A Rare Benedictine (5 page)
He
saw the significance of that go home, slowly but with bitter force. The
masterless men had been nothing but a children’s tale, but until now Roger had
thought, as he had been meant to think, that that dagger-stroke in the forest
had been a bold attempt by an abbey servant to defend his prior. He blinked and
swallowed and stared, and began to sweat, beholding a perilous gulf into which
he had all but stumbled.
“There
were none there who bore arms,” said Cadfael, “but your own.”
A
double-edged ambush that had been, to have him out in the forest by night, all
unsuspecting. And there were as many miles between Woodstock and Sutton Mauduit
returning as coming, and there would be other nights as dark on the way.
“Who?”
asked Roger in a grating whisper. “Which of them? Give him a name!”
“No,”
said Cadfael simply. “Do your own divining. I am no longer in your service, I
have said all I mean to say.”
Roger’s
face had turned grey. He was hearing again the plan unfolded so seductively in
his ear. “You cannot leave me so! If you know so much, for God’s sake return
with me, see me safely home, at least. You I could trust!”
“No,”
said Cadfael again. “You are warned, now guard yourself.”
It
was fair, he considered; it was enough. He turned and went away without another
word. He went, just as he was, to Vespers in the parish church, for no better
reason or so he thought then than that the dimness within the open doorway
beckoned him as he turned his back on a duty completed, inviting him to
quietness and thought, and the bell was just sounding. The little prior was
there, ardent in thanksgiving, one more creature who had fumbled his way to the
completion of a task, and the turning of a leaf in the book of his life.
Cadfael
watched out the office, and stood mute and still for some time after priest and
worshippers had departed. The silence after their going was deeper than the
ocean and more secure than the earth. Cadfael breathed and consumed it like new
bread. It was the light touch of a small hand on the hilt of his sword that
startled him out of that profound isolation. He looked down to see a little
acolyte, no higher than his elbow, regarding him gravely from great round eyes of
blinding blue, intent and challenging, as solemn as ever was angelic messenger.
“Sir,”
said the child in stern treble reproof, tapping the hilt with an infant finger,
“should not all weapons of war be laid aside here?”
“Sir,”
said Cadfael hardly less gravely, though he was smiling, “you may very well be
right.” And slowly he unbuckled the sword from his belt, and went and laid it
down, flatlings, on the lowest step under the altar. It looked strangely
appropriate and at peace there. The hilt, after all, was a cross.
Prior
Heribert was at a frugal supper with his happy brothers in the parish priest’s
house when Cadfael asked audience with him. The little man came out graciously
to welcome a stranger, and knew him for an acquaintance at least, and now at a
breath certainly a friend.
“You,
my son! And surely it was you at Vespers? I felt that I should know the shape
of you. You are the most welcome of guests here, and if there is anything I and
mine can do to repay you for what you did for us, you need but name it.”
“Father,”
said Cadfael, briskly Welsh in his asking, “do you ride for home tomorrow?”
“Surely,
my son, we leave after Prime. Abbot Godefrid will be waiting to hear how we
have fared.”
Then,
Father, here am I at the turning of my life, free of one master’s service, and
finished with arms. Take me with you!”
HAMO
FITZHAMON OF LIDYATE HELD TWO FAT MANORS in the northeastern corner of the
county, towards the border of Cheshire. Though a gross feeder, a heavy drinker,
a self-indulgent lecher, a harsh landlord and a brutal master, he had reached
the age of sixty in the best of health, and it came as a salutary shock to him
when he was at last taken with a mild seizure, and for the first time in his
life saw the next world yawning before him, and woke to the uneasy
consciousness that it might see fit to treat him somewhat more austerely than
this world had done. Though he repented none of them, he was aware of a whole
register of acts in his past which heaven might construe as heavy sins. It
began to seem to him a prudent precaution to acquire merit for his soul as
quickly as possible. Also as cheaply, for he was a grasping and possessive man.
A judicious gift to some holy house should secure the welfare of his soul.
There was no need to go so far as endowing an abbey, or a new church of his
own. The Benedictine abbey of Shrewsbury could put up a powerful assault of
prayers on his behalf in return for a much more modest gift.
