The Devil's Novice

by Ellis Peters

  “Sheriff Prestcote,” panted the reeling messenger, “or who stands here for him—from the lord bishop of Lincoln, in haste, and pleads for haste…”

  “I stand here for the sheriff,” said Hugh. “Speak out! What’s the lord bishop’s urgent word for us?”

  “That you should call up all the king’s knight-service in the shire,” said the messenger, bracing himself strongly, “for in the north-east there’s black treason, in despite of his Grace’s head. Two days after the lord king left Lincoln, Ranulf of Chester and William of Roumare made their way into the king’s castle by a subterfuge and have taken it by force. The citizens of Lincoln cry out to his Grace to rescue them from an abominable tyranny, and the lord bishop has contrived to send out a warning, through tight defences, to tell his Grace of what is done. There are many of us now, riding every way with the word. It will be in London by nightfall.”

  “King Stephen was there but a week or more ago,” cried Canon Eluard, “and they pledged their faith to him. How is this possible? They promised a strong chain of fortresses across the north.”

  “And that they have,” said the envoy, heaving at breath, “but not for King Stephen’s service, nor the empress’s neither, but for their own bastard kingdom in the north. Planned long ago, when they met and called all their castellans to Chester in September, with links as far south as here, and garrisons and constables ready for every castle. They’ve been gathering young men about them everywhere for their ends…”

  So that was the way of it! Planned long ago, in September, at Chester, where Peter Clemence was bound with an errand from Henry of Blois, a most untimely visitor to intervene where such a company was gathered in arms and such a plot being hatched. No wonder Clemence could not be allowed to ride on unmolested and complete his embassy. And with links as far south as here!

  Cadfael caught at Hugh’s arm. “They were two in it together, Hugh. Tomorrow this newly-wed pair were to be on their way north to the very borders of Lincolnshire—it’s Aspley has the manor there, not Linde. Secure Nigel, while you can! If it’s not already too late!”

  Hugh turned to stare for an instant only, grasped the force of it, dropped his bridle and ran, beckoning his sergeants after him to the guest-hall. Cadfael was close at his heels when they broke in upon a demoralised wedding party, bereft of gaiety, appetite or spirits, draped about the untouched board in burdened converse more fitting a wake than a wedding. The bride wept desolately in the arms of a stout matron, with three or four other women clucking and cooing around her. The bridegroom was nowhere to be seen.

  “He’s away!” said Cadfael. “While we were in the stable-yard, no other chance. And without her! The bishop of Lincoln got his message out of a tightly-sealed city at least a day too soon.”

  There was no horse tethered outside the gatehouse, when they recalled the possibility and ran to see. Nigel had taken the first opportunity of following his fellow-conspirator towards the lands, offices and commands William of Roumare had promised them, where able young men of martial achievements and small scruples could carve out a fatter future than in two modest Shropshire manors on the edge of the Long Forest.

  Chapter 13

  THERE WAS NEW and sensational matter for gossip now, and the watchers in the Foregate, having taken in all that stretched ears and sharp eyes could command, went to spread the word further, that there was planned rebellion in the north, a bid to set up a private kingdom for the earls of Chester and Lincoln, that the fine young men of the wedding company were in the plot from long since, and were fled because the matter had come to light before they could make an orderly withdrawal as planned. The lord bishop of Lincoln, no very close friend of King Stephen, had nevertheless found Chester and Roumare still more objectionable, and bestirred himself to smuggle out word to the king and implore rescue, for himself and his city.

  The comings and goings about bridge and abbey were watched avidly. Hugh Beringar, torn two ways, had delegated the pursuit of the traitors to his sergeants, while he rode at once to the castle to send out the call to the knight-service of the shire to be ready to join the force which King Stephen would certainly be raising to besiege Lincoln, to begin commandeering mounts enough for his force, and see that all that was needed in the armoury was in good order. The bishop’s messenger was lodged at the abbey, and his message sped on its way by another rider to the castles in the south of the shire. In the guest-hall the shattered company and the deserted bride remained invisible, shut in with the ruins of their celebration.

