Brother Cadfael 17: The Potter's Field

off in haste all trace of a solemnity that might have cast a shadow on her serenity. She came to sit with them, her hands for once empty, for the light was too far gone for sewing or even spinning, and the warm, soft evening too beautiful to be banished by lighting candles.

    

'He's fast asleep. He was nodding over his prayers. But still he could rouse enough to demand his story from Constance. He'll have heard no more than the first words, but custom is custom. And I want my story, too,' she said, smiling at Cadfael, 'before I let you leave us. What is the news with you, there at the abbey? Since the fair I've got no further afield than Saint Mary's for Mass. Do you find the fair a success this year? There were fewer Remings there, I thought, but some excellent cloths, just the same. I bought well, some heavy Welsh woollen for winter gowns. The sheriff,' she said, and made an impish face at Hugh, 'cares nothing what he puts on, but I won't have my husband go threadbare and cold. Will you believe, his best indoor gown is ten years old, and twice relined, and still he won't part with it?'

    

'Old servants are the best,' said Hugh absently. 'Truth to tell, it's only habit sends me looking for it, you may clothe me new, my heart, whenever you wish. And for what else is new, Cadfael tells me there's an exchange of lands agreed between Shrewsbury and Haughmond. The field they call the Potter's Field, by Longner, will come to the abbey. In good time for the ploughing, if that's what you decide, Cadfael.'

    

'It may well be,' Cadfael conceded. 'At least on the upper part, well clear of the river. The lower part is good grazing.'

    

'I used to buy from Ruald,' said Aline rather ruefully. 'He was a good craftsman. I still wonder - what was it made him leave the world for the cloister, and all so suddenly?'

    

'Who can tell?' Cadfael looked back, as now he seldom did, to the turning-point of his own life, many years past. After all manner of journeying, fighting, endurance of heat and cold and hardship, after the pleasures and the pains of experience, the sudden irresistible longing to turn about and withdraw into quietness remained a mystery. Not a retreat, certainly. Rather an emergence into light and certainty. 'He never could explain it or describe it. All he could say was that he had had a revelation of God, and had turned where he was pointed, and come where he was called. It happens. I think Radulfus had his doubts at first. He kept him the full term and over in his novitiate. His desire was extreme, and our abbot suspects extremes. And then, the man had been fifteen years married, and his wife was by no means consenting. Ruald left her everything he had to leave, and all of it she scorned. She fought his resolve for many weeks, but he would not be moved. After he was admitted among us she did not stay long in the croft, or avail herself of anything he had left behind for her. She went away, only a few weeks later, left the door open and everything in its place, and vanished.'

    

'With another man, so all the neighbours said,' Hugh remarked cynically.

    

'Well,' said Cadfael reasonably, 'her own had left her. And very bitter she was about it, by all accounts. She might well take a lover by way of revenge. Did ever you see the woman?'

    

'No,' said Hugh, 'not that I recall.'

    

'I have,' said Aline. 'She helped at his booth on market days and at the fair. Not last year, of course, last year he was in the cloister and she was already gone. There was a lot of talk about Ruald's leaving her, naturally, and gossip is never very charitable. She was not well liked among the market women, she never went out of her way to make friends, never let them close to her. And then, you see, she was very beautiful, and a stranger. He brought her from Wales, years ago, and even after years she spoke little English, and never made any effort to be anything but a stranger. She seemed to want no one but Ruald. No wonder if she was bitter when he abandoned her. The neighbours said she turned to hating him, and claimed she had another lover and could do without such a husband. But she fought for him to the end. Women turn for ease to hate, sometimes, when love leaves them nothing but pain.' She had mused herself into another woman's anguish with unwonted gravity; she shook off the image with some dismay. 'Now I am the gossip! What will you think of me? And it's all a year past, and surely by now