Authors: Ellis Peters
“Remind
me of the terms, if you will,” the abbot requested apologetically. “My mind has
been full of other matters, I have forgotten just what was agreed.”
“Why,
he grants to us his manor of Mallilie absolutely, with his several tenants, in
return for a messuage here at the abbey—the first house on the town side of the
mill-pond is vacant, and the most suitable to his household—together with
keep for life for himself and his wife, and for two servants also.
The details are as usual in such cases. They shall have daily two monks’ loaves
and one servants’ loaf, two gallons of conventual ale and one of servants’ ale,
a dish of meat such as the abbey sergeants have, on meat-days, and of fish on
fish-days, from the abbot’s kitchen, and an intermissum whenever extra dainties
are provided. These to be fetched by their manservant. They shall also have a
dish of meat or fish daily for their two domestics. Master Bonel is also to
have annually a robe such as the senior of the abbey officers receive, and his
wife—she so prefers—shall have ten shillings yearly to provide a robe for
herself as she chooses. There is also a provision of ten shillings yearly for
linen, shoes and firing, and livery for one horse. And at the death of either,
the other to retain possession of the house and receive a moiety of all the
aforesaid provisions, except that if the wife be the survivor, she need not be
provided with stabling for a horse. These are the terms, and I had intended to
have witnesses come hither after chapter for the ratification. The justice has
a clerk waiting.”
“I
fear none the less,” said the abbot heavily, “that this also must wait. My
rights are in abeyance.”
“It
will greatly inconvenience Master Bonel,” said the cellarer anxiously. “They
have already prepared to remove here, and expected to do so in the next few
days. The Christmas feast is coming, and they cannot well be left in
discomfort.”
“Surely,”
suggested Prior Robert, “the move could be countenanced, even if the ratification
must wait a while. It’s highly unlikely that any abbot appointed would wish to
upset this agreement.” Since it was perfectly clear that he himself was in line
for the appointment, and knew himself to be in better odour with King Stephen
than his superior, he spoke with easy authority. Heribert jumped at the
suggestion.
“I
think such a move is permissible. Yes, Brother Matthew, you may proceed,
pending final sanction, which I feel sure will be forthcoming. Reassure our
guest on that point, and allow him to bring his household at once. It is only
right
that they should feel settled and at peace for the
Christmas feast. There is no other case needing attention?”
“None,
Father.” And he asked, subdued and thoughtful: “When must you set forth on this
journey?”
“The
day after tomorrow I should leave. I ride but slowly these days, and we shall
be some days on the road. In my absence, of course, Prior Robert will be in
charge of all things here.”
Abbot
Heribert lifted a distrait hand in blessing, and led the way out of the
chapter-house. Prior Robert, sweeping after, no doubt felt himself already in
charge of all things within the pale of the Benedictine abbey of St. Peter and
St. Paul of Shrewsbury, and had every intent and expectation of continuing so
to his life’s end.
The
brothers filed out in mourne silence, only to break out into subdued but
agitated conversations as soon as they were dispersed over the great court.
Heribert had been their abbot for eleven years, and an easy man to serve under,
approachable, kindly, perhaps even a little too easy-going. They did not look
forward to changes.
In
the half-hour before High Mass at ten, Cadfael betook himself very thoughtfully
to his workshop in the herb-gardens, to tend a few specifics he had brewing.
The enclosure, thickly hedged and well trimmed, was beginning now to look
bleached and dry with the first moderate cold, all the leaves grown elderly and
lean and brown, the tenderest plants withdrawing into the warmth of the earth;
but the air still bore a lingering, aromatic fragrance compounded of all the
ghostly scents of summer, and inside the hut the spicy sweetness made the
senses swim. Cadfael regularly took his ponderings there for privacy. He was so
used to the drunken, heady air within that he barely noticed it, but at need he
could distinguish every ingredient that contributed to it, and trace it to its
source.
So
King Stephen, after all, had not forgotten his lingering grudges, and Abbot
Heribert was to be the scapegoat for Shrewsbury’s offence in holding out
against his claims. Yet
he was not by nature a vindictive man.
