Rhys was well content to be settled on his bed and left to the sleep that was already overtaking him. His drowsy farewells followed them towards the door, to fade into silence before they reached it. “Take my greetings to your mother, Meurig. And ask her to come and see me… when they bring the wool to Shrewsbury market… I’m fain to see her again…”
“He set great store by your mother, it seems,” said Cadfael, watching as Meurig washed his hands where Brother Edmund had shown him, and making sure that he was thorough about it. “Is there a hope that he may see her again?”
Meurig’s face, seen in profile as he wrung and scrubbed at his hands, had a gravity and brooding thoughtfulness that belied the indulgent gaiety he had put on for this old man. After a moment he said: “Not in this world.” He turned to reach for the coarse towel, and looked Cadfael in the eyes fully and steadily. “My mother has been dead for eleven years this Michaelmas past. He knows it—or he knew it— as well as I. But if she’s alive to him again in his dotage, why should I remind him? Let him keep that thought and any other that can pleasure him.”
They went out together in silence, into the chilly air of the great court, and there separated, Meurig striking across briskly towards the gatehouse, Cadfael making for the church, where the Vesper bell could be only a few minutes delayed.
“God speed!” said Cadfael in parting. “You gave the old man back a piece of his youth today. The elders of your kinship, I think, are fortunate in their sons.”
“My kinship,” said Meurig, halting in mid-stride to stare back with great black eyes, “is my mother’s kinship, I go with my own. My father was not a Welshman.”
He went, lengthening a lusty stride, the square shape of his shoulders cleaving the dusk. And Cadfael wondered about him, as he had wondered about the villein Aelfric, as far as the porch of the church, and then abandoned him for a more immediate duty. These people are, after all, responsible for themselves, and none of his business.
Not yet!
Chapter Two
It was nearing mid-December before the dour manservant Aelfric came again to the herb-gardens for kitchen herbs for his mistress. By that time he was a figure familiar enough to fade into the daily pattern of comings and goings about the great court, and among the multifarious noise and traffic his solitary silence remained generally unremarked. Cadfael had seen him in the mornings, passing through to the bakery and buttery for the day’s loaves and measures of ale, always mute, always purposeful, quick of step and withdrawn of countenance, as though any delay on his part might bring penance, as perhaps, indeed, it might. Brother Mark, attracted to a soul seemingly as lonely and anxious as his own had once been, had made some attempt to engage the stranger in talk, and had little success.
“Though he does unfold a little,” said Mark thoughtfully, kicking his heels on the bench in Cadfael’s workshop as he stirred a salve. “I don’t think he’s an unfriendly soul at all, if he had not something on his mind. When I greet him he sometimes comes near to smiling, but he’ll never linger and talk.”
“He has his work to do, and perhaps a master who’s hard to please,” said Cadfael mildly.
“I heard he’s out of sorts since they moved in,” said Mark. “The master, I mean. Not really ill, but low and out of appetite.”
“So might I be,” opined Cadfael, “if I had nothing to do but sit there and mope, and wonder if I’d done well to part with my lands, even in old age. What seems an easy life in contemplation can be hard enough when it comes to reality.”
“The girl,” said Mark judiciously, “is pretty. Have you seen her?”
“I have not. And you, my lad, should be averting your eyes from contemplation of women. Pretty, is she?”
“Very pretty. Not very tall, round and fair, with a lot of yellow hair, and black eyes. It makes a great effect, yellow hair and black eyes. I saw her come to the stable with some message for Aelfric yesterday. He looked after her, when she went, in such a curious way. Perhaps she is his trouble.”
And that might well be, thought Cadfael, if he was a villein, and she a free woman, and unlikely to look so low as a serf, and they were rubbing shoulders about the household day after day, in closer quarters here than about the manor of Mallilie.
“She could as well be trouble for you, boy, if Brother Jerome or Prior Robert sees you conning her,” he said briskly. “If you must admire a fine girl, let it be out of the corner of your eyes. Don’t forget we have a reforming rule here now.”
“Oh, I’m careful!” Mark was by no means in awe of Brother Cadfael now, and had adopted from him somewhat unorthodox notions of what was and was not permissible. In any case, this boy’s vocation was no longer in doubt or danger. If the times had been less troublesome he might well have sought leave to go and study in Oxford, but even without that opportunity, Cadfael was reasonably certain he would end by taking orders, and become a priest, and a good priest, too, one aware that women existed in the world, and respectful towards their presence and their worth. Mark had come unwillingly and resisting into the cloister, but he had found his rightful place. Not everyone was so fortunate.
Aelfric came to the hut in the afternoon of a cloudy day, to ask for some dried mint. “My mistress wants to brew a mint cordial for my master.”
“I hear he’s somewhat out of humour and health,” said Cadfael, rustling the linen bags that gave forth such rich, heady scents upon the air. The young man’s nostrils quivered and widened with pleasure, inhaling close sweetness. In the soft light within, his wary face eased a little.
“There’s not much ails him, more of the mind than the body. He’ll be well enough when he plucks up heart. He’s out of sorts with his kin most of all,” said Aelfric, growing unexpectedly confiding.
“That’s trying for you all, even the lady,” said Cadfael.
“And she does everything woman could do for him, there’s nothing he can reproach her with. But this upheaval has him out with everybody, even himself. He’s been expecting his son to come running and eat humble pie before this, to try and get his inheritance back, and he’s been disappointed, and that sours him.”
Cadfael turned a surprised face at this. “You mean he’s cut off a son, to give his inheritance to the abbey? To spite the young man? That he couldn’t, in law. No house would think of accepting such a bargain, without the consent of the heir.”
“It’s not his own son.” Aelfric shrugged, shaking his head. “It’s his wife’s son by a former marriage, so the lad has no legal claims on him. It’s true he’d made a will naming him as his heir, but the abbey charter wipes that out—or will when it’s sealed and witnessed. He has no remedy in law. They fell out, and he’s lost his promised manor, and that’s all there is to it.”
“For what fault could he deserve such treatment?” Cadfael wondered.
Aelfric hoisted deprecating shoulders, lean shoulders but broad and straight, as Cadfael observed. “He’s young and wayward, and my lord is old and irritable, not used to being crossed. Neither was the boy used to it, and he fought hard when he found his liberty curbed.”
“And what’s become of him now? For I recall you said you were but four in the house.”
“He has a neck as stiff as my lord’s, he’s taken himself off to live with his married sister and her family, and learn a trade. He was expected back with his tail between his legs before now, my lord was counting on it, but never a sign, and I doubt if there will be.”
It sounded, Cadfael reflected ruefully, a troublous situation for the disinherited boy’s mother, who must be torn two ways in this dissension. Certainly it accounted for an act of spleen which the old man was probably already regretting. He handed over the bunch of mint stems, their oval leaves still well formed and whole, for they had dried in honest summer heat, and had even a good shade of green left. “She’ll need to rub it herself, but it keeps its flavour better so. If she wants more, and you let me know, I’ll crumble it fine for her, but this time we’ll not keep her waiting. I hope it may go some way towards sweetening him, for his own sake and hers. And yours, too,” said Cadfael, and clapped him lightly on the shoulder.