'Go now, if you wish,' said Cadfael simply, eyeing with close attention the steady hands that swept the bench clear of fragments, and the head so sedulously inclined to keep the young, austere face in shadow. 'There's time before Vespers.'
Abbot Radulfus examined his petitioner with a detached and tolerant eye. In three days the boy had changed in understandable ways, his exhaustion cured, his step now firm and vigorous, the lines of his face eased of their tiredness and strain, the reflection of danger and horror gone from his eyes. Whether the rest had resolved his problem for him was not yet clear, but there was certainly nothing indecisive in his manner, or in the clean jut of a very respectable jaw.
'Father,' he said directly. 'I am here to ask your leave to go and visit my family and my home. It is only fair that I should be equally open to influences from within and without.'
'I thought,' said Radulfus mildly, 'that you might be here to tell me that your trouble is resolved, and your mind made up. You have that look about you. It seems I am previous.'
'No, Father, I am not yet sure. And I would not offer myself afresh until I am sure.'
'So you want to breathe the air at Longner before you stake your life, and allow household and kin and kind to speak to you, as our life here has spoken. I would not have it otherwise,' said the abbot. 'Certainly you may visit. Go freely. Better, sleep again at Longner, think well upon all you stand to gain there, and all you stand to lose. You may need even more time. When you are ready, when you are certain, then come and tell me which way you have chosen.'
'I will, Father,' said Sulien. The tone was the one he had learned to take for granted in the year and more of his novitiate in Ramsey, submissive, dutiful and reverent, but the disconcerting eyes were fixed on some distant aim visible only to himself, or so it seemed to the abbot, who was as well versed in reading the monastic face as Sulien was in withdrawing behind it.
'Go then, at once if you wish.' He considered how long a journey afoot this young man had recently had to make, and added a concession. 'Take a mule from the stable, if you intend to leave now. The daylight will see you there if you ride. And tell Brother Cadfael you have leave to stay until tomorrow.'
'I will, Father!' Sulien made his reverence and departed with a purposeful alacrity which Radulfus observed with some amusement and some regret. The boy would have been well worth keeping, if that had truly been his bent, but Radulfus was beginning to judge that he had already lost him. He had been home once before, since electing for the cloister, to bring home his father's body for burial after the rout of Wilton, had stayed several days on that occasion, and still chosen to return to his vocation. He had had seven months since then to reconsider, and this sudden urge now to visit Longner, with no unavoidable filial duty this time to reinforce it, seemed to the abbot significant evidence of a decision as good as made.
Cadfael was crossing the court to enter the church for Vespers when Sulien accosted him with the news.
'Very natural,' said Cadfael heartily, 'that you should want to see your mother and your brother, too. Go with all our goodwill and, whatever you decide, God bless the choice.'
His expectation, however, as he watched the boy ride out at the gatehouse, was the same that Radulfus had in mind. Sulien Blount was not, on the face of it, cut out for the monastic life, however hard he had tried to believe in his misguided choice. A night at home now, in his own bed and with his kin around him, would settle the matter.
Which conclusion left a very pertinent question twitching all through Vespers in Cadfael's mind. What could possibly have driven the boy to make for the cloister in the first place?
Sulien came back next day in time for Mass, very solemn of countenance and resolute of bearing, for some reason looking years nearer to a man's full maturity than when he had arrived from horrors and hardships, endured with all a man's force and determination. A youth, resilient but vulnerable, had spent two days in Cadfael's company; a man, serious and
Kostenlos Online Lesen 
