Gervase Bonel’s manor must lie somewhat further advanced into Welsh land even than these high pastures. The Benedictines had very little hold in Wales, Welshmen preferred their own ancient Celtic Christianity, the solitary hermitage of the self-exiled saint and the homely little college of Celtic monks rather than the shrewd and vigorous foundations that looked to Rome. In the south, secular Norman adventurers had penetrated more deeply, but here Mallilie must, indeed, as Brother Rhys had said, be lodged like a single thorn deep in the flesh of Wales.
“It does not take long to ride to Mallilie,” said Brother Simon, anxiously helpful. “Our horse here is elderly, but strong, and gets little enough work as a rule. I could very well manage now, if you want to go tomorrow.”
“First let’s see,” said Cadfael, “how Brother Barnabas progresses by tomorrow.”
Brother Barnabas progressed very well once he had the fever out of him. Before nightfall he was sick of lying in his bed, and insisted on rising and trying his enfeebled legs about the room. His own natural strength and stout heart were all he needed now to set him up again, though he swallowed tolerantly whatever medicines Cadfael pressed upon him, and consented to have his chest and throat anointed once again with the salve.
“No need to trouble yourself for me now,” he said. “I shall be hale as a hound pup in no time. And if I can’t take to the hills again for a day or two—though I very well could, if you would but let me!—I can see to the house here, and the hens and the cow, for that matter.”
The next morning he rose to join them for Prime, and would not return to his bed, though when they both harried him he agreed to sit snugly by the fire, and exert himself no further than in baking bread and preparing dinner.
“Then I will go,” said Cadfael, “if you can manage alone for the day, Simon. If I leave now I shall have the best of the daylight, and be back with you in time for the evening work.”
Brother Simon went out with him to where the track branched, and gave him directions. After the hamlet of Croesau Bach he would come to a cross roads, and turn right, and from that point he would see how the hills were cleft ahead of him, and making straight for that cleft he would come to Mallilie, beyond which the track continued westward to Llansilin, the central seat of the commote of Cynllaith.
The morning was faintly misty, but with the sun bright through the mist, and the turf wet and sparkling with the hint of rime already melting. He had chosen to ride the horse from the grange rather than his mule, since the mule had had lengthy exercise on the way north, and was entitled to a rest. The horse was an ungainly bay, of homely appearance but amiable disposition and stout heart, willing and ready for work. It was pleasant to be riding here alone in a fine winter morning on cushioned turf, between hills that took him back to his youth, with no routine duties and no need for talk, beyond the occasional greeting for a woman splitting kindling in her yard, or a man moving sheep to a new pasture, and even that was a special pleasure because he found himself instinctively calling his good-day in Welsh. The holdings here were scattered and few until he came through Croesau into lower and richer ground, where the patterns of ordered tillage told him he was already entering Mallilie land. A brook sprang into life on his right hand, and accompanied him towards the cleft where the hill-slopes on either side drew close together. Within a mile it was a little river, providing level meadows on either bank, and the dark selions of ploughed land beyond. Trees clothed the upper slopes, the valley faced south-east into the morning sun; a good place, its tenant holdings sheltered and well found. Well into the defile, drawn back into a fold of the slope on his right, and half-circled with arms of woodland, he came to the manor-house.
A timber stockade surrounded it, massive and high, but the house stood on rising ground, and showed tall above it. Built of local stone, granite grey, with a great long roof of slates, gleaming like fish-scales in the sun as the frost on them turned to dew. When he had crossed the river by a plank-bridge and ridden in at the open gate of the stockade, the whole length of the house lay before him, a tall stone stair leading up to the main door of the living floor at the left-hand end. At ground level three separate doors, wide enough to take in country carts, led into what was evidently a vaulted under-croft, with storage room enough for a siege. Judging by the windows in the gable end, there was yet another small room above the kitchen. The windows of hall and solar were stone-mullioned and generous. Round the inner side of the stockade there were ample outhouses, stables, mews and stores. Norman lordlings, promised heirs, Benedictine abbeys might well covet such a property. Richildis had indeed married out of her kind.
The servants here would be Bonel’s servants, continuing their functions under a new rule. A groom came to take Cadfael’s bridle, feeling no need to question one who arrived in a Benedictine habit. There were few people moving about the court, but those few assured in their passage; and impressive though the house was, it could never have needed a very numerous body to run it. All local people, surely, and that meant Welsh people, like the serving-maid who had warmed her lord’s bed and borne him a disregarded son. It happened! Bonel might even have been an attractive man then, and given her pleasure, as well as a child; and at least he had kept her thereafter, and the child with her, though as mere indulged dependents, not members of his family, not his kin. A man who did not take more than he felt to be legally his, but would not forgo any item of what fell within that net. A man who let an unclaimed villein holding go to a hungry younger son from a free family, on terms of customary service, and then, with the law firmly behind him, claimed that questionable tenant as villein by reason of the dues rendered between them, and his progeny as unfree by the same code.
In this disputed borderland of soil and law, Cadfael found his heart and mind utterly Welsh, but could not deny that the Englishman had just as passionately held by his own law, and been sure that he was justified. He had not been an evil man, only a child of his time and place, and his death had been murder.
Properly speaking, Cadfael had no business at this house but to observe, as now he had observed. But he went in, nevertheless, up the outdoor stair and into the passage screened off from the hail. A boy emerging from the kitchen louted to him and passed, accepting him as one of the breed, who would know his way here. The hall was lofty and strongly beamed. Cadfael passed through it to the solar. This must be where Bonel had intended to install the panelling commissioned from Martin Bellecote, the transaction which had first caused him to set eyes and heart on Richildis Gurney, who had once been Richildis Vaughan, daughter of an honest, unpretentious tradesman.
Martin had done good work, and fitted it into place here with skill and love. The solar was narrower than the hall, there being a garderobe off it, and a tiny chapel. It glowed and was scented with the polished and sparely carved oak panelling, the suave silvery grain glinting in the light from the wide window. Edwin had a good brother and a good master. He need not repine if he missed the illusory heritage.
“Your pardon, brother!” said a respectful voice at Cadfael’s back. “No one told me there was a messenger here from Shrewsbury.”
Cadfael turned, startled, to take a look at the abbey’s steward here; a layman, a lawman, young enough to be deferential to his employers, mature enough to be in command of his own province.
“It’s I who should ask your pardon,” said Cadfael, “for walking in upon you without ceremony. Truth to tell, I have no errand here, but being in the neighbourhood I was curious to see our new manor.”
“If it is indeed ours,” said the steward ruefully, and looked about him with a shrewd eye, assessing what the abbey might well be losing. “It seems to be in doubt at the moment, though that makes no difference to my commission here, to maintain it in good order, however the lot falls in the end. The place has been run well and profitably. But if you are not sent to join us here, brother, where is your domicile? As long as we hold the manor, we can well offer you lodging, if it please you to stay.”