Monk's Hood (30 page)

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.”

Brother
Mark let go of his scruples, and had the grace to grin. “But all the same, when
Father Heribert could meet him with no malice at all, and such affection…”

“Brother
Heribert! And you do yourself less than justice,” said Cadfael fondly. “You’re
still endearingly green, it seems. Did you think all those well-chosen words
were hit upon by accident? ‘A simple brother under you… ’ He could as well have
said among you, since he was speaking to us all a moment before. And ‘with the
same selfless devotion,’ indeed! Yes, the very same! And by the look of our new
abbot, Robert will be waiting a long, long time before there’s another vacancy
there.”

Brother
Mark dangled his legs from the bench by the wall, and gaped in startled
consternation. “Do you mean he did it all on purpose?”

“He
could have sent one of the grooms a day ahead, couldn’t he, if he’d wished to
give warning? He could at least have sent one on from St. Giles to break the
news gently. And privately! A long-suffering soul, but he took a small revenge
today.” He was touched by Brother Mark’s stricken face. “Don’t look so shocked!
You’ll never get to be a saint if you
deny the bit of the
devil in you. And think of the benefit he’s conferred on Prior Robert’s soul!”

“In
showing the vanity of ambition?” hazarded Mark doubtfully.

“In
teaching him not to count his chickens. There, now be off to the warming-room,
and get me all the gossip, and I’ll join you in a little while, after I’ve had
a word or two with Hugh Beringar.”

“Well,
it’s over, and as cleanly as we could have hoped,” said Beringar, comfortable
beside the brazier with a beaker of mulled wine from Cadfael’s store in his
hand. “Documented and done with, and the cost might well have been higher. A
very fine woman, by the way, your Richildis, it was a pleasure to hand her boy
back to her. I’ve no doubt he’ll be in here after you as soon as he hears
you’re back, as he soon will, for I’ll call at the house on my way into the
town.”

There
had been few direct questions asked, and few but oblique answers. Their
conversation was often as devious as their relationship was easy and secure,
but they understood each other.

“I
hear you lost a horse while you were up on the borders,” said Beringar.

“Mea
culpa!” owned Cadfael. “I left the stable unlocked.”

“About
the same time as the Llansilin court lost a man,” observed Hugh.

“Well,
you’re surely not blaming me for that. I found him for them, and then they
couldn’t keep their hold on him.”

“I
suppose they’ll have the price of the horse out of you, one way or the other?”

“No
doubt it will come up at chapter tomorrow. No matter,” said Brother Cadfael
placidly, “as long as no one here can dun me for the price of the man.”

“That
can only be charged at another chapter. But it could come high.” But Hugh’s
sharp, dark face behind the quiv
ering vapour from the brazier
was smiling. “I’ve been saving a piece of news for you, Cadfael, my friend.
Every few days a new wonder out of Wales! Only yesterday I got word from
Chester that a rider who gave no name came into one of the granges of the
monastery of Beddgelert, and left there his horse, asking that the brothers
would give it stable-room until it could be returned to the Benedictine
brothers at the sheepfolds of Rhydycroesau, whence it had been borrowed. They
don’t yet know of it at Rhydycroesau, for they had their first snow before us,
up there in Arfon, and there was no chance of getting a messenger through
overland, and I gather is none even yet. But the horse is there, and safe.
Whoever the stranger was,” said Hugh innocently, “he must have left it there no
more than two days after our own vanished malefactor made his confession in
Penllyn. The word came by way of Bangor, when they could reach it, and by sea
to Chester with one of the coastal boats. So it seems you’ll get a shorter
penance than you bargained for.”

“Beddgelert,
eh!” said Cadfael, pondering. “And left there on foot, it seems. Where do you
suppose he was bound, Hugh? Clynnog or Caergybi, and oversea to Ireland?”

“Why
not into the cells of the clas at Beddgelert?” Hugh suggested, smiling into his
wine. “After all your buffeting around the world, you came into a like
harbour.”

Cadfael
stroked his cheeks thoughtfully. “No, not that. Not yet! He would not think he
had paid enough for that, yet.”

Hugh
gave a brisk bait of laughter, set down his cup, and got to his feet, clapping
Cadfael heartily on the shoulder. “I’d better be off. Every time I come near
you I find myself compounding a felony.”