The Raven in the Foregate (7 page)

“ ‘On no account’,” quoted Cadfael, straight-faced, “
‘may a monk accept small presents of any kind, from his parents or anyone else,
without the abbot’s permission’. That, sweet son, is in the Rule.”

“Lucky you, then, and lucky I,” said the boy gaily,
“that I’ve taken no vows. She makes the best honey cakes ever I tasted.” And he
sank even white teeth into one of them, and reached to offer another to
Cadfael.

“ ‘… nor may the brethren exchange them, one with
another,” said Cadfael, and accepted the offering. “Lucky, indeed! Though I
transgress in accepting, you go sinless in offering. Have you quite abandoned
your inclination to the cloistered life, then?”

“Me?” said the youth, startled out of his busy
munching, and open-mouthed. “When did I ever profess any?”

“Not you, lad, but your sponsor on your account, when
he asked work for you here.”

“Did he say that of me?”

“He did. Not positively promising it, mark you, but
holding out the hope that you might settle to it one day. I grant you I’ve
never seen much sign of it.”

Benet thought that over for a moment, while he
finished his cake and licked the sticky crumbs from his fingers. “No doubt he
was anxious to get rid of me, and thought it might make me more welcome here.
My face was never in any great favour with him—too much given to smiling,
maybe. No, not even you will pen me in here for very long, Cadfael. When the
time comes I’ll be on my way. But while I’m here,” he said, breaking into the
bountiful smile that might well strike an ascetic as far too frivolous, “I’ll
do my fair share of the work.”

And he was off back to his box hedge, swinging the
shears in one large, easy hand, and leaving Cadfael gazing after him with a
very thoughtful face.

Chapter Four

DAME DIOTA HAMMET PRESENTED HERSELF later that
afternoon at a house near Saint Chad’s church, and asked timidly for the lord
Ralph Giffard. The servant who opened the door to her looked her up and down
and hesitated, never having seen her before.

“What’s your business with him, mistress? Who sends
you?”

“I’m to bring him this letter,” said Diota
submissively, and held out a small rolled leaf fastened with a seal. “And to
wait for an answer, if my lord will be so good.”

He was in two minds about taking it from her hand. It
was a small and irregularly shaped slip of parchment, with good reason, since
it was one of the discarded edges from a leaf Brother Anselm had trimmed to
shape and size for a piece of music, two days since. But the seal argued matter
of possible importance, even on so insignificant a missive. The servant was
still hesitating when a girl came out into the porch at his back, and seeing a
woman unknown but clearly respectable, stayed to enquire curiously what was to
do. She accepted the scroll readily enough, and knew the seal. She looked up
with startled, intent blue eyes into Diota’s face, and abruptly handed the
scroll back to her.

“Come in, and deliver this yourself. I’ll bring you to
my step-father.”

The master of the house was sitting by a comfortable
fire in a small solar, with wine at his elbow and a deer-hound coiled about his
feet. A big, ruddy, sinewy man of fifty, balding and bearded, very spruce in
his dress and only just beginning to put on a little extra flesh after an
active life, he looked what he was, the lord of two or three country manors and
this town house, where he preferred to spend his Christmas in comfort. He
looked up at Diota, when the girl presented her, with complete incomprehension,
but he comprehended all too well when he looked at the seal that fastened the
parchment. He asked no questions, but sent the girl for his clerk, and listened
intently as the content was read to him, in so low a voice that it was plain
the clerk understood how dangerous its import could be. He was a small,
withered man, grown old in Giffard’s service, and utterly trustworthy. He made
an end, and watched his master’s face anxiously.

“My lord, send nothing in writing! Word of mouth is
safer, if you want to reply. Words said can be denied, to write them would be
folly.”

Ralph sat pondering for a while in silence, and eyeing
the unlikely messenger, who stood patiently and uneasily waiting.

“Tell him,” he said at last, “that I have received and
understood his message.”

