An Excellent Mystery

by Ellis Peters

  “Why?” asked the abbot. “Welcome indeed you are, I ask only, why here?”

  “Father, some mile or two up-river from here, on a manor called Salton, I was born. I had a fancy to see the place again, or at least be near it, before I die.” He smiled, meeting the penetrating eyes beneath the knotted brows. “It was the only property my father held in this shire. There I was born, as it so happened. A man displaced from his last home may well turn back to his first.”

  “You say well. So far as is in us, we will supply that home. And your young brother?” Fidelis put back the cowl from his neck, bent his head reverently, and made a small outward sweep of submissive hands, but no sound.

  “Father, he cannot speak for himself, I offer thanks from us both. I have not been altogether in my best health in Hyde, and Brother Fidelis, out of pure kindness, has become my faithful friend and attendant. He has no kinsfolk to whom he can go, he elects to be with me and tend me as before. If you will permit.” He waited for the acknowledging nod and smile before he added: “Brother Fidelis will serve God here with every faculty he has. I know him, and I answer for him. But one, his voice, he cannot employ. Brother Fidelis is mute.”

  “He is no less welcome,” said Radulfus, “because his prayers must be silent. His silence may be more eloquent than our spoken words.” If he had been taken aback he had mastered the check so quickly as to give no sign. It would not be so often that Abbot Radulfus would be disconcerted. “After this journey,” he said, “you must both be weary, and still in some distress of mind until you have again a bed, a place, and work to do. Go now with Brother Cadfael, he will take you to Prior Robert, and show you everything within the enclave, dortoir and frater and gardens and herbarium, where he rules. He will find you refreshment and rest, your first need. And at Vespers you shall join us in worship.”

  *

  Word of the arrivals from the south brought Hugh Beringar down hotfoot from the town to confer first with the abbot, and then with Brother Humilis, who repeated freely what he had already once related. When he had gleaned all he could, Hugh went to find Cadfael in the herb-garden, where he was busy watering. There was an hour yet before Vespers, the time of day when all the necessary work had been done, and even a gardener could relax and sit for a while in the shade. Cadfael put away his watering-can, leaving the open, sunlit beds until the cool of the evening, and sat down beside his friend on the bench against the high south wall.

  “Well, you have a breathing-space, at least,” he said. “They are at each other’s throats, not reaching for yours. Great pity, though, that townsmen and monastics and poor nuns should be the sufferers. But so it goes in this world. And the queen and her Flemings must be in the town by now, or very near. What happens next? The besiegers may very well find themselves besieged.”

  “It has happened before,” agreed Hugh. “And the bishop had fair warning he might have need of a well-stocked larder, but she may have taken her supplies for granted. If I were the queen’s general, I would take time to cut all the roads into Winchester first, and make certain no food can get in. Well, we shall see. And I hear you were the first to have speech with these two brothers from Hyde.”

  “They overtook me in the Foregate. And what do you make of them, now you’ve been closeted with them so long?”

  “What should I make of them, thus at first sight? A sick man and a dumb man. More to the purpose, what do your brothers make of them?” Hugh had a sharp eye on his old friend’s face, which was blunt and sleepy and private in the late afternoon heat, but was never quite closed against him. “The elder is noble, clearly. Also he is ill. I guess at a martial past, for I think he has old wounds. Did you see he goes a little sidewise, favouring his left flank? Something has never quite healed. And the young one… I well understand he has fallen under the spell of such a man, and idolises him. Lucky for both! He has a powerful protector, his lord has a devoted nurse. Well?” said Hugh, challenging judgement with a confident smile.