  All this, and the twenty-first day of December barely past two in the afternoon! And what more was to happen before night, who could guess, when things were rushing along at such a speed?

  Abbot Radulfus had reasserted his domestic rule, and the brothers went obediently to dinner in the refectory at his express order, somewhat later than usual. The horarium of the house could not be altogether abandoned even for such devastating matters as murder, treason and man-hunt. Besides, as Brother Cadfael thoughtfully concluded, those who had survived this upheaval to gain, instead of loss, might safely be left to draw breath and think in peace, before they must encounter and come to new terms. And those who had lost must have time to lick their wounds. As for the fugitives, the first of them had a handsome start, and the second had benefited by the arrival of even more shocking news to gain a limited breathing-space, but for all that, the hounds were on their trail, well aware now what route to take, for Aspley’s northern manor lay somewhere south of Newark, and anyone making for it must set forth by the road to Stafford. Somewhere in the heathland short of that town, dusk would be closing on the travellers. They might think it safe to lodge overnight in the town. They might yet be overtaken and brought back.

  On leaving the refectory Cadfael made for his normal destination during the afternoon hours of work, the hut in the herb garden where he brewed his mysteries. And they were there, the two young men in Benedictine habits, seated quickly side by side on the bench against the end wall. The very small spark of the brazier glowed faintly on their faces. Meriet leaned back against the timbers in simple exhaustion, his cowl thrust back on his shoulders, his face shadowy. He had been down into the very profound of anger, grief and bitterness, and surfaced again to find Mark still constant and patient beside him; and now he was at rest, without thought or feeling, ready to be born afresh into a changed world, but not in haste. Mark looked as he always looked, mild, almost deprecatory, as though he pleaded a fragile right to be where he was, and yet would stand to it to the death.

  “I thought I might find you here,” said Brother Cadfael, and took the little bellows and blew the brazier into rosy life, for it was none too warm within there. He closed and barred the door to keep out even the draught that found its way through the chinks. “I doubt if you’ll have eaten,” he said, feeling along the shelf behind the door. “There are oat cakes here and some apples, and I think I have a morsel of cheese. You’ll be the better for a bite. And I have a wine that will do you no harm either.”

  And behold, the boy was hungry! So simple it was. He was not long turned nineteen, and physically hearty, and he had eaten nothing since dawn. He began listlessly, docile to persuasion, and at the first bite he was alive again and ravenous, his eyes brightening, the glow of the blown brazier gilding and softening hollow cheeks. The wine, as Cadfael had predicted, did him no harm at all. Blood flowed through him again, with new warmth and urgency.

  He said not one word of brother, father or lost love. It was still too early. He had heard himself falsely accused by one of them, falsely suspected by another, and what by the third? Left to pursue his devoted and foolish self-sacrifice, without a word to absolve him. He had a great load of bitterness still to shake from his heart. But praise God, he came to life for food and ate like a starved schoolboy. Brother Cadfael was greatly encouraged.

  *

  In the mortuary chapel, where Peter Clemence lay in his sealed coffin on his draped bier, Leoric Aspley had chosen to make h
is confession, and entreated Abbot Radulfus to be the priest to hear it. On his knees on the flagstones, by his own choice, he set forth the story as he had known it, the fearful discovery of his younger son labouring to drag a dead man into cover and hide him from all eyes, Meriet’s tacit acceptance of the guilt, and his own reluctance to deliver up his son to death, or let him go free.

  “I promised him I would deal with his dead man, even at the peril of my soul, and he should live, but in perpetual penance out of the world. And to that he agreed and embraced his penalty, as I now know or fear that I now know, for love of his brother, whom he had better reason for believing a murderer than ever I had for crediting the same guilt to Meriet. I am afraid, father, that he accepted his fate as much for my sake as for his brother’s, having cause, to my shame, to believe—no, to know!—that I built all on Nigel and all too little upon him, and could live on after writing him out of my life, though the loss of Nigel would be my death. As now he is lost indeed, but I can and I will live. Therefore my grievous sin against my son Meriet is not only this doubt of him, this easy credence of his crime and his banishment into the cloister, but stretches back to his birth in lifelong misprizing.

