The Rose Rent (3 page)

The most fleeting of smiles crossed her face, and left her sombre again, her eyes on the path. “Yes,” she said, and nothing more, though it seemed there should have been more. Was it possible that she had noted and been troubled by the same trouble that haunted Eluric? Three times he had carried the rose rent to her, a matter of… how long… in her presence? Two minutes annually? Three, perhaps? But no man’s shadow clouded Judith Perle’s eyes, no living man’s. She might, none the less, have become somehow aware, thought Cadfael, not of a young man’s physical entrance into her house and presence, but of the nearness of pain.

“I’m going there now,” she said, stirring out of her preoccupation. “I’ve lost the buckle of a good girdle, I should like to have a new one made, to match the rosettes that decorate the leather, and the end-tag. Enamel inlay on the bronze. It was a present Edred once made to me. Niall Bronzesmith will be able to copy the design. He’s a fine craftsman. I’m glad the abbey has such a good tenant for the house.”

“A decent, quiet man,” agreed Cadfael, “and keeps the garden well tended. You’ll find your rosebush in very good heart.”

To that she made no reply, only thanked him simply for his services as they entered the great court together, and there separated, she to continue along the Foregate to the large house beyond the abbey forge, where she had spent the few years of her married life, he to the lavatorium to wash his hands before dinner. But he turned at the corner of the cloister to look after her, and watched until she passed through the arch of the gatehouse and vanished from his sight. She had a walk that might be very becoming in an abbess, but to his mind it looked just as well on the capable heiress of the chief clothier in the town. He went on to the refectory convinced that he was right in dissuading her from the conventual life. If she looked upon it as a refuge now, the time might come when it would seem to her a prison, and none the less constricting because she would have entered it willingly.

Chapter Two

THE HOUSE IN THE Foregate stood well along towards the grassy triangle of the horse-fair ground, where the high road turned the corner of the abbey wall. A lower wall on the opposite side of the road closed in the yard where Niall the bronzesmith had his shop and workshop, and beyond lay the substantial and well-built house with its large garden, and a small field of grazing land behind. Niall did a good trade in everything from brooches and buttons, small weights and pins, to metal cooking pots, ewers and dishes, and paid the abbey a suitable rent for his premises. He had even worked occasionally with others of his trade in the founding of bells, but that was a very rare commission, and demanded travel to the site itself, rather than having to transport the heavy bells after casting.

The smith was working in a corner of his shop, on the rim of a dish beaten out in sheet metal, pecking away with punch and mallet at an incised decoration of leaves, when Judith came in to his counter. From the unshuttered window above the work-bench the light fell softly sidewise upon her face and figure, and Niall, turning to see who had entered, stood for a moment at gaze with his tools dangling in either hand, before he laid them down and came to wait upon her. “Your servant, mistress! What can I do for you?” They were barely acquaintances, merely shopkeeper-craftsman and customer, and yet the very fact that he now did his work in the house which she had given to the abbey made them study each other with a special intensity. She had been in his shop perhaps five times in the few years since he had rented it; he had supplied her with pins, points for the laces of bodices, small utensils for her kitchen, the matrix for the seal of the Vestier household. He knew her history, the gift of the house had made it public. She knew little of him beyond the fact that he had come to her erstwhile property as the abbey’s tenant, and that the man and his work were well regarded in town and Foregate.

Judith laid her damaged girdle upon the long counter, a strip of fine, soft leather, excellently worked and ornamented with a series of small bronze rosettes round the holes for the tongue, and a bronze sheath protecting the end of the belt. The bright enamel inlays within the raised outlines were clear and fresh, but the stitching at the other end had worn through, and the buckle was gone.

“I lost it somewhere in the town,” she said, “one night after dark, and never noticed under my cloak that girdle and all had slipped down and were gone. When I went back to look for it I could find only the belt, not the buckle. It was muddy weather, and the kennel running with the thaw. My own fault, I knew it was fraying, I should have made it secure.”

“Delicate work,” said the smith, fingering the end-tag with interest. “That was not bought here, surely?”

“Yes, it was, but at the abbey fair, from a Flemish merchant. I wore it much,” she said, “in earlier days, but it’s been laid by since the winter, when I lost the buckle. Can you make me a new one, to match these colours and designs? It was a long shape—thus!” She drew it on the counter with a fingertip. “But it need not be so, you could make it oval, or whatever you think suits best.”

