Brother Cadfael 07: The Sanctuary Sparrow

wife clerk and count for you, as she claims she did for her father, and leave my stores, my kitchen, my keys to me. Do you think I'll surrender tamely the only reason for living left to me? This family has denied me any other.'
    Walter, if he had anticipated any of this, had been wise to keep well away from it, safe in his shop. But the likelihood was that he had never been warned or consulted, and was expendable until this dispute was settled.
    'But you knew,' cried Daniel, impatiently brushing aside her lifelong grievance, seldom if ever mentioned so plainly before, 'you knew I should be marrying, and surely you had the sense to know my wife would expect her proper place in the house. You've had your day, you've no complaint. Of course the wife has precedence and requires the keys. And shall have them, too!'
    Susanna turned her shoulder on him and appealed with flashing eyes to her grandmother, who had sat silent this while, but followed every word and every look. Her face was grim and controlled as ever, but her breathing was rapid and shallow, and Cadfael had closed his fingers on her wrist to feel the beat of her blood there, but it remained firm and measured. Her thin grey lips were set in a somewhat bitter smile.
    'Madam grandmother, do you speak up! Your word still counts here as mine, it seems, cannot. Have I been so useless to you that you, also, want to discard me? Have I not done well by you all, all this while?'
    'No one has found fault with you,' said Juliana shortly. 'That is not the issue. I doubt if this chit of Daniel's can match you, or do the half as well, but I suppose she has the goodwill and the perseverance to learn, if it has to be by her errors. What she has, and so I tell you, girl, is the right of the argument. The household rule is owing to her, and she will have to have it. I can say no other, like it or lump it. You may as well make it short and final, for it must happen.' And she rapped her stick sharply on the floor to make a period to the judgment.
    Susanna stood gnawing at her lips and looking from face to face of all these three who were united against her. She was calm now, the anger that filled her had cooled into bitter scorn.
    'Very well,' she said abruptly. 'Under protest I'll do what's required of me. But not today. I have been the mistress here for years, I will not be turned out in the middle of my day's work, without time to make up my accounts. She shall not be able to pick flies here and there, and say, this was left unfinished, or, she never told me there was a new pan needed, or, here's a sheet was left wanting mending. No! Margery shall have a full inventory tomorrow, when I'll hand over my charge. She shall have it listed what stocks she inherits, to the last salt fish in the last barrel. She shall start with a fair, clean leaf before her. I have my pride, even if no other regards it.' She turned fully to Margery, whose round fair face seemed distracted between satisfied complacency and discomfort, as if she did not quite know, at this moment, whether to be glad or sorry of her victory. 'Tomorrow morning you shall have the keys. Since the store-room is entered through my chamber, you may also wish to have me move from there, and take that room yourself. Then you may. From tomorrow I won't stand in your way.'
    She turned and walked away out of the hall door and round towards the kitchen, and the bunch of keys at her waist rang as if she had deliberately set them jangling in a last derisive spurt of defiance. She left a charged silence behind her, which Juliana was the first one bold enough to break.
    'Well, children, make yourselves content,' she said, eyeing her grandson and his bride sardonically. 'You have what you wanted, make the most of it. There's hard work and much thought goes into running a household.'
    Margery hastened to ingratiate herself with thanks and promises. The old woman listened tolerantly, but with that chill smile so unnervingly like Susanna's still on her lips. 'There, be off now, and let Daniel get back to his work. Brother Cadfael, I can see, is none too pleased with seeing me roused. I'm likely to be getting some fresh potion poured into me to settle me down, through the three of you and your squabbles.'
    They went gladly enough, they had much to say to each other privately. Cadfael saw the spreading grey pallor round Juliana's mouth as soon as she relaxed her obstinate self-control and lay back against her cushions. He fetched water from