Brother Cadfael 12: The Raven in the Foregate

received the Pope's letter, which he read out to us in conference, reproving him for not enforcing the release of the King, and urging him to insist upon it above all else. And who dares wonder if he made the most of it? And besides, the King came there himself. He entered the hall and made formal complaint against all those who had sworn fealty to him, and then suffered him to lie in prison, and come near to slaying him."
    "But then sat back and let his brother use his eloquence to worm his way out of the reproach," said Hugh, and smiled. "He has the advantage of his cousin and rival, he knows when to mellow and forget. She neither forgets nor forgives."
    "Well, true. But it was not a happy thing to hear. Bishop Henry made his defence, frankly owning he had had no choice open to him but to accept the fortune as it fell, and receive the Empress. He said he had done what seemed the best and only thing, but that she had broken all her pledges, outraged all her subjects, and made war against his own life. And to conclude, he pledged the Church again to King Stephen, and urged all men of consequence and goodwill to serve him. He took some credit," said Abbot Radulfus with sad deliberation, "for the liberation of the King to himself. And outlawed from the Church all those who continued to oppose him."
    "And mentioned the Empress, or so I've heard," said Hugh equally dryly, "as the countess of Anjou." It was a title the Empress detested, as belittling both her birth and her rank by her first marriage, a king's daughter and the widow of an emperor, now reduced to a title borrowed from her none-too-loved and none-too-loving second husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, her inferior in every particular but talent, common sense and efficiency. All he had ever done for Maud was give her a son. Of the love she bore to the boy Henry there was no doubt at all.
    "No one raised a voice against what was said," the abbot mentioned almost absently. "Except an envoy from the lady, who fared no better than the one who spoke, last time, for King Stephen's queen. Though this one, at least, was not set upon by assassins in the street."
    Inevitably those two legatine councils, one in April, one in December, had been exact and chilling mirror-images, fortune turning her face now to one faction, now to the other, and taking back with the left hand what she had given with the right. There might yet be as many further reversals before ever there was an end in sight.
    "We are back where we began," said the abbot, "and nothing to show for months of misery. And what will the King do now?"
    "That I shall hope to find out during the Christmas feast," said Hugh, rising to take his leave. "For I'm summoned to my lord, Father, like you. King Stephen wants all his sheriffs about him at his court at Canterbury, where he keeps the feast, to render account of our stewardships. Me among them, as his sheriff here for want of a better. What he'll do with his freedom remains to be seen. They say he's in good health and resolute spirits, if that means anything. As for what he means to do with me - well, that, no doubt, I shall discover, in due time."
    "My son, I trust he'll have the good sense to leave well alone. For here," said Radulfus, "we have at least preserved what good we can, and by the present measure in this unhappy realm, it is well with this shire. But I doubt whatever he does else can only mean more fighting and more wretchedness for England. And you and I can do nothing to prevent or better it."
    "Well, if we cannot give England peace," said Hugh, smiling somewhat wryly, "at least let's see what you and I can do between us for Shrewsbury."
    After dinner in the refectory Brother Cadfael made his way across the great court, rounded the thick, dark mass of the box hedge-grown straggly now, he noted, and ripe for a final clipping before growth ceased in the cold-and entered the moist flower gardens, where leggy roses balanced at a man's height on their thin, leafless stems, and still glowed with invincible light and life. Beyond lay his herb garden, walled and silent, all its small, square beds already falling asleep, naked spears of mint left standing stiff as wire, cushions of thyme flattened to the ground, crouching to protect their remaining leaves, yet over all a faint surviving fragrance of the summer's spices. Partly a memory, perhaps, partly drifting out from the open door of his workshop, where bunches of dried herbs swung from the eaves and the beams