Brother Cadfael 13: The Rose Rent

middle brown colouring, and his voice was pitched pleasantly low. His age, she thought, might be forty years. When he straightened up they stood virtually eye to eye, and the movements of his large, capable hands were smooth, firm and deft.
    Everything about him fitted into the picture of the ordinary, worthy soul almost indistinguishable from his neighbour, and yet the sum of the parts was very simply and positively himself and no other man. He had thick brown brows in a wide-boned face, and wide-set eyes of a deep, sunny hazel. There were a few grizzled hairs in his thick brown thatch, and a solid, peaceful jut to his shaven chin.
    "Are you in haste for it?" he asked. "I should like to make a good job of it. If I may take two or three days over it."
    "There's no hurry," she said readily. "I've neglected it long enough, another week is no great matter."
    "Then shall I bring it up to you in the town? I know the place, I could save you the walk." He made the offer civilly but hesitantly, as though it might be taken as presumption rather than simply meant as a courtesy.
    She cast a rapid glance about his shop, and saw evidences enough that he had in hand a great deal of work, more than enough to keep him busy all through the labouring day. "But I think your time is very well filled. If you have a boy, perhaps - but I can as well come for it."
    "I work alone," said Niall. "But I'd willingly bring it up to you in the evening, when the light's going. I've no other calls on my time, it's no hardship to work the clock round."
    "You live alone here?" she asked, confirmed in her assumptions about him. "No wife? No family?"
    "I lost my wife, five years ago. I'm used to being alone, it's a simple enough matter to take care of my few needs. But I have a little girl. Her mother died bearing her." He saw the sudden tension in her face, the faint spark in her eyes as she reared her head and glanced round, half expecting to see some evidence of a child's presence. "Oh, not here! I should have been hard put to it to care for a newborn babe, and there's my sister, out at Pulley, no great distance, married to Mortimer's steward at the demesne there, and with two boys and a girl of her own, not very much older. My little lass stays there with them, where she has other children for playmates, and a woman's care. I walk over to see her every Sunday, and sometimes in the evenings, too, but she's better with Cecily and John and the youngsters than here solitary with me, leastways while she's still so young."
    Judith drew breath long and deeply. Widower he might be, and his loss there as bitter as hers, but he had one priceless pledge left to him, while she was barren. "You don't know," she said abruptly, "how I envy you. My child I lost." She had not meant to say so much, but it came out of her naturally and bluntly, and naturally and bluntly he received it.
    "I heard of your trouble, mistress. I was mortally sorry then, having known the like myself not so long before. But the little one at least was spared to me. I thank God for that. When a man suffers such a wound, he also finds out how to value such a mercy."
    "Yes," she said, and turned away sharply. "Well... I trust your daughter thrives," she said, recovering, "and will always be a joy to you. I'll come for the girdle in three days' time, if that's enough for you. No need to bring it."
    She was in the doorway of the shop before he could speak, and then there seemed nothing of any significance to say. But he watched her cross the yard and turn into the Foregate, and turned back to his work at the bench only when she had vanished from his sight.
    It was late in the afternoon, but still an hour short of Vespers at this season of the year, when Brother Eluric, custodian of Saint Mary's altar, slipped almost furtively away from his work in the scriptorium, crossed the great court to the abbot's lodging in its small fenced garden, and asked for audience. His manner was so taut and brittle that Brother Vitalis, chaplain and secretary to Abbot Radulfus, raised questioning eyebrows, and hesitated before announcing him. But Radulfus was absolute that every son of the house in trouble or need of advice must have ready access to him. Vitalis shrugged, and went in to ask leave, which was readily given.
    In the panelled parlour the bright sunlight softened into a mellow haze. Eluric halted just within the doorway, and heard the door gently closed at his back. Radulfus was sitting at his desk near