And here round the curve of the Wyle the arc of the river showed before him, the waning day regaining half its light as he stepped on to the open span and passed through the gates on to the draw-bridge. Here Edwin checked in his indignant flight to hurl away his despised offering. And here beyond was the level road opening before him, and on his right the house where Richildis must still be living, and the mill-pond, a dull silver plane in the twilight; then the wall of the abbey enclosure, the west front and the parish door of the great church looming before him, and on his right hand the gate-house.
He turned in and checked in astonishment at the bustle and noise that met him. The porter was out at his door, brushed and flushed and important as though for a bishop’s visitation, and the great court was full of brothers and lay brothers and officials running to and fro busily, or gathered in excited groups, conversing in raised voices, and looking round eagerly at every creature who entered at the gate. Cadfael’s coming caused one such stir, which subsided with unflattering promptness when he was recognised. Even the schoolboys were out whispering and chirruping together under the wall of the gatehouse, and travellers crowded into the doorway of the guest-hall. Brother Jerome stood perched on the mounting-block by the hail, his attention divided between giving orders left and right, and watching every moment at the gate. In Cadfael’s absence he seemed, if anything, to have grown more self-important and officious than ever.
Cadfael lighted down, prepared to stable his own beast, but unsure whether the mules might still be housed in the barn on the horse-fair; and out of the weaving excitement around him Brother Mark came darting with a whoop of pleasure.
“Oh, Cadfael, what joy to see you! Such happenings! And I thought you would be missing everything, and all the while you were in the thick of it. We’ve heard about the court at Llansilin… Oh, you’re so welcome home again!”
“So I see,” said Cadfael, “if this reception is for me.”
“Mine is!” said Brother Mark fervently. “But this… Of course, you won’t have heard yet. We’re all waiting for Abbot Heribert. One of the carters was out to St Giles a while ago, and he saw them, they’ve made a stop at the hospital there. He came to give the word. Brother Jerome is waiting to run and tell Prior Robert as soon as they come in at the gate. They’ll be here any moment.”
“And no news until they come? Will it still be Abbot Heribert, I wonder?” said Cadfael ruefully.
“We don’t know. But everybody’s afraid… Brother Petrus is muttering awful things into his ovens, and vowing he’ll quit the order. And Jerome is unbearable!”
He turned to glare, so far as his mild, plain face was capable of glaring, at the incubus of whom he spoke, and behold, Brother Jerome had vanished from his mounting-block, and was scurrying head-down for the abbot’s lodging.
“Oh, they must be coming! Look—the prior!”
Robert sailed forth from his appropriated lodging, immaculately robed, majestically tall, visible above all the peering heads. His face was composed into otherworldly serenity, benevolence and piety, ready to welcome his old superior with hypocritical reverence, and assume his office with hypocritical humility; all of which he would do very beautifully, and with noble dignity.
And in at the gate ambled Heribert, a small, rotund, gentle elderly man of unimpressive appearance, who rode like a sack on his white mule, and had the grime and mud and weariness of the journey upon him. He wore, at sight, the print of demotion and retirement in his face and bearing, yet he looked pleasantly content, like a man who has just laid by a heavy burden, and straightened up to draw breath. Humble by nature, Heribert was uncrushable. His own clerk and grooms followed a respectful few yards behind; but at his elbow rode a tall, spare, sinewy Benedictine with weathered features and shrewd blue eyes, who kept pace with him in close attendance, and eyed him, Cadfael thought, with something of restrained affection. A new brother for the house, perhaps.
Prior Robert sailed through the jostling, whispering brothers like a fair ship through disorderly breakers, and extended both hands to Heribert as soon as his foot touched ground. “Father, you are most heartily welcome home! There is no one here but rejoices to see you back among us, and I trust blessed and confirmed in office, our superior as before.”
To do him justice, thought Cadfael critically, it was not often he lied as blatantly as that, and certainly he did not realise even now that he was lying. And to be honest, what could he or any man say in this situation, however covetously he exulted in the promotion he foresaw for himself? You can hardly tell a man to his face that you’ve been waiting for him to go, and he should have done it long ago.
“Indeed, Robert, I’m happy to be back with you,” said Heribert, beaming. “But no, I must inform all here that I am no longer their abbot, only their brother. It has been judged best that another should have charge, and I bow to that judgment, and am come home to serve loyally as a simple brother under you.”
“Oh, no!” whispered Brother Mark, dismayed. “Oh, Cadfael, look, he grows taller!”
And indeed it seemed that Robert’s silver head was suddenly even loftier, as if by the acquisition of a mitre. But equally suddenly there was another head as lofty as his; the stranger had dismounted at leisure, almost unremarked, and stood at Heribert’s side. The ring of thick, straight dark hair round his tonsure was hardly touched with grey, yet he was probably at least as old as Robert, and his intelligent hatchet of a face was just as incisive, if less beautiful.
“Here I present to you all,” said Heribert almost fondly, “Father Radulfus, appointed by the legatine council to have rule here in our abbey as from this day. Receive your new abbot and reverence him, as I, Brother Heribert of this house, have already learned to do.”
There was a profound hush, and then a great stir and sigh and smile that ran like a quiet wave all through the assembly in the great court. Brother Mark clutched Cadfael’s arm and buried what might otherwise have been a howl of delight in his shoulder. Brother Jerome visibly collapsed, like a pricked bladder, and turned the identical wrinkled mud-colour. Somewhere at the rear there was a definite crow, like a game-cock celebrating a kill, though it was instantly suppressed, and no one could trace its origin. It may well have been Brother Petrus, preparing to rush back into his kitchen and whip all his pots and pans into devoted service for the newcomer who had disjointed Prior Robert’s nose in the moment of its most superb elevation.
As for the prior himself, he had not the figure or the bearing to succumb to deflation like his clerk, nor the kind of complexion that could be said to blench. His reaction was variously reported afterwards. Brother Denis the hospitaller claimed that Robert had rocked back on his heels so alarmingly that it was a wonder he did not fall flat on his back. The porter alleged that he blinked violently, and remained glassy-eyed for minutes afterwards. The novices, after comparing notes, agreed that if looks could have killed, they would have had a sudden death in their midst, and the victim would not have been the new abbot, but the old, who by so ingenuously acknowledging his future subordination to Robert as prior had led him to believe in his expected promotion to the abbacy, only to shatter the illusion next moment. Brother Mark, very fairly, said that only a momentary marble stillness, and the subsequent violent agitation of the prior’s Adam’s-apple as he swallowed gall, had betrayed his emotions. Certainly he had been forced to a heroic effort at recovery, for Heribert had proceeded benignly:
“And to you, Father Abbot, I make known Brother Robert Pennant, who has been an exemplary support to me as prior, and I am sure will serve you with the same selfless devotion.”
“It was beautiful!” said Brother Mark later, in the garden workshop where he had submitted somewhat self-consciously to having his stewardship reviewed, and been relieved and happy at being commended. “But I feel ashamed now. It was wicked of me to feel such pleasure in someone else’s downfall.”
“Oh, come, now!” said Cadfael absently, busy unpacking his scrip and replacing the jars and bottles he had brought back with him. “Don’t reach for the halo too soon. You have plenty of time to enjoy yourself, even a little maliciously sometimes, before you settle down to being a saint. It was beautiful, and almost every soul there rejoiced in it. Let’s have no hypocrisy.”