Ellis Peters - The Devil's Novice

“Yes my lord, the same.” He moistened his lips and kept his eyes lowered, but for one spark of a glance for the horse; he did not ask anything.

“Was that the only occasion when you had to do with him? He comes to you readily. Fondle him if you will, he’s asking for your recognition.”

“It was I stabled and groomed and tended him, that night,” said Meriet, low-voiced and hesitant. “And I saddled him in the morning. I never had his like to care for until then. I… I am good with horses.”

“So I see. Then you have also handled his gear.” It had been rich and fine, the saddle inlaid with coloured leathers, the bridle ornamented with silver-work now dinted and soiled. “All this you recognise?”

Meriet said: “Yes. This was his.” And at last he did ask, almost fearfully: “Where did you find Barbary?”

“Was that his name? His master told you? A matter of twenty miles and more north of here, on the peat-hags near Whitchurch. Very well, young sir, that’s all I need from you. You can go back to your duties now.”

Round the water-troughs in the lavatorium, over their ablutions, Meriet’s fellows were making the most of his absence. Those who went in dread of him as a soul possessed, those who resented his holding himself apart, those who felt his silence to be nothing short of disdain for them, all raised their voices clamorously to air their collective grievance. Prior Robert was not there, but his clerk and shadow, Brother Jerome, was, and with ears pricked and willing to listen.

“Brother, you heard him yourself! He cried out again in the night, he awoke us all…”

“He howled for his familiar. I heard the demon’s name, he called him Barbary! And his devil whistled back to him… we all know it’s devils that hiss and whistle!”

“He’s brought an evil spirit in among us, we’re not safe for our lives. And we get no rest at night… Brother, truly, we’re afraid!”

Cadfael, tugging a comb through the thick bush of grizzled hair ringing his nut-brown dome, was in two minds about intervening, but thought better of it. Let them pour out everything they had stored up against the lad, and it might be seen more plainly how little it was. Some genuine superstitious fear they certainly suffered, such night alarms do shake simple minds. If they were silenced now they would only store up their resentment to breed in secret. Out with it all, and the air might clear. So he held his peace, but he kept his ears pricked.

“It shall be brought up again in chapter,” promised Brother Jerome, who thrived on being the prime channel of appeal to the prior’s ears. “Measures will surely be taken to secure rest at nights. If necessary, the disturber of the peace must be segregated.”

“But, brother,” bleated Meriet’s nearest neighbour in the dortoir, “if he’s set apart in a separate cell, with no one to watch him, who knows what he may not get up to? He’ll have greater freedom there, and I dread his devil will thrive all the more and take hold on others. He could bring down the roof upon us or set fire to the cellars under us…”

“That is want of trust in divine providence,” said Brother Jerome, and fingered the cross on his breast as he said it. “Brother Meriet has caused great trouble, I grant, but to say that he is possessed of the devil—“

“But, brother, it’s true! He has a talisman from his demon, he hides it in his bed. I know! I’ve seen him slip some small thing under his blanket, out of sight, when I looked in upon him in his cell. All I wanted was to ask him a line in the psalm, for you know he’s learned, and he had something in his hand, and slipped it away very quickly, and stood between me and the bed, and wouldn’t let me in further. He looked black as thunder at me, brother, I was afraid! But I’ve watched since. It’s true, I swear, he has a charm hidden there, and at night he takes it to him to his bed. Surely this is the symbol of his familiar, and it will bring evil on us all!”

“I cannot believe…” began Brother Jerome, and broke off there, reconsidering the scope of his own credulity. “You have seen this? In his bed, you say? Some alien thing hidden away? That is not according to the Rule.” For what should there be in a dortoir cell but cot and stool, a small desk for reading, and the books for study? These, and the privacy and quiet which can exist only by virtue of mutual consideration, since mere token partitions of wainscot separate cell from cell. “A novice entering here must give up all wordly possessions,” said Jerome, squaring his meagre shoulders and scenting a genuine infringement of the approved order of things. Grist to his mill! Nothing he loved better than an occasion for admonition. “I shall speak to Brother Meriet about this.”

Half a dozen voices, encouraged, urged him to more immediate action. “Brother, go now, while he’s away, and see if I have not told you truth! If you take away his charm the demon will have no more power over him.”

“And we shall have quiet again…”

“Come with me!” said Brother Jerome heroically, making up his mind. And before Cadfael could stir, Jerome was off, out of the lavatorium and surging towards the dortoir stairs, with a flurry of novices hard on his heels.

Cadfael went after them hunched with resigned disgust, but not foreseeing any great urgency. The boy was safely out of this, hobnobbing with Hugh in the stables, and of course they would find nothing in his cell to give them any further hold on him, malice being a great stimulator of the imagination. The flat disappointment might bring them down to earth. So he hoped! But for all that, he made haste on the stairs.

But someone else was in an even greater hurry. Light feet beat a sharp drum-roll on the wooden treads at Cadfael’s back, and an impetuous body overtook him in the doorway of the long dortoir, and swept him several yards down the tiled corridor between the cells. Meriet thrust past with long, indignant strides, his habit flying.

“I heard you! I heard you! Let my things alone!”

Where was the low, submissive voice now, the modestly lowered eyes and folded hands? This was a furious young lordling peremptorily ordering hands off his possessions, and homing on the offenders with fists clenched and eyes flashing. Cadfael, thrust off-balance for a moment, made a grab at a flying sleeve, but only to be dragged along in Meriet’s wake.

The covey of awed, inquisitive novices gathered round the opening of Meriet’s cell, heads thrust cautiously within and rusty black rumps protruding without, whirled in alarm at hearing this angry apparition bearing down on them, and broke away with agitated clucking like so many flurried hens. In the very threshold of his small domain Meriet came nose to nose with Brother Jerome emerging.

On the face of it it was a very uneven confrontation: a mere postulant of a month or so, and one who had already given trouble and been cautioned, facing a man in authority, the prior’s right hand, a cleric and confessor, one of the two appointed for the novices. The check did give Meriet pause for one moment, and Cadfael leaned to his ear to whisper breathlessly: “Hold back, you fool! He’ll have your hide!” He might have saved the breath of which he was short, for Meriet did not even hear him. The moment when he might have come to his senses was already past, for his eye had fallen on the small, bright thing Jerome dangled before him from outraged fingers, as though it were unclean. The boy’s face blanched, not with the pallor of fear, but the blinding whiteness of pure anger, every line of bone in a strongly-boned countenance chiselled in ice.

“That is mine,” he said with soft and deadly authority, and held out his hand. “Give it to me!”