The Potter's Field

Chapter Four

ON THE EIGHTH day of October the morning began in a grey drizzle, hardly perceptible on the face, but wetting after a while. The working folk of the Foregate went about their business hooded in sacking, and the young man trudging along the highway past the horse-fair ground had his cowl grawn well forward over his forehead, and looked very much like any other of those obliged to go out this labouring morning despite the weather. The fact that he wore the Benedictine habit excited no attention. He was taken for one of the resident brothers on some errand between the abbey and Saint Giles, and on his way back to be in time for High Mass and chapter. He had a long stride, but trod as though his sandalled feet were sore, as well as muddy, and his habit was kilted almost to the knee, uncovering muscular, well-shaped legs, smooth and young, mired to the ankles. It seemed he must have walked somewhat further than to the hospital and back, and on somewhat less frequented and seemly roads than the Foregate.

He was moderately tall, but slender and angular in the manner of youth still not quite accomplished in the management of a man’s body, as yearling colts are angular and springy, and to see such a youngster putting his feet down resolutely but tenderly, and thrusting forward with effort, struck Brother Cadfael as curious. He had looked back from the turn of the path into the garden on his way to his workshop, just as the young man turned in at the gatehouse wicket, and his eye was caught by the gait before he noticed anything else about the newcomer. Belated curiosity made him take a second glance, in time to observe that the man entering, though manifestly a brother, had halted to speak to the porter, in the manner of a stranger making civil enquiry after someone in authority. Not a brother of this house, seemingly. And now that Cadfael was paying attention, not one that he knew. One rusty black habit is much like another, especially with the cowl drawn close against the rain, but Cadfael could have identified every member of this extensive household, choir monk, novice, steward or postulant, at greater distance than across the court, and this lad was none of them. Not that there was anything strange in that, since a brother of another house in the Order might very well be sent on some legitimate business here to Shrewsbury. But there was something about this visitor that set him apart. He came on foot: official envoys from house to house more often rode. And he had come on foot a considerable distance, to judge by his appearance, shabby, footsore and weary.

It was not altogether Cadfael’s besetting sin of curiosity that made him abandon his immediate intent and cross the great court to the gatehouse. It was almost time to get ready for Mass, and because of the rain everyone who must venture out did so as briefly and quickly as possible and scurried back to shelter, so that there was no one else visible at this moment to volunteer to bear messages or escort petitioners. But it must be admitted that curiosity also had its part. He approached the pair at the gate with a bright eye and a ready tongue. ‘You need a messenger, Brother? Can I serve?’ ‘Our brother here says he’s instructed,’ said the porter,’to report himself first to the lord abbot, in accordance with his own abbot’s orders. He has matter to report, before he can take any rest.’

‘Abbot Radulfus is still in his lodging,’ said Cadfael, ‘for I left him there only a short while since. Shall I be your herald? He was alone. If it’s so grave he’ll surely see you at once.’

The young man put back the wet cowl from his head, and shook the drops that had slowly penetrated it from a tonsure growing somewhat long for conformity, and a crown covered with a strange fuzz of new growth, curly and of a dark, brownish gold. Yes, he had certainly been a long time on the way, pressing forward doggedly on foot from that distant cloister of his, wherever it might be. His face was oval, tapering slightly from a wide brow and wide-set eyes to a stubborn, probing jaw, covered at this moment by a fine golden down to match his unshaven crown. Weary and footsore he might be, but his long walk seemed to have done him no harm otherwise, for his cheeks had a healthy flush, and his eyes were of clear, light blue, and confronted Cadfael with a bright, unwavering gaze.

‘I shall be glad if he will,’ he said, ‘for I do need to get rid of the dirt of travel, but I’m charged to unburden to him first, and must do as I’m bid. And yes, it’s grave enough for the Order—and for me, though that’s of small account,’ he added, shrugging off with the moisture of his cowl and scapular the present consideration of his own problems.

‘He may not think it so,’ said Cadfael. ‘But come, and we’ll put it to the test.’ And he led the way briskly down the great court towards the abbot’s lodging, leaving the porter to retire into the comfort of his own lodge, out of the clinging rain.