She hesitated, and ventured at last to ask: “Is that
all, my lord?”

“It’s enough! The less said the better, for him and
for me.”

The girl, who had remained unobtrusive but attentive
in a corner of the room, followed Diota out to the shadow of the porch, with
doors closed behind them.

“Mistress,” she said softly in Diota’s ear, “where is
he to be found—this man who sent you?”

By the brief, blank silence and the doubtful face of
the older woman she understood her fears, and made impatient haste to allay
them, her voice low and vehement. “I mean him no harm, God knows! My father was
of the same party—did you not see how well I knew the seal?”

“You can trust me, I won’t say word to any, nor to
him, either, but I want to know how I may know him, where I may find him, in
case of need.”

“At the abbey,” said Diota as softly and hurriedly,
making up her mind. “He’s working in the garden, by the name of Benet, under
the herbalist brother.”

“Oh, Brother Cadfael—I know him!” said the girl,
breathing satisfaction. “He treated me once for a bad fever, when I was ten
years old, and he came to help my mother, three Christmases ago, when she fell
into her last illness. Good, I know where his herbarium is. Go now, quickly!”

She watched Diota scurry hastily out of the small
courtyard, and then closed the door and went back to the solar, where Giffard
was sitting sunk in anxious consideration, heavy-browed and sombre.

“Shall you go to this meeting?”

He had the letter still in his hand. Once already he
had made an impulsive motion towards the fire, to thrust the parchment into it
and be rid of it, but then had drawn back again, rolled it carefully and hid it
in the breast of his cotte. She took that for a sign favourable to the sender,
and was pleased. It was no surprise that he did not give her a direct answer.
This was a serious business and needed thought, and in any case he never paid
any great heed to his step-daughter, either to confide in her or to regulate
her actions. He was indulgent rather out of tolerant indifference than out of
affection.

“Say no word of this to anyone,” he said. “What have I
to gain by keeping such an appointment? And everything to lose! Have not your
family and mine lost enough already by loyalty to that cause? How if he should
be followed to the mill?”

“Why should he be? No one has any suspicion of him.
He’s accepted at the abbey as a labourer in the gardens, calling himself Benet.
He’s vouched for. Christmas Eve, and by night, there’ll be no one abroad but
those already in the church. Where’s the risk? It was a good time to choose.
And he needs help.”

“Well…” said Ralph, and drummed his fingers
irresolutely on the small cylinder in the breast of his cotte. “We have two
days yet, we’ll watch and wait until the time comes.”

Benet was sweeping up the brushings from the hedge,
and whistling merrily over the work, when he heard brisk, light steps stirring
the moist gravel on the path behind him, and turned to behold a young woman in
a dark cloak and hood advancing upon him from the great court. A small, slender
girl of erect and confident bearing, the outline of her swathed form softened
and blurred by the faint mist of a still day, and the hovering approach of
dusk. Not until she was quite near to him and he had stepped deferentially
aside to give her passage could he see clearly the rosy, youthful face within
the shadow of the hood, a rounded face with apple-blossom skin, a resolute
chin, and a mouth full and firm in its generosity of line, and coloured like
half-open roses. Then what light remained gathered into the harebell blue of
her wide-set eyes, at once soft and brilliant, and he lost sight of everything
else. And though he had made way for her to pass him by, and ducked his head to
her in a properly servant-like reverence, she did not pass by, but lingered,
studying him closely and candidly, with the fearless, innocent stare of a cat. Indeed
there was something of the kitten about the whole face, wider at the brow and
eyes than its length from brow to chin, tapered and tilted imperiously, as a
kitten confronts the world, never having experienced fear. She looked him up
and down gravely, and took her time about it, in a solemn inspection that might
have been insolent if it had not implied a very serious purpose. Though what
interest some noble young woman of the county or well-to-do merchant daughter
of the town could have in him was more than Benet could imagine.

Only when she was satisfied of whatever had been in
question in her mind did she ask, in a clear, firm voice: “Are you Brother
Cadfael’s new helper here?”

