Brother Cadfael 17: The Potter's Field Read Free Page A

which was impossible to him. 'He has now that entire security that cannot be moved by well or ill, since to his present state everything is well. If martyrdom was demanded of him now, he would accept it with the same serenity as bliss. Indeed it would be bliss, he knows nothing less. I doubt if he gives a thought to any part of that life he led for forty years, or the wife he knew and abandoned. No, Ruald had no choice.'

    

Aline was regarding him steadily with her wide iris eyes, that were so shrewd in their innocence. 'Was it like that for you,' she asked, 'when your time came?''

    

'No, I had a choice. I made a choice. It was even a hard choice, but I made it, and I hold to it. I am no such elect saint as Ruald.'

    

'Is that a saint?' and Aline. 'It seems to me all too easy.'

    

The charter of the exchange of lands between Haughmond and Shrewsbury was drawn up, sealed and witnessed in the first week of September. Some days later Brother Cadfael and Brother Richard the sub-prior went to view the new acquisition, and consider its future use to the best advantage of the abbey. The morning was misty when they set out, but by the time they had reached the ferry just upstream from the field the sun was already coming through the haze, and their sandalled feet left dark tracks through the dewy grass above the shore.

    

Across the river the further bank rose, sandy and steep, undercut here and there by the currents, and levelling off into a narrow plain of grass, with a rising ridge of bushes and trees beyond. When they stepped from the boat they had some minutes of walking along this belt of pasture, and then they stood at the corner of the Potter's Field, and had the whole expanse obliquely before them.

    

It was a very fair place. From the sandy escarpment of the river bank the slope of grass rose gradually towards a natural headland of bush and thorn and a filigree screen of birch trees against the sky. Backed into this crest in the far corner the shell of the empty cottage squatted, its garden unfenced and running wild into the embracing wildness of the unreaped grass. The crop Haughmond had not found worth his while to garner was bleaching into early autumn pallor, having ripened and seeded weeks earlier, and among the whitened standing stems all manner of meadow flowers still showed, harebell and archangel, poppy and daisy and centaury, with the fresh green shoots of new grass just breaking through the roots of the fading yield. Under the headland above, tangles of bramble offered fruit just beginning to blacken from red.

    

'We could still cut and dry this for bedding,' said Brother Richard, casting a judicial eye over the wild expanse, 'but would it be worth the labour? Or we could leave it to die down of itself, and plough it in. This land has not been under the plough for generations.'

    

'It would be heavy work,' said Cadfael, viewing with pleasure the sheen of sunlight on the distant white trunks of the birch trees on the ridge.

    

'Not so heavy as you might think. The soil beneath is good, friable loam. And we have a strong ox-team, and the field has length enough to get a team of six into the yoke. We need a deep, broad furrow for the first ploughing. I would recommend it,' said Brother Richard, secure in the experience of his farming stock, and set off up the field to the crest, by the same rural instinct keeping to the headland instead of wading through the grass. 'We should leave the lower strip for pasture, and plough this upper level.'

    

Cadfael was of the same mind. The field they had parted with, distant beyond Haughton, had been best left under stock; here they could very well take a crop of wheat or barley, and turn the stock from the lower pasture into the stubble afterwards, to manure the land for the next year. The place pleased him, and yet had an undefined sadness about it. The remnants of the garden fence, when they reached it, the tangled growth in