‘How long have you been on the road?’ asked Cadfael of the young man limping at his elbow.

‘Seven days.’ His voice was low-pitched and clear, and matched every other evidence of his youth. Cadfael judged he could not yet be past twenty, perhaps not even so much.

‘Sent out alone on so long an errand?’ said Cadfael, marvelling.

‘Brother, we are all sent out, scattered. Pardon me if I keep what I have to say, to deliver first to the lord abbot. I would as soon tell it only once, and leave all things in his hands.’

‘That you may do with confidence,’ Cadfael assured him, and asked nothing further. The implication of crisis was there in the words, and the first note of desperation, quietly constrained, in the young voice. At the door of the abbot’s lodging Cadfael let them both in without ceremony into the anteroom, and knocked at the half-open parlour door. The abbot’s voice, preoccupied and absent, bade him enter. Radulfus had a folder of documents before him, and a long forefinger keeping his place, and looked up only briefly to see who entered.

‘Father, there is here a young brother, from a distant house of our Order, come with orders from his own abbot to report himself to you, and with what seems to be grave news. He is here at the door. May I admit him?’

Radulfus looked up with a lingering frown, abandoning whatever had been occupying him, and gave his full attention to this unexpected delivery.

‘From what distant house?’

‘I have not asked,’ said Cadfael, ‘and he has not said. His instructions are to deliver all to you. But he has been on the road seven days to reach us.’

‘Bring him in,’ said the abbot, and pushed his parchments aside on the desk.

The young man came in, made a deep reverence to authority, and as though some seal on his mind and tongue had been broken, drew a great breath and suddenly poured out words, crowding and tumbling like a gush of blood.

‘Father, I am the bearer of very ill news from the abbey of Ramsey. Father, in Essex and the Fens men are become devils. Geoffrey de Mandeville has seized our abbey to be his fortress, and cast us out, like beggars on to the roads, those of us who still live. Ramsey Abbey is become a den of thieves and murderers.’

He had not even waited to be given leave to speak, or to allow his news to be conveyed by orderly question and answer, and Cadfael had barely begun to close the door upon the pair of them, admittedly slowly and with pricked ears, when the abbot’s voice cut sharply through the boy’s breathless utterance.

‘Wait! Stay with us, Cadfael. I may need a messenger in haste.’ And to the boy he said crisply: ‘Draw breath, my son. Sit down, take thought before you speak, and let me hear a plain tale. After seven days, these few minutes will scarcely signify. Now, first, we here have had no word of this until now. If you have been so long afoot reaching us, I marvel it has not been brought to the sheriff’s ears with better speed. Are you the first to come alive out of this assault?’

The boy submitted, quivering, to the hand Cadfael laid on his shoulder, and subsided obediently on to the bench against the wall. ‘Father, I had great trouble in getting clear of de Mandeville’s lines, and so would any other envoy have. In particular a man on horseback, such as might be sent to take the word to the king’s sheriffs, would hardly get through alive. They are taking every horse, every beast, every bow or sword, from three shires, a mounted man would bring them down on him like wolves. I may well be the first, having nothing on me worth the trouble of killing me for it. Hugh Beringar may not know yet.’

The simple use of Hugh’s name startled both Cadfael and Radulfus. The abbot turned sharply to take a longer look at the young face confidingly raised to his. ‘You know the lord sheriff here? How is that?’

‘It is the reason—it is one reason—why I am sent here, Father. I am native here. My name is Sulien Blount. My brother is lord of Longner. You will never have seen me, but Hugh Beringar knows my family well.’

So this, thought Cadfael, enlightened, and studying the boy afresh from head to foot, this is the younger brother who chose to enter the Benedictine Order just over a year ago, and went off to become a novice at Ramsey in late September, about the time his father made over the Potter’s Field to Haughmond Abbey. Now why, I wonder, did he choose the Benedictines rather than his family’s favourite Augustinians? He could as well have gone with the field, and lived quietly and peacefully among the canons of Haughmond. Still, reflected Cadfael, looking down upon the young man’s tonsure, with its new fuzz of dark gold within the ring of damp brown hair, should I quarrel with a preference that flatters my own choice? He liked the moderation and good sense of human kindliness of Saint Benedict, as I did. It was a little disconcerting that this comfortable reflection should only raise other and equally pertinent questions. Why all the way to Ramsey? Why not here in Shrewsbury?