“Yes, my lady,” said the dutiful labourer bashfully,
shuffling his feet and somehow even contriving a blush that sat rather oddly on
so positive and cheerful a countenance.

She looked at the trimmed hedge and the newly weeded
and manured flower beds, and again at him, and for a dazzling instant he
thought she smiled, but in the flicker of an eyelash she was solemn again.

“I came to ask Brother Cadfael for some herbs for my
kitchen forcemeats. Do you know were I shall find him?”

“He’s in his workshop within,” said Benet. “Please to
walk through into the walled garden there.”

“I remember the way,” she said, and inclined her head
to him graciously, as noble to simple, and swept away from him through the open
gate into the walled enclosure of the herbarium.

It was almost time for Vespers, and Benet could well
have quit his labours and gone to make himself ready, but he prolonged his
sweeping quite unnecessarily, gathering the brushings into a pile of
supererogatory neatness, scattering them a little and massing them again, in
order to get another close glimpse of her when she came blithely back with a
bunch of dried herbs loosely wrapped in a cloth and carried carefully in her
hands. She passed him this time without a glance, or seemed to do so, but still
he had the feeling that those wide and wide-set eyes with their startling
blueness took him in methodically in passing. The hood had slipped back a
little from her head, and showed him a coiled braid of hair of an indefinable
spring colour, like the young fronds of bracken when they are just unfolding, a
soft light brown with tones of green in the shadows. Or hazel withies, perhaps!
Hazel eyes are no great rarity, but how many women can boast of hazel hair?

She was gone, the hem of her cloak whisking round the
box hedge and out of his sight. Benet forsook his broom in haste, left his pile
of brushings lying, and went to pick Brother Cadfael’s brains.

“Who was that lady?” he asked, point-blank.

“Is that a proper question for a postulant like you to
be asking?” said Cadfael placidly, and went on cleaning and putting away his
pestle and mortar.

Benet made a derisive noise, and interposed his sturdy
person to confront Cadfael eye to eye, with no pretence whatsoever to notions
of celibacy. “Come, you know her, or at least she knows you. Who is she?”

“She spoke to you?” Cadfael wondered, interested.

“Only to ask me where she would find you. Yes, she
spoke to me!” he said, elated. “Yes, she stopped and looked me up and down, the
creature, as though she found herself in need of a page, and thought I might do,
given a little polishing. Would I do for a lady’s page, Cadfael?”

“What’s certain,” said Cadfael tolerantly, “is that
you’ll never do for a monk. But no, I wouldn’t say a lady’s service is your
right place, either.” He did not add: “Unless on level terms!” but that was
what was in his mind. At this moment the boy had shed all pretence of being a
poor widow’s penniless kinsman, untutored and awkward. That was no great
surprise. There had been little effort spent on the imposture here in the
garden for a week past, though the boy could reassume it at a moment’s notice
with others, and was still the rustic simpleton in Prior Robert’s patronising
presence.

“Cadfael…” Benet took him cajolingly by the shoulders
and held him, tilting his curly head coaxingly, with a wilfully engaging
intimacy. Given the occasion, he was well aware he could charm the birds from
the trees. Nor did he have any difficulty in weighing up elder sympathisers who
must once have shared much the same propensities. “Cadfael, I may never speak
to her again, I may never see her again-but I can try! Who is she?”

“Her name,” said Cadfael, capitulating rather from
policy than from compulsion, “is Sanan Bernières. Her father held a manor in
the north-east of the shire, which was confiscated when he fought for his
overlord FitzAlan and the Empress at the siege here, and died for it. Her
mother married another vassal of FitzAlan, who had suffered his losses, too—the
faction holds together, though they’re all singing very small and lying very
low here now. Giffard spends his winters mainly in his house in Shrewsbury, and
since her mother died he brings his step-daughter to preside at his table-head.
That’s the lady you’ve seen pass by.”