An Excellent Mystery (4 page)

“He
is no less welcome,” said Radulfus, “because his prayers must be silent. His
silence may be more eloquent than our spoken words.” If he had been taken aback
he had mastered the check so quickly as to give no sign. It would not be so
often that Abbot Radulfus would be disconcerted. “After this journey,” he said,
“you must both be weary, and still in some distress of mind until you have
again a bed, a place, and work to do. Go now with Brother Cadfael, he will take
you to Prior Robert, and show you everything within the enclave, dortoir and
frater and gardens and herbarium, where he rules. He will find you refreshment
and rest, your first need. And at Vespers you shall join us in worship.”

Word
of the arrivals from the south brought Hugh Beringar down hotfoot from the town
to confer first with the abbot, and then with Brother Humilis, who repeated
freely what he had already once related. When he had gleaned all he could, Hugh
went to find Cadfael in the herb-garden, where he was busy watering. There was
an hour yet before Vespers, the time of day when all the necessary work had
been done, and even a gardener could relax and sit for a while in the shade.
Cadfael put away his watering-can, leaving the open, sunlit beds until the cool
of the evening, and sat down beside his friend on the bench against the high
south wall.

“Well,
you have a breathing-space, at least,” he said. “They are at each other’s
throats, not reaching for yours. Great pity, though, that townsmen and
monastics and poor nuns should be the sufferers. But so it goes in this world.
And the queen and her Flemings must be in the town by now, or very near. What
happens next? The besiegers may very well find themselves besieged.”

“It
has happened before,” agreed Hugh. “And the bishop had fair warning he might
have need of a well-stocked larder, but she may have taken her supplies for
granted. If I were the queen’s general, I would take time to cut all the roads
into Winchester first, and make certain no food can get in. Well, we shall see.
And I hear you were the first to have speech with these two brothers from
Hyde.”

“They
overtook me in the Foregate. And what do you make of them, now you’ve been
closeted with them so long?”

“What
should I make of them, thus at first sight? A sick man and a dumb man. More to
the purpose, what do your brothers make of them?” Hugh had a sharp eye on his
old friend’s face, which was blunt and sleepy and private in the late afternoon
heat, but was never quite closed against him. “The elder is noble, clearly. Also
he is ill. I guess at a martial past, for I think he has old wounds. Did you
see he goes a little sidewise, favouring his left flank? Something has never
quite healed. And the young one… I well understand he has fallen under the
spell of such a man, and idolises him. Lucky for both! He has a powerful
protector, his lord has a devoted nurse. Well?” said Hugh, challenging
judgement with a confident smile.

“You
haven’t yet divined who our new elder brother is? They may not have told you
all,” admitted Cadfael tolerantly, “for it came out almost by chance. A martial
past, yes, he avowed it, though you could have guessed it no less surely. The
man is past forty-five, I judge, and has visible scars. He has said, also, that
he was born here at Salton, then a manor of his father’s. And he has a scar on
his head, bared by the tonsure, that was made by a Seljuk scimitar, some years
back. A mere slice, readily healed, but left its mark. Salton was held formerly
by the Bishop of Chester, and granted to the church of Saint Chad, here within
the walls. They let it go many years since to a noble family, the Marescots.
There’s a local tenant holds it under them.” He opened a levelled brown eye,
beneath a bushy brow russet as autumn. “Brother Humilis is a Marescot. I know
of only one Marescot of this man’s age who went to the Crusade. Sixteen or
seventeen years ago it must be. I was newly monk, then, part of me still
hankered, and I had one eye always on the tale of those who took the Cross. As
raw and eager as I was, surely, and bound for as bitter a fall, but pure enough
in their going. There was a certain Godfrid Marescot who took three score with
him from his own lands. He made a notable name for valour.”

“And
you think this is he? Thus fallen?”

“Why
not? The great ones are open to wounds no less than the simple. All the more,”
said Cadfael, “if they lead from before, and not from behind. They say this one
was never later than first.”

