Brother Cadfael 08: The Devil's Novice

that, the hounds were on their trail, well aware now what route to take, for Aspley's northern manor lay somewhere south of Newark, and anyone making for it must set forth by the road to Stafford. Somewhere in the heathland short of that town, dusk would be closing on the travellers. They might think it safe to lodge overnight in the town. They might yet be overtaken and brought back.
    On leaving the refectory Cadfael made for his normal destination during the afternoon hours of work, the hut in the herb garden where he brewed his mysteries. And they were there, the two young men in Benedictine habits, seated quickly side by side on the bench against the end wall. The very small spark of the brazier glowed faintly on their faces. Meriet leaned back against the timbers in simple exhaustion, his cowl thrust back on his shoulders, his face shadowy. He had been down into the very profound of anger, grief and bitterness, and surfaced again to find Mark still constant and patient beside him; and now he was at rest, without thought or feeling, ready to be born afresh into a changed world, but not in haste. Mark looked as he always looked, mild, almost deprecatory, as though he pleaded a fragile right to be where he was, and yet would stand to it to the death.
    'I thought I might find you here,' said Brother Cadfael, and took the little bellows and blew the brazier into rosy life, for it was none too warm within there. He closed and barred the door to keep out even the draught that found its way through the chinks. 'I doubt if you'll have eaten,' he said, feeling along the shelf behind the door. 'There are oat cakes here and some apples, and I think I have a morsel of cheese. You'll be the better for a bite. And I have a wine that will do you no harm either.' And behold, the boy was hungry! So simple it was. He was not long turned nineteen, and physically hearty, and he had eaten nothing since dawn. He began listlessly, docile to persuasion, and at the first bite he was alive again and ravenous, his eyes brightening, the glow of the blown brazier gilding and softening hollow cheeks. The wine, as Cadfael had predicted, did him no harm at all. Blood flowed through him again, with new warmth and urgency.
    He said not one word of brother, father or lost love. It was still too early. He had heard himself falsely accused by one of them, falsely suspected by another, and what by the third? Left to pursue his devoted and foolish self-sacrifice, without a word to absolve him. He had a great load of bitterness still to shake from his heart. But praise God, he came to life for food and ate like a starved schoolboy. Brother Cadfael was greatly encouraged.
    In the mortuary chapel, where Peter Clemence lay in his sealed coffin on his draped bier, Leoric Aspley had chosen to make his confession, and entreated Abbot Radulfus to be the priest to hear it. On his knees on the flagstones, by his own choice, he set forth the story as he had known it, the fearful discovery of his younger son labouring to drag a dead man into cover and hide him from all eyes, Meriet's tacit acceptance of the guilt, and his own reluctance to deliver up his son to death, or let him go free.
    'I promised him I would deal with his dead man, even at the peril of my soul, and he should live, but in perpetual penance out of the world. And to that he agreed and embraced his penalty, as I now know or fear that I now know, for love of his brother, whom he had better reason for believing a murderer than ever I had for crediting the same guilt to Meriet. I am afraid, father, that he accepted his fate as much for my sake as for his brother's, having cause, to my shame, to believe - no, to know! - that I built all on Nigel and all too little upon him, and could live on after writing him out of my life, though the loss of Nigel would be my death. As now he is lost indeed, but I can and I will live. Therefore my grievous sin against my son Meriet is not only this doubt of him, this easy credence of his crime and his banishment into the cloister, but stretches back to his birth in lifelong misprizing.
    'And as to my sin against you, father, and against this house, that also I confess and repent, for so to dispose of a suspect murderer and so to enforce a young man without a true vocation, was vile towards him and towards this house. Take that also into account, for I would be free of all my debts.
    'And as to my sin against Peter Clemence, my guest and my kinsman, in denying him