“It is hardly important, surely?” said Prior Robert with ominous mildness. “Your bishop and your prince have made their views plain. The parishioners need not be consulted.”
That, too, Cadfael interpreted, Urien choosing to remain neutral and mute.
“Impossible!” said Huw firmly, knowing himself on secure ground. “In such a grave matter affecting the whole parish, nothing can be done without calling together the assembly of the free men, and putting the case to them fully and publicly. Doubtless the will of prince and bishop will prevail, but even so, these must be put to the people before they can say yes or no to them. I shall call such an assembly tomorrow. Your case can only be vindicated absolutely by public acceptance.”
“He says truly,” said Urien, holding the prior’s austere and half affronted eyes. “You will do well to get the goodwill of Gwytherin, however many blessings you already have. They respect their bishop, and are very content with their king and his sons. I doubt if you need grudge the delay.”
Prior Robert accepted both the warning and the reassurance, and felt the need of a period of quietude in which to review his strategy and prepare his persuasions. When Urien rose to take his leave, his errand punctiliously completed, the Prior also rose, half a head taller than the tallest there, and folded his long white hands in submissive resignation.
“We have yet two hours or more to Vespers,” he said, eyeing the angle of the sun. “I should like to withdraw into your church and spend some while in meditation, and prayer for right guidance. Brother Cadfael, you had better remain with Father Huw, and help him in any arrangements he needs to make, and you, Brother John, bestow the horses as he directs, and see them cared for. The rest will join me in intercession, that we may conduct this enterprise rightly.”
He swept away, elongated and silvery and majestic, and had to stoop his head to enter under the low round arch of the church door. Brother Richard, Brother Jerome, Brother Columbanus vanished within on his heels. Not all the time they were together there would be spent in prayer. They would be considering what arguments would be most likely to carry the day with Father Huw’s free assembly, or what oblique ecclesiastical threats daunt them into submission.
Brother John looked after the lofty silver head until it stooped with accurate dignity just low enough to pass under the stone, and let out something between a sigh and an arrested gurgle of laughter, as though he had been praying for a miscalculation. What with the journey, and the exercise, and the outdoor living, he looked ruddier and healthier and more athletic than ever.
“I’ve been hoping all this while for a chance to get my leg over that dapple-gray,” he said. “Richard rides him like a badly-balanced woolsack. I hope Father Huw’s stabling is a mile or more away.”
Father Huw’s plans for them, it seemed, involved two of the nearer and more prosperous members of his flock, but even so, in the scattered Welsh way, their houses were dispersed in valley and forest.
“I shall give up my own house to the prior and sub-prior, of course,” he said, “and sleep in the loft above my cow. For the beasts, my grazing here is too small, and I have no stable, but Bened the smith has a good paddock above the water-meadows, and stabling with a loft, if this young brother will not mind being lodged the better part of a mite from his fellows. And for you and your two companions, Brother Cadfael, there is open house half a mile from here through the woods, with Cadwallon, who has one of the biggest holdings in these parts.”
Brother Cadfael considered the prospect of being housed with Jerome and Columbanus, and found it unattractive. “Since I am the only one among us who has fluent Welsh,” he said diplomatically, “I should remain close to Prior Robert’s side. With your goodwill, Huw, I’ll share your loft above the cow-byre, and be very comfortable there.”
“If that’s your wish,” said Huw simply, “I shall be glad of your company. And now I must set this young man on his way to the smithy.”
“And I,” said Cadfael, “if you don’t need me along with you — and yonder boy will make himself understood in whatever language, or none! — will go a piece of the way back with Urien. If I can pick up an acquaintance or so among your flock, so much the better, for I like the took of them and their valley.”
Brother John came out from the tiny paddock leading the two tall horses, the mules following on leading reins. Huw’s eyes glowed almost as bright as John’s, caressing the smooth lines of neck and shoulder.
“How long it is,” he said wistfully, “since I was on a good horse!”
“Come on, then, Father,” urged Brother John, understanding the look if not the words, “up with you! Here’s a hand, if you fancy the roan. Lead the way in style!” And he cupped a palm for the priest’s lifted foot, and hoisted him, dazed and enchanted, into the saddle. Up himself on the grey, he fell in alongside, ready if the older man should need a steadying hand, but the brown knees gripped happily He had not forgotten how. “Bravely!” said John, hugely laughing. “We shall get on famously together, and end up in a race!”
Urien, checking his girth, watched them ride away out or the gentle bowl of the clearing “There go two happy men,” he said thoughtfully.
“More and more I wonder,” said Cadfael, “how that youngster ever came to commit himself to the monastic life.”
“Or you, for instance?” said Urien, with his toe in the stirrup. “Come, if you want to view the ground, we’ll take the valley way a piece, before I leave you for the hills.”
They parted at the crest of the ridge, among the trees but where a fold of the ground showed them the ox-team still doggedly labouring at a second strip, continuing the line of the first, above the richer valley land. Two such strips in one day was prodigious work.
“Your prior will be wise,” said Urien, taking his leave, “to take a lesson from yonder young fellow. Leading and coaxing pays better than driving in these parts. But I need not tell you — a man as Welsh as myself.”
Cadfael watched him ride away gently along the cleared track until he vanished among the trees. Then he turned back towards Gwytherin, but went steeply downhill towards the river, and at the edge of the forest stood in green shadow under an oak tree, gazing across the sunlit meadows and the silver thread of river to where the team heaved and strained along the last furrow. Here there was no great distance between them, and he could see clearly the gloss of sweat on the pelts of the oxen, and the heavy curl of the soil as it heeled back from the share. The ploughman was dark, squat and powerful, with a salting of grey in his shaggy locks, but the ox-caller was tall and slender, and the curling hair that tossed on his neck and clung to his moist brow was as fair as flax. He managed his backward walking without a glance behind, feeling his way light-footed and gracefully, as if he had eyes in the back of his heels. His voice was hoarse and tired with long use now, but still clear and merry, more effective than any goad, as he cajoled his weary beasts along the final furrow, calling and luring and praising, telling them they had done marvels, and should get their rest and their meed for it, that in moments now they would be going home, and he was proud of them and loved them, as if he had been talking to Christian souls. And the beasts heaved and leaned, throwing their weight into the yokes and keeping their eyes upon him, and plainly would do anything in their power to please him. When the plough curved to the end and halted, and the steaming oxen stood with lowered heads, the young man came and flung an arm over the neck of the near leader, and scrubbed with brisk knuckles in the curly hair on the other’s brow, and Cadfael said aloud: “Bravely! But, my friend, how did you stray into Wales?”