Brother Cadfael 12: The Raven in the Foregate

with quickening interest. A mop of shaggy light-brown curls capped a shapely head poised on an elegant neck, and the face that took such pains to play the rustic innocent abashed before his betters was youthfully rounded of cheek and chin, but very adequately supplied with bone, too, and shaven clean as the schoolboy it aimed at presenting. A guileless face, but for the suppressed smoulder of mischief in the wide hazel eyes, changeable and fluid like peat water flowing over sunlit pebbles of delectable, autumnal greens and browns. There was nothing he could do about that merry sparkle. Asleep, the angelic simpleton might achieve conviction, but not with those eyes open.
    "Then you have found him," said Cadfael. "That name belongs to me. And you, I take it, must be the young fellow who came here with the priest, and wants work with us for a while." He rose, gathering himself without haste. Their eyes came virtually on a level. Dancing, brook-water eyes the boy had, scintillating with winter sunlight. "What was the name they gave you, son?"
    "N ... name?" The stammer was a surprise, and the sudden nervous flickering of long brown lashes that briefly veiled the lively eyes was the first sign of unease Cadfael had detected in him. "Benet - my name's Benet. My Aunt Diota is widow to a decent man, John Hammet, who was a groom in the lord bishop's service, so when he died Bishop Henry found a place for her with Father Ailnoth. That's how we came here. They're used to each other now for three years and more. And I begged to come here along with them to see could I find work near to her. I'm not skilled, but what I don't know I can learn."
    Very voluble now, all at once, and no more stammering, either, and he had stepped within, into shadow from the midday light, quenching somewhat of his perilous brightness. "He said you could make use of me here," said the vibrant voice, meekly muted. "Tell me what to do, and I'll do it."
    "And a very proper attitude to work," allowed Cadfael. "You'll be sharing the life here within the enclave, so I'm told. Where have they lodged you? Among the lay servants?"
    "Nowhere yet," said the boy, his voice cautiously recovering its spring and resonance. "But I'm promised a bed here within. I'd just as soon be out of the priest's house. There's a parish fellow looks after his glebe, they tell me, so there's no need for me there."
    "Well, there's need enough here," said Cadfael heartily, "for what with one thing and another I'm behind with the rough digging that ought to be done before the frosts come, and I've half a dozen fruit trees here in the small orchard that need pruning about Christmas time. Brother Bernard will be wanting to borrow you to help with the ploughing in the Gaye, where our main gardens are - you'll scarcely be familiar with the lie of the land yet, but you'll soon get used to it. I'll see you're not snatched away until I've had the worth of you here. Come, then, and see what we have for you within the walls."
    Benet had come a few paces more into the hut, and was looking about him with curiosity and mild awe at the array of bottles, jars and flagons that furnished Brother Cadfael's shelves, the rustling bunches of herbs that sighed overhead in the faint stirrings of air from the open door, the small brass scales, the three mortars, the single gently bubbling wine-jar, the little wooden bowls of medicinal roots, and a batch of small white lozenges drying on a marble slab. His round-eyed, open-mouthed stare spoke for him. Cadfael half-expected him to cross himself defensively against such ominous mysteries, but Benet stopped short of that. Just as well, thought Cadfael, alerted and amused, for I should not quite have believed in it.
    "This, too, you can learn, if you put your mind to it diligently enough," he said dryly, "but it will take you some years. Mere medicines - God made every ingredient that goes into them, there's no other magic. But let's begin with what's needed most. There's a good acre of vegetable garden beds to rough-dig, and a small mountain of well-weathered stable muck to cart and spread on the main butts and the rose beds. And the sooner we get down to it, the sooner it will be done. Come and see!"
    The boy followed him willingly enough, his light, lively eyes scanning everything with interest. Beyond the fish ponds, in the two pease fields that ran down the slope to the Meole Brook, the western boundary of the enclave, the haulms had long since been cut