Brother Cadfael 08: The Devil's Novice

good time to see the lofty young bay that trotted into the courtyard on a leading-rein, and arched his copper neck and brandished his long, narrow white blaze at strange surroundings, shifting white-sandalled forefeet delicately on the cobbles.
    Cadfael saw the encounter clearly. The horse tossed its farrow, beautiful head, stretched neck and nostril, and whinnied softly. The young man blanched white as the blazoned forehead, and jerked strongly back in his careful stride, and brief sunlight found the green in his eyes. Then he remembered himself and passed hurriedly on, following his fellows into the cloister.
    In the night, an hour before Matins, the dortoir was shaken by a great, wild cry of: 'Barbary ... Barbary ... ' and then a single long, piercing whistle, before Brother Cadfael reached Meriet's cell, smoothed an urgent hand over brow and cheek and pursed lips, and eased him back, still sleeping, to his pillow. The edge of the dream, if it was a dream, was abruptly blunted, the sounds melted into silence.
    Cadfael was ready to frown and hush away the startled brothers when they came, and even Prior Robert hesitated to break so perilous a sleep, especially at the cost of inconveniencing everyone else's including his own. Cadfael sat by the bed long after all was silence and darkness again. He did not know quite what he had been expecting, but he was glad he had been ready for it. As for the morrow, it would come, for better or worse.
    Chapter Four.
    Meriet arose for Prime heavy-eyed and sombre, but seemingly quite innocent of what had happened during the night, and was saved from the immediate impact of the brothers' seething dread, disquiet and displeasure by being summoned forth, immediately when the office was over, to speak with the deputy-sheriff in the stables. Hugh had the torn and weathered harness spread on a bench in the yard, and a groom was walking the horse called Russet appreciatively about the cobbles to be viewed clearly in the mellow morning light.
    'I hardly need to ask,' said Hugh pleasantly, smiling at the way the white-fired brow lifted and the wide nostrils dilated at sight of the approaching figure, even in such unfamiliar garb. 'No question but he knows you again, I must needs conclude that you know him just as well.' And as Meriet volunteered nothing, but continued to wait to be asked: 'Is this the horse Peter Clemence was riding when he left your father's house?'
    'Yes my lord, the same.' He moistened his lips and kept his eyes lowered, but for one spark of a glance for the horse; he did not ask anything.
    'Was that the only occasion when you had to do with him? He comes to you readily. Fondle him if you will, he's asking for your recognition.'
    'It was I stabled and groomed and tended him, that night,' said Meriet, low-voiced and hesitant. 'And I saddled him in the morning. I never had his like to care for until then. I ... I am good with horses.'
    'So I see. Then you have also handled his gear.' It had been rich and fine, the saddle inlaid with coloured leathers, the bridle ornamented with silver-work now dinted and soiled. 'All this you recognise?'
    Meriet said: 'Yes. This was his.' And at last he did ask, almost fearfully: 'Where did you find Barbary?'
    'Was that his name? His master told you? A matter of twenty miles and more north of here, on the peat-hags near Whitchurch. Very well, young sir, that's all I need from you. You can go back to your duties now.'
    Round the water-troughs in the lavatorium, over their ablutions, Meriet's fellows were making the most of his absence. Those who went in dread of him as a soul possessed, those who resented his holding himself apart, those who felt his silence to be nothing short of disdain for them, all raised their voices clamorously to air their collective grievance. Prior Robert was not there, but his clerk and shadow, Brother Jerome, was, and with ears pricked and willing to listen.
    'Brother, you heard him youself! He cried out again in the night, he awoke us all ... '
    'He howled for his familiar. I heard the demon's name, he called him Barbary! And his devil whistled back to him ... we all know it's devils that hiss and whistle!'
    'He's brought an evil spirit in among us, we're not safe for our lives. And we get no rest at night ... Brother, truly, we're afraid!'
    Cadfael, tugging a comb through the thick bush of grizzled hair ringing his nut-brown dome, was in two minds about intervening, but thought better of it. Let them pour out