The Devils Novice (29 page)

“I
have myself noted Brother Mark’s inclination,” said the abbot, “and approved
it. He has the heart of the matter in him. I will see him advanced, and take
your offer willingly.”

“And
the second thing,” said Leoric, “concerns my sons, for I have learned by good
and by ill that I have two, as a certain brother of this house has twice found
occasion to remind me, and with good reason. My son Nigel is wed to a daughter
of a manor now lacking another heir, and will therefore inherit through his
wife, if he makes good his reparation for faults confessed. Therefore I intend
to settle my manor of Aspley to my younger son Meriet. I mean to make my intent
known in a charter, and beg you to be one of my witnesses.”

“With
my goodwill,” said Radulfus, gravely smiling, “and part with him gladly, to
meet him in another fashion, outside this pale which never was meant to contain
him.”

Brother
Cadfael betook himself to his workshop that night before Compline, to make his
usual nightly check that all was in order there, the brazier fire either out or
so low that it presented no threat, all the vessels not in use tidied away, his
current wines contentedly bubbling, the lids on all his jars and the stoppers
in all his flasks and bottles. He was tired but tranquil, the world about him
hardly more chaotic than it had been two days ago, and in the meantime the
innocent delivered, not without great cost. For the boy had worshipped the
easy, warm, kind brother so much more pleasing to the eye and so much more
gifted in graces and physical accomplishments than ever he could be, so much
more loved, so much more vulnerable and frail, if only the soul showed through.
Worship was over now, but compassion and loyalty, even pity, can be just as
enchaining. Meriet had been the last to leave Nigel’s sick-room. Strange to
think that it must have cost Leoric a great pang of jealousy to leave him there
so long, fettered to his brother and letting his father go. They had still some
fearful lunges of adjustment to make between those three before all would be
resolved. Cadfael sat down with a sigh in his dark hut, only a glowing spark in
the brazier to keep him company. A quarter of an hour yet before Compline. Hugh
was away home at last, shutting out for tonight the task of levying men for the
king’s service. Christmas would come and go, and Stephen would move almost on
its heels—that mild, admirable, lethargic soul of generous inclinations, stung
into violent action by a blatantly treasonous act. He could move fast when he
chose, his trouble was that his animosities died young. He could not really
hate. And somewhere in the north, far towards his goal now, rode Janyn Linde,
no doubt still smiling, whistling, light of heart, with his two unavoidable
dead men behind him, and his sister, who had been nearer to him than any other
human creature, nonetheless shrugged off like a split glove. Hugh would have
Janyn Linde in his levelled eye, when he came with Stephen to Lincoln. A light
young man with heavy enormities to answer for, and all to be paid, here or
hereafter. Better here.

As
for the villein Harald, there was a farrier on the town side of the western
bridge willing to take him on, and as soon as the flighty public mind had
forgotten him he would be quietly let out to take up honest work there. A year
and a day in a charter borough, and he would be a free man.

Unwittingly
Cadfael had closed his eyes for a few drowsing moments, leaning well back
against his timber wall, with legs stretched out before him and ankles
comfortably crossed. Only the momentary chill draught penetrated his
half-sleep, and caused him to open his eyes. And they were there before him,
standing hand in hand, very gravely smiling, twin images of indulgence to his
age and cares, the boy become a man and the girl become what she had always
been in the bud, a formidable woman. There was only the glow-worm spark of the
dying brazier to light them, but they shone most satisfactorily.

Isouda
loosed her playfellow’s hand and came forward to stoop and kiss Cadfael’s
furrowed russet cheek.

“Tomorrow
early we are going home. There may be no chance then to say farewell properly.
But we shall not be far away. Roswitha is staying with Nigel, and will take him
home with her when he is well.”

The
secret light played on the planes of her face, rounded and soft and strong, and
found frets of scarlet in her mane of hair. Roswitha had never been as
beautiful as this, the burning heart was wanting.

