by Ellis Peters
“And you?” said Sulien, still gazing and remembering. “How is it with you? You are well? And content? But I see that you are!”
“All is well with me,” said Ruald. “All is very well, better than I deserve.” He took the young man by the sleeve, and the pair of them turned together towards the church. Cadfael followed more slowly, letting them pass out of earshot. From the look of them, as they went, Ruald was talking cheerfully of ordinary things, as brother to brother. The occasion of Sulien’s flight from Ramsey he knew, as the whole household knew it, but clearly he knew nothing as yet of the boy’s shaken faith in his vocation. And just as clearly, he did not intend to say a word of the suspicion and possible danger that hung over his own head. The rear view of them, springy youth and patient, plodding middle age jauntily shoulder to shoulder, was like father and son in one craft on their way to work, and, fatherly, the elder wanted no part of his shadowed destiny to cloud the bright horizons of faith that beckoned his son.
*
“Ramsey will be recovered,” said Ruald with certainty. “Evil will be driven out of it, though we may need long patience. I have been praying for your abbot and brothers.”
“So have I,” said Sulien ruefully, “all along the way. I’m lucky to be out of that terror. But it’s worse for the poor folk there in the villages, who have nowhere to run for shelter.”
“We are praying for them also. There will be a return, and a reckoning.”
The shadow of the south porch closed over them, and they halted irresolutely on the edge of separating, Ruald to his stall in the choir, Sulien to his obscure place among the novices, before Ruald spoke. His voice was still level and soft, but from some deeper well of feeling within him it had taken on a distant, plangent tone like a faraway bell.
“Did you ever hear word from Generys, after she left? Or do you know if any other did?”
“No, never a word,” said Sulien, startled and quivering.
“No, nor I. I deserved none, but they would have told me, in kindness, if anything was known of her. She was fond of you from a babe, I thought perhaps… I should dearly like to know that all is well with her.”
Sulien stood with lowered eyes, silent for a long moment. Then he said in a very low voice: “And so should I, God knows how dearly!”
Chapter 5
IT DID NOT PLEASE BROTHER JEROME that anything should be going on within the precinct of which he was even marginally kept in ignorance, and he felt that in the matter of the refugee novice from Ramsey not quite everything had been openly declared. True, Abbot Radulfus had made a clear statement in chapter concerning the fate of Ramsey and the terror in the Fens, and expressed the hope that young Brother Sulien, who had brought the news and sought refuge here, should be allowed a while of quietness and peace to recover from his experiences. There was reason and kindness in that, certainly. But everyone in the household, by now, knew who Sulien was, and could not help connecting his return with the matter of the dead woman found in the Potter’s Field, and the growing shadow hanging over Brother Ruald’s head, and wondering if he had yet been let into all the details of that tragedy, and what effect it would have on him if he had. What must he be thinking concerning his family’s former tenant? Was that why the abbot had made a point of asking for peace and quietness for him, and seeing to it that his daily work should be somewhat set apart from too much company? And what would be said, what would be noted in the bearing of the two, when Sulien and Ruald met?
And now everyone knew that they had met. Everyone had seen them enter the church for Mass side by side, in quiet conversation, and watched them separate to their places without any noticeable change of countenance on either part, and go about their separate business afterwards with even step and unshaken faces. Brother Jerome had watched avidly, and was no wiser. That aggrieved him. He took pride in knowing everything that went on within and around the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and his reputation would suffer if he allowed this particular obscurity to go unprobed. Moreover, his status with Prior Robert might feel the draught no less. Robert’s dignity forbade him to point his own aristocratic nose into every shadowy corner, but he expected to be informed of what went on there, just the same. His thin silver brows might rise, with unpleasant implications, if he found his trusted source, after all, fallible.
So when Brother Cadfael sallied forth with a full scrip to visit a new inmate at the hospital of Saint Giles, that same afternoon, and to replenish the medicine cupboard there, leaving the herb garden to his two assistants, of whom Brother Winfrid was plainly visible digging over the depleted vegetable beds ready for the winter, Brother Jerome seized his opportunity and went visiting on his own account.
He did not go without an errand. Brother Petrus wanted onions for the abbot’s table, and they were newly lifted and drying out in trays in Cadfael’s store-shed. In the ordinary way Jerome would have delegated this task to someone else, but this day he went himself.
In the workshop in the herb garden the young man Sulien was diligently sorting beans dried for next year’s seed, discarding those flawed or suspect, and collecting the best into a pottery jar almost certainly made by Brother Ruald in his former life. Jerome looked him over cautiously from the doorway before entering to interrupt his work. The sight only deepened his suspicion that things were going on of which he, Jerome, was insufficiently informed. For one thing, Sulien’s crown still bore its new crop of light brown curls, growing more luxuriant every day, and presenting an incongruous image grossly offensive to Jerome’s sense of decorum. Why was he not again shaven-headed and seemly, like all the brothers? Again, he went about his simple task with the most untroubled serenity and a steady hand, apparently quite unmoved by what he must have learned by now from Ruald’s own lips. Jerome could not conceive that the two of them had walked together from the great court into the church before Mass, without one word being said about the murdered woman, found in the field once owned by the boy’s father and tenanted by Ruald himself. It was the chief subject of gossip, scandal and speculation, how could it be avoided? And this boy and his family might be a considerable protection to a man threatened with the charge of murder, if they chose to stand by him. Jerome, in Ruald’s place, would most heartily have enlisted that support, would have poured out the story as soon as the chance offered. He took it for granted that Ruald had done the same. Yet here this unfathomable youth stood earnestly sorting his seed, apparently without anything else on his mind, even the tension and stress of Ramsey already mastered.
