‘He has not. He is as intent as ever on taking vows.’
‘But you’ve been with my father! What could there be to discuss with him? You are sure that Meriet…’ He fell silent, doubtfully studying Cadfael’s face. The girl had drawn near at her leisure, and stood a little apart, watching them both with serene composure, and in a posture of such natural grace that Cadfael’s eyes could not forbear straying to enjoy her.
‘I left your brother in stout heart,’ he said, carefully truthful, ‘and of the same mind as when he came to us. I was sent by my abbot only to speak with your father about certain doubts which have arisen rather in the lord abbot’s mind than in Brother Meriet’s. He is still very young to take such a step in haste, and his zeal seems to older minds excessive. You are nearer to him in years than either your sire or our officers,’ said Cadfael persuasively. ‘Can you not tell me why he may have taken this step? For what reason, sound and sufficient to him, should he choose to leave the world so early?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Nigel lamely, and shook his head over his failure. ‘Why do they do so? I never understood.’ As why should he, with all the reasons he had for remaining in and of this world? ‘He said he wanted it,’ said Nigel.
‘He says so still. At every turn he insists on it.’
‘You’ll stand by him? You’ll help him to have his will? If that is truly what he wishes?’
‘We’re all resolved,’ said Cadfael sententiously, ‘on helping him to his desire. Not all young men pursue the same destiny, as you must know.’ His eyes were on the girl; she was aware of it, and he was aware of her awareness. Another coil of red-gold hair had escaped from the band that held it; it lay against her smooth cheek, casting a deep gold shadow.
‘Will you carry him my dear remembrances, brother? Say he has my prayers, and my love always.’ Nigel withdrew his hand from the bridle, and stood back to let the rider proceed.
‘And assure him of my-love, also,’ said the girl in a voice of honey, heavy and sweet. Her blue eyes lifted to Cadfael’s face. ‘We have been playfellows many years, all of us here,’ she said, certainly with truth. ‘I may speak in terms of love, for I shall soon be his sister.’
‘Roswitha and I are to be married at the abbey in December,’ said Nigel, and again took her by the hand.
‘I’ll bear your messages gladly,’ said Cadfael, ‘and wish you both all possible blessing against the day.’
The mule moved resignedly, answering the slight shake of the bridle. Cadfael passed them with his eyes still fixed on the girl Roswitha, whose infinite blue gaze opened on him like a summer sky. The slightest of smiles touched her lips as he passed, and a small, contented brightness flashed in her eyes. She knew that he could not but admire her, and even the admiration of an elderly monk was satisfaction to her. Surely the very motions she had made in his presence, so slight and so conscious, had been made in the knowledge that he was well aware of them, cobweb threads to entrammel one more unlikely fly.
He was careful not to look back, for it had dawned on him that she would confidently expect him to.
Just within the fringe of the copse, at the end of the fields, there was a stone-built sheepfold, close beside the ride, and someone was sitting on the rough wall, dangling crossed ankles and small bare feet, and nursing in her lap a handful of late hazelnuts, which she cracked in her teeth, dropping the fragments of shell into the long grass. From a distance Cad-fael had been uncertain whether this was boy or girl, for her gown was kilted to the knee, and her hair cropped just short enough to swing clear of her shoulders, and her dress was the common brown homespun of the countryside. But as he drew nearer it became clear that this was certainly a girl, and moreover, busy about the enterprise of becoming a woman. There were high, firm breasts under the close-fitting bodice, and for all her slenderness she had the swelling hips that would some day make childbirth natural and easy for her. Sixteen, he thought, might be her age. Most curiously of all, it appeared that she was both expecting and waiting for him, for as he rode towards her she turned on her perch to look towards him with a slow, confident smile of recognition and welcome, and when he was close she slid from the wail, brushing off the last nutshells, and shook down her skirts with the brisk movements of one making ready for action. ‘Sir, I must talk to you,’ she said with firmness, and put up a slim brown hand to the mule’s neck. ‘Will you light down and sit with me?’ She had still her child’s face, but the woman was beginning to show through, paring away the puppy-flesh to outline the elegant lines of her cheekbones and chin. She was brown almost as her nutshells, with a warm rose-colour mantling beneath the tanned, smooth skin, and a mouth rose-red, and curled like the petals of a half-open rose. The short, thick mane of curling hair was richly russet-brown, and her eyes one shade darker, and black-lashed. No cottar’s girl, if she did choose to go plain and scorning finery. She knew she was an heiress, and to be reckoned with.
‘I will, with pleasure,’ said Cadfael promptly, and did so. She took a step back, her head on one side, scarcely having expected such an accommodating reception, without explanation asked or given; and when he stood on level terms with her, and barely half a head taller, she suddenly made up her mind, and smiled at him radiantly.
‘I do believe we two can talk together properly. You don’t question, and yet you don’t even know me.’
‘I think I do,’ said Cadfael, hitching the mule’s bridle to a staple in the stone wall. ‘You can hardly be anyone else but Isouda Foriet. For all the rest I’ve already seen, and I was told already that you must be the youngest of the tribe.’
‘He told you of me?’ she demanded at once, with sharp interest, but no noticeable anxiety.
‘He mentioned you to others, but it came to my ears.’
‘How did he speak of me?’ she asked bluntly, jutting a firm chin. ‘Did that also come to your ears?’
‘I did gather that you were a kind of young sister.’ For some reason, not only did he not feel it possible to lie to this young person, it had no value even to soften the truth for her.
She smiled consideringly, like a confident commander weighing up the odds in a threatened field. ‘As if he did not much regard me. Never mind! He will.’
‘If I had the ruling of him,’ said Cadfael with respect, ‘I would advise it now. Well, Isouda, here you have me, as you wished. Come and sit, and tell me what you wanted of me.’
‘You brothers are not supposed to have to do with women,’ said Isouda, and grinned at him warmly as she hoisted herself back on to the wall. ‘That makes him safe from her, at least, but it must not go too far with this folly of his. May I know your name, since you know mine?’
‘My name is Cadfael, A Welshman from Trefriw.’
‘My first nurse was Welsh,’ she said, leaning down to pluck a frail green thread of grass from the fading stems below her, and set it between strong white teeth. ‘I don’t believe you have always been a monk, Cadfael, you know too much.’
‘I have known monks, children of the cloister from eight years old,’ said Cadfael seriously, ‘who knew more than I shall ever know, though only God knows how, who made it possible. But no, I have lived forty years in the world before I came to it. My knowledge is limited. But what I know you may ask of me. You want, I think, to hear of Meriet.’
‘Not “Brother Meriet”?’ she said, pouncing, light as a cat, and glad.
‘Not yet. Not for some time yet.’
‘Never!’ she said firmly and confidently. ‘It will not come to that. It must not.’ She turned her head and looked him in the face with a high, imperious stare. ‘He is mine,’ she said simply. ‘Meriet is mine, whether he knows it yet or no. And no one else will have him.’
* * *
CHAPTER SIX
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‘Ask me whatever you wish,’ said Cadfael, shifting to find the least spiky position on the stones of the wall. ‘And then there are things I have to ask of you.’