Their heads were close together over the counter. She looked up into his face, mildly startled by its nearness, but he was intent upon the detail of the bronzework and inlay, and unaware of her sharp scrutiny. A decent, quiet man, Cadfael had called him, and coming from Cadfael there was nothing dismissive in that description. Decent, quiet men were the backbone of any community, to be respected and valued beyond those who made the biggest commotion and the most noise in the world. Niall the bronzesmith could have provided the portrait for them all. He was of the middle height and the middle years, and even of the middle brown colouring, and his voice was pitched pleasantly low. His age, she thought, might be forty years. When he straightened up they stood virtually eye to eye, and the movements of his large, capable hands were smooth, firm and deft.

Everything about him fitted into the picture of the ordinary, worthy soul almost indistinguishable from his neighbour, and yet the sum of the parts was very simply and positively himself and no other man. He had thick brown brows in a wide-boned face, and wide-set eyes of a deep, sunny hazel. There were a few grizzled hairs in his thick brown thatch, and a solid, peaceful jut to his shaven chin.

“Are you in haste for it?” he asked. “I should like to make a good job of it. If I may take two or three days over it.”

“There’s no hurry,” she said readily. “I’ve neglected it long enough, another week is no great matter.”

“Then shall I bring it up to you in the town? I know the place, I could save you the walk.” He made the offer civilly but hesitantly, as though it might be taken as presumption rather than simply meant as a courtesy.

She cast a rapid glance about his shop, and saw evidences enough that he had in hand a great deal of work, more than enough to keep him busy all through the labouring day. “But I think your time is very well filled. If you have a boy, perhaps—but I can as well come for it.”

“I work alone,” said Niall. “But I’d willingly bring it up to you in the evening, when the light’s going. I’ve no other calls on my time, it’s no hardship to work the clock round.”

“You live alone here?” she asked, confirmed in her assumptions about him. “No wife? No family?”

“I lost my wife, five years ago. I’m used to being alone, it’s a simple enough matter to take care of my few needs. But I have a little girl. Her mother died bearing her.” He saw the sudden tension in her face, the faint spark in her eyes as she reared her head and glanced round, half expecting to see some evidence of a child’s presence. “Oh, not here! I should have been hard put to it to care for a newborn babe, and there’s my sister, out at Pulley, no great distance, married to Mortimer’s steward at the demesne there, and with two boys and a girl of her own, not very much older. My little lass stays there with them, where she has other children for playmates, and a woman’s care. I walk over to see her every Sunday, and sometimes in the evenings, too, but she’s better with Cecily and John and the youngsters than here solitary with me, leastways while she’s still so young.”

Judith drew breath long and deeply. Widower he might be, and his loss there as bitter as hers, but he had one priceless pledge left to him, while she was barren. “You don’t know,” she said abruptly, “how I envy you. My child I lost.” She had not meant to say so much, but it came out of her naturally and bluntly, and naturally and bluntly he received it.

“I heard of your trouble, mistress. I was mortally sorry then, having known the like myself not so long before. But the little one at least was spared to me. I thank God for that. When a man suffers such a wound, he also finds out how to value such a mercy.”

“Yes,” she said, and turned away sharply. “Well… I trust your daughter thrives,” she said, recovering, “and will always be a joy to you. I’ll come for the girdle in three days’ time, if that’s enough for you. No need to bring it.”

She was in the doorway of the shop before he could speak, and then there seemed nothing of any significance to say. But he watched her cross the yard and turn into the Foregate, and turned back to his work at the bench only when she had vanished from his sight.

It was late in the afternoon, but still an hour short of Vespers at this season of the year, when Brother Eluric, custodian of Saint Mary’s altar, slipped almost furtively away from his work in the scriptorium, crossed the great court to the abbot’s lodging in its small fenced garden, and asked for audience. His manner was so taut and brittle that Brother Vitalis, chaplain and secretary to Abbot Radulfus, raised questioning eyebrows, and hesitated before announcing him. But Radulfus was absolute that every son of the house in trouble or need of advice must have ready access to him. Vitalis shrugged, and went in to ask leave, which was readily given.

In the panelled parlour the bright sunlight softened into a mellow haze. Eluric halted just within the doorway, and heard the door gently closed at his back. Radulfus was sitting at his desk near the open window, quill in hand, and did not look up for a moment from his writing. Against the light his aquiline profile showed dark and calm, an outline of gold shaping lofty brow and lean cheek. Eluric went in great awe of him, and yet was drawn gratefully to that composure and certainty, so far out of his own scope.

Radulfus put a period to his well-shaped sentence, and laid down his quill in the bronze tray before him. “Yes, my son? I am here. I am listening.” He looked up. “If you have need of me, ask freely.”

“Father,” said Eluric, from a throat constricted and dry, and in a voice so low it was barely audible across the room, “I have a great trouble. I hardly know how to tell it, or how far it must be seen as shame and guilt to me, though God knows I have struggled with it, and been constant in prayer to keep myself from evil. I am both petitioner and penitent, and yet I have not sinned, and by your grace and understanding may still be saved from offence.”

