Ellis Peters: The Raven in the Foregate

“Ah, yes, the young man Benet,” said the abbot. “He seems a well-conditioned youth, I agree. Certainly he may come, upon probation, no doubt work can be found for him. There must be a deal of things to be done about the grange court, or in the gardens…”

“Indeed there is, Father,” Cadfael spoke up heartily. “I could make good use of a younger pair of hands, there’s much of the rough digging for the winter still to be done, some of the ground in the kitchen garden has only now been cleared. And the pruning in the orchard—heavy work. With the winter coming on, short days, and Brother Oswin gone to Saint Giles, to the hospice, I shall be needing a helper. I should shortly have been asking for another brother to come and work with me, as is usual, though through the summer I’ve managed well enough.”

“True! And some of the ploughing in the Gaye remains to be done, and around Christmas, or soon after, the lambing will begin in the hill granges, if the young man is no longer needed here. Yes, by all means send Benet to us. Should he later find other employment more to his advantage, he may take it with our goodwill. In the meantime hard labour here for us will do him no harm.”

“I will tell him so,” said Ailnoth, “and he will be as thankful to you as I am. His aunt would have been sad at leaving him behind, seeing he is the only younger kinsman she has, to be helpful to her. Shall I send him here today?”

“Do so, and tell him he may ask at the gatehouse for Brother Cadfael. Leave us now to confer, Father,” said the abbot, “but wait in the cloister, and Father Prior will bring you word of our decision.”

Ailnoth bowed his head with measured reverence, withdrew a respectful pace or two backwards from the abbot’s presence, and strode out of the chapter house, his black, handsome head erect and confident. His gown swung like half-spread wings to the vigour of his stride. He was already sure, as was everyone present, that the cure of Holy Cross was his.

“It went much as you have probably supposed,” said Abbot Radulfus, somewhat later in the day, in the parlour of his own lodging, with a modest fire burning on the chimney stone, and Hugh Beringar seated opposite him across the glow. The abbot’s face was still a little drawn and grey with tiredness, his deep-set eyes a little hollow. The two knew each other very well by this time, and had grown accustomed to sharing with complete confidence, for the sake of order and England, whatever they gathered of events and tendencies, without ever questioning whether they shared the same opinions. Their disciplines were separate and very different, but their acceptance of service was one, and mutually recognised.

“The bishop had little choice,” said Hugh simply. “Virtually none, now the King is again free, and the Empress again driven into the west, with little foothold in the rest of England. I would not have wished myself in his shoes, nor do I know how I would have handled his difficulties. Let him who is certain of his own valour cast blame, I cannot.”

“Nor I. But for all that can be said, the spectacle is not edifying. There are, after all, some who have never wavered, whether fortune favoured or flayed them. But it is truth that the legate had received the Pope’s letter, which he read out to us in conference, reproving him for not enforcing the release of the King, and urging him to insist upon it above all else. And who dares wonder if he made the most of it? And besides, the King came there himself. He entered the hall and made formal complaint against all those who had sworn fealty to him, and then suffered him to lie in prison, and come near to slaying him.”

“But then sat back and let his brother use his eloquence to worm his way out of the reproach,” said Hugh, and smiled. “He has the advantage of his cousin and rival, he knows when to mellow and forget. She neither forgets nor forgives.”

“Well, true. But it was not a happy thing to hear. Bishop Henry made his defence, frankly owning he had had no choice open to him but to accept the fortune as it fell, and receive the Empress. He said he had done what seemed the best and only thing, but that she had broken all her pledges, outraged all her subjects, and made war against his own life. And to conclude, he pledged the Church again to King Stephen, and urged all men of consequence and goodwill to serve him. He took some credit,” said Abbot Radulfus with sad deliberation, “for the liberation of the King to himself. And outlawed from the Church all those who continued to oppose him.”

“And mentioned the Empress, or so I’ve heard,” said Hugh equally drily, “as the countess of Anjou.” It was a title the Empress detested, as belittling both her birth and her rank by her first marriage, a king’s daughter and the widow of an emperor, now reduced to a title borrowed from her none-too-loved and none-too-loving second husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, her inferior in every particular but talent, common sense and efficiency. All he had ever done for Maud was give her a son. Of the love she bore to the boy Henry there was no doubt at all.

“No one raised a voice against what was said,” the abbot mentioned almost absently. “Except an envoy from the lady, who fared no better than the one who spoke, last time, for King Stephen’s queen. Though this one, at least, was not set upon by assassins in the street.”

Inevitably those two legatine councils, one in April, one in December, had been exact and chilling mirror-images, fortune turning her face now to one faction, now to the other, and taking back with the left hand what she had given with the right. There might yet be as many further reversals before ever there was an end in sight.

“We are back where we began,” said the abbot, “and nothing to show for months of misery. And what will the King do now?”

“That I shall hope to find out during the Christmas feast,” said Hugh, rising to take his leave. “For I’m summoned to my lord, Father, like you. King Stephen wants all his sheriffs about him at his court at Canterbury, where he keeps the feast, to render account of our stewardships. Me among them, as his sheriff here for want of a better. What he’ll do with his freedom remains to be seen. They say he’s in good health and resolute spirits, if that means anything. As for what he means to do with me—well, that, no doubt, I shall discover, in due time.”

“My son, I trust he’ll have the good sense to leave well alone. For here,” said Radulfus, “we have at least preserved what good we can, and by the present measure in this unhappy realm, it is well with this shire. But I doubt whatever he does else can only mean more fighting and more wretchedness for England. And you and I can do nothing to prevent or better it.”

“Well, if we cannot give England peace,” said Hugh, smiling somewhat wryly, “at least let’s see what you and I can do between us for Shrewsbury.”

After dinner in the refectory Brother Cadfael made his way across the great court, rounded the thick, dark mass of the box hedge—grown straggly now, he noted, and ripe for a final clipping before growth ceased in the cold—and entered the moist flower gardens, where leggy roses balanced at a man’s height on their thin, leafless stems, and still glowed with invincible light and life. Beyond lay his herb garden, walled and silent, all its small, square beds already falling asleep, naked spears of mint left standing stiff as wire, cushions of thyme flattened to the ground, crouching to protect their remaining leaves, yet over all a faint surviving fragrance of the summer’s spices. Partly a memory, perhaps, partly drifting out from the open door of his workshop, where bunches of dried herbs swung from the eaves and the beams within, but surely, also, still emanating from these drowsy minor manifestations of God, grown old and tired now only to grow young and vigorous again with the spring. Green phoenixes every one, visible proof, if any were needed, of perpetual life.