Monk's Hood Read Free Page B

all his silence
and withdrawal about the cloister and court, who brought all the gossip before
others knew it.
    He
came in from an errand to the mill, an hour before Vespers, full of news.
    “Do
you know what Prior Robert has done? Taken up residence in the abbot’s lodging!
Truly! Brother Sub-prior has orders to sleep in the prior’s cell in the
dormitory from tonight. And Abbot Heribert barely out of the gates! I call it
great presumption!”
    So
did Cadfael, though he felt it hardly incumbent upon him either to say so, or
to let Brother Mark utter his thoughts quite so openly. “Beware how you pass
judgment on your superiors,” he said mildly, “at least until you know how to
put yourself in their place and see from their view. For all we know, Abbot
Heribert may have required him to move into the lodging, as an instance of his
authority while we’re without an abbot. It is the place set aside for the
spiritual father of this convent.”
    “But
Prior Robert is not that, not yet! And Abbot Heribert would have said so at
chapter if he had wished it so. At least he would have told Brother Sub-prior,
and no one did. I saw his face, he is as astonished as anyone, and shocked. He
would not have taken such a liberty!”
    Too
true, thought Cadfael, busy pounding roots in a mortar, Brother Richard the
sub-prior was the last man to presume; large, good-natured and peace-loving to
the point of laziness, he never exerted himself to advance even by legitimate
means. It might dawn on some of the younger and more audacious brothers shortly
that they had gained an advantagein the exchange. With Richard
in the prior’s cell that commanded the length of the dortoir, it would be far
easier for the occasional sinner to slip out by the night-stairs after the
lights were out; even if the crime were detected it would probably never be
reported. A blind eye is the easiest thing in the world to turn on whatever is
troublesome.
    “All
the servants at the lodging are simmering,” said Brother Mark. “You know how
devoted they are to Abbot Heribert, and now to be made to serve someone else,
before his place is truly vacant, even! Brother Henry says it’s almost
blasphemy. And Brother Petrus is looking blacker than thunder, and muttering
into his cooking-pots something fearful. He said, once Prior Robert gets his
foot in the door, it will take a dose of hemlock to get him out again when
Abbot Heribert returns.”
    Cadfael
could well imagine it. Brother Petrus was the abbot’s cook, old in his service,
and a black-haired, fiery-eyed barbarian from near the Scottish border, at
that, given to tempestuous and immoderate declarations, none of them to be
taken too seriously; but the puzzle was where exactly to draw the line.
    “Brother
Petrus says many things he might do well not to say, but he never means harm,
as you well know. And he’s a prime cook, and will continue to feed the abbot’s
table nobly, whoever sits at the head of it, because he can do no other.”
    “But
not happily,” said Brother Mark with conviction.
    No
question but the even course of the day had been gravely shaken; yet so well
regulated was the regime within these walls that every brother, happy or not,
would pursue his duties as conscientiously as ever.
    “When
Abbot Heribert returns, confirmed in office,” said Mark, firmly counting wishes
as horses, “Prior Robert’s nose will be out of joint.” And the thought of that
august organ bent aside like the misused beak of an old soldier so consoled him
that he found heart to laugh again, while Cadfael could not find the heart to
scold him, since even for him the picture had its appeal.
    Brother
Edmund the infirmarer came to Cadfael’s hut in the middle of the afternoon, a
week after Abbot Heribert’s departure, to collect some medicines for his
inmates. The frosts, though not yet severe, had come after such mild weather as
to take more than one young