The Devils Novice (22 page)

Close
behind her, and for a moment hard to recognise, came Isouda Foriet on a tall
spirited horse. Groomed and shod and well-mounted, her hair netted and
uncovered to the light, a bright russet like autumn leaves, with her hood
tossed back on her shoulders and her back straight and lissome as a birch-tree,
Isouda rode without artifice, and needed none. As good as a boy! As good as the
boy who rode beside her, with a hand stretched out to her bridle-hand, lightly
touching. Neighbours, each with a manor to offer, would it be strange if
Janyn’s father and Isouda’s guardian planned to match them? Excellently matched
in age, in quality, having known each other from children, what could be more suitable?
But the two most concerned still chattered and wrangled like brother and
sister, very easy and familiar together. And besides, Isouda had other plans.

Janyn
carried with him, here as elsewhere, his light, comely candour, smiling round
him with pleasure on all he saw. Sweeping a bright glance round all the
watching faces, he recognised Brother Cadfael, and his face lit up engagingly
as he gave him a marked inclination of his fair head.

“He
knows you,” said Brother Paul, catching the gesture.

“The
bride’s brother—her twin. I encountered him when I went to talk with Meriet’s
father. The two families are close neighbours.”

“A
great pity,” said Paul sympathetically, “that Brother Meriet is not well enough
to be here. I am sure he would wish to be present when his brother marries, and
to wish them God’s blessing. He cannot walk yet?”

All
that was known of Meriet among these who had done their best for him was that
he had had a fall, and was laid up with a lingering weakness and a twisted
foot.

“He
hobbles with a stick,” said Cadfael. “I would not like him to venture far as he
is. In a day or two we shall see how far we may let him try his powers.”

Janyn
was down from his saddle with a bound, and attentive at Isouda’s stirrup as she
made to descend. She laid a hand heartily on his shoulder and came down like a
feather, and they laughed together, and turned to join the company already
assembled. After them came the Aspleys, Leoric as Cadfael had imagined and seen
him, bolt-upright body and soul, appearing tall as a church column in the
saddle; an irate, intolerant, honourable man, exact to his responsibilities,
absolute on his privileges. A demi-god to his servants, and one to be trusted
provided they in turn were trustworthy; a god to his sons. What he had been to
his dead wife could scarcely be guessed, or what she had felt towards her
second boy. The admirable firstborn, close at his father’s elbow, vaulted out
of his tall saddle like a bird lighting, large, vigorous and beautiful. At
every move Nigel did honour to his progenitors and his name. Cloistered young
men watching him murmured admiration, and well they might.

“Difficult,”
said Brother Paul always sensitive to youth and its obscure torments, “to be
second to such a one.”

“Difficult
indeed,” said Cadfael ruefully.

Kinsmen
and neighbours followed, small lords and their ladies, self-confident folk,
commanding limited realms, perhaps, but absolute within them, and well able to
guard their own. They alighted, their grooms led away the horses and ponies,
the court gradually emptied of the sudden blaze of colour and animation, and
the fixed and revered order continued unbroken, with Vespers drawing near.

Brother
Cadfael went to his workshop in the herbarium after supper to fetch certain
dried herbs needed by Brother Petrus, the abbot’s cook, for the next day’s
dinner, when the Aspleys and the Lindes were to dine with Canon Euard at the
abbot’s table. Frost was setting in again for the night, the air was crisp and
still and the sky starry, and even the smallest sound rang like a bell in the
pure darkness. The footsteps that followed him along the hard earth path
between the pleached hedges were very soft, but he heard them; someone small
and light of foot, keeping her distance, one sharp ear listening for Cadfael’s
guiding steps ahead, the other pricked back to make sure no others followed
behind. When he opened the door of his hut and passed within, his pursuer
halted, giving him time to strike a spark from his flint and light his little
lamp. Then she came into the open doorway, wrapped in a dark cloak, her hair
loose on her neck as he had first seen her, the cold stinging her cheeks into
rose-red, and the flame of the lamp making stars of her eyes.

