The Devils Novice (13 page)

Brother
Paul, coming from the abbot’s parlour before Vespers, was clearly relieved at
the prospect of enjoying a lengthened truce even after Meriet was released from
his prison.

“Father
Abbot tells me the suggestion came from you. It was well thought of, there’s
need of a long pause and a new beginning, though the children will easily
forget their terrors. But that act of violence—that will not be so easily
forgotten.”

“How
is your penitent faring?” asked Cadfael. “Have you visited him since I was in
there early this morning?”

“I
have. I am not so sure of his penitence,” said Brother Paul dubiously, “but he
is very quiet and biddable, and listens to exhortation patiently. I did not try
him too far. We are failing sadly if he is happier in a cell than out among us.
I think the only thing that frets him is having no work to do, so I have taken
him the sermons of Saint Augustine, and given him a better lamp to read by, and
a little desk he can set on his bed. Better far to have his mind occupied, and
he is quick at letters. I suppose you would rather have given him Palladius on
agriculture,” said Paul, mildly joking. “Then you could make a case for taking
him into your herbarium, when Oswin moves on.”

It
was an idea that had occurred to Brother Cadfael, but better the boy should go
clean away, into Mark’s gentle stewardship. “I have not asked leave again,” he
said, “but if I may visit him before bed, I should be glad. I did not tell him
of my errand to his father, I shall not tell him now, but there are two people
there have sent him messages of affection which I have promised to deliver.”
There was also one who had not, and perhaps she knew her own business best.

“Certainly
you may go in before Compline,” said Paul. “He is justly confined, but not
ostracised. To shun him utterly would be no way to bring him into our family, which
must be the end of our endeavours.”

It
was not the end of Cadfael’s but he did not feel it necessary or timely to say
so. There is a right place for every soul under the sun, but it had already
become clear to him that the cloister was no place for Meriet Aspley, however
feverishly he demanded to be let in.

Meriet
had his lamp lighted, and so placed as to illumine the leaves of Saint
Augustine on the head of his cot. He looked round quickly but tranquilly when
the door opened, and knowing the incomer, actually smiled. It was very cold in
the cell, the prisoner wore habit and scapular for warmth, and by the careful
way he turned his body, and the momentary wincing halt to release a fold of his
shirt from a tender spot, his weals were stiffening as they healed.

“I’m
glad to see you so healthily employed,” said Cadfael. “With a small effort in
prayer, Saint Augustine may do you good. Have you used the balm since this
morning? Paul would have helped you, if you had asked him.”

“He
is good to me,” said Meriet, closing his book and turning fully to his visitor.
And he meant it, that was plain.

“But
you did not choose to condescend to ask for sympathy or admit to need—I know!
Let me have off the scapular and drop your habit.” It had certainly not yet
become a habit in which he felt at home, he moved naturally in it only when he
was aflame, and forgot he wore it. “There, lie down and let me at you.”

Meriet
presented his back obediently, and allowed Cadfael to draw up his shirt and
anoint the fading weals that showed only here and there a dark dot of dried
blood. “Why do I do what you tell me?” he wondered, mildly rebelling. “As
though you were no brother at all, but a father?”

“From
all I’ve heard of you,” said Cadfael, busy with his balm, “you are by no means
known for doing what your own father tells you.”

Meriet
turned in his cradling arms and brought to bear one bright green-gold eye upon
his companion. “How do you know so much of me? Have you been there and talked
with my father?” He was ready to bristle in distrust, the muscles of his back
had tensed. “What are they trying to do? What business is there needs my
father’s word now? I am here! If I offend, I pay. No one else settles my
debts.”

“No
one else has offered,” said Cadfael placidly. “You are your own master, however
ill you master yourself. Nothing is changed. Except that I have to bring you
messages, which do not meddle with your lordship’s liberty to save or damn
yourself. Your brother sends you his best remembrances and bids me say he holds
you in his love always.”

Meriet
lay very still, only his brown skin quivered very faintly under Cadfael’s
fingers.

