Ellis Peters - The Rose Rent

Aunt Agatha Coliar, who had sat a little apart, sewing, bit off her thread, and said in the sweet, indulgent voice she affected sometimes towards the niece who kept her in comfort: “You’ll never rid yourself of him by being too civil. He takes it for encouragement.”

“He has a right to speak his mind,” said Judith indifferently, “and he’s in no doubt about mine. As often as he asks, I can refuse.”

“Oh, my dear soul, I trust you can. He’s not the man for you. Nor none of those youngsters he spoke of, neither. You well know there’s no second in the world for one who’s known joy with the first. Better by far go the leave of the way alone! I still grieve for my own man, after all these years. I could never look at any other, after him.” So she had said, sighing and shaking her head and wiping away a facile tear, a thousand times since she had kept the storehouse and the linen here, and brought her son to help manage the business. “If it had not been for my boy, who was young then to fend for himself, I would have taken the veil that same year that Will died. There’d be no fortune-hunting lads pestering a woman in the cloister. Peace of mind there’d be, there.” She was off upon her best theme, and sometimes seemed almost to forget that she was talking to anyone but herself.

She had been a pretty woman in youth, and still had a round, rosy, comfortable freshness, somewhat contradicted by the alert sharpness of her blue eyes, and the taut smile that visited her mouth very often when it should have been relaxed and easy in repose, as if shrewd thoughts within wore her soft outward seeming like a disguise. Judith could not remember her own mother, and often wondered if there had been much resemblance between the sisters. But these, mother and son, were the only kin she had, and she had taken them in without hesitation. Miles more than earned his keep, for he had shown himself an excellent manager during the long decline of Edred’s health, when Judith had had no thought to spare for anything but her husband and the child to come. She had not had the heart, when she returned to the shop, to take back the reins into her own hands. Though she did her share, and kept a dutiful eye upon everything, she let him continue as master-clothier. So influential a house fared better with a man in the forefront.

“But there,” sighed Agatha, folding her sewing on her spacious lap and dropping a tear on the hem, “I had my duty to do in the world, there was to be no such calm and quiet for me. But you have no chick nor child to cling to you, my poor dear, and nothing now to tie you to the world, if it should please you to leave it. You did speak of it once. Oh, take good thought, do nothing in haste. But should it come to that, there’s nothing to hold you back.”

No, nothing! And sometimes the world did seem to Judith a waste, a tedium, hardly worth keeping. And in a day or two, perhaps tomorrow, Sister Magdalen would be coming from Godric’s Ford, from the forest cell of the abbey of Polesworth, to fetch away Brother Edmund’s niece as a postulant. She could as well take back with her two aspiring novices as one.

Judith was in the spinning room with the women when Sister Magdalen arrived, early the following afternoon. As heiress to the clothier’s business for want of a brother, she had learned all the skills involved, from teasing and carding to the loom and the final cutting of garments, though she found herself much out of practice now at the distaff. The sheaf of carded wool before her was russet-red. Even the dye-stuffs came seasonally, and last summer’s crop of woad for the blues was generally used up by April or May, to be followed by these variations on reds and browns and yellows, which Godfrey Fuller produced from the lichens and madders. He knew his craft. The lengths of cloth he would finally get back for fulling had a clear, fast colour, and fetched good prices.

It was Miles who came looking for her. “You have a visitor,” he said, reaching over Judith’s shoulder to rub a strand of wool from the distaff between finger and thumb, with cautious approval. “There’s a nun from Godric’s Ford sitting in your small chamber, waiting for you. She says they told her at the abbey you’d be glad of a word with her. You’re not still playing with the notion of quitting the world, are you? I thought that nonsense was over.”

“I did tell Brother Cadfael I should like to see her,” said Judith, stilling her spindle. “No more than that. She’s here to fetch a new novice away - the infirmarer’s sister’s girl.”

“Then don’t you be fool enough to offer her a second. Though you do have your follies, as I know,” he said lightly, and clapped her affectionately on the shoulder. “Like giving away for a rose-leaf the best property in the Foregate. Do you intend to cap that by giving away yourself?”

He was two years older than his cousin, and given to playing the elder, full of sage advice, though with a lightness that tempered the image. A young man very neatly and compactly made, strong and lissome, and as good at riding and wrestling and shooting at the butts by the riverside as he was at managing a clothier’s business. He had his mother’s blue, alert eyes and light-brown hair, but none of her blurred complacency. All that was, or seemed, vague and shallow in the mother became clear and decisive in the son. Judith had had good cause to be glad of him, and to rely on his solid good sense in all matters concerning commerce.

“I may do as I please with myself,” she said, rising and laying her spindle down in safety with its cone of russet yarn, “if only I knew what does best please me! But truth to tell, I’m utterly in the dark. All I’ve done is to say I should be glad to talk to her. So I shall. I like Sister Magdalen.”

“So do I,” agreed Miles heartily. “But I should grudge you to her. This house would founder without you.”

“Folly!” said Judith sharply. “You know well enough it could fare as well without me as with me. It’s you who hold up the roof, not I.”

If he disclaimed that, she did not wait to hear, but gave him a sudden reassuring smile and a touch of her hand on his sleeve as she passed, and went to join her guest. Miles had a ruthless honesty, he knew that what she had said was no more than truth, he could have run everything here without her. The sharp reminder pricked her. She was indeed expendable, a woman without purpose here in this world, she might well consider whether there was not a better use for her out of the world. In urging her against it, he had reopened the hollow in her heart, and turned her thoughts again towards the cloister.

Sister Magdalen was sitting on a cushioned bench beside the unshuttered window in Judith’s small private chamber, broad, composed and placid in her black habit. Agatha had brought her fruit and wine, and left her to herself, for she went in some awe of her. Judith sat down beside her visitor.

“Cadfael has told me,” said the nun simply, “what ails you, and what you have confided to him. God forbid I should press you one way or the other, for in the end the decision is yours to make, and no other can make it for you. I am taking into account how grievous your losses have been.”

“I envy you,” said Judith, looking down into her linked hands. “You are kind, and I am sure you are wise and strong. I do not believe I am now any of these things, and it is tempting to lean upon someone who is. Oh, I do live, I do work, I have not abandoned house, or kinsfolk, or duties. Yet all this could as well go on without me. My cousin has just shown me as much by denying it. It would be a most welcome refuge, to have a vocation elsewhere.”

“Which you have not,” said Sister Magdalen shrewdly, “or you could not have said that.” Her sudden smile was like a ray of warmth, and the dimple that darted in and out of her cheek sparkled and was gone.