Brother Cadfael 08: The Devil's Novice

far we may let him try his powers.'
    Janyn was down from his saddle with a bound, and attentive at Isouda's stirrup as she made to descend. She laid a hand heartily on his shoulder and came down like a feather, and they laughed together, and turned to join the company already assembled. After them came the Aspleys, Leoric as Cadfael had imagined and seen him, bolt-upright body and soul, appearing tall as a church column in the saddle; an irate, intolerant, honourable man, exact to his responsibilities, absolute on his privileges. A demi-god to his servants, and one to be trusted provided they in turn were trustworthy; a god to his sons. What he had been to his dead wife could scarcely be guessed, or what she had felt towards her second boy. The admirable firstborn, close at his father's elbow, vaulted out of his tall saddle like a bird lighting, large, vigorous and beautiful. At every move Nigel did honour to his progenitors and his name. Cloistered young men watching him murmured admiration, and well they might.
    'Difficult,' said Brother Paul always sensitive to youth and its obscure torments,'to be second to such a one.'
    'Difficult indeed,' said Cadfael ruefully.
    Kinsmen and neighbours followed, small lords and their ladies, self-confident folk, commanding limited realms, perhaps, but absolute within them, and well able to guard their own. They alighted, their grooms led away the horses and ponies, the court gradually emptied of the sudden blaze of colour and animation, and the fixed and revered order continued unbroken, with Vespers drawing near.
    Brother Cadfael went to his workshop in the herbarium after supper to fetch certain dried herbs needed by Brother Petrus, the abbot's cook, for the next day's dinner, when the Aspleys and the Lindes were to dine with Canon Euard at the abbot's table. Frost was setting in again for the night, the air was crisp and still and the sky starry, and even the smallest sound rang like a bell in the pure darkness. The footsteps that followed him along the hard earth path between the pleached hedges were very soft, but he heard them; someone small and light of foot, keeping her distance, one sharp ear listening for Cadfael's guiding steps ahead, the other pricked back to make sure no others followed behind. When he opened the door of his hut and passed within, his pursuer halted, giving him time to strike a spark from his flint and light his little lamp. Then she came into the open doorway, wrapped in a dark cloak, her hair loose on her neck as he had first seen her, the cold stinging her cheeks into rose-red, and the flame of the lamp making stars of her eyes.
    'Come in, Isouda,' said Cadfael placidly, rustling the bunches of herbs that dangled from the beams above. 'I've been hoping to find a means of talking with you. I should have known you would make your own occasion.'
    'But I mustn't stay long,' she said, coming in and closing the door behind her. 'I am supposed to be lighting a candle and putting up prayers in the church for my father's soul.'
    'Then should you not be doing that?' said Cadfael, smiling. 'Here, sit and be easy for the short time you have, and whatever you want of me, ask.'
    'I have lit my candle,' she said, seating herself on the bench by the wall, 'it's there to be seen, but my father was a fine man, and God will take good care of his soul without any interference from me. And I need to know what is really happening to Meriet.'
    'They'll have told you that he had a bad fall, and cannot walk as yet?'
    'Brother Paul told us so. He said it would be no lasting harm. Is it so? Will he be well again surely?'
    'Surely he will. He got a gash on the head in his fall, but that's already healed, and his wrenched foot needs only a little longer rest, and it will bear him again as well as ever. He's in good hands, Brother Mark is taking care of him, and Brother Mark is his staunch friend. Tell me, how did his father take the word of his fall?'
    'He kept a severe face,' she said, 'though he said he grieved to hear it, so coldly, who would believe him? But for all that, he does grieve.'
    'He did not ask to visit him?'
    She made a disdainful face at the obstinacy of men. 'Not he! He has given him to God, and God must fend for him. He will not go near him. But I came to ask you if you will take me there to see him.'
    Cadfael stood earnestly considering her for a long moment, and then sat down beside her and told her all that had happened, all that he knew or guessed. She