Sulien turned as the visitor’s shadow fell within, and looked up into Jerome’s face, and waited in dutiful silence to hear what was required of him. One brother was like another to him here as yet, and with this meagre little man he had not so far exchanged a word. The narrow, grey face and stooped shoulders made Jerome look older than he was, and it was the duty of young brothers to be serviceable and submissive to their elders.
Jerome requested onions, and Sulien went into the store-shed and brought what was wanted, choosing the soundest and roundest, since these were for the abbot’s own kitchen. Jerome opened benevolently: “How are you faring now, here among us, after all your trials elsewhere? Have you settled well here with Brother Cadfael?”
“Very well, I thank you,” said Sulien carefully, unsure yet of this solicitous visitor whose appearance was not precisely reassuring, nor his voice, even speaking sympathy, particularly sympathetic. “I am fortunate to be here, I thank God for my deliverance.”
“In a very proper spirit,” said Jerome wooingly. “Though I fear that even here there are matters that must trouble you. I wish that you could have come back to us in happier circumstances.”
“Indeed, so do I!” agreed Sulien warmly, still harking back in his own mind to the upheaval of Ramsey.
Jerome was encouraged. It seemed the young man might, after all, be in a mood to confide, if sympathetically prompted. “I feel for you,” he said mellifluously. “A shocking thing it must be, after such t
errible blows, to come home to yet more ill news here. This death that has come to light, and worse, to know that it casts so black a shadow of suspicion upon a brother among us, and one well known to all your family—”
He was weaving his way so confidently into his theme that he had not even noticed the stiffening of Sulien’s body, and the sudden blank stillness of his face.
“Death?” said the boy abruptly. “What death?”
Thus sharply cut off in full flow, Jerome blinked and gaped, and leaned to peer more intently into the young, frowning face before him, suspecting deception. But the blue eyes confronted him with a wide stare of such crystal clarity that not even Jerome, himself adept at dissembling and a cause of defensive evasion in others, could doubt the young man’s honest bewilderment.
“Do you mean,” demanded Jerome incredulously, “that Ruald has not told you?”
“Told me of what? Nothing of a death, certainly! I don’t know what you mean, Brother!”
“But you walked with him to Mass this morning,” protested Jerome, reluctant to relinquish his certainty. “I saw you come, you had some talk together…”
“Yes, so we did, but nothing of ill news, nothing of a death. I have known Ruald since I could first run,” said Sulien. “I was glad to meet with him, and see him so secure in his faith, and so happy. But what is this you are telling me of a death? I beg you, let me understand you!”
Jerome had thought to be eliciting information, but found himself instead imparting it. “I thought you must surely know it already. Our plough-team turned up a woman’s body, the first day they broke the soil of the Potter’s Field. Buried there unlawfully, without rites—the sheriff believes killed unlawfully. The first thought that came to mind was that it must be the woman who was Brother Ruald’s wife when he was in the world. I thought you knew from him. Did he never say a word to you?”
“No, never a word,” said Sulien. His voice was level and almost distant, as though all his thoughts had already grappled with the grim truth of it, and withdrawn deep into his being, to contain and conceal any immediate consideration of its full meaning. His blue, opaque stare held Jerome at gaze, unwavering. “That it must be you said. Then it is not known! Neither he nor any can name the woman?”
“It would not be possible to name her. There is nothing left that could be known to any man. Mere naked bones is what they found.” Jerome’s faded flesh shrank at the mere thought of contemplating so stark a reminder of mortality. “Dead at least a year, so they judge. Maybe more, even as much as five years. Earth deals in many different ways with the body.”
Sulien stood stiff and silent for a moment, digesting this knowledge with a face still as a mask. At last he said: “Did I understand you to say also that this death casts a black shadow of suspicion upon a brother of this house? You mean by that, on Ruald?”
“How could it be avoided?” said Jerome reasonably. “If this is indeed she, where else would the law look first? We know of no other woman who frequented that place, we know that this one disappeared from there without a word to any. But whether living or dead, who can be certain?”
“It is impossible,” said Sulien very firmly. “Ruald had been a month and more here in the abbey before she vanished. Hugh Beringar knows that.”
“And acknowledges it, but that does not make it impossible. Twice he visited her afterwards, in company with Brother Paul, to settle matters about such possessions as he left. Who can be sure that he never visited her alone? He was not a prisoner within the enclave, he went out with others to work at the Gaye, and elsewhere on our lands. Who can say he never left the sight of his fellows? At least,” said Jerome, with mildly malicious satisfaction in his own superior reasoning, “the sheriff is busy tracing every errand Brother Ruald has had outside the gates during those early days of his novitiate. If he satisfies himself they never did meet and come to conflict, well. If not, he knows that Ruald is here, and will be here, waiting. He cannot evade.”
