-gold hair had escaped from the band that held it; it lay against her smooth
cheek, casting a deep gold shadow.

“Will
you carry him my dear remembrances, brother? Say he has my prayers, and my love
always.” Nigel withdrew his hand from the bridle, and stood back to let the
rider proceed.

“And
assure him of my love, also,” said the girl in a voice of honey, heavy and
sweet. Her blue eyes lifted to Cadfael’s face. “We have been playfellows many
years, all of us here,” she said, certainly with truth. “I may speak in terms
of love, for I shall soon be his sister.”

“Roswitha
and I are to be married at the abbey in December,” said Nigel, and again took
her by the hand.

“I’ll
bear your messages gladly,” said Cadfael, “and wish you both all possible
blessing against the day.”

The
mule moved resignedly, answering the slight shake of the bridle. Cadfael passed
them with his eyes still fixed on the girl Roswitha, whose infinite blue gaze
opened on him like a summer sky. The slightest of smiles touched her lips as he
passed, and a small, contented brightness flashed in her eyes. She knew that he
could not but admire her, and even the admiration of an elderly monk was
satisfaction to her. Surely the very motions she had made in his presence, so
slight and so conscious, had been made in the knowledge that he was well aware
of them, cobweb threads to entrammel one more unlikely fly.

He
was careful not to look back, for it had dawned on him that she would
confidently expect him to.

Just
within the fringe of the copse, at the end of the fields, there was a
stone-built sheepfold, close beside the ride, and someone was sitting on the
rough wall, dangling crossed ankles and small bare feet, and nursing in her lap
a handful of late hazelnuts, which she cracked in her teeth, dropping the
fragments of shell into the long grass. From a distance Cadfael had been
uncertain whether this was boy or girl, for her gown was kilted to the knee,
and her hair cropped just short enough to swing clear of her shoulders, and her
dress was the common brown homespun of the countryside. But as he drew nearer
it became clear that this was certainly a girl, and moreover, busy about the
enterprise of becoming a woman. There were high, firm breasts under the
close-fitting bodice, and for all her slenderness she had the swelling hips
that would some day make childbirth natural and easy for her. Sixteen, he
thought, might be her age. Most curiously of all, it appeared that she was both
expecting and waiting for him, for as he rode towards her she turned on her
perch to look towards him with a slow, confident smile of recognition and
welcome, and when he was close she slid from the wail, brushing off the last
nutshells, and shook down her skirts with the brisk movements of one making
ready for action. “Sir, I must talk to you,” she said with firmness, and put up
a slim brown hand to the mule’s neck. “Will you light down and sit with me?”
She had still her child’s face, but the woman was beginning to show through,
paring away the puppy-flesh to outline the elegant lines of her cheekbones and
chin. She was brown almost as her nutshells, with a warm rose-colour mantling
beneath the tanned, smooth skin, and a mouth rose-red, and curled like the
petals of a half-open rose. The short, thick mane of curling hair was richly
russet-brown, and her eyes one shade darker, and black-lashed. No cottar’s
girl, if she did choose to go plain and scorning finery. She knew she was an
heiress, and to be reckoned with.

“I
will, with pleasure,” said Cadfael promptly, and did so. She took a step back,
her head on one side, scarcely having expected such an accommodating reception,
without explanation asked or given; and when he stood on level terms with her,
and barely half a head taller, she suddenly made up her mind, and smiled at him
radiantly.

“I
do believe we two can talk together properly. You don’t question, and yet you
don’t even know me.”

“I
think I do,” said Cadfael, hitching the mule’s bridle to a staple in the stone
wall. “You can hardly be anyone else but Isouda Foriet. For all the rest I’ve
already seen, and I was told already that you must be the youngest of the
tribe.”

“He
told you of me?” she demanded at once, with sharp interest, but no noticeable
anxiety.

“He
mentioned you to others, but it came to my ears.”

“How
did he speak of me?” she asked bluntly, jutting a firm chin. “Did that also
come to your ears?”

“I
did gather that you were a kind of young sister.” For some reason, not only did
he not feel it possible to lie to this young person, it had no value even to
soften the truth for her.

