Brother Cadfael 08: The Devil's Novice

action to leaven us. Brother Jerome needs a hand round his over-voluble throat now and again.'
    Meriet had the grace to blush and the serenity to smile. 'I've made my peace with Brother Jerome, very civilly and humbly, you would have approved. I hope you would! He wished me well, and said he would continue to pray for me.'
    'Did he, indeed!' In one who might grudgingly forgive an injury to his person, but seldom one to his dignity, that was handsome, and should be reckoned as credit to Jerome. Or was it simply that he was heartily glad to see the back of the devil's novice, and giving devout thanks after his own fashion?
    'I was very young and foolish,' said Meriet, with a sage's indulgence for the green boy he had been, hugging to his grieving heart the keepsake of a girl he would live to hear unload upon him shamelessly the guilt of murder and theft. 'Do you remember,' asked Meriet, 'the few times I ever called you "brother"? I was trying hard to get into the way of it. But it was not what I felt, or what I wanted to say. And now in the end it seems it's Mark I shall have to call "father", though he's the one I shall always think of as a brother. I was in need of fathering, more ways than one. This once, will you let me so claim and so call you as ... as I would have liked to then ... ?'
    'Son Meriet,' said Cadfael, rising heartily to embrace him and plant the formal kiss of kinship resoundingly on a cheek frostily cool and smooth, 'you're of my kin and welcome to whatsoever I have whenever you may need it. And bear in mind, I'm Welsh, and that's a lifelong tie. There, are you satisfied?' His kiss was returned, very solemnly and fervently, by cold lips that burned into ardent heat as they touched. But Meriet had yet one more request to make, and clung to Cadfael's hand as he advanced it.
    'And will you, while he's here, extend the same goodness to my brother? For his need is greater than mine ever was.' Withdrawn discreetly into shadow, Cadfael thought he heard Isouda utter a brief, soft spurt of laughter, and after it heave a resigned sigh; but if so, both escaped Meriet's ears.
    'Child,' said Cadfael, shaking his head over such obstinate devotion, but very complacently, 'you are either an idiot or a saint, and I am not in the mood at present to have much patience with either. But for the sake of peace, yes, I will, I will! What I can do, I'll do. There, be off with you! Take him away, girl, and let me put out the brazier and shut up my workshop or I shall be late for Compline!'