“And
the lady Roswitha also desires you to know that she loves you as befits a
sister.”

Cadfael
softened in his hands the stiffened folds of the shirt, where they had dried
hard, and drew the linen down over fading lacerations that would leave no scar.
Roswitha might be far more deadly. “ Draw up your gown now, and if I were you
I’d put out the lamp and leave your reading, and sleep.” Meriet lay still on
his face, saying never a word. Cadfael drew up the blanket over him, and stood
looking down at the mute and rigid shape in the bed.

It
was no longer quite rigid, the wide shoulders heaved in a suppressed and
resented rhythm, the braced forearms were stiff and protective, covering the
hidden face. Meriet was weeping. For Roswitha or for Nigel? Or for his own
fate?

“Child,”
said Cadfael, half-exasperated and half-indulgent, “you are nineteen years old,
and have not even begun to live, and you think in the first misery of your life
that God has abandoned you. Despair is deadly sin, but worse it is mortal
folly. The number of your friends is legion, and God is looking your way as
attentively as ever he did. And all you have to do to deserve is to wait in
patience, and keep up your heart.”

Even
through his deliberate withdrawal and angrily suppressed tears Meriet was
listening, so much was clear by his tension and stillness.

“And
if you care to know,” said Cadfael, almost against his will, and sounding still
more exasperated in consequence, “yes, I am, by God’s grace, a father. I have a
son. And you are the only one but myself who knows it.”

And
with that he pinched out the wick of the lamp, and in the darkness went to
thump on the door to be let out.

It
was a question, when Cadfael visited next morning, which of them was the more
aloof and wary with the other, each of them having given away rather more than
he had intended. Plainly there was to be no more of that. Meriet had put on an
austere and composed face, not admitting to any weakness, and Cadfael was gruff
and practical, and after a look at the little that was still visible of the
damage to his difficult patient, pronounced him in no more need of doctoring,
but very well able to concentrate on his reading, and make the most of his
penitential time for the good of his soul.

“Does
that mean,” asked Meriet directly, “that you are washing your hands of me?”

“It
means I have no more excuse for demanding entry here, when you are supposed to
be reflecting on your sins in solitude.”

Meriet
scowled briefly at the stones of the wall, and then said stiffly: “It is not
that you fear I’ll take some liberty because of what you were so good as to
confide to me? I shall never say a word, unless to you and at your instance.”

“No
such thought ever entered my mind,” Cadfael assured him, startled and touched.
“Do you think I would have said it to a blabbermouth who would not know a
confidence when one was offered him? No, it’s simply that I have no warranty to
go in and out here without good reason, and I must abide by the rules as you
must.”

The
fragile ice had already melted. “A pity, though,” said Meriet, unbending with a
sudden smile which Cadfael recalled afterwards as both startlingly sweet and
extraordinarily sad. “I reflect on my sins much better when you are here
scolding. In solitude I still find myself thinking how much I would like to
make Brother Jerome eat his own sandals.”

“We’ll
consider that a confession in itself,” said Cadfael, “and one that had better
not be made to any other ears. And your penance will be to make do without me
until your ten days of mortification are up. I doubt you’re incorrigible and
past praying for, but we can but try.”

He
was at the door when Meriet asked anxiously: “Brother Cadfael…?” And when he
turned at once: “Do you know what they mean to do with me afterwards?”

“Not
to discard you, at all events,” said Cadfael, and saw no reason why he should
not tell him what was planned for him. It seemed that nothing was changed. The
news that he was in no danger of banishment from his chosen field calmed,
reassured, placated Meriet; it was all that he wanted to hear. But it did not
make him happy.

Cadfael
went away discouraged, and was cantankerous with everyone who came in his path
for the rest of the day.

