Brother Cadfael 17: The Potter's Field

sorting out a few good lads ready for action. Stephen is slow to start, sometimes, having a vein of laziness in him until he's roused, but he'll have to take action now against this rabble. He should have wrung de Mandeville's neck while he had him, he was warned often enough.'

    

'He's unlikely to call on you,' Cadfael considered judicially, 'even if he does decide to raise a new force to flush out the wolves. He can call on the neighbouring shires, surely. He'll want men fast.'

    

'He shall have them fast,' said Hugh grimly, 'for I'll be ready to take the road as soon as he gives the word. True, he may not need to fetch men from the border here, seeing he trusts Chester no more than he did Essex, and Chester's turn will surely come. But whether or no, I'll be ready for him. If you're bound back, Cadfael, take my thanks to the abbot for his news. We'll set the armourers and the fletchers to work, and make certain of our horses. No matter if they turn out not to be needed, it does the garrison no harm to be alerted in a hurry now and then.' He turned towards the outer ward and the gatehouse with his departing friend, still frowning thoughtfully over this new complexity in England's already confused and troublous situation. 'Strange how great and little get their lives tangled together, Cadfael. De Mandeville takes his revenge in the east, and sends this lad from Longner scurrying home again here to the Welsh border. Would you say fate had done him any favour? It could well be. You never knew him until now, did you? He never seemed to me a likely postulant for the cloister.'

    

'I did gather,' said Cadfael cautiously, 'that he may not yet have taken his final vows. He said he came with a trouble of his own unresolved, that his abbot charged him bring with him here to Radulfus. It may be he's taken fright, now the time closes upon him. It happens! I'll be off back and see what Radulfus intends for him.'

    

What Radulfus had in mind for the troubled soul was made plain when Cadfael returned, as bidden, to the abbot's parlour. The abbot was alone at his desk by this time, the new entrant sent away with Brother Paul to rest from his long journey afoot and take his place, with certain safeguards, among his peers, if not of them.

    

'He has need of some days of quietude,' said Radulfus, 'with time for prayer and thought, for he is in doubt of his vocation, and truth to tell, so am I. But I know nothing of his state of mind and his behaviour when he conceived his desire for the cloister, and am in no position to judge how genuine were his motives then, or are his reservations now. It is something he must resolve for himself. All I can do is ensure that no further shadow or shock shall fall upon him, to distract his mind when most he needs a clear head. I do not want him perpetually reminded of the fate of Ramsey, nor, for that matter, upset by any talk of this matter of the Potter's Field. Let him have stillness and solitude to think out his own deliverance first. When he is ready to see me again, I have told Brother Vitalis to admit him at once. But in the meantime, it may be as well if you would take him to help you in the herb garden, apart from the brothers except at worship. In frater and dortoir Paul will keep a watchful eye on him, during the hours of work he will be best with you, who already know his situation.'

    

'I have been thinking,' said Cadfael, scrubbing reflectively at his forehead, 'that he knows Ruald is here among us. It was some months after Ruald's entry that this young fellow made up his mind for the cloister. Ruald was Blount's tenant lifelong, and close by the manor, and Hugh tells me this boy Sulien was in and out of that workshop from a child, and a favourite with them, seeing they had none of their own. He has not spoken of Ruald, or asked to see him? How if he seeks him out?'

    

'If he does, well. He has that right, and I do not intend to hedge him in for long. But I think he is too full of Ramsey and his own trouble to have any thought to spare for other matters as yet. He has not yet taken his final vows,' said Radulfus, pondering with resigned anxiety over the complex agonies of the young. 'All we can do is provide him a time of shelter and calm. His will and his acts are still his own. And as for this shadow that hangs over Ruald - what use would it be to ignore the threat? - if the relations between them were as Hugh says, that will be one more grief and