Ellis Peters - The Raven in the Foregate

Cadfael went out into the garden with him. Benet was just coming up over the far rim of the rose garden, where the ground sloped away to the pease fields and the brook. He was whistling jauntily as he came, and swinging an axe lightly in one hand, for a little earlier he had been breaking the ice on the fish ponds, to let air through to the denizens below.

“What did you say, Hugh, was the christened name of this young man Bachiler you’re supposed to be hunting?”

“Ninian or so he’s reported.”

“Ah, yes!” said Cadfael. “That was it—Ninian.”

Benet came back into the garden after his dinner with the lay servants, and looked about him somewhat doubtfully, kicking at the hard-frozen ground he had recently dug, and viewing the clipped hedges now silvered with rime that lasted day-long and increased by a fresh frilling of white every night. Every branch that stirred tinkled like glass. Every clod was solid as stone.

“What is there for me to do?” he demanded, tramping into Cadfael’s workshop. “This frost halts everything. No man could plough or dig, a day like this. Let alone copy letters,” he added, round eyed at the thought of the numb fingers in the scriptorium trying to line in a capital with precious gold-leaf, or even write an unshaken line. “They’re still at it, poor wretches. At least there’s some warmth in handling a spade or an axe. Can I split you some wood for the brazier? Lucky for us you need the fire for your brews, or we should be as blue and stiff as the scribes.”

“They’ll have lighted the fire in the warming room early, a day like this,” said Cadfael placidly, “and when they can no longer hold pen or brush steady they have leave to stop work. You’ve done all the digging within the walls here, and the pruning’s finished, no need to feel guilty if you sit idle for once. Or you can take a turn at these mysteries of mine if you care to. Nothing learned is ever quite wasted.”

Benet was ready enough to try his hand at anything. He came close, to peer curiously at what Cadfael was stirring in a stone pot on a grid on the side of the brazier. Here in their shared solitude he was quite easy, and had lost the passing disquiet and dismay that had dimmed his brightness on Christmas Day. Men die, and thinking men see a morsel of their own death in every one that draws close to them, but the young soon recover. And what was Father Ailnoth to Benet, after all? If he had done him a kindness in letting him come here with his aunt, the priest had none the less had the benefit of the boy’s willing service on the journey, a fair exchange.

“Did you visit Mistress Hammet last evening?” asked Cadfael, recalling another possible source of concern. “How is she now?”

“Still bruised and shaken,” said Benet, “but she has a stout spirit, she’ll do well enough.”

“She hasn’t been greatly worried by the sergeants? Hugh Beringar is home now, and he’ll want to hear everything from her own lips, but she need not trouble for that. Hugh has been told how it was, she need only repeat it to him.”

“They’ve been civility itself with her,” said Benet. “What is this you’re making?”

It was a large pot, and a goodly quantity of aromatic brown syrup bubbling gently in it. “A mixture for coughs and colds,” said Cadfael. “We shall be needing it any day now, and plenty of it, too.”

“What goes into it?”

“A great many things. Bay and mint, coltsfoot, horehound, mullein, mustard, poppy—good for the throat and the chest—and a small draught of the strong liquor I distil does no harm in such cases, either. But if you want work, here, lift out that big mortar… yes, there! Those frost-gnawed hands you were pitying, we’ll make something for those.”

The chilblains of winter were always a seasonal enemy, and an extra batch of ointment for treating them could not come amiss. He began to issue orders briskly, pointing out the herbs he wanted, making Benet climb for some, and move hastily up and down the hanging bunches for others. The boy took pleasure in this novel entertainment, and jumped to obey every crisp command.

“The small scale, there, at the back of the shelf—fetch that out, and while you’re in the corner there, the little weights are in the box beside. Oh, and, Ninian…” said Cadfael, sweet and calm and guileless as ever.

The boy, interested and off his guard, halted and swung about in response to his name, waiting with a willing smile to hear what next he should bring. And on the instant he froze where he stood, the serene brightness still visible on a face turned to marble, the smile fixed and empty. For a long moment they contemplated each other eye to eye, Cadfael also smiling, then warm blood flushed into Benet’s face and he stirred out of his stillness, and the smile, wary as it was, became live and young again. The silence endured longer, but it was the boy who broke it at last.

“Now what should happen? Am I supposed to overturn the brazier, set the hut on fire, rush out and bar the door on you, and run for my life?”

“Hardly,” said Cadfael, “unless that’s what you want. It would scarcely suit me. It would become you better to put that scale down on the level slab there, and pay attention to what you and I are about. And while you’re at it, that jar by the shutter is hog’s fat, bring that out, too.”

Benet did so, with admirable calm now, and turned a wryly smiling face. “How did you know? How did you know even my name?” He was making no further pretence at secrecy, he had even relaxed into a measure of perverse enjoyment.

“Son, the story of your invasion of this realm, along with another mad-head as reckless as yourself, seems to be common currency by this time, and the whole land knows you are supposed to have fled northwards from regions where you were far too hotly hunted for comfort. Hugh Beringar got his orders to keep an eye open for you, at the feast in Canterbury. King Stephen’s blood is up, and until it cools your liberty is not worth a penny if his officers catch up with you. For I take it,” he said mildly,”that you are Ninian Bachiler?”

“I am. But how did you know?”

“Why, once I heard that there was a certain Ninian lost somewhere in these midland counties, it was not so hard. Once you all but told me yourself. “What’s your name?” I asked you, and you began to say “Ninian”, and then caught yourself up and changed it to a clownish echo of the question, before you got out “Benet”. And oh, my child, how soon you gave over pretending with me that you were a simple country groom. Never had a spade in your hand before! No, I swear you never had, though I grant you you learn very quickly. And your speech, and your hands—No, never blush or look mortified, it was not so obvious, it simply added together grain by grain. And besides, you stopped counting me as someone to be deceived. You may as well admit it.”

“It seemed unworthy,” said the boy, and scowled briefly at the beaten earth floor. “Or useless, perhaps! I don’t know! What are you going to do with me now? If you try to give me up, I warn you I’ll do all I can to break away. But I won’t do it by laying hand on you. We’ve been friendly together.”

“As well for both you and me,” said Cadfael, smiling, “for you might find you’d met your match. And who said I had any notion of giving you up? I am neither King Stephen’s partisan nor the Empress Maud’s, and whoever serves either of them honestly and at risk to himself may go about his business freely for me. But you may as well tell me what that business is. Without implicating any other, of course. I take it, for instance, that Mistress Hammet is not your aunt?”

“No,” said Ninian slowly, his eyes intent and earnest on Cadfael’s face. “You will respect her part in this? She was in my mother’s service before she married the bishop’s groom. She was my nurse when I was a child. When I was in flight I went to her for help. It was thoughtless, and I wish it could be undone, but believe it, whatever she has done has been done in pure affection for me, and what I’ve been about is nothing to do with her. She got me these clothes I wear—mine had been living rough in the woods and in and out of rivers, but they still marked me for what I am. And it was of her own will that she asked leave to bring me here with her as her nephew, when Father Ailnoth got this preferment. To get me away from the hunters. She had asked and been given his leave before ever I knew of it, I could not avoid. And it did come as a blessing to me, I own it.”