Brother Cadfael 21: A Rare Benedictine

collection was due, but whether to comfort or reproach was matter for speculation. Brother Ambrose, still voiceless, essayed speech and achieved only a painful wheeze, before Brother Cadfael, who was anointing his patient's throat afresh with goose-grease, and had a soothing syrup of orpine standing by, laid a palm over the sufferer's mouth and ordered silence.
    "Now, William," he said tolerantly, "if you can't comfort, don't vex. This poor soul's got you on his conscience as it is, and you know, as well as I do, that you have the whole matter at your finger-ends. You tell him so, and fetch up a smile, or out you go." And he wrapped a length of good Welsh flannel round the glistening throat, and reached for the spoon that stood in the beaker of syrup. Brother Ambrose opened his mouth with the devoted resignation of a little bird waiting to be fed, and sucked in the dose with an expression of slightly surprised appreciation.
    But William Rede was not going to be done out of his grievance so easily. "Oh, no fault of yours," he owned grudgingly, "but very ill luck for me, as if I had not enough on my hands in any event, with the rent-roll grown so long, and the burden of scribe's work for ever lengthening, as it does. And I have troubles of my own nearer home, into the bargain, with that rogue son of mine nothing but brawler and gamester as he is. If I've told him once I've told him a score of times, the next time he comes to me to pay his debts or buy him out of trouble, he'll come in vain, he may sweat it out in gaol, and serve him right. A man would think he could get a little peace and comfort from his own flesh and blood. All I get is vexation."
    Once launched upon this tune, he was liable to continue the song indefinitely, and Brother Ambrose was already looking apologetic and abject, as though not William, but he, had engendered the unsatisfactory son. Cadfael could not recall that he had ever spoken with young Rede, beyond exchanging the time of day, and knew enough about fathers and sons, and the expectations each had of the other, to take all such complaints with wary reserve. Report certainly said the young man was a wild one, but at twenty-two which of the town hopefuls was not? By thirty they were most of them working hard, and minding their own purses, homes and wives. "Your lad will mend, like many another," said Cadfael comfortably, edging the voluble visitor out from the infirmary into the sunshine of the great court. Before them on their left the great west tower of the church loomed; on their right, the long block of the guest-halls, and beyond, the crowns of the garden trees just bursting into leaf and bud, with a moist, pearly light filming over stonework and cobbles and all with a soft Spring sheen. "And as for the rents, you know very well, old humbug, that you have your finger on every line of the leiger book, and tomorrow's affair will go like a morning walk. At any rate, you can't complain of your prentice hand. He's worked hard enough over those books of yours."
    "Jacob has certainly shown application," the steward agreed cautiously. "I own I've been surprised at the grasp he has of abbey affairs, in so short a time. Young people nowadays take so little interest in what they're set to do fly-by-nights and frivolous, most of them. It's been heartening to see one of them work with such zeal. I daresay he knows the value due from every property of the house by this time. Yes, a good boy. But too ingenuous, Cadfael, there's his flaw too affable. Figures and characters on vellum cannot baffle him, but a rogue with a friendly tongue might come over him. He cannot stand men off he cannot put frost between. It's not well to be too open with all men."
    It was mid-afternoon; in an hour or so it would be time for Vespers. The great court had always some steady flow of activity, but at this hour it was at its quietest. They crossed the court together at leisure, Brother Cadfael to return to his workshop in the herb garden, the steward to the north walk of the cloister, where his assistant was hard at work in the scriptorium. But before they had reached the spot where their paths would divide, two young men emerged from the cloister in easy conversation, and came towards them.
    Jacob of Bouldon was a sturdy, square-set young fellow from the south of the shire, with a round, amiable face, large, candid eyes, and a ready smile. He came with a vellum leaf doubled in one hand, and a pen behind his ear, in