‘Hugh Beringar shall know from me, without delay,’ said the abbot reassuringly, ‘all that you can tell me. You say de Mandeville has seized Ramsey. When did this happen? And how?’

Sulien moistened his lips and put together, sensibly and calmly enough, the picture he had carried in his mind for seven days.

‘It was the ninth day back from today. We knew, as all that countryside knew, that the earl had returned to lands which formerly were his own, and gathered together those who had served him in the past and all those living wild, or at odds with law, willing to serve him now in his exile. But we did not know where his forces were, and had no warning of any intent towards us. You know that Ramsey is almost an island, with only one causeway dryshod into it? It is why it was first favoured as a place of retirement from the world.’

‘And undoubtedly the reason why the earl coveted it,’ said Radulfus grimly. ‘Yes, that we knew.’

‘But what need had we ever had to guard that causeway? And how could we, being brothers, guard it in arms even if we had known? They came in thousands,’ said Sulien, clearly considering what he said of numbers, and meaning his words, ‘crossed and took possession. They drove us out into the court and out from the gate, seizing everything we had but our habits. Some part of our enclave they fired. Some of us who showed defiance, though without violence, they beat or killed. Some who lingered in the neighbourhood though outside the island, they shot at with arrows. They have turned our house into a den of bandits and torturers, and filled it with weapons and armed men, and from that stronghold they go forth to rob and pillage and slay. No one for miles around has the means to till his fields or keep anything of value in his house. This is how it happened, Father, and I saw it happen.’

‘And your abbot?’ asked Radulfus.

‘Abbot Walter is a valiant man indeed, Father. The next day he went alone into their camp and laid about him with a brand out of their fire, burning some of their tents. He has pronounced excommunication against them all, and the marvel is they did not kill him, but only mocked him and let him go unharmed. De Mandeville has seized all those of the abbey’s manors that lie near at hand, and given them to his fellows to garrison, but some that lie further afield he has left unmolested, and Abbot Walter has taken most of the brothers to refuge there. I left him safe when I broke through as far as Peterborough. That town is not yet threatened.’

‘How came it that he did not take you also with him?’ the abbot questioned. ‘That he would send out word to any of the king’s liegemen I well understand, but why to this shire in particular?’

‘I have told it everywhere as I came, Father. But my abbot sent me here to you for my own sake, for I have a trouble of my own. I had taken it to him, in duty bound,’ said Sulien, with hesitant voice and lowered gaze, ‘and since this disruption fell upon us before it could be resolved, he sent me here to submit myself and my burden to you, and take from you counsel or penance or absolution, whatever you may judge my due.’

Then that is between us two,’ said the abbot briskly, ‘and can wait. Tell me whatever more you can concerning the scope of this terror in the Fens. We knew of Cambridge, but if the man now has a safe base in Ramsey, what places besides may be in peril?’

‘He is but newly installed,’ said Sulien, ‘and the villages nearby have been the first to suffer. There is no cottage too mean but they will wring some tribute out of the tenant, or take life or limb if he has nothing besides. But I do know that Abbot Walter feared for Ely, being so rich a prize, and in country the earl knows so well. He will stay among the waters, where no army can bring him to battle.’

This judgement was given with a lift of the head and a glint of the eye that bespoke rather the apprentice to arms than the monastic novice. Radulfus had observed it, too, and exchanged a long, mute glance with Cadfael over the young man’s shoulder.

‘So, we have it! If that is all you can furnish, let’s see it fully delivered to Hugh Beringar at once. Cadfael, will you see that done? Leave Brother Sulien here with me, and send Brother Paul to us. Take a horse, and come back to us here when you return.’

Brother Paul, master of the novices, delivered Sulien again to the abbot’s parlour in a little over half an hour, a different youth, washed clean of the muck of the roads, shaven, in a dry habit, his hair, if not yet properly trimmed of its rebellious down of curls, brushed into neatness. He folded his hands submissively before the abbot, with every mark of humility and reverence, but always with the same straight, confident stare of the clear blue eyes.

