Brother Cadfael 03: Monk's Hood

restored, and back among his sheep.
    "You mean well, brother," said William generously, "but you are far out of your cloister in matters like these. Best leave them to those who have experience."
    Cadfael took his leave without further protest, mounted his mule, and rode back through the town to the foot of the hill, where the street turning off to the right led him to the westward bridge. At least nothing was lost, and Beringar was following up the lead he had given. It was time now to keep his mind on the journey before him, and put aside the affairs of Richildis and her son until he had done his best for Brother Barnabas.
    The road from Shrewsbury to Oswestry was one of the main highroads of the region, and fairly well maintained. The old people, the Romans, had laid it long ago when they ruled in Britain, and the same road ran south-eastward right to the city of London, where King Stephen was now preparing to keep Christmas among his lords, and Cardinal-bishop Alberic of Ostia was busy holding his legatine council for the reform of the church, to the probable discomfiture of Abbot Heribert. But here, riding in the opposite direction, the road ran straight and wide, only a little overgrown with grass here and there, and encroached upon by the wild verges, through fat farming country and woods to the town of Oswestry, a distance of no more than eighteen miles. Cadfael took it at a brisk but steady pace, to keep the mule content. Beyond the town it was but four miles to the sheepfolds. In the distance, as he rode due west in the dimming light, the hills of Wales rose blue and noble, the great rolling ridge of Berwyn melting into a faintly misted sky.
    He came to the small, bare grange in a fold of the hills before dark. A low, solid wooden hut housed the brothers, and beyond lay the much larger byres and stables, where the sheep could be brought in from ice and snow, and beyond again, climbing the gentle slopes, the long, complex grey stone walls of the field enclosures, where they grazed in this relatively mild beginning of winter, and were fed roots and grain if ever stubble and grass failed them. The hardiest were still out at liberty in the hills. Brother Simon's dog began to bark, pricking his ears to the neat hooves that hardly made a sound in the thin turf of the ride.
    Cadfael lighted down at the door, and Simon came eagerly out to welcome him, a thin, wiry, dishevelled brother, some forty years old but still distrait as a child when anything went wrong with other than sheep. Sheep he knew as mothers know their babes, but Brother Barnabas's illness had utterly undone him. He clasped Cadfael's hands in his, and shook them and himself in his gratitude at no longer being alone with his patient.
    "He has it hard, Cadfael, you hear the leaves of his heart rustling as he breathes, like a man's feet in the woods in autumn. I cannot break it with a sweat, I've tried ..."
    "We'll try again," said Cadfael comfortably, and went into the dark, timber-scented hut before him. Within it was blessedly warm and dry; wood is the best of armours against weather, where there's small fear of fire, as in this solitude there was none. A bare minimum of furnishing, yet enough; and within, in the inner room, Brother Barnabas lay in his bed neither asleep nor awake, only uneasily in between, rustling at every breath as Simon had said, his forehead hot and dry, his eyes half-open and vacant. A big, massive man, all muscle and bone, with reserves of fight in him that needed only a little guidance.
    "You go look to whatever you should be doing," said Cadfael, unbuckling his scrip and opening it on the foot of the bed, "and leave him to me."
    "Is there anything you will need?" asked Simon anxiously.
    "A pan of water on the fire, out there, and a cloth, and a beaker ready, and that's all. If I want for more, I'll find it."
    Blessedly, he was taken at his word; Brother Simon had a childlike faith in all who practised peculiar mysteries. Cadfael worked upon Brother Barnabas without haste all the evening, by a single candle that Simon brought as the light died. A hot stone wrapped in Welsh flannel for the sick man's feet, a long and vigorous rub for chest and throat and ribs, down to the waist, with an ointment of goose-grease impregnated with mustard and other heat-giving herbs, and chest and throat then swathed in a strip of the same flannel, cool cloths on the dry forehead, and a hot draught of wine mulled with spices and borage and other