“Come
in, Isouda,” said Cadfael placidly, rustling the bunches of herbs that dangled
from the beams above. “I’ve been hoping to find a means of talking with you. I
should have known you would make your own occasion.”

“But
I mustn’t stay long,” she said, coming in and closing the door behind her. “I
am supposed to be lighting a candle and putting up prayers in the church for my
father’s soul.”

“Then
should you not be doing that?” said Cadfael, smiling. “Here, sit and be easy
for the short time you have, and whatever you want of me, ask.”

“I
have lit my candle,” she said, seating herself on the bench by the wall, “it’s
there to be seen, but my father was a fine man, and God will take good care of
his soul without any interference from me. And I need to know what is really
happening to Meriet.”

“They’ll
have told you that he had a bad fall, and cannot walk as yet?”

“Brother
Paul told us so. He said it would be no lasting harm. Is it so? Will he be well
again surely?”

“Surely
he will. He got a gash on the head in his fall, but that’s already healed, and his
wrenched foot needs only a little longer rest, and it will bear him again as
well as ever. He’s in good hands, Brother Mark is taking care of him, and
Brother Mark is his staunch friend. Tell me, how did his father take the word
of his fall?”

“He
kept a severe face,” she said, “though he said he grieved to hear it, so
coldly, who would believe him? But for all that, he does grieve.”

“He
did not ask to visit him?”

She
made a disdainful face at the obstinacy of men. “Not he! He has given him to
God, and God must fend for him. He will not go near him. But I came to ask you
if you will take
me
there to see him.”

Cadfael
stood earnestly considering her for a long moment, and then sat down beside her
and told her all that had happened, all that he knew or guessed. She was
shrewd, gallant and resolute, and she knew what she wanted and was ready to
fight for it. She gnawed a calculating lip when she heard that Meriet had
confessed to murder, and glowed in proud acknowledgement when Cadfael stressed
that she was the sole privileged person, besides himself and Mark and the law,
to be apprised of it, and to know, to her comfort, that it was not believed.

“Sheer
folly!” she said roundly. “I thank God you see through him as through gauze.
And his fool of a father
believes
it? But he never has known him, he
never has valued or come close to him, from the day Meriet was born. And yet
he’s a fair-minded man, I own it, he would not knowingly do any man wrong. He
must have urgent cause to believe this. And Meriet cause just as grave to leave
him in the mistake—even while he certainly must be holding it against him that
he’s so ready to believe evil of his own flesh and blood. Brother Cadfael, I
tell you, I never before saw so clearly how like those two are, proud and
stubborn and solitary, taking to themselves every burden that falls their way,
shutting out kith and kin and liegemen and all. I could knock their two fool
crowns together. But what good would that do, without an answer that would shut
both their mouths—except on penitence?”

“There
will be such an answer,” said Cadfael, “and if ever you do knock their heads
together, I promise you both shall be unshaven. And yes, tomorrow I will take
you to practise upon the one of them, but after dinner—for before it, I aim to
bring your Uncle Leoric to visit his son, whether he will or no. Tell me, if
you know, what are their plans for the morrow? They have yet one day to spare
before the marriage.”

“They
mean to attend High Mass,” she said, sparkling hopefully, “and then we women
will be fitting gowns and choosing ornaments, and putting a stitch in here and
there to the wedding clothes. Nigel will be shut out of all that, until we go
to dine with the lord abbot, and I think he and Janyn intend to go into the
town for some last trifles. Uncle Leoric may be left to himself after Mass. You
might snare him then, if you catch your time.”

“I
shall be watching for it,” Cadfael assured her. “And after the abbot’s dinner,
if you can absent yourself, then I will take you to Meriet.”

She
rose joyfully when she thought it high time to leave him, and she went forth
valiantly, certain of herself and her stars, and her standing with the powers
of heaven. And Cadfael went to deliver his selected herbs to Brother Petrus,
who was already brooding over the masterpieces he would produce the next day at
noon.

