The Rose Rent (6 page)

“I may do as I please with myself,” she said, rising and laying her spindle down in safety with its cone of russet yarn, “if only I knew what does best please me! But truth to tell, I’m utterly in the dark. All I’ve done is to say I should be glad to talk to her. So I shall. I like Sister Magdalen.”

“So do I,” agreed Miles heartily. “But I should grudge you to her. This house would founder without you.”

“Folly!” said Judith sharply. “You know well enough it could fare as well without me as with me. It’s you who hold up the roof, not I.”

If he disclaimed that, she did not wait to hear, but gave him a sudden reassuring smile and a touch of her hand on his sleeve as she passed, and went to join her guest. Miles had a ruthless honesty, he knew that what she had said was no more than truth, he could have run everything here without her. The sharp reminder pricked her. She was indeed expendable, a woman without purpose here in this world, she might well consider whether there was not a better use for her out of the world. In urging her against it, he had reopened the hollow in her heart, and turned her thoughts again towards the cloister.

Sister Magdalen was sitting on a cushioned bench beside the unshuttered window in Judith’s small private chamber, broad, composed and placid in her black habit. Agatha had brought her fruit and wine, and left her to herself, for she went in some awe of her. Judith sat down beside her visitor.

“Cadfael has told me,” said the nun simply, “what ails you, and what you have confided to him. God forbid I should press you one way or the other, for in the end the decision is yours to make, and no other can make it for you. I am taking into account how grievous your losses have been.”

“I envy you,” said Judith, looking down into her linked hands. “You are kind, and I am sure you are wise and strong. I do not believe I am now any of these things, and it is tempting to lean upon someone who is. Oh, I do live, I do work, I have not abandoned house, or kinsfolk, or duties. Yet all this could as well go on without me. My cousin has just shown me as much by denying it. It would be a most welcome refuge, to have a vocation elsewhere.”

“Which you have not,” said Sister Magdalen shrewdly, “or you could not have said that.” Her sudden smile was like a ray of warmth, and the dimple that darted in and out of her cheek sparkled and was gone.

“No. Brother Cadfael said as much. He said the religious life should not be embraced as a second-best, but only as the best—not a hiding-place, but a passion.”

“He would be hard put to it to apply that to me,” said Sister Magdalen bluntly. “But neither do I recommend to others what I myself do. If truth be told, I am no example to any woman. I took what I chose, I have still some years of life in which to pay for it. And if the debt is not discharged by then, I’ll pay the balance after, ungrudging. But you have incurred no such debt, and I do not think you should. The price comes high. You, I judge, will do better to wait, and spend your substance for something different.”

“I know of nothing,” said Judith bleakly, after a long moment of thought, “that I find worth buying in this world now. But you and Brother Cadfael are right, if I took the veil I should be hiding behind a lie. All I covet in the cloister is the quiet, and the wall around me, keeping the world out.”

“Bear in mind, then,” said the nun emphatically, “that our doors are not closed against any woman in need, and the quiet is not reserved for those who have taken vows. The time may come when you truly need a place to be apart, time for thought and rest, even time to recover lost courage, though of that I think you have enough. I said I would not advise, and I am advising. Wait, bear with things as they are. But if ever you need a place to hide, for a little while or a long while, come to Godric’s Ford and bring all your frets in with you, and you shall find a refuge for as long as you need, with no vows taken, never unless you come to it with a whole heart. And I will keep the door against the world until you see fit to go forth again.”

Late after supper that night, in the small manor-house of Pulley, in the open scrubland fringes of the Long Forest, Niall opened the outer door of his brother-in-law’s timber hall, and looked out into the twilight that was just deepening into night. He had a walk of three miles or so before him, back to his house in the Foregate of the town, but it was a familiar and pleasant walk in fair weather, and he was accustomed to making the trip two or three times in the week after work, and home in the early dark, to be up and at work again betimes in the morning. But on this night he saw with some surprise that there was a steady rain falling, so quietly and straightly that within the house they had been quite unaware of it.

“Bide overnight,” said his sister at his shoulder. “No need to get wet through, and this won’t last the night out.”

“I don’t mind it,” said Niall simply. “I shan’t hurt.”

“With all that way to go? Get some sense,” advised Cecily comfortably, “and stay here in the dry, there’s room enough, and you know you’re welcome. You can be up and away in good time tomorrow, no fear of oversleeping, these early dawns.”

