Brother Cadfael 03: Monk's Hood

me ... when they bring the wool to Shrewsbury market ... I'm fain to see her again ..."
    "He set great store by your mother, it seems," said Cadfael, watching as Meurig washed his hands where Brother Edmund had shown him, and making sure that he was thorough about it. "Is there a hope that he may see her again?"
    Meurig's face, seen in profile as he wrung and scrubbed at his hands, had a gravity and brooding thoughtfulness that belied the indulgent gaiety he had put on for this old man. After a moment he said: "Not in this world." He turned to reach for the coarse towel, and looked Cadfael in the eyes fully and steadily. "My mother has been dead for eleven years this Michaelmas past. He knows it - or he knew it - as well as I. But if she's alive to him again in his dotage, why should I remind him? Let him keep that thought and any other that can pleasure him."
    They went out together in silence, into the chilly air of the great court, and there separated, Meurig striking across briskly towards the gatehouse, Cadfael making for the church, where the Vesper bell could be only a few minutes delayed.
    "God speed!" said Cadfael in parting. "You gave the old man back a piece of his youth today. The elders of your kinship, I think, are fortunate in their sons."
    "My kinship," said Meurig, halting in mid-stride to stare back with great black eyes, "is my mother's kinship, I go with my own. My father was not a Welshman."
    He went, lengthening a lusty stride, the square shape of his shoulders cleaving the dusk. And Cadfael wondered about him, as he had wondered about the villein Aelfric, as far as the porch of the church, and then abandoned him for a more immediate duty. These people are, after all, responsible for themselves, and none of his business.
    Not yet!
    Chapter Two
    It was nearing mid-December before the dour manservant Aelfric came again to the herb-gardens for kitchen herbs for his mistress. By that time he was a figure familiar enough to fade into the daily pattern of comings and goings about the great court, and among the multifarious noise and traffic his solitary silence remained generally unremarked. Cadfael had seen him in the mornings, passing through to the bakery and buttery for the day's loaves and measures of ale, always mute, always purposeful, quick of step and withdrawn of countenance, as though any delay on his part might bring penance, as perhaps, indeed, it might. Brother Mark, attracted to a soul seemingly as lonely and anxious as his own had once been, had made some attempt to engage the stranger in talk, and had little success.
    "Though he does unfold a little," said Mark thoughtfully, kicking his heels on the bench in Cadfael's workshop as he stirred a salve. "I don't think he's an unfriendly soul at all, if he had not something on his mind. When I greet him he sometimes comes near to smiling, but he'll never linger and talk."
    "He has his work to do, and perhaps a master who's hard to please," said Cadfael mildly.
    "I heard he's out of sorts since they moved in," said Mark. "The master, I mean. Not really ill, but low and out of appetite."
    "So might I be," opined Cadfael, "if I had nothing to do but sit there and mope, and wonder if I'd done well to part with my lands, even in old age. What seems an easy life in contemplation can be hard enough when it comes to reality."
    "The girl," said Mark judiciously, "is pretty. Have you seen her?"
    "I have not. And you, my lad, should be averting your eyes from contemplation of women. Pretty, is she?"
    "Very pretty. Not very tall, round and fair, with a lot of yellow hair, and black eyes. It makes a great effect, yellow hair and black eyes. I saw her come to the stable with some message for Aelfric yesterday. He looked after her, when she went, in such a curious way. Perhaps she is his trouble."
    And that might well be, thought Cadfael, if he was a villein, and she a free woman, and unlikely to look so low as a serf, and they were rubbing shoulders about the household day after day, in closer quarters here than about the manor of Mallilie.
    "She could as well be trouble for you, boy, if Brother Jerome or Prior Robert sees you conning her," he said briskly. "If you must admire a fine girl, let it be out of the corner of your eyes. Don't forget we have a reforming rule here now."
    "Oh, I'm careful!" Mark was by no means in awe of Brother Cadfael now, and had adopted from him somewhat unorthodox notions of what was and was not permissible. In any case,