‘Leave us, Paul,’ said Radulfus. And to the boy, after the door had closed softly on Paul’s departure: ‘Have you broken your fast? It will be a while yet before the meal in the frater, and I think you have not eaten today.’

‘No, Father, I set out before dawn. Brother Paul has given me bread and ale. I am grateful.’

‘We are come, then, to whatever it may be that troubles you. There is no need to stand, I would rather you felt at ease, and able to speak freely. As you would with Abbot Walter, so speak with me.’

Sulien sat, submissive of orders, but still stiff within his own youthful body, unable quite to surrender from the heart what he offered ardently in word and form. He sat with straight back and eyes lowered now, and his linked fingers were white at the knuckles.

‘Father, it was late September of last year when I entered Ramsey as a postulant. I have tried to deliver faithfully what I promised, but there have been troubles I never foresaw, and things asked of me that I never thought to have to face. After I left my home, my father went to join the king’s forces, and was with him at Wilton. It may be all this is already known to you, how he died there with the rearguard, protecting the king’s retreat. It fell to me to go and redeem his body and bring him home for burial, last March. I had leave from my abbot, and I returned strictly to my day. But

It is hard to have two homes, when the first is not yet quite relinquished, and the second not yet quite accepted, and then to be forced to make the double journey over again. And lately there have also been contentions at Ramsey that have torn us apart. For a time Abbot Walter gave up his office to Brother Daniel, who was no way fit to step into his sandals. That is resolved now, but it was disruption and distress. Now my year of novitiate draws to an end, and I know neither what to do, nor what I want to do. I asked my abbot for more time, before I take my final vows. When this disaster fell upon us, he thought it best to send me here, to my brothers of the order here in Shrewsbury. And here I submit myself to your rule and guidance, until I can see my way before me plain.’

‘You are no longer sure of your vocation,’ said the abbot.

‘No, Father, I am no longer sure. I am blown by two conflicting winds.’

‘Abbot Walter has not made it simpler for you,’ remarked Radulfus, frowning. ‘He has sent you where you stand all the more exposed to both.’

‘Father, I believe he thought it only fair. My home is here, but he did not say: Go home. He sent me where I may still be within the discipline I chose, and yet feel the strong pull of place and family. Why should it be made simple for me,’ said Sulien, suddenly raising his wide blue stare, unwaveringly gallant and deeply troubled,’so the answer at the end is the right one? But I cannot come to any decision, because the very act of looking back makes me ashamed.’

‘There is no need,’ said Radulfus. ‘You are not the first, and will not be the last, to look back, nor the first nor the last to turn back, if that is what you choose. Every man has within him only one life and one nature to give to the service of God, and if there was but one way of doing that, celibate within the cloister, procreation and birth would cease, the world would be depeopled, and neither within nor without the Church would God receive worship. It behoves a man to look within himself, and turn to the best dedication possible those endowments he has from his Maker. You do no wrong in questioning what once you held to be right for you, if now it has come to seem wrong. Put away all thought of being bound. We do not want you bound. No one who is not free can give freely.’

The young man fronted him earnestly in silence for some moments, eyes as limpidly light as harebells, lips very firmly set, searching rather his mentor than himself. Then he said with deliberation: ‘Father, I am not sure even of my own acts, but I think it was not for the right reasons that I ever asked admission to the Order. I think that is why it shames me to think of abandoning it now.’

‘That in itself, my son,’ said Radulfus, ‘may be good reason why the Order should abandon you. Many have entered for the wrong reasons, and later remained for the right ones, but to remain against the grain and against the truth, out of obstinancy and pride, that would be a sin.’ And he smiled to see the boy’s level brown brows draw together in despairing bewilderment. ‘Am I confusing you still more? I do not ask why you entered, though I think it may have been to escape the world without rather than to embrace the world within. You are young, and of that outer world you have seen as yet very little, and may have misjudged what you did see. There is no haste now. For the present take your full place here among us, but apart from the other novices. I would not have them troubled with your trouble. Rest some days, pray constantly for guidance, have faith that it will be granted, and then choose. For the choice must be yours, let no one take it from you.’