“Shut the door on it,” urged John from the table, “and come and have another sup. Better wet inside than out. It’s not often we have time for a talk among the three of us, after the children are all abed and asleep.”

With four of them about the place, and all lively as squirrels, that was true enough; the grown folk were at the beck and call of their young for all manner of services, mending toys, joining in games, telling stories, singing rhymes. Cecily’s two boys and a girl ranged from ten years old down to six, and Niall’s own chick was the youngest and the pet. Now all four were curled up like a litter of puppies on their hay mattresses in the little loft, fast asleep, and round the trestle table in the hall the elders could talk freely without disturbing them.

It had been a good day for Niall. He had cast and decorated and polished the new buckle for Judith’s girdle, and was not displeased with his work. Tomorrow she might come to fetch it, and if he saw pleasure in her eyes when she took it, he would be well rewarded. Meantime, why not settle here cosily for the night, and get up with the dawn to a newly washed world, and a sweet green walk home?

He slept well, and was roused at first light by the usual wild, waking rapture of the birds, at once sweet and strident. Cecily was up and busy, and had small ale and bread ready for him. She was younger than he, fair and benign, happy in her husband and a born hand with children, no wonder the motherless child thrived here. Stury would take nothing for her keep. What was one more little bird, he said, in a full nest? And indeed the family was well provided here, keeping Mortimer’s little manor prosperous and in good repair, the cleared fields productive, the forest well managed, the small coppice ditched against the invading deer. A good place for children. And yet it was always an effort to set out for the town, and leave her behind, and he visited often for fear she should begin to forget that she was his, and not the youngest of the Stury brood, fathered and mothered here from birth.

Niall set out through an early morning moist and sweet, the rain over, seemingly, for some hours, for though the grass sparkled, the open soil had swallowed up the fall, and was beginning to dry. The first long, low beams of the rising sun lanced through the trees and drew patterns of light and dark along the ground. The first passion of bird-song gradually softened and lost its belligerence, grew busy and sweet and at ease. Here also the nests were full of fledgelings, hard work day-long to feed them all.

The first mile was through the edges of the forest, the ground opening gradually into heath and scrub, dotted with small groves of trees. Then he came to the hamlet of Brace Meole, and from there it was a beaten road, widening as it neared the town into a cart-track, which crossed the Meole Brook by a narrow bridge, and brought him into the Foregate between the stone bridge into the town and the mill and mill-pond at the edge of the abbey enclave. He had set off early and walked briskly, and the Foregate was still barely awake; only a few cottagers and labourers were up and about their business, and gave him good day as he passed. The monks were not yet down for Prime, there was no sound in the church as Niall went by, but faintly from the dortoir the waking bell was ringing. The high road had dried after the rain, but the soil of the gardens showed richly dark, promising grateful growth.

He came to the gate in his own burgage wall, and let himself through into the yard, set the door of his shop open, and made ready for the day’s work. Judith’s girdle lay coiled on a shelf. He held his hand from taking it down to caress yet again, for he had no rights in her, and never would have. But this very day he might at least see her again and hear her voice, and in five days’ time he surely would, and that in her own house. Their hands might touch on the stem of the rose. He would choose carefully, wary of offering her thorns, who had been pierced by too many and too sharp thorns already in her brief life.

The thought drove him out into the garden, which lay behind the yard, entered by a door from the house and a wicket in the wall from the yard. After the indoor chill left from the night, the bright sunlight embraced him in the doorway, a scarf of warmth, and gleamed moistly through the branches of the fruit trees and over the tangled flower-bed. He took one step over the threshold and halted, stricken and appalled.

Against the north wall the white rosebush sagged sidelong, its thorny arms dragged from the stone, its thickened bole hacked in a long, downward gash that split away a third of its weight and growth dangling into the grass. Beneath it the soil of the bed was stirred and churned as if dogs had battled there, and beside the battlefield lay huddled a still heap of rusty black, half sunk in the grass. Niall took no more than three hasty steps towards the wreckage when he saw the pale gleam of a naked ankle jutting from the heap, an arm in a wide black sleeve flung out, a hand convulsively clenched into the soil, and the pallid circle of a tonsure startlingly white in all the blackness. A monk of Shrewsbury, young and slight, almost more habit than body within it, and what, in God’s name, was he doing here, dead or wounded under the wounded tree?

