‘Good-day, brother! Are you bound for us?’
‘If by any chance your name is Nigel Aspley,’ said Cadfael, halting to return the airy greeting, ‘then indeed I am.’ But this could hardly be the elder son who had five or six years the advantage of Meriet, he was too young, of too markedly different a colouring and build, long and slender and blue-eyed, with rounded countenance and ready smile. A little more red in the fair hair, which had the elusive greenish-yellow of oak leaves just budded in spring, or just turning in autumn, and he could have provided the lock that Meriet had cherished in his bed.
‘Then we’re out of luck,’ said the young man gracefully, and made a pleasant grimace of disappointment. ‘Though you’d still be welcome to halt at home for a rest and a cup, if you have the leisure for it? For I’m only a Linde, not an Aspley, and my name is Janyn.’
Cadfael recalled what Hugh had told him of Meriet’s replies to Canon Eluard. The elder brother was affianced to the daughter of the neighbouring manor; and that could only be a Linde, since he had also mentioned without much interest the foster-sister who was a Foriet, and heiress to the manor that bordered Aspley on the southern side. Then this personable and debonair young creature must be a brother of Nigel’s prospective bride.
‘That’s very civil of you,’ said Cadfael mildly, ‘and I thank you for the goodwill, but I’d best be getting on about my business. For I think I must have only a mile or so still to go.’
‘Barely that, sir, if you take the left-hand path below here where it forks. Through the copse, and you’re into their fields, and the track will bring you straight to their gate. If you’re not in haste I’ll walk with you and show you.’
Cadfael was more than willing. Even if he learned little from his companion about this cluster of manors all productive of sons and daughters of much the same age, and consequently brought up practically as one family, yet the companionship itself was pleasant. And a few useful grains of knowledge might be dropped like seed, and take root for him. He let the mule amble gently, and Janyn Linde fell in beside him with a long, easy stride.
‘You’ll be from Shrewsbury, brother?’ Evidently he had his share of human curiosity. ‘Is it something concerning Meriet? We were shaken, I can tell you, when he made up his mind to take the cowl, and yet, come to think, he went always his own ways, and would follow them. How did you leave him? Well, I hope?’
‘Passably well,’ said Cadfael cautiously. ‘You must know him a deal better than we do, as yet, being neighbours, and much of an age.’
‘Oh, we were all raised together from pups, Nigel, Meriet, my sister and me—especially after both our mothers died—and Isouda, too, when she was left orphan, though she’s younger. Meriet’s our first loss from the clan, we miss him.’
‘I hear there’ll be a marriage soon that will change things still more,’ said Cadfael, fishing delicately.
‘Roswitha and Nigel?’ Janyn shrugged lightly and airily. ‘It was a match our fathers planned long ago—but if they hadn’t, they’d have had to come round to it, for those two made up their own minds almost from children. If you’re bound for Aspley you’ll find my sister somewhere about the place. She’s more often there than here, now. They’re deadly fond!’ He sounded tolerantly amused, as brothers still unsmitten frequently are by the eccentricities of lovers. Deadly fond! Then if the red-gold hair had truly come from Roswitha’s head, surely it had not been given? To a besotted younger brother of her bridegroom? Clipped on the sly, more likely, and the ribbon stolen. Or else it came, after all, from some very different girl.
‘Meriet’s mind took another way,’ said Cadfael, trailing his line. ‘How did his father take it when he chose the cloister? I think were I a father, and had but two sons, I should take no pleasure in giving up either of them.’
Janyn laughed, briefly and gaily. ‘Meriet’s father took precious little pleasure in anything Meriet ever did, and Meriet took precious little pains to please him. They waged one long battle. And yet I dare swear they loved each other as well as most fathers and sons do. Now and then they come like that, oil and water, and nothing they can do about it.’
They had reached a point below the headland where the fields gave place to a copse, and a broad ride turned aside at a slight angle to thread the trees.
‘There lies your best way,’ said Janyn, ‘straight to their manor fence. And if you should have time to step in at our house on your way back, brother, my father would be glad to welcome you.’
Cadfael thanked him gravely, and turned into the green ride. At a turn of the path he looked back. Janyn was strolling jauntily back towards his headland and the open fields, where he could fly the merlin on his creance without tangling her in trees to her confusion and displeasure. He was whistling again as he went, very melodiously, and his fair head had the very gloss and rare colour of young oak foliage, Meriet’s contemporary, but how different by nature! This one would have no difficulty in pleasing the most exacting of fathers, and would certainly never vex his by electing to remove from a world which obviously pleased him very well.
The copse was open and airy, the trees had shed half their leaves, and let in light to a floor still green and fresh. There were brackets of orange fungus jutting from the tree-boles, and frail bluish toadstools in the turf. The path brought Cadfael out, as Janyn had promised, to the wide, striped fields of the Aspley manor, carved out long ago from the forest, and enlarged steadily ever since, both to westward, into the forest land, and eastward, into richer, tamed country. The sheep had been turned into the stubble here, too, in greater numbers, to crop what they could from the aftermath, and leave their droppings to manure the ground for the next sowing. And along a raised track between strips the manor came into view, within an enclosing wall, but high enough to be seen over its crest; a long, stone-built house, a windowed hall floor over a squat undercroft, and probably some chambers in the roof above the solar end. Well built and well kept, worth inheriting, like the land that surrounded it. Low, wide doors made to accommodate carts and wagons opened into the undercroft, a steep stairway led up to the hall door. There were stables and byres lining the inside of the wall on two sides. They kept ample stock.
There were two or three men busy about the byres when Cadfael rode in at the gate, and a groom came out from the stable to take his bridle, quick and respectful at sight of the Benedictine habit. And out from the open hall door came an elderly, thickset, bearded personage who must, Cadfael supposed rightly, be the steward Fremund who had been Meriet’s herald to the abbey. A well-run household. Peter Clemence must have been met with ceremony on the threshold when he arrived unexpectedly. It would not be easy to take these retainers by surprise.
Cadfael asked for the lord Leoric, and was told that he was out in the back fields superintending the grubbing of a tree that had heeled into his stream from a slipping bank, and was fouling the flow, but he would be sent for at once, if Brother Cadfael would wait but a quarter of an hour in the solar, and drink a cup of wine or ale to pass the time. An invitation which Cadfael accepted willingly after his ride. His mule had already been led away, doubtless to some equally meticulous hospitality of its own. Aspley kept up the lofty standards of his forebears. A guest here would be a sacred trust.
Leoric Aspley filled the narrow doorway when he came in, his thick bush of greying hair brushing the lintel. Its colour, before he aged, must have been a light brown. Meriet did not favour him in figure or complexion, but there was a strong likeness in the face. Was it because they were too unbendingly alike that they fought and could not come to terms, as Janyn had said? Aspley made his guest welcome with cool immaculate courtesy, waited on him with his own hand, and pointedly closed the door upon the rest of the household.
‘I am sent,’ said Cadfael, when they were seated, facing each other in a deep window embrasure, their cups on the stone beside them, ‘by Abbot Radulfus, to consult you concerning your son Meriet.’