Radulfus eyed him more sharply, and saw the tension that stiffened the young man’s body, and set him quivering like a drawn bowstring. An over-intense boy, always racked by remorse for faults as often as not imaginary, or so venial that to inflate them into sins was itself an offence, being a distortion of truth.

“Child,” said the abbot tolerantly, “from all I know of you, you are too forward to take to your charge as great sins such small matters as a wise man would think unworthy of mention. Beware of inverted pride! Moderation in all things is not the most spectacular path to perfection, but it is the safest and the most modest. Now speak up plainly, and let’s see what between us we can do to end your trouble.” And he added briskly: “Come closer! Let me see you clearly, and hear you make good sense.”

Eluric crept closer, linked his hands before him in a nervous convulsion that whitened the knuckles perceptibly, and moistened his dry lips. “Father, in eight days’ time it will be the day of Saint Winifred’s translation, and the rose rent must be paid for the property in the Foregate… to Mistress Perle, who gave the house by charter on those terms.

“Yes,” said Radulfus, “I know it. Well?”

“Father, I came to beg you to release me from this duty. Three times I have carried the rose to her, according to the charter, and with every year it grows harder for me. Do not send me there again! Lift this burden from me, before I founder! It is more than I can bear.” He was shaking violently, and had difficulty in continuing to speak, so that the words came in painful bursts, like gouts of blood from a wound. “Father, the very sight and sound of her are torment to me, to be in the same room with her is the pain of death. I have prayed, I have kept vigil, I have implored God and the saints for deliverance from sin, but not all my prayers and austerities could keep me from this uninvited love.”

Radulfus sat silent for a while after the last word had been said, and his face had not changed, beyond a certain sharpening of his attention, a steady gleam in his deep-set eyes.

“Love, of itself,” he said at last with deliberation, “is not sin, cannot be sin, though it may lead into sin. Has any word of this inordinate affection ever been said between you and the woman, any act or look that would blemish your vows or her purity?”

“No! No, Father, never! Never word of any sort but in civil greeting and farewell, and a blessing, due to such a benefactress. Nothing wrong has been done or said, only my heart is the offender. She knows nothing of my torment, she never has nor never will give one thought to me but as the messenger of this house. God forbid she should ever come to know, for she is blameless. It is for her sake, as well as mine, that I pray to be excused from ever seeing her again, for such pain as I feel might well disturb and distress her, even without understanding. The last thing I wish is for her to suffer.”

Radulfus rose abruptly from his seat, and Eluric, drained with the effort of confession and convinced of guilt, sank to his knees and bowed his head into his hands, expecting condemnation. But the abbot merely turned away to the window, and stood for a while looking out into the sunlit afternoon, where his own roses were coming into lavish bud.

No more oblates, the abbot was reflecting ruefully, and thanking God for it. No more taking these babes out of their cradles and severing them from the very sight and sound of women, half the creation stolen out of their world. How can they be expected to deal capably at last with something as strange and daunting to them as dragons? Sooner or later a woman must cross their path, terrible as an army with banners, and these wretched children without arms or armour to withstand the onslaught! We wrong women, and we wrong these boys, to send them unprepared into maturity, whole men, defenceless against the first pricking of the flesh. In defending them from perils we have deprived them of the means to defend themselves. Well, no more now! Those who enter here henceforward will be of manhood’s years, enter of their own will, bear their own burdens. But this one’s burden falls upon me.

He turned back into the room. Eluric knelt brokenly, his smooth young hands spread painfully to cover his face, and slow tears sliding between the fingers.

“Look up!” said Radulfus firmly, and as the young, tortured face was turned up to him fearfully: “Now answer me truly, and don’t be afraid. You have never spoken word of love to this lady?”

“No, Father!”

“Nor she ever offered such a word to you, nor such a look as could inflame or invite love?”

“No, Father, never, never! She is utterly untouched. I am nothing to her.” And he added with despairing tears: “It is I who have in some way besmirched her, to my shame, by loving her, though she knows nothing of it.”

“Indeed? In what way has your unhappy affection befouled the lady? Tell me this, did ever you let your fancy dwell on touching her? On embracing her? On possessing her?”

“No!” cried Eluric in a great howl of pain and dismay. “God forbid! How could I so profane her? I revere her, I think of her as of the company of the saints. When I trim the candles her goodness provides, I see her face as a brightness. I am no more than her pilgrim. But ah, it hurts…” he said, and bowed himself into the skirts of the abbot’s gown and clung there.