Chapter Seven

HUGH
CAME SOUTH FROM THE PEAT-HAGS empty-handed to his house in Shrewsbury, and sent
an invitation to Cadfael to join him at supper on the evening of his return. To
such occasional visits Cadfael had the most unexceptionable claim, since Giles
Beringar, now some ten months old, was his godson, and a good godfather must
keep a close eye on the welfare and progress of his charge. Of young Gile’s
physical well being and inexhaustible energy there could be little question,
but Hugh did sometimes express doubts about his moral inclinations, and like
most fathers, detailed his son’s ingenious villainies with respect and pride.

Aline,
having fed and wined her menfolk, and observed with a practised eye the first
droop of her son’s eyelids, swept him off out of the room to be put to bed by
Constance, who was his devoted slave, as she had been loyal friend and servant
to his mother from childhood. Hugh and Cadfael were left alone for a while to
exchange such information as they had. But the sum of it was sadly little.

“The
men of the moss,” said Hugh, “are confident that not one of them has seen hide
or hair of a stranger, whether victim or malefactor. Yet the plain fact is that
the horse reached the moss, and the man surely cannot have been far away. It
still seems to me that he lies somewhere in those peat-pools, and we are never
likely to see or hear of him again. I have sent to Canon Eluard to try and find
out what he carried on him. I gather he went very well-presented and was given
to wearing jewels. Enough to tempt footpads. But if that was the way of it, it
seems to be a first venture from farther north, and it may well be that our
scourings there have warned off the maurauders from coming that way again for a
while. There have been no other travellers molested in those parts. And indeed,
strangers in the moss would be in some peril themselves. You need to know the
safe places to tread. Still, for all I can see, that is what happened to Peter
Clemence. I’ve left a sergeant and a couple of men up there, and the natives
are on the watch for us, too.”

Cadfael
could not but agree that this was the likeliest answer to the loss of a man.
“And yet… you know and I know that because one event follows another, it is not
necessary the one should have caused the other. And yet the mind is so
constructed, it cannot break the bond between the two. And here were two
events, both unexpected; Clemence visited and departed—for he did depart, not one
but four people rode a piece with him and said farewell to him in goodwill—and
two days later the younger son of the house declared his intent to take the
cowl. There is no sensible connection, and I cannot reeve the two apart.”

“Does
that mean,” demanded Hugh plainly, “that you think this boy may have had a hand
in a man’s death and be taking refuge in the cloister?”

“No,”
said Cadfael decidedly. “Don’t ask what is in my mind, for all I find there is mist
and confusion, but whatever lies behind the mist, I feel certain it is not
that. What his motive is I dare not guess, but I do not believe it is
blood-guilt.” And even as he said and meant it, he saw again Brother Wolstan
prone and bleeding in the orchard grass, and Meriet’s face fallen into a frozen
mask of horror.

“For
all that—and I respect what you say—I would like to keep a hand on this strange
young man. A hand I can close at any moment if ever I should so wish,” said
Hugh honestly. “And you tell me he is to go to Saint Giles? To the very edge of
town, close to woods and open heaths!”

“You
need not fret,” said Cadfael, “he will not run. He has nowhere to run to, for
whatever else is true, his father is utterly estranged from him and would
refuse to take him in. But he will not run because he does not wish to. The
only haste he still nurses is to rush into his final vows and be done with it,
and beyond deliverance.”

“It’s
perpetual imprisonment he’s seeking, then? Not escape?” said Hugh, with his dark
head on one side, and a rueful and affectionate smile on his lips.

“Not
escape, no. From all I have seen,” said Cadfael heavily, “he knows of no way of
escape, anywhere, for him.”

At
the end of his penance Meriet came forth from his cell, blinking even at the
subdued light of a November morning after the chill dimness within, and was
presented at chapter before austere, unrevealing faces to ask pardon for his
offences and acknowledge the justice of his penalty, which he did, to Cadfael’s
relief and admiration, with a calm and dignified bearing and a quiet voice. He
looked thinner for his low diet, and his summer brown, smooth copper when he
came, had faded into dark, creamy ivory, for though he tanned richly, he had
little colour beneath the skin except when enraged. He was docile enough now,
or had discovered how to withdraw into himself so far that curiosity, censure
and animosity should not be able to move him.