Brother Cadfael 07: The Sanctuary Sparrow

scandalized countenance of a sour-faced brother almost as meagre as himself. He stared, abashed, into eyes rounded and ferocious with outrage.
    'Is this how you reverence this holy enclave?' demanded Brother Jerome, genuinely incensed. 'Is such foolery and lightmindedness fit for our abbey? And have you, fellow, so little gratitude for the shelter afforded you here? You do not deserve sanctuary, if you value it so lightly. How dared you so affront God's enclosure?'
    Liliwin shrank and stammered, out of breath and abased to the ground. 'I meant no offence. I am grateful, I do hold the abbey in reverence. I only wanted to see if I could still master my craft. It is my living, I must practice it! Pardon if I've done wrong!' He was easily intimidated, here where he was in debt, and in doubt how to comport himself in a strange world. All his brief gaiety, all the pleasure of the music, ebbed out of him. He got to his feet almost clumsily, who had been so lissome only moments ago, and stood trembling, shoulders bowed and eyes lowered.
    Brother Jerome, who seldom had business in the gardens, being the prior's clerk and having no taste for manual labour, had heard from the great court the small sound, strange in these precincts, of wooden balls clicking together in mid-air, and had come to investigate in relative innocence. But once in view of the performance, and himself screened by bushes fringing Brother Cadfael's herb-garden, he had not called a halt at once and warned the offender of his offence, but remained in hiding, storing up a cumulative fund of indignation until the culprit uncoiled at his feet. It may be that a degree of guilt on his own part rendered more extreme the reproaches he loosed upon the tumbler.
    'Your living,' he said mercilessly, 'ought to engage you rather in prayers and self-searchings than in these follies. A man who has such charges hanging over him as you have must concern himself first with his soul's welfare, for whether he has a living to make hereafter or none, he has a soul to save when his debt in this world is paid. Think on that, and go put your trumpery away, as long as you are sheltered here. It is not fitting! It is blasphemy! Have you not enough already unpaid on your account?'
    Liliwin felt the terror of the outer world close in on him: it could not be long evaded. As some within here wore hovering haloes, so he wore a noose, invisible but ever-present.
    'I meant no harm,' he whispered hopelessly and turned, half-blind with misery, to grope for his poor bundle of toys and blunder hastily away.
    'Tumbling and juggling, there in our gardens,' Jerome reported, still burning with offence, 'like a vagabond player at a fair. How can it be excused? Sanctuary is lawful for those who come in proper deference, but this ... I reproved him, of course. I told him he should be thinking rather of his eternal part, having so mortal a charge against him. "My living," he says! And he with a life owing!'
    Prior Robert looked down his patrician nose, and maintained the fastidious and grieved calm of his noble countenance. 'Father Abbot is right to observe the sanctity of sanctuary, it may not be discarded. We are not to blame, and need not be concerned, for the guilt or innocence of those who lay claim to it. But we are, indeed, concerned for the good order and good name of our house, and I grant you this present guest is little honour to us. I should be happier if he took himself off and submitted himself to the law, that is true. But unless he does so, we must bear with him. To reprove where he offends is not only our due, but our duty. To use any effort to influence or eject him is far beyond either. Unless he leaves of his own will,' said Prior Robert, 'both you and I, Brother Jerome, must succour, shelter and pray for him.'
    How sincerely, how resolutely. But how reluctantly!
    Chapter Five
    Monday: from dawn to Compline
    Sunday passed, clear and fine, and Monday came up no less sunnily, a splendid washing day, with a warm air and a light breeze, and bushes and turf dry and springy. The Aurifaber household was always up and active early on washing days, which were saved up two or three weeks at a time, to make but one upheaval of the heating of so much water, and such labour of scrubbing and knuckling with ash and lye. Rannilt was up first, to kindle the fire under the brick and clay boiler and hump the water from the well. She was stronger than she looked and used to the weight. What burdened her