Ellis Peters: An Excellent Mystery

“They overtook me in the Foregate. And what do you make of them, now you’ve been closeted with them so long?”

“What should I make of them, thus at first sight? A sick man and a dumb man. More to the purpose, what do your brothers make of them?” Hugh had a sharp eye on his old friend’s face, which was blunt and sleepy and private in the late afternoon heat, but was never quite closed against him. “The elder is noble, clearly. Also he is ill. I guess at a martial past, for I think he has old wounds. Did you see he goes a little sidewise, favouring his left flank? Something has never quite healed. And the young one… I well understand he has fallen under the spell of such a man, and idolises him. Lucky for both! He has a powerful protector, his lord has a devoted nurse. Well?” said Hugh, challenging judgement with a confident smile.

“You haven’t yet divined who our new elder brother is? They may not have told you all,” admitted Cadfael tolerantly, “for it came out almost by chance. A martial past, yes, he avowed it, though you could have guessed it no less surely. The man is past forty-five, I judge, and has visible scars. He has said, also, that he was born here at Salton, then a manor of his father’s. And he has a scar on his head, bared by the tonsure, that was made by a Seljuk scimitar, some years back. A mere slice, readily healed, but left its mark. Salton was held formerly by the Bishop of Chester, and granted to the church of Saint Chad, here within the walls. They let it go many years since to a noble family, the Marescots. There’s a local tenant holds it under them.” He opened a levelled brown eye, beneath a bushy brow russet as autumn. “Brother Humilis is a Marescot. I know of only one Marescot of this man’s age who went to the Crusade. Sixteen or seventeen years ago it must be. I was newly monk, then, part of me still hankered, and I had one eye always on the tale of those who took the Cross. As raw and eager as I was, surely, and bound for as bitter a fall, but pure enough in their going. There was a certain Godfrid Marescot who took three score with him from his own lands. He made a notable name for valour.”

“And you think this is he? Thus fallen?”

“Why not? The great ones are open to wounds no less than the simple. All the more,” said Cadfael, “if they lead from before, and not from behind. They say this one was never later than first.”

He had still the crusader blood quick within him, he could not choose but awake and respond, however the truth had sunk below his dreams and hopes, all those years ago. Others, no less, had believed and trusted, no less to shudder and turn aside from much of what was done in the name of the Faith.

“Prior Robert will be running through the tale of the lords of Salton this moment,” said Cadfael, “and will not fail to find his man. He knows the pedigree of every lord of a manor in this shire and beyond, for thirty years back and more. Brother Humilis will have no trouble in establishing himself, he sheds lustre upon us by being here, he need do nothing more.”

“As well,” said Hugh wryly, “for I think there is no more he can do, unless it be to die here, and here be buried. Come, you have a better eye than mine for mortal sickness. The man is on his way out of this world. No haste, but the end is assured.”

“So it is for you and for me,” said Cadfael sharply. “And as for haste, it’s neither you nor I that hold the measure. It will come when it will come. Until then, every day is of consequence, the last no less than the first.”

“So be it!” said Hugh, and smiled, unchidden. “But he’ll come into your hands before many days are out. And what of his youngling, the dumb boy?”

“Nothing of him! Nothing but silence and shrinking into the shadows. Give us time,” said Cadfael, “and we shall learn to know him better.”

A man who has renounced possessions may move freely from one asylum to another, and be no less at home, make do with nothing as well in Shrewsbury as in Hyde Mead. A man who wears what every other man under the same discipline wears need not be noticeable for more than a day. Brother Humilis and Brother Fidelis resumed here in the midlands the same routine they had kept in the south, and the hours of the day enfolded them no less firmly and serenely. Yet Prior Robert had made a satisfactory end of his cogitations concerning the feudal holdings and family genealogies in the shire, and it was very soon made known to all, through his reliable echo, Brother Jerome, that the abbey had acquired a most distinguished son, a crusader of acknowledged valour, who had made a name for himself in the recent contention against the rising Atabeg Zenghi of Mosul, the latest threat to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Prior Robert’s personal ambitions lay all within the cloister, but for all that he missed never a turn of the fortunes of the world without. Four years since, Jerusalem had been shaken to its foundations by the king’s defeat at this Zenghi’s hands, but the kingdom had survived through its alliance with the emirate of Damascus. In that unhappy battle, so Robert made known discreetly, Godfrid Marescot had played a heroic part.

“He has observed every office, and worked steadily every hour set aside for work,” said Brother Edmund the infirmarer, eyeing the new brother across the court as he trod slowly towards the church for Compline, in the radiant stillness and lingering warmth of evening. “And he has not asked for any help of yours or mine. But I wish he had a better colour, and a morsel of flesh more on those long bones. That bronze gone dull, with no blood behind it…”

And there went the faithful shadow after him, young, lissome, with strong, flowing pace, and hand ever advanced a little to prop an elbow, should it flag, or encircle a lean body, should it stagger or fall.

“There goes one who knows it all,” said Cadfael, “and cannot speak. Nor would if he could, without his lord’s permission. A son of one of his tenants, would you say? Something of that kind, surely. The boy is well born and taught. He knows Latin, almost as well as his master.”

On reflection it seemed a liberty to speak of a man as anyone’s master who called himself Humilis, and had renounced the world.

“I had in mind,” said Edmund, but hesitantly, and with reverence, “a natural son. I may be far astray, but it is what came to mind. I take him for a man who would love and protect his seed, and the young one might well love and admire him, for that as for all else.”

And it could well be true. The tall man and the tall youth, a certain likeness, even, in the clear features, insofar, thought Cadfael, as anyone had yet looked directly at the features of young Brother Fidelis, who passed so silently and unobtrusively about the enclave, patiently finding his way in this unfamiliar place. He suffered, perhaps, more than his elder companion in the change, having less confidence and experience, and all the anxiety of youth. He clung to his lodestar, and every motion he made was oriented by its light. They had a shared carrel in the scriptorium, for Brother Humilis had need, only too clearly, of a sedentary occupation, and had proved to have a delicate hand with copying, and artistry in illumination. And since he had limited control after a period of work, and his hand was liable to shake in fine detail, Abbot Radulfus had decreed that Brother Fidelis should be present with him to assist whenever he needed relief. The one hand matched the other as if the one had taught the other, though it might have been only emulation and love. Together, they did slow but admirable work.

“I had never considered,” said Edmund, musing aloud, “how remote and strange a man could be who has no voice, and how hard it is to reach and touch him. I have caught myself talking of him to Brother Humilis, over the lad’s head, and been ashamed-as if he had neither hearing nor wits. I blushed before him. Yet how do you touch hands with such a one? I never had practice in it till now, and I am altogether astray.”