‘First Cambridge,’ said Hugh, tramping the inner ward of the castle with long, irritated strides as he digested the news from the Fen country, ‘now Ramsey. And Ely in danger! Your young man’s right there, a rich prize that would be for a wolf like de Mandeville. I tell you what, Cadfael, I’d better be going over every lance and sword and bow in the armoury, and sorting out a few good lads ready for action. Stephen is slow to start, sometimes, having a vein of laziness in him until he’s roused, but he’ll have to take action now against this rabble. He should have wrung de Mandeville’s neck while he had him, he was warned often enough.’

‘He’s unlikely to call on you,’ Cadfael considered judicially, ‘even if he does decide to raise a new force to flush out the wolves. He can call on the neighbouring shires, surely. He’ll want men fast.’

‘He shall have them fast,’ said Hugh grimly, ‘for I’ll be ready to take the road as soon as he gives the word. True, he may not need to fetch men from the border here, seeing he trusts Chester no more than he did Essex, and Chester’s turn will surely come. But whether or no, I’ll be ready for him. If you’re bound back, Cadfael, take my thanks to the abbot for his news. We’ll set the armourers and the fletchers to work, and make certain of our horses. No matter if they turn out not to be needed, it does the garrison no harm to be alerted in a hurry now and then.’ He turned towards the outer ward and the gatehouse with his departing friend, still frowning thoughtfully over this new complexity in England’s already confused and troublous situation. ‘Strange how great and little get their lives tangled together, Cadfael. De Mandeville takes his revenge in the east, and sends this lad from Longner scurrying home again here to the Welsh border. Would you say fate had done him any favour? It could well be. You never knew him until now, did you? He never seemed to me a likely postulant for the cloister.’

‘I did gather,’ said Cadfael cautiously,’that he may not yet have taken his final vows. He said he came with a trouble of his own unresolved, that his abbot charged him bring with him here to Radulfus. It may be he’s taken fright, now the time closes upon him. It happens! I’ll be off back and see what Radulfus intends for him.’

What Radulfus had in mind for the troubled soul was made plain when Cadfael returned, as bidden, to the abbot’s parlour. The abbot was alone at his desk by this time, the new entrant sent away with Brother Paul to rest from his long journey afoot and take his place, with certain safeguards, among his peers, if not of them.

‘He has need of some days of quietude,’ said Radulfus, ‘with time for prayer and thought, for he is in doubt of his vocation, and truth to tell, so am I. But I know nothing of his state of mind and his behaviour when he conceived his desire for the cloister, and am in no position to judge how genuine were his motives then, or are his reservations now. It is something he must resolve for himself. All I can do is ensure that no further shadow or shock shall fall upon him, to distract his mind when most he needs a clear head. I do not want him perpetually reminded of the fate of Ramsey, nor, for that matter, upset by any talk of this matter of the Potter’s Field. Let him have stillness and solitude to think out his own deliverance first. When he is ready to see me again, I have told Brother Vitalis to admit him at once. But in the meantime, it may be as well if you would take him to help you in the herb garden, apart from the brothers except at worship. In frater and dortoir Paul will keep a watchful eye on him, during the hours of work he will be best with you, who already know his situation.’

‘I have been thinking,’ said Cadfael, scrubbing reflectively at his forehead,’that he knows Ruald is here among us. It was some months after Ruald’s entry that this young fellow made up his mind for the cloister. Ruald was Blount’s tenant lifelong, and close by the manor, and Hugh tells me this boy Sulien was in and out of that workshop from a child, and a favourite with them, seeing they had none of their own. He has not spoken of Ruald, or asked to see him? How if he seeks him out?’

