The Raven in the Foregate (13 page)

Benet came back into the garden after his dinner with
the lay servants, and looked about him somewhat doubtfully, kicking at the
hard-frozen ground he had recently dug, and viewing the clipped hedges now
silvered with rime that lasted day-long and increased by a fresh frilling of
white every night. Every branch that stirred tinkled like glass. Every clod was
solid as stone.

“What is there for me to do?” he demanded, tramping
into Cadfael’s workshop. “This frost halts everything. No man could plough or
dig, a day like this. Let alone copy letters,” he added, round eyed at the
thought of the numb fingers in the scriptorium trying to line in a capital with
precious gold-leaf, or even write an unshaken line. “They’re still at it, poor
wretches. At least there’s some warmth in handling a spade or an axe. Can I
split you some wood for the brazier? Lucky for us you need the fire for your
brews, or we should be as blue and stiff as the scribes.”

“They’ll have lighted the fire in the warming room
early, a day like this,” said Cadfael placidly, “and when they can no longer
hold pen or brush steady they have leave to stop work. You’ve done all the
digging within the walls here, and the pruning’s finished, no need to feel
guilty if you sit idle for once. Or you can take a turn at these mysteries of
mine if you care to. Nothing learned is ever quite wasted.”

Benet was ready enough to try his hand at anything. He
came close, to peer curiously at what Cadfael was stirring in a stone pot on a
grid on the side of the brazier. Here in their shared solitude he was quite
easy, and had lost the passing disquiet and dismay that had dimmed his
brightness on Christmas Day. Men die, and thinking men see a morsel of their
own death in every one that draws close to them, but the young soon recover.
And what was Father Ailnoth to Benet, after all? If he had done him a kindness
in letting him come here with his aunt, the priest had none the less had the
benefit of the boy’s willing service on the journey, a fair exchange.

“Did you visit Mistress Hammet last evening?” asked
Cadfael, recalling another possible source of concern. “How is she now?”

“Still bruised and shaken,” said Benet, “but she has a
stout spirit, she’ll do well enough.”

“She hasn’t been greatly worried by the sergeants?
Hugh Beringar is home now, and he’ll want to hear everything from her own lips,
but she need not trouble for that. Hugh has been told how it was, she need only
repeat it to him.”

“They’ve been civility itself with her,” said Benet.
“What is this you’re making?”

It was a large pot, and a goodly quantity of aromatic
brown syrup bubbling gently in it. “A mixture for coughs and colds,” said
Cadfael. “We shall be needing it any day now, and plenty of it, too.”

“What goes into it?”

“A great many things. Bay and mint, coltsfoot,
horehound, mullein, mustard, poppy—good for the throat and the chest—and a
small draught of the strong liquor I distil does no harm in such cases, either.
But if you want work, here, lift out that big mortar… yes, there! Those
frost-gnawed hands you were pitying, we’ll make something for those.”

The chilblains of winter were always a seasonal enemy,
and an extra batch of ointment for treating them could not come amiss. He began
to issue orders briskly, pointing out the herbs he wanted, making Benet climb
for some, and move hastily up and down the hanging bunches for others. The boy
took pleasure in this novel entertainment, and jumped to obey every crisp
command.

“The small scale, there, at the back of the
shelf—fetch that out, and while you’re in the corner there, the little weights
are in the box beside. Oh, and, Ninian…” said Cadfael, sweet and calm and
guileless as ever.

The boy, interested and off his guard, halted and
swung about in response to his name, waiting with a willing smile to hear what
next he should bring. And on the instant he froze where he stood, the serene
brightness still visible on a face turned to marble, the smile fixed and empty.
For a long moment they contemplated each other eye to eye, Cadfael also
smiling, then warm blood flushed into Benet’s face and he stirred out of his
stillness, and the smile, wary as it was, became live and young again. The
silence endured longer, but it was the boy who broke it at last.

“Now what should happen? Am I supposed to overturn the
brazier, set the hut on fire, rush out and bar the door on you, and run for my
life?”

