Brother Cadfael 03: Monk's Hood

learned it by experience, by trial and study, accumulating knowledge over the years, until some preferred his ministrations to those of the acknowledged physicians.
    His assistant at this time was a novice of no more than eighteen years, Brother Mark, orphaned, and a trouble to a neglectful uncle, who had sent him into the abbey at sixteen to be rid of him. He had entered tongue-tied, solitary and homesick, a waif who seemed even younger than his years, who did what he was told with apprehensive submission, as though the best to be hoped out of life was to avoid punishment. But some months of working in the garden with Cadfael had gradually loosened his tongue and put his fears to flight. He was still undersized, and slightly wary of authority, but healthy and wiry, and good at making things grow, and he was acquiring a sure and delicate touch with the making of medicines, and an eager interest in them. Mute among his fellows, he made up for it by being voluble enough in the garden workshop, and with none but Cadfael by. It was always Mark, for all his silence and withdrawal about the cloister and court, who brought all the gossip before others knew it.
    He came in from an errand to the mill, an hour before Vespers, full of news.
    "Do you know what Prior Robert has done? Taken up residence in the abbot's lodging! Truly! Brother Sub-prior has orders to sleep in the prior's cell in the dormitory from tonight. And Abbot Heribert barely out of the gates! I call it great presumption!"
    So did Cadfael, though he felt it hardly incumbent upon him either to say so, or to let Brother Mark utter his thoughts quite so openly. "Beware how you pass judgment on your superiors," he said mildly, "at least until you know how to put yourself in their place and see from their view. For all we know, Abbot Heribert may have required him to move into the lodging, as an instance of his authority while we're without an abbot. It is the place set aside for the spiritual father of this convent."
    "But Prior Robert is not that, not yet! And Abbot Heribert would have said so at chapter if he had wished it so. At least he would have told Brother Sub-prior, and no one did, I saw his face, he is as astonished as anyone, and shocked. He would not have taken such a liberty!"
    Too true, thought Cadfael, busy pounding roots in a mortar, Brother Richard the sub-prior was the last man to presume; large, good-natured and peace-loving to the point of laziness, he never exerted himself to advance even by legitimate means. It might dawn on some of the younger and more audacious brothers shortly that they had gained an advantage in the exchange. With Richard in the prior's cell that commanded the length of the dortoir, it would be far easier for the occasional sinner to slip out by the night-stairs after the lights were out; even if the crime were detected it would probably never be reported. A blind eye is the easiest thing in the world to turn on whatever is troublesome.
    "All the servants at the lodging are simmering," said Brother Mark. "You know how devoted they are to Abbot Heribert, and now to be made to serve someone else, before his place is truly vacant, even! Brother Henry says it's almost blasphemy. And Brother Petrus is looking blacker than thunder, and muttering into his cooking-pots something fearful. He said, once Prior Robert gets his foot in the door, it will take a dose of hemlock to get him out again when Abbot Heribert returns."
    Cadfael could well imagine it. Brother Petrus was the abbot's cook, old in his service, and a black-haired, fiery-eyed barbarian from near the Scottish border, at that, given to tempestuous and immoderate declarations, none of them to be taken too seriously; but the puzzle was where exactly to draw the line.
    "Brother Petrus says many things he might do well not to say, but he never means harm, as you well know. And he's a prime cook, and will continue to feed the abbot's table nobly, whoever sits at the head of it, because he can do no other."
    "But not happily," said Brother Mark with conviction.
    No question but the even course of the day had been gravely shaken; yet so well regulated was the regime within these walls that every brother, happy or not, would pursue his duties as conscientiously as ever.
    "When Abbot Heribert returns, confirmed in office," said Mark, firmly counting wishes as horses, "Prior Robert's nose will be out of joint." And the thought of that august organ bent aside like the misused