“Jacob has certainly shown application,” the steward agreed cautiously. “I own I’ve been surprised at the grasp he has of abbey affairs, in so short a time. Young people nowadays take so little interest in what they’re set to do—fly-by-nights and frivolous, most of them. It’s been heartening to see one of them work with such zeal. I daresay he knows the value due from every property of the house by this time. Yes, a good boy. But too ingenuous, Cadfael, there’s his flaw—too affable. Figures and characters on vellum cannot baffle him, but a rogue with a friendly tongue might come over him. He cannot stand men off—he cannot put frost between. It’s not well to be too open with all men.”
It was mid-afternoon; in an hour or so it would be time for Vespers. The great court had always some steady flow of activity, but at this hour it was at its quietest. They crossed the court together at leisure, Brother Cadfael to return to his workshop in the herb garden, the steward to the north walk of the cloister, where his assistant was hard at work in the scriptorium. But before they had reached the spot where their paths would divide, two young men emerged from the cloister in easy conversation, and came towards them.
Jacob of Bouldon was a sturdy, square-set young fellow from the south of the shire, with a round, amiable face, large, candid eyes, and a ready smile. He came with a vellum leaf doubled in one hand, and a pen behind his ear, in every particular the eager, hard-working clerk. A little too open to any man’s approaches, perhaps, as his master had said. The lanky, narrow-headed fellow attentive at his side had a very different look about him, weather-beaten, sharp-eyed and drab in hard-wearing dark clothes, with a leather jerkin to bear the rubbing of a heavy pack. The back of the left shoulder was scrubbed pallid and dull from much carrying, and his hat was wide and drooping of brim, to shed off rain. A travelling haberdasher with a few days’ business in Shrewsbury, no novelty in the commoners’ guest-hall of the abbey. His like were always on the roads, somewhere about the shire.
The pedlar louted to Master William with obsequious respect, said his goodday, and made off to his lodging. Early to be home for the night, surely, but perhaps he had done good business and come back to replenish his stock. A wise tradesman kept something in reserve, when he had a safe store to hand, rather than carry his all on every foray.
Master William looked after him with no great favour. “What had that fellow to do thus with you, boy?” he questioned suspiciously. “He’s a deal too curious, with that long nose of his. I’ve seen him making up to any of the household he can back into a corner. What was he after in the scriptorium?”
Jacob opened his wide eyes even wider. “Oh, he’s an honest fellow enough, sir, I’m sure. Though he does like to probe into everything, I grant you, and asks a lot of questions…”
“Then you give him no answers,” said the steward firmly.
“I don’t, nothing but general talk that leaves him no wiser. Though I think he’s but naturally inquisitive and no harm meant. He likes to curry favour with everyone, but that’s by way of his trade. A rough-tongued pedlar would not sell many tapes and laces,” said the young man blithely, and flourished the leaf of vellum he carried. “I was coming to ask you about this carucate of land in Recordine—there’s an erasure in the leiger book, I looked up the copy to compare. You’ll remember, sir, it was disputed land for a while, the heir tried to recover it…”
“I do recall. Come, I’ll show you the original copy. But have as little to say to these travelling folk as you can with civility,” Master William adjured earnestly. “There are rogues on the roads as well as honest tradesmen. There, you go before, I’ll follow you.”
He looked after the jaunty figure as it departed smartly, back to the scriptorium. “As I said, Cadfael, too easily pleased with every man. It’s not wise to look always for the best in men. But for all that,” he added, reverting morosely to his private grievance, “I wish that scamp of mine was more like him. In debt already for some gambling folly, and he has to get himself picked up by the sergeants for a street brawl, and fined, and cannot pay the fine. And to keep my own name in respect, he’s confident I shall have to buy him clear. I must see to it tomorrow, one way or the other, when I’ve finished my rounds in the town, for he has but three days left to pay. If it weren’t for his mother… Even so, even so, this time I ought to let him stew.”
He departed after his clerk, shaking his head bitterly over his troubles. And Cadfael went off to see what feats of idiocy or genius Brother Oswin had wrought in the herb garden in his absence.
In the morning, when the brothers came out from Prime, Brother Cadfael saw the steward departing to begin his round, the deep leather satchel secured to his locked belt, and swinging by two stout straps. By evening it would be heavy with the annual wealth of the city rents, and those from the northern suburbs outside the walls. Jacob was there to see him go, listening dutifully to his last emphatic instructions, and sighing as he was left behind to complete the bookwork. Warm Harefoot, the packman, was off early, too, to ply his trade among the housewives either of the town or the parish of the Foregate. A pliable fellow, full of professional bows and smiles, but by the look of him all his efforts brought him no better than a meagre living.
So there went Jacob, back to his pen and inkhorn in the cloisters, and forth to his important business went Master William. And who knows, thought Cadfael, which is in the right, the young man who sees the best in all, and trusts all, or the old one who suspects all until he has probed them through and through? The one may stumble into a snare now and then, but at least enjoy sunshine along the way, between falls. The other may never miss his footing, but seldom experience joy. Better find a way somewhere between!
It was a curious chance that seated him next to Brother Eutropius at breakfast, for what did anyone know about Brother Eutropius? He had come to the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul of Shrewsbury only two months ago, from a minor grange of the order. But in two months of Brother Oswin, say, that young man would have been an open book to every reader, whereas Eutropius contained himself as tightly as did his skin, and gave out much less in the way of information. A taciturn man, thirty or so at a guess, who kept himself apart and looked solitary discontent at everything that crossed his path, but never complained. It might be merely newness and shyness, in one naturally uncommunicative, or it might be a gnawing inward anger against his lot and all the world. Rumour said, a man frustrated in love, and finding no relief in his resort to the cowl. But rumour was using its imagination, for want of fuel more reliable.
Eutropius also worked under Brother Matthew, the cellarer, and was intelligent and literate, but not a good or a quick scribe. Perhaps, when Brother Ambrose fell ill, he would have liked to be trusted to take over his books. Perhaps he resented the lay clerk being preferred before him. Perhaps! With Eutropius everything, thus far, was conjecture. Some day someone would pierce that carapace of his, with an unguarded word or a sudden irresistible motion of grace, and the mystery would no longer be a mystery, or the stranger a stranger.
Brother Cadfael knew better than to be in a hurry, where souls were concerned. There was plenty of elbow-room in eternity.
In the afternoon, returning to the grange court to collect some seed he had left stored in the loft, Cadfael encountered Jacob, his scribing done for the moment, setting forth importantly with his own leather satchel into the Foregate,
“So he’s left you a parcel to clear for him,” said Cadfael.
“I would gladly have done more,” said Jacob, mildly aggrieved and on his dignity. He looked less than his twenty-five years, well-grown as he was, with that cherubic face. “But he says I’m sure to be slow, not knowing the rounds or the tenants, so he’s let me take only the outlying lanes here in the Foregate, where I can take my time. I daresay he’s right, it will take me longer than I think. I’m sorry to see him so worried about his son,” he said, shaking his head. “He has to see to this business with the law, he told me not to worry if he was late returning today. I hope all goes well,” said the loyal subordinate, and set forth sturdily to do his own duty towards his master, however beset he might be by other cares.