Niall went close and kneeled beside him, in too much awe, at first, to touch. Then he saw the knife, lying close beside the outstretched hand, its blade glazed with drying blood. There was a thick dark moisture that was not rain, sodden into the soil under the body. The forearm exposed by the wide black sleeve was smooth and fair. This was no more than a boy. Niall reached a hand to touch at last, and the flesh was chill but not yet cold. Nevertheless, he knew death. With careful dread he eased a hand under the head, and turned to the morning light the soiled young face of Brother Eluric.

Chapter Four

BROTHER JEROME, WHO counted heads and censored behaviour in all the brothers, young and old, and whether within his province or no, had marked the silence within one dormitory cell when all the rest were rising dutifully for Prime, and made it his business to look within, somewhat surprised in this case, for Brother Eluric rated normally as a model of virtue. But even the virtuous may backslide now and then, and the opportunity to reprove so exemplary a brother came rarely, and was certainly not to be missed. This time Jerome’s zeal was wasted, and the pious words of reproach died unspoken, for the cell was empty, the cot immaculately neat, the breviary open on the narrow desk. Brother Eluric had surely risen ahead of his kin, and was already on his knees somewhere in the church, engaged in supererogatory prayer. Jerome felt cheated, and snapped with more than his usual acidity at any who looked blear-eyed with sleep, or came yawning to the night-stairs. He was equally at odds with those who exceeded him in devotion and those who fell short. One way or another, Eluric would pay for this check.

Once they were all in their stalls in the choir, and Brother Anselm was launched into the liturgy—how could a man past fifty, who spoke in a round, human voice deeper than most, sing at will in that upper register, like the most perfect of boy cantors? And how dared he!—Jerome again began to count heads, and grew even happier in his self-vindication, for there was one missing, and that one was Brother Eluric. The fallen paragon, who had actually won his way into Prior Robert’s dignified and influential favour, to Jerome’s jealous concern! Let him look to his laurels now! The prior would never demean himself to count or search for defections, but he would listen when they were brought to his notice.

Prime came to its end, and the brothers began to file back to the night-stairs, to complete their toilets and make ready for breakfast. Jerome lingered to sidle confidentially to Prior Robert’s elbow, and whisper into his ear, with righteous disapproval: “Father, we have a truant this morning. Brother Eluric was not present in church. Nor is he in his cell. All is left in order there, I thought surely he was before us into the church. Now I cannot think where he may be, nor what he is about, to neglect his duties so.”

Prior Robert in his turn paused and frowned. “Strange! He of all people! Have you looked in the Lady Chapel? If he rose very early to tend the altar and has lingered long in prayer he may have fallen asleep. The best of us may do so.”

But Brother Eluric was not in the Lady Chapel. Prior Robert hurried to detain the abbot on his way across the great court towards his lodging.

“Father Abbot, we are in some concern over Brother Eluric.”

The name produced instant and sharp attention. Abbot Radulfus turned a fixed and guarded countenance. “Brother Eluric? Why, what of him?”

“He was not in attendance at Prime, and he is nowhere to be found. Nowhere, at least, that he should be at this hour. It is not like him to absent himself from the office,” said the prior fairly.

“It is not. He is a devoted soul.” The abbot spoke almost absently, for his mind was back in the privacy of his parlour, facing that all too brittle devotee as he poured out his illicit and bravely resisted love. This reminder came all too aptly. How if confession and absolution and the release from temptation had not been enough? Radulfus, not a hesitant man, was still hesitating how to act now, when they were interrupted by the sight of the porter coming down from the gatehouse at a scurrying run, skirts and sleeves flying.

“Father Abbot, there’s one here at the gate, the bronze-smith who rents the Widow Perle’s old house, says he has dire news that won’t wait. He asks for you—would not give me the message—”

“I’ll come,” said Radulfus instantly. And to the prior, who would have made to follow him: “Robert, you have someone search further, the gardens, the grange court… If you do not find him, come back to me.” And he was off at a long, raking stride towards the gate, and the authority of his voice and the vehemence of his going forbade pursuit. There were too many interwoven threads here—the lady of the rose, the house of the rose, the tenant who had willingly undertaken the errand Eluric dreaded, and now Eluric lost from within, and dire news entering from without. A woven pattern began to appear, and its colours were sombre.