Perhaps it was rather that he felt a need to flatter and court the legate,
since the pope had recognised him as king of England, and given him papal
backing, no negligible weapon, in the contention with the Empress Maud, the
rival claimant to the throne. That determined lady would certainly not give up
so easily, she would be pressing her case strongly in Rome, and even popes may
change their allegiance. So Alberic of Ostia would be given every possible
latitude in pursuing his plans for the reform of the Church, and Heribert might
be but one sacrificial victim offered to his zeal on a platter.
Another
curious theme intruded itself persistently into Cadfael’s musings. This matter
of the occasional guests of the abbey, so-called, the souls who chose to
abandon the working world, sometimes in their prime, and hand over their
inheritance to the abbey for a soft, shielded, inactive life in a house of
retirement, with food, clothing, firing, all provided without the lifting of a
finger! Did they dream of it for years while they were sweating over lambing
ewes, or toiling in the harvest, or working hard at a trade? A little
sub-paradise where meals dropped from the sky and there was nothing to do but
bask, in the summer, and toast by the fire with mulled ale in the winter? And
when they got to it, how long did the enchantment last? How soon did they
sicken of doing nothing, and needing to do nothing? In a man blind, lame, sick,
he could understand the act. But in those hale and busy, and used to exerting
body and mind? No, that he could not understand. There must be other motives.
Not all men could be deceived, or deceive themselves, into mistaking idleness
for blessedness. What else could provoke such an act? Want of an heir? An urge,
not yet understood, to the monastic life, without the immediate courage to go
all the way? Perhaps! In a man with a wife, well advanced in years and growing
aware of his end, it might be so. Many a man had taken the habit and the cowl
late, after children and grandchildren and the heat of a long day. The grace
house and the guest status might be a stage on the way. Or was it possible that
men divested themselves
of their life’s work at last out of
pure despite, against the world, against the unsatisfactory son, against the
burden of carrying their own souls?
Brother
Cadfael shut the door upon the rich horehound reek of a mixture for coughs, and
went very soberly to High Mass.
Abbot
Heribert departed by the London road, turning his back upon the town of
Shrewsbury, in the early morning of a somewhat grey day, the first time there
had been the nip of frost in the air as well as the pale sparkle in the grass.
He took with him his own clerk, Brother Emmanuel, and two lay grooms who had
served here longest; and he rode his own white mule. He put on a cheerful
countenance as he took leave, but for all that he cut a sad little figure as
the four riders dwindled along the road. No horseman now, if he ever had been
much of one, he used a high, cradling saddle, and sagged in it like a small
sack not properly filled. Many of the brothers crowded to the gates to watch
him as long as he remained in view, and their faces were apprehensive and
aggrieved. Some of the boy pupils came out to join them, looking even more
dismayed, for the abbot had allowed Brother Paul to conduct his schooling
undisturbed, which meant very tolerantly, but with Prior Robert in charge there
was no department of this house likely to go its way un-goaded, and discipline
might be expected to tighten abruptly.
There
was, Cadfael could not but admit, room for a little hard practicality within
these walls, if the truth were told. Heribert of late had grown deeply
discouraged with the world of men, and withdrawn more and more into his
prayers. The siege and fall of Shrewsbury, with all the bloodshed and revenge
involved, had been enough to sadden any man, though that was no excuse for
abandoning the effort to defend right and oppose wrong. But there comes a time
when the old grow very tired, and the load of leadership unjustly heavy to
bear. And perhaps—perhaps!—Heribert would not be quite so sad as even he now
supposed, if the load should be lifted from him.
Mass
and chapter passed that day with unexceptionable
decorum and calm,
High Mass was celebrated devoutly, the duties of the day proceeded in their
smooth and regular course. Robert was too sensible of his own image to rub his
hands visibly, or lick his lips before witnesses. All that he did would be done
according to just and pious law, with the authority of sainthood. Nevertheless,
what he considered his due would be appropriated, to the last privilege.