The
thought of alms to the poor, however ostentatiously bestowed in the first
place, did not recommend itself. Whatever was given would be soon consumed and
forgotten, and a rag-tag of beggarly blessings from the indigent could carry
very little weight, besides failing to confer a lasting lustre upon himself.
No, he wanted something that would continue in daily use and daily respectful
notice, a permanent reminder of his munificence and piety. He took his time
about making his decision, and when he was satisfied of the best value he could
get for the least expenditure, he sent his law-man to Shrewsbury to confer with
abbot and prior, and conclude with due ceremony and many witnesses the charter
that conveyed to the custodian of the altar of St Mary, within the abbey
church, one of his free tenant farmers, the rent to provide light for Our
Lady’s altar throughout the year. He promised also, for the proper displaying
of his charity, the gift of a pair of fine silver candlesticks, which he
himself would bring and see installed on the altar at the coming Christmas
feast.
Abbot
Heribert, who after a long life of repeated disillusionments still contrived to
think the best of everybody, was moved to tears by this penitential generosity.
Prior Robert, himself an aristocrat, refrained, out of Norman solidarity, from
casting doubt upon Hamo’s motive, but he elevated his eyebrows, all the same.
Brother Cadfael, who knew only the public reputation of the donor, and was
sceptical enough to suspend judgement until he encountered the source, said
nothing, and waited to observe and decide for himself. Not that he expected
much; he had been in the world fifty-five years, and learned to temper all his
expectations, bad or good.
It
was with mild and detached interest that he observed the arrival of the party
from Lidyate, on the morning of Christmas Eve. A hard, cold Christmas it was
proving to be, that year of 1135, all bitter black frost and grudging snow,
thin and sharp as whips before a withering east wind. The weather had been
vicious all the year, and the harvest a disaster. In the villages people
shivered and starved, and Brother Oswald the almoner fretted and grieved the
more that the alms he had to distribute were not enough to keep all those
bodies and souls together. The sight of a cavalcade of three good riding
horses, ridden by travellers richly wrapped up from the cold, and followed by
two pack-ponies, brought all the wretched petitioners crowding and crying,
holding out hands blue with frost. All they got out of it was a single
perfunctory handful of small coin, and when they hampered his movements
FitzHamon used his whip as a matter of course to clear the way. Rumour, thought
Brother Cadfael, pausing on his way to the infirmary with his daily medicines
for the sick, had probably not done Hamo FitzHamon any injustice.
Dismounting
in the great court, the knight of Lidyate was seen to be a big, over-fleshed,
top-heavy man with bushy hair and beard and eyebrows, all grey-streaked from
their former black, and stiff and bristling as wire. He might well have been a
very handsome man before indulgence purpled his face and pocked his skin and
sank his sharp black eyes deep into flabby sacks of flesh. He looked more than
his age, but still a man to be reckoned with.
The
second horse carried his lady, pillion behind a groom. A small figure she made,
even swathed almost to invisibility in her woollens and furs, and she rode
snuggled comfortably against the groom’s broad back, her arms hugging him round
the waist. And a very well-looking young fellow he was, this groom, a strapping
lad barely twenty years old, with round, ruddy cheeks and merry, guileless
eyes, long in the legs, wide in the shoulders, everything a country youth
should be, and attentive to his duties into the bargain, for he was down from
the saddle in one lithe leap, and reaching up to take the lady by the waist,
every bit as heartily as she had been clasping him a moment before, and lift
her lightly down. Small, gloved hands rested on his shoulders a brief moment
longer than was necessary. His respectful support of her continued until she
was safe on the ground and sure of her footing; perhaps a few seconds more.
Hamo FitzHamon was occupied with Prior Robert’s ceremonious welcome, and the
attentions of the hospitaller, who had made the best rooms of the guest-hall
ready for him.
