The Raven in the Foregate Read Free Page B

at that
moment, but in any case it was unlikely that any of them would have troubled to
argue with Jerome, whose much noise and small effect hardly challenged notice.
No doubt he would preach stern sermons at the parish Mass, on the two days
allotted to him, but there would be very few of the regular attenders there to
listen to him, and even those who did attend would let his homily in at one ear
and out at the other, knowing his office here could last but a few days.
    For all that, Cadfael went to his bed that night very
thoughtful, and though he heard a few whispered exchanges in the dortoir,
himself kept silence, mindful of the rule that the words of Compline, the completion,
the perfecting of the day’s worship, should be the last words uttered before
sleep, that the mind should not be distracted from the ‘Opus Dei’. Nor was it.
For the words lingered with him between sleep and waking, the same words over
and over, faintly returning. By chance the psalm was the sixth. He took it with
him into slumber.
    “Domine, ne in furore—O Lord, rebuke me not in thine
anger, neither chasten me in thy displeasure… Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I
am weak.”

 
     
     
    Chapter Two
     
    ON THE TENTH DAY OF DECEMBER, abbot Radulfus returned,
riding in at the gatehouse just as the daylight was fading, and the brethren
were within at Vespers. Thus the porter was the only witness of his arrival,
and of the embellished entourage he brought back with him, and not until the
next day at chapter did the brothers hear all that he had to tell, or as much
of it as concerned the abbey itself. But Brother Porter, the soul of discretion
when required, could also be the best-informed gossip in the enclave to his
special friends, and Cadfael learned something of what was toward that same
night, in one of the carrels in the cloister, immediately after Vespers.
    “He’s brought back with him a priest, a fine tall
fellow—not above thirty-five years or so I’d guess him to be. He’s bedded now
in the guest hall, they rode hard today to get home before dark. Not a word has
Father Abbot said to me, beyond giving me my orders to let Brother Denis know
he has a guest for the night, and to take care of the other two. For there’s a
woman come with the priest, a decent soul going grey and very modestly
conducted, that I take to be some sort of aunt or housekeeper to the priest,
for I was bidden get one of the lay grooms to show her the way to Father Adam’s
cottage, and that I did. And not the woman alone, there’s another young servant
lad with her, that waits on the pair of them and does their errands. A widow
and her son they could be, in the priest’s service. Off he goes with only
Brother Vitalis, as always, and comes back with three more, and two extra horses.
The young lad brought the woman pillion behind him. And what do you make of all
that?”
    “Why, there’s but one way of it,” said Cadfael, after
giving the matter serious thought. “The lord abbot has brought back a priest
for Holy Cross from the southlands, and his household with him. The man himself
is made comfortable in the guest hall overnight, while his domestics go to open
up the empty house and get a good fire going for him, and food in store, and
the place warmed and ready. And tomorrow at chapter, no doubt, we shall hear
how the abbot came by him, and which of all the bishops gathered there
recommended him to the benefice.”
    “It’s what I myself was thinking,” agreed the porter,
“though it would have been more to the general mind, I fancy, if a local man
had been advanced to the vacancy. Still, it’s what a man is that counts, not
his name nor where he came from. No doubt the lord abbot knows his business
best.” And he went off briskly, probably to whisper the news into one or two
other discreet ears before Compline. Certainly several of the brothers came to
the next morning’s chapter already