Cadfael was
accustomed to having two assistants allotted to him throughout the active part
of the gardening years, for he grew other things in his walled garden besides
the enclosure of herbs, though the main kitchen gardens of the abbey were
outside the enclave, across the main highway and along the fields by the river,
the lush level called the Gaye. The waters of Severn regularly moistened it in
the flood season, and its soil was rich and bore well. Here within the walls he
had made, virtually single-handed, this closed garden for the small and
precious things, and in the outer levels, running down to the Meole brook that
fed the mill, he grew food crops, beans and cabbages and pulse, and fields of
pease. But now with the winter closing gently in, and the soil settling to its
sleep like the urchins under the hedges, curled drowsily with all their
prickles cushioned by straw and dead grass and leaves, he was left with just
one novice to help him brew his draughts, and roll his pills, and stir his
rubbing oils, and pound his poultices, to medicine not only the brothers, but
many who came for help in their troubles, from the town and the Foregate,
sometimes even from the scattered villages beyond. He had not been bred to this
science, he had learned it by experience, by trial and study, accumulating
knowledge over the years, until some preferred his ministrations to those of the
acknowledged physicians.
His
assistant at this time was a novice of no more than eighteen years, Brother
Mark, orphaned, and a trouble to a neglectful uncle, who had sent him into the
abbey at sixteen to be rid of him. He had entered tongue-tied, solitary and
homesick, a waif who seemed even younger than his years, who did what he was
told with apprehensive submission, as though the best to be hoped out of life
was to avoid punish
ment. But some months of working in the
garden with Cadfael had gradually loosened his tongue and put his fears to
flight. He was still undersized, and slightly wary of authority, but healthy
and wiry, and good at making things grow, and he was acquiring a sure and
delicate touch with the making of medicines, and an eager interest in them.
Mute among his fellows, he made up for it by being voluble enough in the garden
workshop, and with none but Cadfael by. It was always Mark, for all his silence
and withdrawal about the cloister and court, who brought all the gossip before
others knew it.
He
came in from an errand to the mill, an hour before Vespers, full of news.
“Do
you know what Prior Robert has done? Taken up residence in the abbot’s lodging!
Truly! Brother Sub-prior has orders to sleep in the prior’s cell in the
dormitory from tonight. And Abbot Heribert barely out of the gates! I call it
great presumption!”
So
did Cadfael, though he felt it hardly incumbent upon him either to say so, or
to let Brother Mark utter his thoughts quite so openly. “Beware how you pass
judgment on your superiors,” he said mildly, “at least until you know how to
put yourself in their place and see from their view. For all we know, Abbot
Heribert may have required him to move into the lodging, as an instance of his
authority while we’re without an abbot. It is the place set aside for the
spiritual father of this convent.”
“But
Prior Robert is not that, not yet! And Abbot Heribert would have said so at
chapter if he had wished it so. At least he would have told Brother Sub-prior,
and no one did. I saw his face, he is as astonished as anyone, and shocked. He
would not have taken such a liberty!”
Too
true, thought Cadfael, busy pounding roots in a mortar, Brother Richard the
sub-prior was the last man to presume; large, good-natured and peace-loving to
the point of laziness, he never exerted himself to advance even by legitimate
means. It might dawn on some of the younger and more audacious brothers shortly
that they had gained an advantage
in the exchange. With Richard
in the prior’s cell that commanded the length of the dortoir, it would be far
easier for the occasional sinner to slip out by the night-stairs after the
lights were out; even if the crime were detected it would probably never be
reported. A blind eye is the easiest thing in the world to turn on whatever is
troublesome.
“All
the servants at the lodging are simmering,” said Brother Mark. “You know how
devoted they are to Abbot Heribert, and now to be made to serve someone else,
before his place is truly vacant, even! Brother Henry says it’s almost
blasphemy. And Brother Petrus is looking blacker than thunder, and muttering
into his cooking-pots something fearful. He said, once Prior Robert gets his
foot in the door, it will take a dose of hemlock to get him out again when
Abbot Heribert returns.”