  “You haven’t yet divined who our new elder brother is? They may not have told you all,” admitted Cadfael tolerantly, “for it came out almost by chance. A martial past, yes, he avowed it, though you could have guessed it no less surely. The man is past forty-five, I judge, and has visible scars. He has said, also, that he was born here at Salton, then a manor of his father’s. And he has a scar on his head, bared by the tonsure, that was made by a Seljuk scimitar, some years back. A mere slice, readily healed, but left its mark. Salton was held formerly by the Bishop of Chester, and granted to the church of Saint Chad, here within the walls. They let it go many years since to a noble family, the Marescots. There’s a local tenant holds it under them.” He opened a levelled brown eye, beneath a bushy brow russet as autumn. “Brother Humilis is a Marescot. I know of only one Marescot of this man’s age who went to the Crusade. Sixteen or seventeen years ago it must be. I was newly monk, then, part of me still hankered, and I had one eye always on the tale of those who took the Cross. As raw and eager as I was, surely, and bound for as bitter a fall, but pure enough in their going. There was a certain Godfrid Marescot who took three score with him from his own lands. He made a notable name for valour.”

  “And you think this is he? Thus fallen?”

  “Why not? The great ones are open to wounds no less than the simple. All the more,” said Cadfael, “if they lead from before, and not from behind. They say this one was never later than first.”

  He had still the crusader blood quick within him, he could not choose but awake and respond, however the truth had sunk below his dreams and hopes, all those years ago. Others, no less, had believed and trusted, no less to shudder and turn aside from much of what was done in the name of the Faith.

  “Prior Robert will be running through the tale of the lords of Salton this moment,” said Cadfael, “and will not fail to find his man. He knows the pedigree of every lord of a manor in this shire and beyond, for thirty years back and more. Brother Humilis will have no trouble in establishing himself, he sheds lustre upon us by being here, he need do nothing more.”

  “As well,” said Hugh wryly, “for I think there is no more he can do, unless it be to die here, and here be buried. Come, you have a better eye than mine for mortal sickness. The man is on his way out of this world. No haste, but the end is assured.”

  “So it is for you and for me,” said Cadfael sharply. “And as for haste, it’s neither you nor I that hold the measure. It will come when it will come. Until then, every day is of consequence, the last no less than the first.”

  “So be it!” said Hugh, and smiled, unchidden. “But he’ll come into your hands before many days are out. And what of his youngling—the dumb boy?”

  “Nothing of him! Nothing but silence and shrinking into the shadows. Give us time,” said Cadfael, “and we shall learn to know him better.”

  *

  A man who has renounced possessions may move freely from one asylum to another, and be no less at home, make do with nothing as well in Shrewsbury as in Hyde Mead. A man who wears what every other man under the same discipline wears need not be noticeable for more than a day. Brother Humilis and Brother Fidelis resumed here in the midlands the same routine they had kept in the south, and the hours of the day enfolded them no less firmly and serenely. Yet Prior Robert had made a satisfactory end of his cogitations concerning the feudal holdings and family genealogies in the shire, and it was very soon made known to all, through his reliable echo, Brother Jerome, that the abbey had acquired a most distinguished son, a crusader of acknowledged valour, who had made a name for himself in the recent contention against the rising Atabeg Zenghi of Mosul, the latest threat to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Prior Robert’s personal ambitions lay all within the cloister, but for all that he missed never a turn of the fortunes of the world without. Four years since, Jerusalem had been shaken to its foundations by the king’s defeat at this Zenghi’s hands, but the kingdom had survived through its alliance with the emirate of Damascus. In that unhappy battle,
so Robert made known discreetly, Godfrid Marescot had played a heroic part.

  “He has observed every office, and worked steadily every hour set aside for work,” said Brother Edmund the infirmarer, eyeing the new brother across the court as he trod slowly towards the church for Compline, in the radiant stillness and lingering warmth of evening. “And he has not asked for any help of yours or mine. But I wish he had a better colour, and a morsel of flesh more on those long bones. That bronze gone dull, with no blood behind it…”

  And there went the faithful shadow after him, young, lissome, with strong, flowing pace, and hand ever advanced a little to prop an elbow, should it flag, or encircle a lean body, should it stagger or fall.

  “There goes one who knows it all,” said Cadfael, “and cannot speak. Nor would if he could, without his lord’s permission. A son of one of his tenants, would you say? Something of that kind, surely. The boy is well born and taught. He knows Latin, almost as well as his master.”