“Hardly,” said Cadfael, “unless that’s what you want.
It would scarcely suit me. It would become you better to put that scale down on
the level slab there, and pay attention to what you and I are about. And while
you’re at it, that jar by the shutter is hog’s fat, bring that out, too.”

Benet did so, with admirable calm now, and turned a
wryly smiling face. “How did you know? How did you know even my name?” He was
making no further pretence at secrecy, he had even relaxed into a measure of
perverse enjoyment.

“Son, the story of your invasion of this realm, along
with another mad-head as reckless as yourself, seems to be common currency by
this time, and the whole land knows you are supposed to have fled northwards
from regions where you were far too hotly hunted for comfort. Hugh Beringar got
his orders to keep an eye open for you, at the feast in Canterbury. King
Stephen’s blood is up, and until it cools your liberty is not worth a penny if
his officers catch up with you. For I take it,” he said mildly,”that you are
Ninian Bachiler?”

“I am. But how did you know?”

“Why, once I heard that there was a certain Ninian
lost somewhere in these midland counties, it was not so hard. Once you all but
told me yourself. “What’s your name?” I asked you, and you began to say
“Ninian”, and then caught yourself up and changed it to a clownish echo of the
question, before you got out “Benet”. And oh, my child, how soon you gave over
pretending with me that you were a simple country groom. Never had a spade in
your hand before! No, I swear you never had, though I grant you you learn very
quickly. And your speech, and your hands—No, never blush or look mortified, it
was not so obvious, it simply added together grain by grain. And besides, you stopped
counting me as someone to be deceived. You may as well admit it.”

“It seemed unworthy,” said the boy, and scowled
briefly at the beaten earth floor. “Or useless, perhaps! I don’t know! What are
you going to do with me now? If you try to give me up, I warn you I’ll do all I
can to break away. But I won’t do it by laying hand on you. We’ve been friendly
together.”

“As well for both you and me,” said Cadfael, smiling,
“for you might find you’d met your match. And who said I had any notion of
giving you up? I am neither King Stephen’s partisan nor the Empress Maud’s, and
whoever serves either of them honestly and at risk to himself may go about his
business freely for me. But you may as well tell me what that business is.
Without implicating any other, of course. I take it, for instance, that
Mistress Hammet is not your aunt?”

“No,” said Ninian slowly, his eyes intent and earnest
on Cadfael’s face. “You will respect her part in this? She was in my mother’s
service before she married the bishop’s groom. She was my nurse when I was a
child. When I was in flight I went to her for help. It was thoughtless, and I
wish it could be undone, but believe it, whatever she has done has been done in
pure affection for me, and what I’ve been about is nothing to do with her. She
got me these clothes I wear—mine had been living rough in the woods and in and
out of rivers, but they still marked me for what I am. And it was of her own
will that she asked leave to bring me here with her as her nephew, when Father
Ailnoth got this preferment. To get me away from the hunters. She had asked and
been given his leave before ever I knew of it, I could not avoid. And it did
come as a blessing to me, I own it.”

“What was your intent when you came over from
Normandy?” asked Cadfael.

“Why, to make contact with any friends of the Empress
who might be lying very low in the south and east, where she’s least loved, and
urge them to be ready to rise if FitzAlan should think the time ripe for a
return. It looked well for her chances then. But when the wind changed,
someone—God knows which of those we’d spoken with—took fright and covered
himself by betraying us. You know we were two?”

“I know it,” said Cadfael. “Indeed I know the second.
He was of FitzAlan’s household here in Shrewsbury before the town fell to the
King. He got off safely from an eastern port, as I heard. You were not so
lucky.”

“Is Torold clean away? Oh, you do me good!” cried
Ninian, flushed with joy. “We were separated when they almost cornered us near
Bury. I feared for him! Oh, if he’s safe home…” He caught himself up there,
wincing at the thought of calling Normandy home. “For myself, I can deal! Even
if I do end in the King’s prison—but I won’t! Fending for one is not so hard as
fretting for two. And Torold’s a married man!”

“And the word is, he’s gone, back to his wife. And
what,” wondered Cadfael, “is your intention now? Plainly the one you came with
is a lost cause. What now?”