He
had still the crusader blood quick within him, he could not choose but awake
and respond, however the truth had sunk below his dreams and hopes, all those
years ago. Others, no less, had believed and trusted, no less to shudder and
turn aside from much of what was done in the name of the Faith.

“Prior
Robert will be running through the tale of the lords of Salton this moment,”
said Cadfael, “and will not fail to find his man. He knows the pedigree of
every lord of a manor in this shire and beyond, for thirty years back and more.
Brother Humilis will have no trouble in establishing himself, he sheds lustre
upon us by being here, he need do nothing more.”

“As
well,” said Hugh wryly, “for I think there is no more he can do, unless it be
to die here, and here be buried. Come, you have a better eye than mine for
mortal sickness. The man is on his way out of this world. No haste, but the end
is assured.”

“So
it is for you and for me,” said Cadfael sharply. “And as for haste, it’s
neither you nor I that hold the measure. It will come when it will come. Until
then, every day is of consequence, the last no less than the first.”

“So
be it!” said Hugh, and smiled, unchidden. “But he’ll come into your hands
before many days are out. And what of his youngling, the dumb boy?”

“Nothing
of him! Nothing but silence and shrinking into the shadows. Give us time,” said
Cadfael, “and we shall learn to know him better.”

A
man who has renounced possessions may move freely from one asylum to another,
and be no less at home, make do with nothing as well in Shrewsbury as in Hyde
Mead. A man who wears what every other man under the same discipline wears need
not be noticeable for more than a day. Brother Humilis and Brother Fidelis
resumed here in the midlands the same routine they had kept in the south, and
the hours of the day enfolded them no less firmly and serenely. Yet Prior
Robert had made a satisfactory end of his cogitations concerning the feudal
holdings and family genealogies in the shire, and it was very soon made known
to all, through his reliable echo, Brother Jerome, that the abbey had acquired
a most distinguished son, a crusader of acknowledged valour, who had made a
name for himself in the recent contention against the rising Atabeg Zenghi of
Mosul, the latest threat to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Prior Robert’s personal
ambitions lay all within the cloister, but for all that he missed never a turn
of the fortunes of the world without. Four years since, Jerusalem had been
shaken to its foundations by the king’s defeat at this Zenghi’s hands, but the kingdom
had survived through its alliance with the emirate of Damascus. In that unhappy
battle, so Robert made known discreetly, Godfrid Marescot had played a heroic
part.

“He
has observed every office, and worked steadily every hour set aside for work,”
said Brother Edmund the infirmarer, eyeing the new brother across the court as
he trod slowly towards the church for Compline, in the radiant stillness and
lingering warmth of evening. “And he has not asked for any help of yours or
mine. But I wish he had a better colour, and a morsel of flesh more on those
long bones. That bronze gone dull, with no blood behind it…”

And
there went the faithful shadow after him, young, lissome, with strong, flowing
pace, and hand ever advanced a little to prop an elbow, should it flag, or
encircle a lean body, should it stagger or fall.

There
goes one who knows it all,” said Cadfael, “and cannot speak. Nor would if he
could, without his lord’s permission. A son of one of his tenants, would you
say? Something of that kind, surely. The boy is well born and taught. He knows
Latin, almost as well as his master.”

On
reflection it seemed a liberty to speak of a man as anyone’s master who called
himself Humilis, and had renounced the world.

“I
had in mind,” said Edmund, but hesitantly, and with reverence, “a natural son.
I may be far astray, but it is what came to mind. I take him for a man who
would love and protect his seed, and the young one might well love and admire
him, for that as for all else.”