‘If he does, well. He has that right, and I do not intend to hedge him in for long. But I think he is too full of Ramsey and his own trouble to have any thought to spare for other matters as yet. He has not yet taken his final vows,’ said Radulfus, pondering with resigned anxiety over the complex agonies of the young. ‘All we can do is provide him a time of shelter and calm. His will and his acts are still his own. And as for this shadow that hangs over Ruald—what use would it be to ignore the threat?—if the relations between them were as Hugh says, that will be one more grief and disruption to the young man’s mind. As well if he is spared it for a day or so. But if it comes, it comes. He is a man grown, we cannot take his rightful burdens from him.’

It was on the morning of the second day after his arrival that Sulien encountered Brother Ruald face to face at close quarters and with no one else by except Cadfael. At every service in church he had seen him among all the other brothers, once or twice had caught his eye, and smiled across the dim space of the choir, but received no more acknowledgement than a brief, lingering glance of abstracted sweetness, as if the older man saw him through a veil of wonder and rapture in which old associations had no place. Now they emerged at the same moment into the great court, converging upon the south door of the cloister, Sulien from the garden, with Cadfael ambling a yard or two behind him, Ruald from the direction of the infirmary. Sulien had a young man’s thrusting, impetuous gait, now that his blistered feet were healed, and he rounded the corner of the tall box hedge so precipitately that the two almost collided, their sleeves brushing, and both halted abruptly and drew back a step in hasty apology. Here in the open, under a wide sky still streaked with trailers of primrose gold from a bright sunrise, they met like humble mortal men, with no veil of glory between them.

‘Sulien!’ Ruald opened his arms with a warm, delighted smile, and embraced the young man briefly cheek to cheek. ‘I saw you in church the first day. How glad I am that you are here, and safe!’

Sulien stood mute for a moment, looking the older man over earnestly from head to foot, captivated by the serenity of his thin face, and the curious air he had of having found his way home, and being settled and content here as he had never been before, in his craft, in his cottage, in his marriage, in his community. Cadfael, holding aloof at the turn of the box hedge, with a shrewd eye on the pair of them, saw Ruald briefly as Sulien was seeing him, a man secure in the rightness of his choice, and radiating his unblemished joy upon all who drew near him. To one ignorant of any threat or shadow hanging over this man, he must seem the possessor of perfect happiness. The true revelation was that, indeed, so he was. A marvel!

‘And you?’ said Sulien, still gazing and remembering. ‘How is it with you? You are well? And content? But I see that you are!’

‘All is well with me,’ said Ruald. ‘All is very well, better than I deserve.’ He took the young man by the sleeve, and the pair of them turned together towards the church. Cadfael followed more slowly, letting them pass out of earshot. From the look of them, as they went, Ruald was talking cheerfully of ordinary things, as brother to brother. The occasion of Sulien’s flight from Ramsey he knew, as the whole household knew it, but clearly he knew nothing as yet of the boy’s shaken faith in his vocation. And just as clearly, he did not intend to say a word of the suspicion and possible danger that hung over his own head. The rear view of them, springy youth and patient, plodding middle age jauntily shoulder to shoulder, was like father and son in one craft on their way to work, and, fatherly, the elder wanted no part of his shadowed destiny to cloud the bright horizons of faith that beckoned his son.

‘Ramsey will be recovered,’ said Ruald with certainty. ‘Evil will be driven out of it, though we may need long patience. I have been praying for your abbot and brothers.’

‘So have I,’ said Sulien ruefully, ‘all along the way. I’m lucky to be out of that terror. But it’s worse for the poor folk there in the villages, who have nowhere to run for shelter.’

‘We are praying for them also. There will be a return, and a reckoning.’

The shadow of the south porch closed over them, and they halted irresolutely on the edge of separating, Ruald to his stall in the choir, Sulien to his obscure place among the novices, before Ruald spoke. His voice was still level and soft, but from some deeper well of feeling within him it had taken on a distant, plangent tone like a faraway bell.

‘Did you ever hear word from Generys, after she left? Or do you know if any other did?’

‘No, never a word,’ said Sulien, startled and quivering.

‘No, nor I. I deserved none, but they would have told me, in kindness, if anything was known of her. She was fond of you from a babe, I thought perhaps

I should dearly like to know that all is well with her.’

Sulien stood with lowered eyes, silent for a long moment. Then he said in a very low voice: ‘And so should I, God knows how dearly!’