“Now,” said the boy with emphatic gravity, “I mean to
get across the border into Wales, and make my way down to join the Empress’s
army at Gloucester. I can’t bring her FitzAlan’s army, but I can bring her one
able-bodied man to fight for her—and not a bad hand with sword or lance, though
I do say it myself.”

By the lift of his voice and the sparkle in his eyes
he meant it ardently, and it was a course much more congenial to him than
acting as agent to reluctant allies. And why should he not succeed? The Welsh
border was not so far, though the journey to Gloucester through the
ill-disciplined wilds of Powys might be long and perilous. Cadfael considered
his companion thoughtfully, and beheld a young man somewhat lightly clad for
winter travelling afoot, without weapons, without a horse, without wealth to
grease his journeying. None of which considerations appeared to discourage
Ninian.

“An honest enough purpose,” said Cadfael, “and I see
nothing against it. We have a few adherents of your faction even in these
parts, though they keep very quiet these days. Could not one of them be of use
to you now?”

The bait was not taken. The boy closed his lips
firmly, and stared Cadfael out with impregnable composure. If he had indeed
attempted to contact one of the Empress’s partisans here, he was never going to
admit it. With his own confidences he might favour his too perceptive mentor,
but he was not going to implicate any other man.

“Well,” said Cadfael comfortably, “it seems that you
are not being hunted here with any great zeal, and your position with us is
well established, no reason why Benet should not continue to do his work here
quietly and modestly, and never be noticed. And if this iron frost goes on as
it’s begun, your work will be here among the medicines, so we may as well go on
with your lesson. Look lively, now, and pay attention to what I show you.”

The boy burst into a soft, half-smothered peal of
laughter in sheer relief and pleasure, like a child, and bounded to Cadfael’s
elbow at the mortar like a hound puppy excited by a fresh scent.

“Good, then tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. I’ll
be half an apothecary before I leave you. Nothing learned,” said Ninian, with
an impudently accurate imitation of Cadfael’s more didactic style, “is ever
quite wasted.”

“True, true!” agreed Cadfael sententiously. “Nothing
observed, either. You never know where it may fit into a larger vision.”

Exactly as certain details were beginning to fit
together and elaborate for him the picture he had of this venturesome,
light-hearted, likeable young man. A destitute young man, urgently in need of
the means to make his way undetected to Gloucester, one who had come to
England, no doubt, with a memorised list of names that should prove sympathetic
to the Empress’s cause, a few of them even here in Shropshire. A devoted woman
all anxiety for her nurseling, bringing honey cakes and carrying away a small
token thing that slipped easily into the breast of her gown, from the breast of
Benet’s cotte. And shortly thereafter, the lady Sanan Bernières, daughter of a
father dispossessed for his adherence to Maud, and step-daughter to another
lord of the same party, paying a brief visit from Giffard’s house near Saint
Chad’s to buy herbs for her Christmas kitchen, and pausing in the garden to
speak to the labouring boy, and look him up and down, as though, as the boy
himself had reported, she were in need of a page, ‘and thought I might do,
given a little polishing’.”

Well, well! So far everything in harmony. But why,
then, was the boy still here at all, if aid had been asked and given?

Upon this incomplete picture the sudden death of
Father Ailnoth intruded like a black blot in a half-written page, complicating
everything, relating, apparently, to nothing, a bird of as ill omen dead as
alive.

Chapter Seven

THE HUNT FOR NINIAN BACHILER, AS A PROSCRIBED AGENT OF
THE EMPRESS MAUD at large in Stephen’s territory, was duly proclaimed in
Shrewsbury, and the word went round in voluble gossip, all the more exuberantly
as a relief from the former sensation of Ailnoth’s death, concerning which no
one in the Foregate had been voluble, unless in privacy. It was good to have a
topic of conversation which departed at so marked a tangent from what really
preoccupied the parishioners of Holy Cross. Since none of the gossips cared a
pin how many dissident agents were at large in the county, none of the talk was
any threat to the fugitive, much less to Mistress Hammet’s dutiful nephew
Benet, who came and went freely between abbey and parsonage.