  “And as to my sin against you, father, and against this house, that also I confess and repent, for so to dispose of a suspect murderer and so to enforce a young man without a true vocation, was vile towards him and towards this house. Take that also into account, for I would be free of all my debts.

  “And as to my sin against Peter Clemence, my guest and my kinsman, in denying him Christian burial to protect the good name of my own house, I am glad now that the hand of God made use of my own abused son to uncover and undo the evil I have done. Whatever penance you decree for me in that matter, I shall add to it an endowment to provide Masses for his soul as long as my own life continues…”

  As proud and rigid in confessing faults as in correcting them in his son, he unwound the tale to the end, and to the end Radulfus listened patiently and gravely, decreed measured terms by way of amends, and gave absolution.

  Leoric arose stiffly from his knees, and went out in unaccustomed humility and dread, to look for the one son he had left.

  *

  The rapping at the closed and barred door of Cadfael’s workshop came when the wine, one of Cadfael’s three-year-old brews, had begun to warm Meriet into a hesitant reconciliation with life, blurring the sharp memories of betrayal. Cadfael opened the door, and into the mellow ring of light from the brazier stepped Isouda in her grown-up wedding finery, crimson and rose and ivory, a silver fillet round her hair, her face solemn and important. There was a taller shape behind her in the doorway, shadowy against the winter dusk.

  “I thought we might find you here,” she said, and the light gilded her faint, secure smile. “I am a herald. You have been sought everywhere. Your father begs you to admit him to speech with you.”

  Meriet had stiffened where he sat, knowing who stood behind her. “That is not the way I was ever summoned to my father’s presence,” he said, with a fading spurt of malice and pain. “In his house things were not conducted so.”

  “Very well then,” said Isouda, undisturbed. “Your father orders you to admit him here, or I do in his behalf, and you had better be sharp and respectful about it.” And she stood aside, eyes imperiously beckoning Brother Cadfael and Brother Mark, as Leoric came into the hut, his tall head brushing the dangling bunches of dried herbs swinging from the beams.

  Meriet rose from the bench and made a slow, hostile but punctilious reverence, his back stiff as pride itself, his eyes burning. But his voice was quiet and secure as he said: “Be pleased to come in. Will you sit, sir?”

  Cadfael and Mark drew away one on either side, and followed Isouda into the chill of the dusk. Behind them they heard Leoric say, very quietly and humbly: “You will not now refuse me the kiss?”

  There was a brief and perilous silence; then Meriet said hoarsely: “Father…” and Cadfael closed the door.

  *

  In the high and broken heathland to the south-west of the town of Stafford, about this same hour, Nigel Aspley rode headlong into a deep copse, over thick, tussocky turf, and all but rode over his friend, neighbour and fellow-conspirator, Janyn Linde, cursing and sweating over a horse that went deadly lame upon a hind foot after treading askew and falling in the rough ground. Nigel cried recognition with relief, for he had small appetite for venturesome enterprises alone, and lighted down to look what the damage might be. But Isouda’s horse limped to the point of foundering, and manifestly could go no further.

  “You?” cried Janyn. “You broke through, then? God curse this damned brute, he’s thrown me and crippled himself.” He clutched at his friend’s arm. “What have you done with my sister? Left her to answer for all? She’ll run mad!”

  “She’s well enough and safe enough, we’ll send for her as soon as we may… You to cry out on me!” flared Nigel, turning on him hotly. “You made your escape in good time, and left the pair of us in mire to the brows. Who sank us in this bog in the first place? Did I bid you kill the man? All I asked was that you send a rider ahead to give warning, have them put everything out of sight quickly before he came. They could have done it! How could I send? The man was lodged there in our house, I had no one to send who would not be missed… But you—you had to shoot him down…”

  “I had the hardihood to make all certain, where you would have flinched,” spat Janyn, curling a contemptuous lip. “A rider would have got there too late. I made sure the bishop’s lackey should never get there.”