  On reflection it seemed a liberty to speak of a man as anyone’s master who called himself Humilis, and had renounced the world.

  “I had in mind,” said Edmund, but hesitantly, and with reverence, “a natural son. I may be far astray, but it is what came to mind. I take him for a man who would love and protect his seed, and the young one might well love and admire him, for that as for all else.”

  And it could well be true. The tall man and the tall youth, a certain likeness, even, in the clear features—insofar, thought Cadfael, as anyone had yet looked directly at the features of young Brother Fidelis, who passed so silently and unobtrusively about the enclave, patiently finding his way in this unfamiliar place. He suffered, perhaps, more than his elder companion in the change, having less confidence and experience, and all the anxiety of youth. He clung to his lodestar, and every motion he made was oriented by its light. They had a shared carrel in the scriptorium, for Brother Humilis had need, only too clearly, of a sedentary occupation, and had proved to have a delicate hand with copying, and artistry in illumination. And since he had limited control after a period of work, and his hand was liable to shake in fine detail, Abbot Radulfus had decreed that Brother Fidelis should be present with him to assist whenever he needed relief. The one hand matched the other as if the one had taught the other, though it might have been only emulation and love. Together, they did slow but admirable work.

  “I had never considered,” said Edmund, musing aloud, “how remote and strange a man could be who has no voice, and how hard it is to reach and touch him. I have caught myself talking of him to Brother Humilis, over the lad’s head, and been ashamed — as if he had neither hearing nor wits. I blushed before him. Yet how do you touch hands with such a one? I never had practice in it till now, and I am altogether astray.”

  “Who is not?” said Cadfael.

  It was truth, he had noted it. The silence, or rather the moderation of speech enjoined by the Rule had one quality, the hush that hung about Brother Fidelis quite another. Those who must communicate with him tended to use much gesture and few words, or none, reflecting his silence. As though, truly, he had neither hearing nor wits. But manifestly he had both, quick and delicate senses and sharp hearing, tuned to the least sound. And that was also strange. So often the dumb were dumb because they had never learned of sounds, and therefore made none. And this young man had been well taught in his letters, and knew some Latin, which argued a mind far more agile than most. Unless, thought Cadfael doubtfully, his muteness was a new-come thing in recent years, from some constriction of the cords of the tongue or the sinews of the throat? Or even if he had it from birth, might it not be caused by some strings too tightly drawn under his tongue, that could be eased by exercise or loosed by the knife?

  “I meddle too much,” said Cadfael to himself crossly, shaking off the speculation that could lead nowhere. And he went to Compline in an unwontedly penitent mood, and by way of discipline observed silence himself for the rest of the evening.

  They gathered the purple-black Lammas plums next day, for they were just on the right edge of ripeness. Some would be eaten at once, fresh as they were, some Brother Petrus would boil down into a preserve thick and dark as cakes of poppy-seed, and some would be laid out on racks in the drying house to wrinkle and crystallise into gummy sweetness. Cadfael had a few trees in a small orchard within the enclave, though most of the fruit-trees were in the main garden of the Gaye, the lush meadow-land along the riverside. The novices and younger brothers picked the fruit, and the oblates and schoolboys were allowed to help; and if everyone knew that a few handfuls went into the breasts of tunics rather than into the baskets, provided the depredations were reasonable Cadfael turned a blind eye.

  It was too much to expect silence in such fine weather and such a holiday occupation. The voices of the boys rang merrily in Cadfael’s ears as he decanted wine in his workshop, and went back and forth among his plants along the shadowed wall, weeding and watering. A pleasant sound! He could pick out known voices, the children’s shrill and light, their elders in a whole range of tones. That warm, clear call, that was Brother Rhun, the youngest of the novices, sixteen years old, only two months since received into probation, and not yet tonsured, lest he should think better of his impulsive resolve to quit a world he had scarcely seen. But Rhun would not repent of his choice. He had come to the abbey for Saint Winifred’s festival, a cripple and in pain, and by her grace now he went straight and tall and agile, radiating delight upon everyone who came near him. As now, surely, on whoever was his partner at the nearest of the plum-trees. Cadfael went to the edge of the orchard to see, and there was the sometime lame boy up among the branches, secure and joyous, his slim, deft hands nursing the fruit so lightly his fingers scarcely blurred the bloom, and leaning down to lay them in the basket held up to him by a tall brother whose back was turned, and whose figure was not immediately recognisable, until he moved round, the better to follow Rhun’s movements, and showed the face of Brother Fidelis.