After
High Mass on the morning of the twentieth of December the womenfolk repaired to
their own apartments, to make careful choice of the right array for dining with
the abbot. Leoric’s son and his son’s bosom friend went off on foot into the
town, his guests dispersed to pay local visits for which this was rare
opportunity, and make purchases of stores for their country manors while they
were close to the town, or to burnish their own finery for the morrow. Leoric
walked briskly in the frosty air the length of the gardens, round fish-ponds
and fields, down to the Meole brook, fringed with delicate frost like fine
lace, and after that as decisively vanished. Cadfael had waited to give him
time to be alone, as plainly he willed to be, and then lost sight of him, to
find him again in the mortuary chapel where Peter Clemence’s coffin, closed now
and richly draped, waited for Bishop Henry’s word as to its disposal. Two new,
fine candles burned on a branched candlestick at the head, and Leoric Aspley
was on his knees on the flagstones at the foot. His lips moved upon silent,
methodical prayers, his open eyes were fixed unflinchingly upon the bier.
Cadfael knew then that he was on firm ground. The candles might have been
simply any courtly man’s offering to a dead kinsman, however distant, but the
grim and grievous face, silently acknowledging a guilt not yet confessed or
atoned for, confirmed the part he had played in denying this dead man burial,
and pointed plainly at the reason.

Cadfael
withdrew silently, and waited for him to come forth. Blinking as he emerged
into daylight again, Leoric found himself confronted by a short, sturdy,
nut-brown brother who stepped into his path and addressed him ominously, like a
warning angel blocking the way:

“My
lord, I have an urgent errand to you. I beg you to come with me. You are
needed. Your son is mortally ill.”

It
came so suddenly and shortly, it struck like a lance. The two young men had
been gone half an hour, time for the assassin’s stroke, for the sneak-thief’s
knife, for any number of disasters. Leoric heaved up his head and snuffed the
air of terror, and gasped aloud: “My son…?”

Only
then did he recognise the brother who had come to Aspley on the abbot’s errand.
Cadfael saw hostile suspicion flare in the deep-set, arrogant eyes, and
forestalled whatever his antagonist might have had to say.

“It’s
high time,” said Cadfael, “that you remembered you have two sons. Will you let
one of them die uncomforted?”

Chapter Eleven

LEORIC
WENT WITH HIM; striding impatiently, suspiciously, intolerantly, yet continuing
to go with him. He questioned, and was not answered. When Cadfael said simply:
“Turn back, then, if that’s your will, and make your own peace with God and
him!” Leoric set his teeth and his jaw, and went on.

At
the rising path up the grass-slope to Saint Giles he checked, but rather to
take stock of the place where his son served and suffered than out of any fear
of the many contagions that might be met within. Cadfael brought him to the
barn, where Meriet’s pallet was still laid, and Meriet at this moment was
seated upon it, the stout staff by which he hobbled about the hospice braced
upright in his right hand, and his head leaned upon its handle. He would have
been about the place as best he might since Prime, and Mark must have banished
him to an interval of rest before the midday meal. He was not immediately aware
of them, the light within the barn being dim and mellow, and subject to passing
shadows. He looked several years older than the silent and submissive youth
Leoric had brought to the abbey a postulant, almost three months earlier.

His
sire, entering with the light sidelong, stood gazing. His face was closed and
angry, but the eyes in it stared in bewilderment and grief, and indignation,
too, at being led here in this fashion when the sufferer had no mark of death
upon him, but leaned resigned and quiet, like a man at peace with his fate.

“Go
in,” said Cadfael at Leoric’s shoulder, “and speak to him.”

It
hung perilously in the balance whether Leoric would not turn, thrust his
deceitful guide out of the way, and stalk back by the way he had come. He did
cast a black look over his shoulder and make to draw back from the doorway; but
either Cadfael’s low voice or the stir of movement had reached and startled
Meriet. He raised his head and saw his father. The strangest contortion of
astonishment, pain, and reluctant and grudging affection twisted his face. He
made to rise respectfully and fumbled it in his haste. The crutch slipped out
of his hand and thudded to the floor, and he reached for it, wincing.