The
third horse also carried two people, but the woman on the pillion did not wait
for anyone to help her down, but slid quickly to the ground and hurried to help
her mistress off with the great outer cloak in which she had travelled. A
quiet, submissive young woman, perhaps in her middle twenties, perhaps older,
in drab homespun, her hair hidden away under a coarse linen wimple. Her face
was thin and pale, her skin dazzlingly fair, and her eyes, reserved and weary,
were of a pale, clear blue, a fierce colour that ill suited their humility and
resignation.
Lifting
the heavy folds from her lady’s shoulders, the maid showed a head the taller of
the two, but drab indeed beside the bright little bird that emerged from the
cloak. Lady FitzHamon came forth graciously smiling on the world in scarlet and
brown, like a robin, and just as confidently. She had dark hair braided about a
small, shapely head, soft, full cheeks flushed rosy by the chill air, and large
dark eyes assured of their charm and power. She could not possibly have been
more than thirty, probably not so much. FitzHamon had a grown son somewhere,
with children of his own, and waiting, some said with little patience, for his
inheritance. This girl must be a second or a third wife, a good deal younger
than her stepson, and a beauty, at that. Hamo was secure enough and important
enough to keep himself supplied with wives as he wore them out. This one must
have cost him dear, for she had not the air of a poor but pretty relative sold
for a profitable alliance, rather she looked as if she knew her own status very
well indeed, and meant to have it acknowledged She would look well presiding
over the high table at Lidyate, certainly, which was probably the main
consideration.
The
groom behind whom the maid had ridden was an older man, lean and wiry, with a
face like the bole of a knotty oak. By the sardonic patience of his eyes he had
been in close and relatively favoured attendance on FitzHamon for many years,
knew the best and the worst his moods could do, and was sure of his own ability
to ride the storms. Without a word he set about unloading the pack-horses, and
followed his lord to the guest-hall, while the young man took FitzHamon’s
bridle, and led the horses away to the stables.
Cadfael
watched the two women cross to the doorway, the lady springy as a young hind,
with bright eyes taking in everything around her, the tall maid keeping always
a pace behind, with long steps curbed to keep her distance. Even thus,
frustrated like a mewed hawk, she had a graceful gait. Almost certainly of
villein stock, like the two grooms. Cadfael had long practice in distinguishing
the free from the unfree. Not that the free had any easy life, often they were
worse off than the villeins of their neighbourhood; there were plenty of free
men, this Christmas, gaunt and hungry, forced to hold out begging hands among
the throng round the gatehouse. Freedom, the first ambition of every man, still
could not fill the bellies of wives and children in a bad season.
FitzHamon
and his party appeared at Vespers in full glory, to see the candlesticks
reverently installed upon the altar in the Lady Chapel. Abbot, prior and
brothers had no difficulty in sufficiently admiring the gift, for they were
indeed things of beauty, two fluted stems ending in the twin cups of flowering
lilies. Even the veins of the leaves showed delicate and perfect as in the
living plant. Brother Oswald the almoner, himself a skilled silversmith when he
had time to exercise his craft, stood gazing at the new embellishments of the
altar with a face and mind curiously torn between rapture and regret, and
ventured to delay the donor for a moment, as he was being ushered away to sup
with Abbot Heribert in his lodging.
“My
lord, these are of truly noble workmanship. I have some knowledge of precious
metals, and of the most notable craftsmen in these parts, but I never saw any
work so true to the plant as this. A countryman’s eye is here, but the hand of
a court craftsman. May we know who made them?”
FitzHamon’s
marred face curdled into deeper purple, as if an unpardonable shadow had been
cast upon his hour of self-congratulation. He said brusquely: “I commissioned
them from a fellow in my own service. You would not know his name a villein
born, but he had some skill.” And with that he swept on, avoiding further
question, and wife and men-servants and maid trailed after him. Only the older
groom, who seemed less in awe of his lord than anyone, perhaps by reason of
having so often presided over the ceremony of carrying him dead-drunk to his
bed, turned back for a moment to pluck at Brother Oswald’s sleeve, and advise
him in a confidential whisper: “You’ll find him short to question on that head.
The silversmith Alard, his name was cut and ran from his service last
Christmas, and for all they hunted him as far as London, where the signs
pointed, he’s never been found. I’d let that matter lie, if I were you.”