  It was the first time Cadfael had seen that face so clearly, in sunlight, the cowl slung back. Rhun, it seemed, was one creature at least who found no difficulty in drawing near to the mute brother, but spoke out to him merrily and found no strangeness in his silence. Rhun leaned down laughing, and Fidelis looked up, smiling, one face reflecting the other. Their hands touched on the handle of the basket as Rhun dangled it at the full stretch of his arm while Fidelis plucked a cluster of low-growing fruit pointed out to him from above.

  After all, thought Cadfael, it was to be expected that valiant innocence would stride in boldly where most of us hesitate to set foot. And besides, Rhun has gone most of his life with a cruel flaw that set him apart, and taken no bitterness from it, naturally he would advance without fear into another man’s isolation. And thank God for him, and for the valour of the children!

  He went back to his weeding very thoughtfully, recalling that eased and sunlit glimpse of one who habitually withdrew into shadow. An oval face, firm-featured and by nature grave, with a lofty forehead and strong cheekbones, and clear ivory skin, smooth and youthful. There in the orchard he looked scarcely older than Rhun, though there must surely be a few years between them. The halo of curling hair round his tonsure was an autumn brown, almost fiery-bright, yet not red, and his wide-set eyes, under strong, level brows, were of a luminous grey, at least in that full light. A very comely young man, like a veiled reflection of Rhun’s sunlit beauty. Noonday and twilight met together.

  The fruit-pickers were still at work, though with most of their harvest already gleaned, when Cadfael put away his hoe and watering-can and went to prepare for Vespers. In the great court there was the usual late-afternoon bustle, brothers returning from their work along the Gaye, the stir of arrival in guest-hall and stable-yard, and in the cloister the sound of Brother Anselm’s little portative organ testing out a new chant. The illuminators and copiers would be putting the finishing touches to their afternoon’s work, and cleaning their pens and brushes. Brother Humi
lis must be alone in his carrel, having sent Fidelis out to the joyous labour in the garden, for nothing less would have induced the boy to leave him. Cadfael had intended crossing the open garth to the precentor’s workshop, to sit down comfortably with Anselm for a quarter of an hour, until the Vesper bell, and talk and perhaps argue about music. But the memory of the dumb youth, so kindly sent out to his brief pleasure in the orchard among his peers, stirred in him as he entered the cloister, and the gaunt visage of Brother Humilis rose before him, self-contained, uncomplaining, proudly solitary. Or should it be, rather, humbly solitary? That was the quality he had claimed for himself and by which he desired to be accepted. A large claim, for one so celebrated. There was not a soul within here now who did not know his reputation. If he longed to escape it, and be as mute as his servitor, he had been cruelly thwarted.

  Cadfael veered from his intent, and turned instead along the north walk of the cloister, where the carrels of the scrip scriptorium basked in the sun, even at this hour. Humilis had been given a study midway, where the light would fall earliest and linger longest. It was quiet there, the soft tones of Anselm’s organetto seemed very distant and hushed. The grass of the open garth was blanched and dry, in spite of daily watering.

  “Brother Humilis…” said Cadfael softly, at the opening of the carrel.

  The leaf of parchment was pushed askew on the desk, a small pot of gold had spilled drops along the paving as it rolled. Brother Humilis lay forward over his desk with his right arm flung up to hold by the wood, and his left hand gripped hard into his groin, the wrist braced to press hard into his side. His head lay with the left cheek on his work, smeared with the blue and the scarlet, and his eyes were shut, but clenched shut, upon the controlled awareness of pain. He had not uttered a sound. If he had, those close by would have heard him. What he had, he had contained. So he would still.