And
it could well be true. The tall man and the tall youth, a certain likeness,
even, in the clear features, insofar, thought Cadfael, as anyone had yet looked
directly at the features of young Brother Fidelis, who passed so silently and
unobtrusively about the enclave, patiently finding his way in this unfamiliar
place. He suffered, perhaps, more than his elder companion in the change,
having less confidence and experience, and all the anxiety of youth. He clung
to his lodestar, and every motion he made was oriented by its light. They had a
shared carrel in the scriptorium, for Brother Humilis had need, only too
clearly, of a sedentary occupation, and had proved to have a delicate hand with
copying, and artistry in illumination. And since he had limited control after a
period of work, and his hand was liable to shake in fine detail, Abbot Radulfus
had decreed that Brother Fidelis should be present with him to assist whenever
he needed relief. The one hand matched the other as if the one had taught the
other, though it might have been only emulation and love. Together, they did
slow but admirable work.

“I
had never considered,” said Edmund, musing aloud, “how remote and strange a man
could be who has no voice, and how hard it is to reach and touch him. I have
caught myself talking of him to Brother Humilis, over the lad’s head, and been
ashamed — as if he had neither hearing nor wits. I blushed before him. Yet how
do you touch hands with such a one? I never had practice in it till now, and I
am altogether astray.”

“Who
is not?” said Cadfael.

It
was truth, he had noted it. The silence, or rather the moderation of speech
enjoined by the Rule had one quality, the hush that hung about Brother Fidelis
quite another. Those who must communicate with him tended to use much gesture
and few words, or none, reflecting his silence. As though, truly, he had
neither hearing nor wits. But manifestly he had both, quick and delicate senses
and sharp hearing, tuned to the least sound. And that was also strange. So
often the dumb were dumb because they had never learned of sounds, and
therefore made none. And this young man had been well taught in his letters,
and knew some Latin, which argued a mind far more agile than most.

Unless,
thought Cadfael doubtfully, his muteness was a new-come thing in recent years,
from some constriction of the cords of the tongue or the sinews of the throat?
Or even if he had it from birth, might it not be caused by some strings too
tightly drawn under his tongue, that could be eased by exercise or loosed by
the knife?

“I
meddle too much,” said Cadfael to himself crossly, shaking off the speculation
that could lead nowhere. And he went to Compline in an unwontedly penitent
mood, and by way of discipline observed silence himself for the rest of the
evening.

They
gathered the purple-black Lammas plums next day, for they were just on the
right edge of ripeness. Some would be eaten at once, fresh as they were, some
Brother Petrus would boil down into a preserve thick and dark as cakes of
poppy-seed, and some would be laid out on racks in the drying house to wrinkle
and crystallise into gummy sweetness. Cadfael had a few trees in a small
orchard within the enclave, though most of the fruit-trees were in the main
garden of the Gaye, the lush meadow-land along the riverside. The novices and younger
brothers picked the fruit, and the oblates and schoolboys were allowed to help;
and if everyone knew that a few handfuls went into the breasts of tunics rather
than into the baskets, provided the depredations were reasonable Cadfael turned
a blind eye.

It
was too much to expect silence in such fine weather and such a holiday
occupation. The voices of the boys rang merrily in Cadfael’s ears as he
decanted wine in his workshop, and went back and forth among his plants along
the shadowed wall, weeding and watering. A pleasant sound! He could pick out
known voices, the children’s shrill and light, their elders in a whole range of
tones. That warm, clear call, that was Brother Rhun, the youngest of the
novices, sixteen years old, only two months since received into probation, and
not yet tonsured, lest he should think better of his impulsive resolve to quit
a world he had scarcely seen. But Rhun would not repent of his choice. He had
come to the abbey for Saint Winifred’s festival, a cripple and in pain, and by
her grace now he went straight and tall and agile, radiating delight upon
everyone who came near him. As now, surely, on whoever was his partner at the
nearest of the plum-trees. Cadfael went to the edge of the orchard to see, and
there was the sometime lame boy up among the branches, secure and joyous, his
slim, deft hands nursing the fruit so lightly his fingers scarcely blurred the
bloom, and leaning down to lay them in the basket held up to him by a tall
brother whose back was turned, and whose figure was not immediately
recognisable, until he moved round, the better to follow Rhun’s movements, and
showed the face of Brother Fidelis.