Brother Cadfael 12: The Raven in the Foregate

Hugh, setting his empty cup aside and rising to take his leave. "All the more as this affair is indeed laid right at my door, and for all I know young Bachiler may be a hundred miles away or more. A small show of zeal, however, won't come amiss, or do any harm."
    Cadfael went out into the garden with him. Benet was just coming up over the far rim of the rose garden, where the ground sloped away to the pease fields and the brook. He was whistling jauntily as he came, and swinging an axe lightly in one hand, for a little earlier he had been breaking the ice on the fish ponds, to let air through to the denizens below.
    "What did you say, Hugh, was the christened name of this young man Bachiler you're supposed to be hunting?"
    "Ninian or so he's reported."
    "Ah, yes!" said Cadfael. "That was it - Ninian."
    Benet came back into the garden after his dinner with the lay servants, and looked about him somewhat doubtfully, kicking at the hard-frozen ground he had recently dug, and viewing the clipped hedges now silvered with rime that lasted day-long and increased by a fresh frilling of white every night. Every branch that stirred tinkled like glass. Every clod was solid as stone.
    "What is there for me to do?" he demanded, tramping into Cadfael's workshop. "This frost halts everything. No man could plough or dig, a day like this. Let alone copy letters," he added, round eyed at the thought of the numb fingers in the scriptorium trying to line in a capital with precious gold-leaf, or even write an unshaken line. "They're still at it, poor wretches. At least there's some warmth in handling a spade or an axe. Can I split you some wood for the brazier? Lucky for us you need the fire for your brews, or we should be as blue and stiff as the scribes."
    "They'll have lighted the fire in the warming room early, a day like this," said Cadfael placidly, "and when they can no longer hold pen or brush steady they have leave to stop work. You've done all the digging within the walls here, and the pruning's finished, no need to feel guilty if you sit idle for once. Or you can take a turn at these mysteries of mine if you care to. Nothing learned is ever quite wasted."
    Benet was ready enough to try his hand at anything. He came close, to peer curiously at what Cadfael was stirring in a stone pot on a grid on the side of the brazier. Here in their shared solitude he was quite easy, and had lost the passing disquiet and dismay that had dimmed his brightness on Christmas Day. Men die, and thinking men see a morsel of their own death in every one that draws close to them, but the young soon recover. And what was Father Ailnoth to Benet, after all? If he had done him a kindness in letting him come here with his aunt, the priest had none the less had the benefit of the boy's willing service on the journey, a fair exchange.
    "Did you visit Mistress Hammet last evening?" asked Cadfael, recalling another possible source of concern. "How is she now?"
    "Still bruised and shaken," said Benet, "but she has a stout spirit, she'll do well enough."
    "She hasn't been greatly worried by the sergeants? Hugh Beringar is home now, and he'll want to hear everything from her own lips, but she need not trouble for that. Hugh has been told how it was, she need only repeat it to him."
    "They've been civility itself with her," said Benet. "What is this you're making?"
    It was a large pot, and a goodly quantity of aromatic brown syrup bubbling gently in it. "A mixture for coughs and colds," said Cadfael. "We shall be needing it any day now, and plenty of it, too."
    "What goes into it?"
    "A great many things. Bay and mint, coltsfoot, hore-hound, mullein, mustard, poppy - good for the throat and the chest - and a small draught of the strong liquor I distil does no harm in such cases, either. But if you want work, here, lift out that big mortar ... yes, there! Those frost-gnawed hands you were pitying, we'll make something for those."
    The chilblains of winter were always a seasonal enemy, and an extra batch of ointment for treating them could not come amiss. He began to issue orders briskly, pointing out the herbs he wanted, making Benet climb for some, and move hastily up and down the hanging bunches for others. The boy took pleasure in this novel entertainment, and jumped to obey every crisp command.
    "The small scale, there, at the back of the shelf-fetch that out, and while you're in the corner there, the little weights are in the box beside. Oh, and, Ninian ..."