  “And left him lying! Lying in the open ride!”

  “For you to be fool enough to run there as soon as I told you!” Janyn hissed derisive scorn at such weakness of will and nerve. “If you’d let him lie, who was ever to know who struck him down? But you must take fright, and rush to try and hide him, who was far better not hidden. And fetch your poor idiot brother down on you, and your father after him! That ever I broached such high business to such a broken reed!”

  “Or I ever listened to such a plausible tempter!” fretted Nigel wretchedly. “Now here we are helpless. This creature cannot go—you see it! And the town above a mile distant, and night coming…”

  “And I had a head start,” raged Janyn, stamping the thick, blanched grass, “and fortune ahead of me, and the beast had to founder! And you’ll be off to pick up the prizes due to both of us—you who crumple at the first threat! God’s curse on the day!”

  “Hush your noise!” Nigel turned his back despairingly, stroking the lame horse’s sweating flank. “I wish to God I’d never in life set eyes on you, to come to this pass, but I’ll not leave you. If you must be dragged back—you think they’ll be far behind us now?—we’ll go back together. But let’s at least try to reach Stafford. Let’s leave this one tethered to be found, and ride and run by turns with the other…”

  His back was still turned when the dagger slid in between his ribs from behind, and he sagged and folded, marvelling, not yet feeling any pain, but only the withdrawal of his life and force, that laid him almost softly in the grass. Blood streamed out from his wound and warmed his side, flowing round to fire the ground beneath him. He tried to raise himself, and could not stir a hand.

  Janyn stood a moment looking down at him dispassionately. He doubted if the wound itself was fatal, but judged it would take less than half an hour for his sometime friend to bleed to death, which would do as well. He spurned the motionless body with a careless foot, wiped his dagger on the grass, and turned to mount the horse Nigel had ridden. Without another glance behind he dug in his heels and set off at a rapid canter towards Stafford, between the darkening trees.

  *

  Hugh’s officers, coming at speed some ten minutes later, found half-dead man and lamed horse and divided their forces, two men riding on to try to overtake Janyn, while the remaining pair salvaged both man and beast, bestowed Isouda’s horse at the nearest holding, and carried Nigel back to Shrewsbury, pallid
, swathed and senseless, but alive.

  *

  “…he promised us advancement, castles and commands—William of Roumare. It was when Janyn went north with me at midsummer to view my manor—it was Janyn persuaded me.” Nigel brought out the sorry, broken fragments of his confession late in the dusk of the following day, in his wits again and half-wishing he were not. So many eyes round his bed, his father erect and ravaged of face at the foot, staring upon his heir with grieved eyes, Roswitha kneeling at his right side, tearless now, but bloated with past weeping, Brother Cadfael and Brother Edmund the infirmarer watchful from the shadows in case their patient tried his strength too far too soon. And on his left Meriet, back in cotte and hose, stripped of the black habit which had never fitted or suited him, and looking strangely taller, leaner and older than when he had first put it on. His eyes, aloof and stern as his father’s, were the first Nigel’s waking, wandering stare had encountered. There was no knowing what went on in the mind behind them.

  “We have been his men from that time on… We knew the time set for the strike at Lincoln. We meant to ride north after our marriage, Janyn with us—but Roswitha did not know! And now we have lost. Word came through too soon…”

  “Come to the death-day,” said Hugh, standing at Leone’s shoulder.

  “Yes—Clemence. At supper he let out what his business was. And they were there in Chester, all their constables and castellans… in the act! When I took Roswitha home I told Janyn, and begged him to send a rider ahead at once, through the night, to warn them. He swore he would… I went there next morning early, but he was not there, he never came until past noon, and when I asked if all was well, he said very well! For Peter Clemence was dead in the forest, and the gathering in Chester safe enough. He laughed at me for being in dread. Let him lie, he said, who’ll be the wiser, there are footpads everywhere… But I was afraid! I went to find him, to hide him away until night…”