Ellis Peters - A Rare Benedictine

The pedlar louted to Master William with obsequious respect, said his goodday, and made off to his lodging. Early to be home for the night, surely, but perhaps he had done good business and come back to replenish his stock. A wise tradesman kept something in reserve, when he had a safe store to hand, rather than carry his all on every foray.

Master William looked after him with no great favour. “What had that fellow to do thus with you, boy?” he questioned suspiciously. “He’s a deal too curious, with that long nose of his. I’ve seen him making up to any of the household he can back into a corner. What was he after in the scriptorium?”

Jacob opened his wide eyes even wider. “Oh, he’s an honest fellow enough, sir, I’m sure. Though he does like to probe into everything, I grant you, and asks a lot of questions…”

“Then you give him no answers,” said the steward firmly.

“I don’t, nothing but general talk that leaves him no wiser. Though I think he’s but naturally inquisitive and no harm meant. He likes to curry favour with everyone, but that’s by way of his trade. A rough-tongued pedlar would not sell many tapes and laces,” said the young man blithely, and flourished the leaf of vellum he carried. “I was coming to ask you about this carucate of land in Recordine there’s an erasure in the ledger book, I looked up the copy to compare. You’ll remember, sir, it was disputed land for a while, the heir tried to recover it…”

“I do recall. Come, I’ll show you the original copy. But have as little to say to these travelling folk as you can with civility,” Master William adjured earnestly. “There are rogues on the roads as well as honest tradesmen. There, you go before, I’ll follow you.”

He looked after the jaunty figure as it departed smartly, back to the scriptorium. “As I said, Cadfael, too easily pleased with every man. It’s not wise to look always for the best in men. But for all that,” he added, reverting morosely to his private grievance, “I wish that scamp of mine was more like him. In debt already for some gambling folly, and he has to get himself picked up by the sergeants for a street brawl, and fined, and cannot pay the fine. And to keep my own name in respect, he’s confident I shall have to buy him clear. I must see to it tomorrow, one way or the other, when I’ve finished my rounds in the town, for he has but three days left to pay. If it weren’t for his mother… Even so, even so, this time I ought to let him stew.”

He departed after his clerk, shaking his head bitterly over his troubles. And Cadfael went off to see what feats of idiocy or genius Brother Oswin had wrought in the herb garden in his absence.

In the morning, when the brothers came out from Prime, Brother Cadfael saw the steward departing to begin his round, the deep leather satchel secured to his locked belt, and swinging by two stout straps. By evening it would be heavy with the annual wealth of the city rents, and those from the northern suburbs outside the walls. Jacob was there to see him go, listening dutifully to his last emphatic instructions, and sighing as he was left behind to complete the bookwork. Warm Harefoot, the packman, was off early, too, to ply his trade among the housewives either of the town or the parish of the Foregate. A pliable fellow, full of professional bows and smiles, but by the look of him all his efforts brought him no better than a meagre living.

So there went Jacob, back to his pen and inkhorn in the cloisters, and forth to his important business went Master William. And who knows, thought Cadfael, which is in the right, the young man who sees the best in all, and trusts all, or the old one who suspects all until he has probed them through and through? The one may stumble into a snare now and then, but at least enjoy sunshine along the way, between falls. The other may never miss his footing, but seldom experience joy. Better find a way somewhere between!

It was a curious chance that seated him next to Brother Eutropius at breakfast, for what did anyone know about Brother Eutropius? He had come to the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul of Shrewsbury only two months ago, from a minor grange of the order. But in two months of Brother Oswin, say, that young man would have been an open book to every reader, whereas Eutropius contained himself as tightly as did his skin, and gave out much less in the way of information. A taciturn man, thirty or so at a guess, who kept himself apart and looked solitary discontent at everything that crossed his path, but never complained. It might be merely newness and shyness, in one naturally uncommunicative, or it might be a gnawing inward anger against his lot and all the world. Rumour said, a man frustrated in love, and finding no relief in his resort to the cowl. But rumour was using its imagination, for want of fuel more reliable.

Eutropius also worked under Brother Matthew, the cellarer, and was intelligent and literate, but not a good or a quick scribe. Perhaps, when Brother Ambrose fell ill, he would have liked to be trusted to take over his books. Perhaps he resented the lay clerk being preferred before him. Perhaps! With Eutropius everything, thus far, was conjecture. Some day someone would pierce that carapace of his, with an unguarded word or a sudden irresistible motion of grace, and the mystery would no longer be a mystery, or the stranger a stranger.

Brother Cadfael knew better than to be in a hurry, where souls were concerned. There was plenty of elbow-room in eternity.

In the afternoon, returning to the grange court to collect some seed he had left stored in the loft, Cadfael encountered Jacob, his scribing done for the moment, setting forth importantly with his own leather satchel into the Foregate, “So he’s left you a parcel to clear for him,” said Cadfael.

“I would gladly have done more,” said Jacob, mildly aggrieved and on his dignity. He looked less than his twenty-five years, well-grown as he was, with that cherubic face. “But he says I’m sure to be slow, not knowing the rounds or the tenants, so he’s let me take only the outlying lanes here in the Foregate, where I can take my time. I daresay he’s right, it will take me longer than I think. I ‘m sorry to see him so worried about his son,” he said, shaking his head. “He has to see to this business with the law, he told me not to worry if he was late returning today. I hope all goes well,” said the loyal subordinate, and set forth sturdily to do his own duty towards his master, however beset he might be by other cares.

Cadfael took his seed back to the garden, put in an hour or so of contented work there, washed his hands, and went to check on the progress of Brother Ambrose, who was just able to croak in his ear, more audibly than yesterday: “I could rise and help poor William such a day for him…!

He was halted there by a large, rough palm. “Lie quiet,” said Cadfael, “like a wise man. Let them see how well they can fend without you, and they’ll value you the better hereafter. And about time, too!” And he fed his captive bird again, and returned to his labours in the garden.

At Vespers, Brother Eutropius came late and in haste, and took his place breathing rapidly, but as impenetrable as ever. And when they emerged to go to supper in the refectory, Jacob of Bouldon was just coming in at the gatehouse with his leather satchel of rents jealously guarded by one hand and looking round hopefully for his master, who had not yet returned. Nor had he some twenty minutes later, when supper was over; but in the gathering dusk Warin Harefoot trudged wearily across the court to the guest-hall, and the pack on his shoulder looked hardly lighter than when he had gone out in the morning.

Madog of the Dead-Boat, in addition to his primary means of livelihood, which was salvaging dead bodies from the River Severn at any season, had a number of seasonal occupations that afforded him sport as well as a living. Of these the one he enjoyed most was fishing, and of all the fishing seasons the one he liked best was the early Spring run up-river of the mature salmon, fine, energetic young males which had arrived early in the estuary, and would run and leap like athletes many miles upstream before they spawned. Madog was expert at taking them, and had had one out of the water this same day, before he paddled his coracle into the thick bushes under the castle’s water-gate, a narrow lane running down from the town, and dropped a lesser line into the river to pick up whatever else offered. Here he was in good, leafy cover, and could stake himself into the bank and lie back to drowse until his line jerked him awake. From above, whether castle ramparts, town wall or upper window, he could not be seen.