She
smiled consideringly, like a confident commander weighing up the odds in a threatened
field. “As if he did not much regard me. Never mind! He will.”

“If
I had the ruling of him,” said Cadfael with respect, “I would advise it now.
Well, Isouda, here you have me, as you wished. Come and sit, and tell me what
you wanted of me.”

“You
brothers are not supposed to have to do with women,” said Isouda, and grinned
at him warmly as she hoisted herself back on to the wall. “That makes him safe
from
her,
at least, but it must not go too far with this folly of his.
May I know your name, since you know mine?”

“My
name is Cadfael, A Welshman from Trefriw.”

“My
first nurse was Welsh,” she said, leaning down to pluck a frail green thread of
grass from the fading stems below her, and set it between strong white teeth.
“I don’t believe you have always been a monk, Cadfael, you know too much.”

“I
have known monks, children of the cloister from eight years old,” said Cadfael
seriously, “who knew more than I shall ever know, though only God knows how,
who made it possible. But no, I have lived forty years in the world before I
came to it. My knowledge is limited. But what I know you may ask of me. You
want, I think, to hear of Meriet.”

“Not
“Brother Meriet”?” she said, pouncing, light as a cat, and glad.

“Not
yet. Not for some time yet.”

“Never
!” she said
firmly and confidently. “It will not come to that. It must not.” She turned her
head and looked him in the face with a high, imperious stare. “He is mine,” she
said simply. “Meriet is mine, whether he knows it yet or no. And no one else
will have him.”

Chapter Six

“ASK
ME WHATEVER YOU WISH,” said Cadfael, shifting to find the least spiky position
on the stones of the wall. “And then there are things I have to ask of you.”

“And
you’ll tell me honestly what I need to know? Every part of it?” she challenged.
Her voice had a child’s directness and high, clear pitch, but a lord’s
authority.

“I
will.” For she was equal to it, even prepared for it. Who knew this vexing
Meriet better?

“How
far has he got towards taking vows? What enemies has he made? What sort of fool
has he made of himself, with his martyr’s wish? Tell me everything that has
happened to him since he went from me.” “From me” was what she said, not “from
us”.

Cadfael
told her. If he chose his words carefully, yet he made them tell her the truth.
She listened with so contained and armed a silence, nodding her head
occasionally where she recognised necessity, shaking it where she deprecated
folly, smiling suddenly and briefly where she understood, as Cadfael could not
yet fully understand, the proceedings of her chosen man. He ended telling her
bluntly of the penalty Meriet had brought upon himself, and even, which was a
greater temptation to discretion, about the burned tress that was the occasion
of his fall. It did not surprise or greatly dismay her, he noted. She thought
about it no more than a moment.

“If
you but knew the whippings he has brought on himself before! No one will ever
break him that way. And your Brother Jerome has burned her lure—that was well
done. He won’t be able to fool himself for long, with no bait left him.” She
caught, Cadfael thought, his momentary suspicion that he had nothing more to
deal with here than women’s jealousy. She turned and grinned at him with open
amusement. “Oh, but I saw you meet them! I was watching, though they didn’t
know it, and neither did you. Did you find her handsome? Surely you did, so she
is. And did she not make herself graceful and pleasing for you? Oh, it was for
you, be sure—why should she fish for Nigel, she has him landed, the only fish
she truly wants. But she cannot help casting her line.
She
gave Meriet
that lock of hair, of course! She can never quite let go of any man.”

It
was so exactly what Cadfael had suspected, since casting eyes on Roswitha, that
he was silenced.

“I’m
not afraid
of her,”
said Isouda tolerantly. “I know her too well. He
only began to imagine himself loving her because she belonged to Nigel. He must
desire whatever Nigel desires, and he must be jealous of whatever Nigel
possesses and he has not. And yet, if you’ll trust me, there is no one he loves
as he loves Nigel. No one. Not yet!”

“I
think,” said Cadfael, “you know far more than I about this boy who troubles my
mind and engages my liking. And I wish you would tell me what he does not,
everything about this home of his and how he has grown up in it. For he’s in
need of your help and mine, and I am willing to be your dealer in this, if you
wish him well, for so do I.”