Brother Cadfael 12: The Raven in the Foregate

wonder they should!" said Cadfael. "I'm away to have a look at one or two of the children, but there's no great harm yet. Why, do you know of someone who needs me? I have leave, I can as well make one more visit. Who is sick?"
    "It's the little wooden hovel on the left, along the back lane from the horse-fair, the widow Nest. She's caring for her grandchild, the poor worm, Eluned's baby, and she's fretted for it." Cynric, perforce, was unusually loquacious in explaining. "Won't take its milk, and cries with the wind in its belly."
    "It was born a healthy child?" asked Cadfael. For it could not be many weeks old, and motherless, deprived of its best food. He had not forgotten the shock and anger that had swept through the Foregate, when they lost their favourite whore. If indeed Eluned had ever been a whore. She never asked payment. If men gave her things, it was of their own will. She, it seemed, had done nothing but give, however unwisely.
    "A bonny girl, big and lusty, so Nest said."
    "Then she'll have it in her, infant though she may be, to fight her way into life," said Cadfael comfortably. "I must go get the right cordial for an infant's inside. I'll make it fresh. Who sings Mass for you today?"
    "Brother Anselm."
    "Well for you!" said Brother Cadfael, making for the south porch and his quickest way to the garden and his workshop. "It might as easily have been Brother Jerome."
    The house was low and narrow, but sturdy, and the dark passage in which it stood braced against a taller dwelling looked crisp and clean in the hard frost, though in moist, mild weather it might have been an odorous hole. Cadfael rapped at the door, and for immediate reassurance called out loudly: "Brother Cadfael from the abbey, mistress. Cynric said you need me for the child."
    Whether it was his own name or Cynric's that made him welcome there was no knowing, but instantly there was a stir of movement within, a baby howled fretfully, probably at being laid down in haste, and then the door was opened wide, and from half-darkness a woman beckoned him within, and made haste to close the door after him against the cold.
    This one small room was all the house, and its only inlet for light or outlet for smoke was a vent in the roof. In clement weather the door would always be open from dawn to dusk, but frost had closed it, and the dwelling was lit only by a small oil lamp and the dim but steady glow of a fire penned in an iron cage on a flat stone under the vent. But blessedly someone had supplied charcoal for the widow's needs, and there was a mild fume in the nostrils here but little smoke. Furnishings were few, a low bench-bed in a corner, a few pots on the firestone, a rough, small table. Cadfael took a little time to accustom his eyes to the dim light, and the shapes of things emerged gradually. The woman stood by him, waiting, and like all else here, grew steadily out of the gloom, a perceptible human being. The cradle, the central concern of this house, was placed in the most sheltered corner, where the warmth of the fire could come, but not the draught from door or vent. And the child within was wailing indignantly within its wrappings, half-asleep but unable by reason of discomfort to fall deeper into peace.
    "I brought an end of candle with me," said Cadfael, taking in everything about him without haste. "I thought we might need more light. With your leave!" He took it out from his scrip, tilted the wick into the small flame of the lamp in its clay saucer, and stood the stump upon the corner of the table, where it shed light closely upon the cradle. It was a broad-based end discarded from one of the prickets in the wall brackets of the church, he found them useful for carrying on his errands because they would stand solidly on any flat surface, and run no risk of being overturned. Among flimsy wooden cottages there was need of such care. This dwelling, poor as it was, had been more solidly built than many.
    "They keep you in charcoal?" asked Cadfael, turning to the woman, who stood quite still, gazing at him with fixed and illusionless eyes.
    "My man who's dead was a forester in Eyton. The abbey's man there remembers me. He brings me wood, as well, the dead twigs and small chippings for kindling."
    "That's well," said Cadfael. "So young a babe needs to be kept warm. Now you tell me, what's her trouble?"
    She was telling him herself, in small, fretful wails from her cradle, but she was well wrapped and clean, and had a healthy,