Niall was waiting at the door of the porter’s lodge, his broad, strongly boned face very still and blanched with shock under its summer brown.

“You asked for me,” said Radulfus quietly, viewing him with a steady, measuring stare. “I am here. What is this news you bring?”

“My lord,” said Niall, “I thought best you should know it first alone, and then dispose as you see fit. Last night I lay at my sister’s house overnight because of the rain. When I came back this morning I went into the garden. My lord, Mistress Perle’s rosebush has been hacked and broken, and one of your brothers lies dead there under it.”

After a brief, profound silence Radulfus said: “If you know him, name him.”

“I do know him. For three years he came to the garden to cut the rose for Mistress Perle. He is Brother Eluric, the custodian of Saint Mary’s altar.”

This time the silence was longer and deeper. Then the abbot asked simply: “How long since you discovered him there?”

“About the length of Prime, my lord, for it was nearly the hour when I passed the church on my way home. I came at once, but the porter would not disturb you during the office.”

“And you left all as you found it? Touched nothing?”

“I lifted his head to see his face. Nothing else. He lies just as I found him.”

“Good!” said Radulfus, and winced at using the word even for one right act, where everything else went grimly awry. “Then wait but a moment, while I send for certain others, and we will go back with you to that garden.”

Those he took with him, saying nothing as yet to any other, even the prior, were Brother Anselm and Brother Cadfael, witnesses for the abbey to the charter drawn up with Judith Perle. They alone had been told of Brother Eluric’s trouble, and shared the sorry knowledge that might be relevant here. The young man’s confessor was silenced by his office, and in any case Sub-Prior Richard was not the man Radulfus would have chosen as a wise counsellor in such dark matters.

The four of them stood in silence round the body of Brother Eluric, taking in the pitiful heap of black folds, the outflung hand, the mangled tree and the bloody knife. Niall had withdrawn a few paces to leave them alone, but stood watchful in attendance, to answer whatever they might ask.

“Poor, tormented child,” said Radulfus heavily. “I doubt I failed him fatally, his disease was worse than I knew. He begged to be relieved of his task, but surely he grudged it to any other, and has tried here to destroy the bush. And himself with it.”

Cadfael was silent, his eyes roving thoughtfully over the trampled ground. They had all refrained from treading too close, nothing had been disturbed since Niall went on his knees to turn the pallid face up to the light.

“Is that how you read it?” asked Anselm. “Are we to condemn him as a suicide? However we may pity?”

“What else can it be? Surely this involuntary love had so eaten into him that he could not bear another should take his place with the woman. Why else should he steal out by night and come here to this garden, why else should he hack at the roots of the tree? And from that it would be but a step, in his despair, to the unholy temptation to destroy himself with the roses. What could fix his image more terribly and for ever in her memory than such a death? For you know—you two do know—the measure of his desperation. And there lies the knife beside his hand.”

It was not a dagger, but a good, long-hafted knife, sharp and thin, such as any practical man might carry on him for a dozen lawful purposes, from carving his meat at the table to scaring off footpads on ajourney, or the occasional wild boar in the forest.

“Beside it,” said Cadfael shortly, “not in it.”

They turned their eyes on him cautiously, even hopefully.

“You see how his hand is clenched into the soil,” he went on slowly, “and there is no blood upon it, though the knife is bloodied to the hilt. Touch his hand—I think you’ll find it is already stiffening as it lies, clutching the earth. He never held this knife. And if he had, would not the sheath be on his girdle? No man in his senses would carry such a knife about him unsheathed.”

“A man not in his right senses might, however,” said Radulfus ruefully. “He needed it, did he not, for what he has done to the rosebush.”

“What was done to the rosebush,” said Cadfael firmly, “was not done with that knife. Could not be! A man would have to saw away for half an hour or more, even with a sharp knife, at such a thick bole. That was done with a heavier weapon, meant for such work, a broom-hook or a hatchet. Moreover, you see the gash begins higher, where a single blow, or two at the most, should have severed the stem, but it swerves downwards into the thick of the bole, where dead wood has been cut away for years, and left this woody encrustation.”

“I fear,” said Brother Anselm wryly,”that Brother Eluric would hardly be expert with such a tool.”

