Ellis Peters: Devil's Novice

As for the villein Harald, there was a farrier on the town side of the western bridge willing to take him on, and as soon as the flighty public mind had forgotten him he would be quietly let out to take up honest work there. A year and a day in a charter borough, and he would be a free man.

Unwittingly Cadfael had closed his eyes for a few drowsing moments, leaning well back against his timber wall, with legs stretched out before him and ankles comfortably crossed. Only the momentary chill draught penetrated his half-sleep, and caused him to open his eyes. And they were there before him, standing hand in hand, very gravely smiling, twin images of indulgence to his age and cares, the boy become a man and the girl become what she had always been in the bud, a formidable woman. There was only the glow-worm spark of the dying brazier to light them, but they shone most satisfactorily.

Isouda loosed her playfellow’s hand and came forward to stoop and kiss Cadfael’s furrowed russet cheek.

“Tomorrow early we are going home. There may be no chance then to say farewell properly. But we shall not be far away. Roswitha is staying with Nigel, and will take him home with her when he is well.”

The secret light played on the planes of her face, rounded and soft and strong, and found frets of scarlet in her mane of hair. Roswitha had never been as beautiful as this, the burning heart was wanting.

“We do love you!” said Isouda impulsively, speaking for both after her confident fashion, “You and Brother Mark!” She swooped to cup his sleepy face in her hands for an instant, and quickly withdrew to surrender him generously to Meriet.

He had been out in the frost with her, and the cold had stung high colour into his cheeks. In the warmer air within the hut his dark, thick thatch of hair, still blessedly untonsured, dangled thawing over his brow, and he looked somewhat as Cadfael had first seen him, lighting down in the rain to hold his father’s stirrup, stubborn and dutiful, when those two, so perilously alike, had been at odds over a mortal issue. But the face beneath the damp locks was mature and calm now, even resigned, acknowledging the burden of a weaker brother in need of loyalty. Not for his disastrous acts, but for his poor, faulty flesh and spirit.

“So we’ve lost you,” said Cadfael. “If ever you’d come by choice I should have been glad of you, we can do with a man of action to leaven us. Brother Jerome needs a hand round his over-voluble throat now and again.”

Meriet had the grace to blush and the serenity to smile. “I’ve made my peace with Brother Jerome, very civilly and humbly, you would have approved. I hope you would! He wished me well, and said he would continue to pray for me.”

“Did he, indeed!” In one who might grudgingly forgive an injury to his person, but seldom one to his dignity, that was handsome, and should be reckoned as credit to Jerome. Or was it simply that he was heartily glad to see the back of the devil’s novice, and giving devout thanks after his own fashion?

“I was very young and foolish,” said Meriet, with a sage’s indulgence for the green boy he had been, hugging to his grieving heart the keepsake of a girl he would live to hear unload upon him shamelessly the guilt of murder and theft. “Do you remember,” asked Meriet, “the few times I ever called you “brother”? I was trying hard to get into the way of it. But it was not what I felt, or what I wanted to say. And now in the end it seems it’s Mark I shall have to call “father”, though he’s the one I shall always think of as a brother. I was in need of fathering, more ways than one. This once, will you let me so claim and so call you as… as I would have liked to then…?”

“Son Meriet,” said Cadfael, rising heartily to embrace him and plant the formal kiss of kinship resoundingly on a cheek frostily cool and smooth, “you’re of my kin and welcome to whatsoever I have whenever you may need it. And bear in mind, I’m Welsh, and that’s a lifelong tie. There, are you satisfied?”

His kiss was returned, very solemnly and fervently, by cold lips that burned into ardent heat as they touched. But Meriet had yet one more request to make, and clung to Cadfael’s hand as he advanced it.

“And will you, while he’s here, extend the same goodness to my brother? For his need is greater than mine ever was.”

Withdrawn discreetly into shadow, Cadfael thought he heard Isouda utter a brief, soft spurt of laughter, and after it heave a resigned sigh; but if so, both escaped Meriet’s ears.

“Child,” said Cadfael, shaking his head over such obstinate devotion, but very complacently, “you are either an idiot or a saint, and I am not in the mood at present to have much patience with either. But for the sake of peace, yes, I will, I will! What I can do, I’ll do. There, be off with you! Take him away, girl, and let me put out the brazier and shut up my workshop or I shall be late for Compline!”