“Why that?” asked Cadfael ap Meilyr ap Dafydd. “Have you kin in the west?”
“I had once. I have not now.”
“Dead?”
“I am the one who died.” Alard heaved lean shoulders in a helpless shrug, and grinned. “Fifty-seven brothers I had, and now I’m brotherless. I begin to miss my kin, now I’m past forty. I never valued them when I was young.” He slanted a rueful glance at his companion and shook his head. “I was a monk of Evesham, an oblatus, given to God by my father when I was five years old. When I was fifteen I could no longer abide to live my life in one place, and I ran. Stability is one of the vows we take—to be content in one stay, and go abroad only when ordered. That was not for me, not then. My sort they call vagus—frivolous minds that must wander. Well, I’ve wandered far enough, God knows, in my time. I begin to fear I can never stand still again.”
The Welshman drew his cloak about him against the chill of the wind. “Are you hankering for a return?”
“Even you seamen must drop anchor somewhere at last,” said Alard. “They’d have my hide if I went back, that I know. But there’s this about penance, it pays all debts, and leaves the record clear. They’d find a place for me, once I’d paid. But I don’t know… I don’t know… The vagus is still in me. I’m torn two ways.”
“After twenty-five years,” said Cadfael, “a month or two more for quiet thinking can do no harm. Copy his papers for him and take your case until his business is settled.”
They were much of an age, though the renegade monk looked the elder by ten years, and much knocked about by the world he had coveted from within the cloister. It had never paid him well in goods or gear, for he went threadbare and thin, but in wisdom he might have got his fair wages. A little soldiering, a little clerking, some horse-tending, any labour that came to hand, until he could turn his hand to almost anything a hale man can do. He had seen, he said, Italy as far south as Rome, served once for a time under the Count of Flanders, crossed the mountains into Spain, never abiding anywhere for long. His feet still served him, but his mind grew weary of the road.
“And you?” he said, eyeing his companion, whom he had known now for a year in this last campaign. “You’re something of a vagus yourself, by your own account. All those years crusading and battling corsairs in the midland sea, and still you have not enough of it, but must cross the sea again to get buffeted about Normandy. Had you no better business of your own, once you got back to England, but you must enlist again in this muddled melee of a war? No woman to take your mind off fighting?”
“What of yourself? Free of the cloister, free of the vows!”
“Somehow,” said Alard, himself puzzled, “I never saw it so. A woman here and there, yes, when the heat was on me, and there was a woman by and willing, but marriage and wiving… it never seemed to me I had the right.”
The Welshman braced his feet on the gently swaying deck and watched the distant shore draw nearer. A broad-set, sturdy, muscular man in his healthy prime, brown-haired and brown-skinned from eastern suns and outdoor living, well-provided in leather coat and good cloth, and well-armed with sword and dagger. A comely enough face, strongly featured, with the bold bones of his race—there had been women, in his time, who had found him handsome.
“I had a girl,” he said meditatively, “years back, before ever I went crusading. But I left her when I took the Cross, left her for three years and stayed away seventeen. The truth is, in the east I forgot her, and in the west she, thanks be to God, had forgotten me. I did enquire, when I got back. She’d made a better bargain, and married a decent, solid man who had nothing of the vagus in him. A guildsman and counsellor of the town of Shrewsbury, no less. So I shed the load from my conscience and went back to what I knew, soldiering. With no regrets,” he said simply. “It was all over and done, years since. I doubt if I should have known her again, or she me.” There had been other women’s faces in the years between, still vivid in his memory, while hers had faded into mist.
“And what will you do,” asked Alard, “now the King’s got everything he wanted, married his son to Anjou and Maine, and made an end of fighting? Go back to the east? There’s never any want of squabbles there to keep a man busy.”
“No,” said Cadfael, eyes fixed on the shore that began to show the solidity of land and the undulations of cliff and down. For that, too, was over and done, years since, and not as well done as once he had hoped. This desultory campaigning in Normandy was little more than a postscriptum, an afterthought, a means of filling in the interim between what was past and what was to come, and as yet unrevealed. All he knew of it was that it must be something new and momentous, a door opening into another room. “It seems we have both a few days’ grace, you and I, to find out where we are going. We’d best make good use of the time.”
There was stir enough before night to keep them from wondering beyond the next moment, or troubling their minds about what was past or what was to come. Their ship put into the roads with a steady and favourable wind, and made course into Southampton before the light faded, and there was work for Alard checking the gear as it was unloaded, and for Cadfael disembarking the horses. A night’s sleep in lodgings and stables in the town, and they would be on their way with the dawn.
“So the King’s due in Woodstock,” said Alard, rustling sleepily in his straw in a warm loft over the horses, “in time to sit in judgement on the twenty-third of the month. He makes his forest lodges the hub of his kingdom, there’s more statecraft talked at Woodstock, so they say, than ever at Westminster. And he keeps his beasts there—lions and leopards—even camels. Did you ever see camels, Cadfael? There in the east?”
“Saw them and rode them. Common as horses there, hard-working and serviceable, but uncomfortable riding, and foul-tempered. Thank God it’s horses we’ll be mounting in the morning.” And after a long silence, on the edge of sleep, he asked curiously into the straw-scented darkness: “If ever you do go back, what is it you want of Evesham?”
“Do I know?” responded Alard drowsily, and followed that with a sudden sharpening sigh, again fully awake. “The silence, it might be… or the stillness. To have no more running to do… to have arrived, and have no more need to run. The appetite changes. Now I think it would be a beautiful thing to be still.”
The manor which was the head of Roger Mauduit’s scattered and substantial honour lay somewhat southeast of Northampton, comfortably under the lee of the long ridge of wooded hills where the king had a chase, and spreading its extensive fields over the rich lowland between. The house was of stone, and ample, over a deep undercroft, and with a low tower providing two small chambers at the eastern end, and the array of sturdy byres, barns and stables that lined the containing walls was impressive. Someone had proved a good steward while the lord was away about King Henry’s business.
The furnishings of the hall were no less eloquent of good management, and the men and maids of the household went about their work with a brisk wariness that showed they went in some awe of whoever presided over their labours. It needed only a single day of watching the Lady Eadwina in action to show who ruled the roost here. Roger Mauduit had married a wife not only handsome, but also efficient and masterful. She had had her own way here for three years, and by all the signs had enjoyed her dominance. She might, even, be none too glad to resign her charge now, however glad she might be to have her lord home again.
She was a tall, graceful woman, ten years younger than Roger, with an abundance of fair hair, and large blue eyes that went discreetly half-veiled by absurdly long lashes most of the time, but flashed a bright and steely challenge when she opened them fully. Her smile was likewise discreet and almost constant, concealing rather than revealing whatever went on in her mind; and though her welcome to her returning lord left nothing to be desired, but lavished on him every possible tribute of ceremony and affection from the moment his horse entered at the gate, Cadfael could not but wonder whether she was not, at the same time, taking stock of every man he brought in with him, and every article of gear or harness or weaponry in their equipment, as one taking jealous inventory of his goods and reserves to make sure nothing was lacking.