“And there was no second blow,” said Cadfael, undeterred. “If there had been, the bush would be severed utterly. And the first blow, I think, the only blow—even that was deflected. Someone interrupted the act. Someone clutched at the arm that was swinging the hatchet, and sent the blade down into the thick of the bole. I think—I think—it stuck fast there, and the man who held it had not time to get both hands to the haft and pull it out. Why else should he draw his knife?”

“You are saying,” said Radulfus intently, “that there were two men here in the night, not one? One who tried to destroy, and one who tried to prevent?”

“Yes, that is what I see here.”

“And that the one who tried to protect the tree, who caught at the attacker’s arm and caused his weapon to lodge fast—and who was struck down instead with the knife

“Is Brother Eluric. Yes. How else can it have been?

Certainly he came here secretly in the night of his own will, but not to destroy, rather to take a last farewell of this wild dream of his, to look for one last time on the roses, and then never no more. But he came just in time to see another man here, one who had other thoughts, and for other motives, one who had come to destroy the rosebush. Would Eluric endure to see that done? Surely he leaped to protect the tree, clutched at the arm wielding the hatchet, drove the blade down to stick fast in the bole. If there was a struggle, as the ground shows, I do not think it lasted long. Eluric was unarmed. The other, if he could not then make use of his hatchet, carried a knife. And used it.”

There was a long silence, while they all stared at him and thought out slowly the implications of what he was saying. And gradually something of conviction came easefully into their faces, even something of relief and gratitude. For if Eluric was not a suicide, but had gone to his end faithfully bearing his burden and seeking to prevent an evil act, then his resting-place in the cemetery was assured, and his passage through death, however his account might stand for little sins needing purging, as safe as a prodigal son re-entering his father’s house.

“If it were not as I’ve said, “Cadfael pointed out, “then the hatchet would still be here in the garden. It is not. And certainly it was not our brother here who carried it away. And neither did he bring it here, I pledge my word on that.”

“Yet if this is true,” said Anselm consideringly, “the other did not stay to complete his work.”

“No, he lugged out his hatchet and made off as fast as he could, away from the place where he had made himself a murderer. A thing I daresay he never intended, done in a moment of alarm and terror, when this poor lad in his outrage lunged at him. He would run from Eluric dead in far greater horror than he ever need have done from Eluric living.”

“Nevertheless,” said Abbot Radulfus strongly, “this is murder.”

“It is.”

“Then I must send word to the castle. It is for the secular authorities to pursue murderers. A pity,” he said, “that Hugh Beringar is gone north, we shall have to wait for his return, though no doubt Alan Herbard will send to him at once, and let him know what has happened. Is there more that we here must do, before we have Brother Eluric carried home?”

“We can at least observe whatever is here to be seen, Father. One thing I can tell you, indeed you yourself will see it, what happened here happened after the rain stopped. The ground was soft when they came together here, see how they’ve marked it. And back and shoulder of the boy’s habit are dry. May we now move him? There are witnesses enough here as to how he was found.”

They stooped in all reverence and lifted the stiffening but not yet rigid body, and laid him out on the grass, stretched on his back. From throat to toes the front of his habit was dark with the moisture from the earth, and the great dark stain of his blood clotted the cloth over his left breast. His face, if it had borne the stamp of sudden anger, dread and pain, had now lost that tension, and eased into the smoothness of youth and innocence. Only his eyes, half-open, retained the frowning anxiety of a troubled soul. Radulfus stooped and closed them gently, and wiped the mud from the pale cheeks.

“You take a load from my heart, Cadfael. Surely you are right, he did not take his own life, it was rapt from him cruelly and unjustly, and there must be a price to pay for it. But as for this child here, he is safe enough. I would I had known better how to deal with him, he might still have been living.” He drew the two smooth hands together, and folded them on the bloodied breast.

“I sleep too well,” said Cadfael wryly, “I never heard when the rain ceased. Did anyone mark the end of it?”

Niall had drawn a little nearer, waiting patiently in case anything further should be required of him.

“It was over by about midnight,” he said, “for before we went to our beds, there at Pulley, my sister opened the door and looked out, and said that the sky had cleared and it was bidding to be a fine night. But it was too late to start out then.” He added, putting his own interpretation on the way they turned to look at him, after so long of forgetting his presence: “My sister and her man and the children will tell you I stayed the night over, and left in the dawn. It might be said a family will hold together, however. But I can tell you the names of two or three I said good day to, coming back along the Foregate this morning. They’ll bear me out.”