“We
do love you!” said Isouda impulsively, speaking for both after her confident
fashion, “You and Brother Mark!” She swooped to cup his sleepy face in her
hands for an instant, and quickly withdrew to surrender him generously to
Meriet.

He
had been out in the frost with her, and the cold had stung high colour into his
cheeks. In the warmer air within the hut his dark, thick thatch of hair, still
blessedly untonsured, dangled thawing over his brow, and he looked somewhat as
Cadfael had first seen him, lighting down in the rain to hold his father’s
stirrup, stubborn and dutiful, when those two, so perilously alike, had been at
odds over a mortal issue. But the face beneath the damp locks was mature and
calm now, even resigned, acknowledging the burden of a weaker brother in need
of loyalty. Not for his disastrous acts, but for his poor, faulty flesh and
spirit.

“So
we’ve lost you,” said Cadfael. “If ever you’d come by choice I should have been
glad of you, we can do with a man of action to leaven us. Brother Jerome needs
a hand round his over-voluble throat now and again.”

Meriet
had the grace to blush and the serenity to smile. “I’ve made my peace with
Brother Jerome, very civilly and humbly, you would have approved. I
hope
you would! He wished me well, and said he would continue to pray for me.”

“Did
he, indeed!” In one who might grudgingly forgive an injury to his person, but
seldom one to his dignity, that was handsome, and should be reckoned as credit
to Jerome. Or was it simply that he was heartily glad to see the back of the
devil’s novice, and giving devout thanks after his own fashion?

“I
was very young and foolish,” said Meriet, with a sage’s indulgence for the
green boy he had been, hugging to his grieving heart the keepsake of a girl he
would live to hear unload upon him shamelessly the guilt of murder and theft.
“Do you remember,” asked Meriet, “the few times I ever called you “brother”? I
was trying hard to get into the way of it. But it was not what I felt, or what
I wanted to say. And now in the end it seems it’s Mark I shall have to call
“father”, though he’s the one I shall always think of as a brother. I was in
need of fathering, more ways than one. This once, will you let me so claim and
so call you as… as I would have liked to then…?”

“Son
Meriet,” said Cadfael, rising heartily to embrace him and plant the formal kiss
of kinship resoundingly on a cheek frostily cool and smooth, “you’re of my kin
and welcome to whatsoever I have whenever you may need it. And bear in mind,
I’m Welsh, and that’s a lifelong tie. There, are you satisfied?”

His
kiss was returned, very solemnly and fervently, by cold lips that burned into
ardent heat as they touched. But Meriet had yet one more request to make, and
clung to Cadfael’s hand as he advanced it.

“And
will you, while he’s here, extend the same goodness to my brother? For his need
is greater than mine ever was.”

Withdrawn
discreetly into shadow, Cadfael thought he heard Isouda utter a brief, soft
spurt of laughter, and after it heave a resigned sigh; but if so, both escaped
Meriet’s ears.

“Child,”
said Cadfael, shaking his head over such obstinate devotion, but very
complacently, “you are either an idiot or a saint, and I am not in the mood at
present to have much patience with either. But for the sake of peace, yes, I
will, I will! What I can do, I’ll do. There, be off with you! Take him away,
girl, and let me put out the brazier and shut up my workshop or I shall be late
for Compline!”

About
the Author

ELLIS PETERS is
the
nom-de-crime
of English novelist Edith Pargeter, author of scores of
books under her own name. She is the recipient of the Silver Dagger Award, conferred
by the Crime Writers Association in Britain, as well as the coveted Edgar,
awarded by the Mystery Writers of America. Miss Pargeter is also well known as
a translator of poetry and prose from the Czech and has been awarded the Gold
Medal and Ribbon of the Czechoslovak Society for Foreign Relations for her
services to Czech literature. She passed away in 1995, at the age of 82, at
home in her beloved Shropshire.