Brother Cadfael shut the door upon the rich horehound reek of a mixture for coughs, and went very soberly to High Mass.
Abbot Heribert departed by the London road, turning his back upon the town of Shrewsbury, in the early morning of a somewhat grey day, the first time there had been the nip of frost in the air as well as the pale sparkle in the grass. He took with him his own clerk, Brother Emmanuel, and two lay grooms who had served here longest; and he rode his own white mule. He put on a cheerful countenance as he took leave, but for all that he cut a sad little figure as the four riders dwindled along the road. No horseman now, if he ever had been much of one, he used a high, cradling saddle, and sagged in it like a small sack not properly filled. Many of the brothers crowded to the gates to watch him as long as he remained in view, and their faces were apprehensive and aggrieved. Some of the boy pupils came out to join them, looking even more dismayed, for the abbot had allowed Brother Paul to conduct his schooling undisturbed, which meant very tolerantly, but with Prior Robert in charge there was no department of this house likely to go its way ungoaded, and discipline might be expected to tighten abruptly.
There was, Cadfael could not but admit, room for a little hard practicality within these walls, if the truth were told. Heribert of late had grown deeply discouraged with the world of men, and withdrawn more and more into his prayers. The siege and fall of Shrewsbury, with all the bloodshed and revenge involved, had been enough to sadden any man, though that was no excuse for abandoning the effort to defend right and oppose wrong. But there comes a time when the old grow very tired, and the load of leadership unjustly heavy to bear. And perhaps—perhaps!—Heribert would not be quite so sad as even he now supposed, if the load should be lifted from him.
Mass and chapter passed that day with unexceptionable decorum and calm, High Mass was celebrated devoutly, the duties of the day proceeded in their smooth and regular course. Robert was too sensible of his own image to rub his hands visibly, or lick his lips before witnesses. All that he did would be done according to just and pious law, with the authority of sainthood. Nevertheless, what he considered his due would be appropriated, to the last privilege.
Cadfael was accustomed to having two assistants allotted to him throughout the active part of the gardening years, for he grew other things in his walled garden besides the enclosure of herbs, though the main kitchen gardens of the abbey were outside the enclave, across the main highway and along the fields by the river, the lush level called the Gaye. The waters of Severn regularly moistened it in the flood season, and its soil was rich and bore well. Here within the walls be had made, virtually single-handed, this closed garden for the small and precious things, and in the outer levels, running down to the Meole brook that fed the mill, he grew food crops, beans and cabbages and pulse, and fields of pease. But now with the winter closing gently in, and the soil settling to its sleep like the urchins under the hedges, curled drowsily with all their prickles cushioned by straw and dead grass and leaves, he was left with just one novice to help him brew his draughts, and roll his pills, and stir his rubbing oils, and pound his poultices, to medicine not only the brothers, but many who came for help in their troubles, from the town and the Foregate, sometimes even from the scattered villages beyond. He had not been bred to this science, he had learned it by experience, by trial and study, accumulating knowledge over the years, until some preferred his ministrations to those of the acknowledged physicians.
His assistant at this time was a novice of no more than eighteen years, Brother Mark, orphaned, and a trouble to a neglectful uncle, who had sent him into the abbey at sixteen to be rid of him. He had entered tongue-tied, solitary and homesick, a waif who seemed even younger than his years, who did what he was told with apprehensive submission, as though the best to be hoped out of life was to avoid punishment. But some months of working in the garden with Cadfael had gradually loosened his tongue and put his fears to flight. He was still undersized, and slightly wary of authority, but healthy and wiry, and good at making things grow, and he was acquiring a sure and delicate touch with the making of medicines, and an eager interest in them. Mute among his fellows, he made up for it by being voluble enough in the garden workshop, and with none but Cadfael by. It was always Mark, for all his silence and withdrawal about the cloister and court, who brought all the gossip before others knew it.
He came in from an errand to the mill, an hour before Vespers, full of news.
“Do you know what Prior Robert has done? Taken up residence in the abbot’s lodging! Truly! Brother Sub-prior has orders to sleep in the prior’s cell in the dormitory from tonight. And Abbot Heribert barely out of the gates! I call it great presumption!”
So did Cadfael, though he felt it hardly incumbent upon him either to say so, or to let Brother Mark utter his thoughts quite so openly. “Beware how you pass judgment on your superiors,” he said mildly, “at least until you know how to put yourself in their place and see from their view. For all we know, Abbot Heribert may have required him to move into the lodging, as an instance of his authority while we’re without an abbot. It is the place set aside for the spiritual father of this convent.”
“But Prior Robert is not that, not yet! And Abbot Heribert would have said so at chapter if he had wished it so. At least he would have told Brother Sub-prior, and no one did, I saw his face, he is as astonished as anyone, and shocked. He would not have taken such a liberty!”
Too true, thought Cadfael, busy pounding roots in a mortar, Brother Richard the sub-prior was the last man to presume; large, good-natured and peace-loving to the point of laziness, he never exerted himself to advance even by legitimate means. It might dawn on some of the younger and more audacious brothers shortly that they had gained an advantage in the exchange. With Richard in the prior’s cell that commanded the length of the dortoir, it would be far easier for the occasional sinner to slip out by the night-stairs after the lights were out; even if the crime were detected it would probably never be reported. A blind eye is the easiest thing in the world to turn on whatever is troublesome.
“All the servants at the lodging are simmering,” said Brother Mark. “You know how devoted they are to Abbot Heribert, and now to be made to serve someone else, before his place is truly vacant, even! Brother Henry says it’s almost blasphemy. And Brother Petrus is looking blacker than thunder, and muttering into his cooking-pots something fearful. He said, once Prior Robert gets his foot in the door, it will take a dose of hemlock to get him out again when Abbot Heribert returns.”
Cadfael could well imagine it. Brother Petrus was the abbot’s cook, old in his service, and a black-haired, fiery-eyed barbarian from near the Scottish border, at that, given to tempestuous and immoderate declarations, none of them to be taken too seriously; but the puzzle was where exactly to draw the line.
“Brother Petrus says many things he might do well not to say, but he never means harm, as you well know. And he’s a prime cook, and will continue to feed the abbot’s table nobly, whoever sits at the head of it, because he can do no other.”
“But not happily,” said Brother Mark with conviction.
No question but the even course of the day had been gravely shaken; yet so well regulated was the regime within these walls that every brother, happy or not, would pursue his duties as conscientiously as ever.
“When Abbot Heribert returns, confirmed in office,” said Mark, firmly counting wishes as horses, “Prior Robert’s nose will be out of joint.” And the thought of that august organ bent aside like the misused beak of an old soldier so consoled him that he found heart to laugh again, while Cadfael could not find the heart to scold him, since even for him the picture had its appeal.
Brother Edmund the infirmarer came to Cadfael’s hut in the middle of the afternoon, a week after Abbot Heribert’s departure, to collect some medicines for his inmates. The frosts, though not yet severe, had come after such mild weather as to take more than one young brother by surprise, spreading a sneezing rheum that had to be checked by isolating the victims, most of them active youngsters who worked outdoors with the sheep. He had four of them in the infirmary, besides the few old men who now spent their days there with none but religious duties, waiting peacefully for their end.