“It is foolishness,” said the boy with sudden quiet violence. “If there were proof from many witnesses, I would not believe he ever harmed her. I should know them liars, because I know him. Such a thing he could not do. He did not do!” repeated Sulien, staring blue challenge-like daggers into Jerome’s face.
“Brother, you presume!” Jerome drew his inadequate length to its tallest, though he was still topped by almost a head. “It is sin to be swayed by human affection to defend a brother. Truth and justice are preferred before mere fallible inclination. In chapter sixty-nine of the Rule that is set down. If you know the Rule as you should, you know such partiality is an offence.”
It cannot be said that Sulien lowered his embattled stare or bent his head to this reproof, and he would certainly have been in for a much longer lecture if his superior’s sharp ear had not caught, at that moment, the distant sound of Cadfael’s voice, some yards away along the path, halting to exchange a few cheerful words with Brother Winfrid, who was just cleaning his spade and putting away his tools. Jerome had no wish to see this unsatisfactory colloquy complicated by a third party, least of all Cadfael, who, upon consideration, might have been entrusted with this ill-disciplined assistant precisely in order to withdraw him from too much knowledge too soon. As well leave things as they stood.
“But you may be indulged,” he said, with hasty magnanimity, “seeing this comes so suddenly on you, and at a time when you have already been sorely tried. I say no more!”
And forthwith he took a somewhat abrupt but still dignified leave, and was in time to be a dozen paces outside the door when Cadfael met him. They exchanged a brief word in passing, somewhat to Cadfael’s surprise. Such brotherly civility in Jerome argued a slight embarrassment, if not a guilty conscience.
Sulien was collecting his rejected beans into a bowl, to be added to the compost, when Cadfael came into the workshop. He did not look round as his mentor came in. He had known the voice, as he knew the step.
“What did Jerome want?” Cadfael asked, with only mild interest.
“Onions. Brother Petrus sent him.”
No one below Prior Robert’s status sent Brother Jerome anywhere. He kept his services for where they might reflect favour and benefit upon himself, and the abbot’s cook, a red-haired and belligerent northerner, had nothing profitable to bestow, even if he had been well-disposed towards Jerome, which he certainly was not.
“I can believe Brother Petrus wanted onions. But what did Jerome want?”
“He wanted to know how I was faring, here with you,” said Sulien with deliberation. “At least, that’s what he asked me. And, Cadfael, you know how things are with me. I am not quite sure yet how I am faring, or what I ought to do, but before I commit myself either to going or staying, I think it is time I went to see Father Abbot again. He said I might, when I felt the need.”
“Go now, if you wish,” said Cadfael simply, eyeing with close attention the steady hands that swept the bench clear of fragments, and the head so sedulously inclined to keep the young, austere face in shadow. “There’s time before Vespers.”
*
Abbot Radulfus examined his petitioner with a detached and tolerant eye. In three days the boy had changed in understandable ways, his exhaustion cured, his step now firm and vigorous, the lines of his face eased of their tiredness and strain, the reflection of danger and horror gone from his eyes. Whether the rest had resolved his problem for him was not yet clear, but there was certainly nothing indecisive in his manner, or in the clean jut of a very respectable jaw.
“Father,” he said directly. “I am here to ask your leave to go and visit my family and my home. It is only fair that I should be equally open to influences from within and without.”
“I thought,” said Radulfus mildly, “that you might be here to tell me that your trouble is resolved, and your mind made up. You have that look about you. It seems I am previous.”
“No, Father, I am not yet sure. And I would not offer myself afresh until I am sure.”
“I will, Father,” said Sulien. The tone was the one he had learned to take for granted in the year and more of his novitiate in Ramsey, submissive, dutiful and reverent, but the disconcerting eyes were fixed on some distant aim visible only to himself, or so it seemed to the abbot, who was as well versed in reading the monastic face as Sulien was in withdrawing behind it.
“Go then, at once if you wish.” He considered how long a journey afoot this young man had recently had to make, and added a concession. “Take a mule from the stable, if you intend to leave now. The daylight will see you there if you ride. And tell Brother Cadfael you have leave to stay until tomorrow.”
“I will, Father!” Sulien made his reverence and departed with a purposeful alacrity which Radulfus observed with some amusement and some regret. The boy would have been well worth keeping, if that had truly been his bent, but Radulfus was beginning to judge that he had already lost him. He had been home once before, since electing for the cloister, to bring home his father’s body for burial after the rout of Wilton, had stayed several days on that occasion, and still chosen to return to his vocation. He had had seven months since then to reconsider, and this sudden urge now to visit Longner, with no unavoidable filial duty this time to reinforce it, seemed to the abbot significant evidence of a decision as good as made.
Cadfael was crossing the court to enter the church for Vespers when Sulien accosted him with the news.
