Brother Cadfael 02: One Corpse Too Many

out of reach of being pressed for either side, thought Cadfael, and small blame to them.
    'Brother Cadfael, I think you have need of a helper, and here is a youngster who says he's not afraid of hard work. A good woman of the town has brought him in to the porter, and asked that he be taken and taught as a lay servant. Her nephew from Hencot, she says, and his parents dead. There's a year's endowment with him. Prior Robert has given leave to take him, and there's room in the boys' dortoir. He'll attend school with the novices, but he'll not take vows unless he himself comes to wish it. What do you say, will you have him?'
    Cadfael looked the boy over with interest, but said yes without hesitation, glad enough to be offered someone young, able-bodied and willing. The lad was slenderly built, but vigorous and firm on his feet, and moved with a spring. He looked up warily from under a cropped tangle of brown curls, and his eyes were long-lashed and darkly blue, very shrewd and bright. He was behaving himself meekly and decorously, but he did not look intimidated.
    'Very heartily I'll have you,' said Cadfael, 'if you'll take to this outdoor work with me. And what's your name, boy?'
    'Godric, sir,' said the young thing, in a small, gruff voice, appraising Cadfael just as earnestly as he was being appraised.
    'Good, then, Godric, you and I will get on well enough. And first, if you will, walk around the gardens here with me and see what we have in hand, and get used to being within these walls. Strange enough I daresay you'll find it, but safer than in the town yonder, which I make no doubt is why your good aunt brought you here.'
    The blue, bright eyes flashed him one glance and were veiled again.
    'See you come to Vespers with Brother Cadfael,' the almoner instructed, 'and Brother Paul, the master of the novices, will show you your bed, and tell you your duties after supper. Pay attention to what Brother Cadfael tells you, and be obedient to him as you should.'
    'Yes, sir,' said the boy virtuously. Under the meek accents a small bubble of laughter seemed to be trying, though vainly, to burst. When Brother Oswald hurried away, the blue eyes watched him out of sight, and then turned their intent gaze upon Cadfael. A demure, oval face, with a wide, firm mouth shaped properly for laughter, but quick to revert to a very sombre gravity. Even for those meant to be light-hearted, these were grave times.
    'Come, see what manner of labour you're taking on yourself,' said Cadfael cheerfully, and downed his spade to take his new. boy round the enclosed garden, showing him the vegetables, the herbs that made the noon air heady and drunken with fragrance, the fish ponds and the beds of pease that ran down almost to the brook. The early field was already dried and flaxen in the sun, all its harvest gathered, even the later-sown hung heavy and full in pod.
    'These we should gather today and tomorrow. In this heat they'll pass their best in a day. And these spent ones have to be cleared. You can begin that for me. Don't pull them up, take the sickle and cut them off low to the ground, and the roots we plough in, they're good food for the soil.' He was talking in an easy, good-humoured flow, to pass off peacefully whatever residue of regret and strangeness there might be in this abrupt change. 'How old are you, Godric?'
    'Seventeen,' said the husky voice beside him. He was on the small side for seventeen; let him try his hand at digging later on, the ground Cadfael was working was heavy to till. 'I can work hard,' said the boy, almost as though he had guessed at the thought, and resented it. 'I don't know much, but I can do whatever you tell me.'
    'So you shall, then, and you can begin with the pease. Stack the dry stuff aside here, and it goes to provide stable litter. And the roots go back to the ground.'
    'Like humankind,' said Godric unexpectedly.
    'Yes, like humankind.' Too many were going back to the earth prematurely now in this fratricidal war. He saw the boy turn his head, almost involuntarily, and look across the abbey grounds and roofs to where the battered towers of the castle loomed in their pall of smoke. 'Have you kin within there, child?' asked Cadfael gently.
    'No!' said the boy, too quickly. 'But I can't but think of them. They're saying in the town it can't last long - that it may fall tomorrow. And surely they've done only rightly! Before King Henry died he made his barons acknowledge the Empress Maud as his heir, and