Something small, round and hard dropped rustling through the leaves above him, and hit him neatly in the middle of his weather-beaten tonsure. He clapped a hand to his crown, and said something unbecoming his habit. But it was only one of last year’s oak-balls, dried out by a winter’s weathering to the hardness of a pebble. He looked up into the foliage above his head, already thick and turning rich green from its early gold, and it seemed to him that the tremor of leaves where there was no wind required more explanation than the accidental fall of one small remnant of a dead year. It stilled very quickly, and even its stillness, by contrast, seemed too careful and aware. Cadfael removed himself a few yards, as if about to walk on, and doubled round again behind the next barrier of bushes to see if the bait had been taken.
A small bare foot, slightly strained with moss and bark, reached down out of the branches to a toe-hold on the trunk. Its fellow, stretched at the end of a long, slim leg, swung clear, as the boy prepared to drop. Brother Cadfael, fascinated, suddenly averted his eyes in haste, and turned his back, but he was smiling, and he did not, after all, withdraw, but circled his screen of bushes and reappeared innocently in view of the bird that had just flown down out of its nest. No boy, as he had first supposed, but a girl, and a most personable girl, too, now standing decorously in the grass with her skirts nobly disposed round her, and even the small bare feet concealed.
They stood looking at each other with candid curiosity, neither at all abashed. She might have been eighteen or nineteen years old, possibly younger, for there was a certain erect assurance about her that gave her the dignity of maturity even when newly dropped out of an oak tree. And for all her bare feet and mane of unbraided dark hair, she was no villein girl. Everything about her said clearly that she knew her worth. Her gown was of fine homespun wool, dyed a soft blue, and had embroidery at neck and sleeves. No question but she was a beauty. Her face was oval and firm of feature, the hair that fell in wild waves about her shoulders was almost black, but black with a tint of dark and brilliant red in it where the light caught, and the large, blacklashed eyes that considered Brother Cadfael with such frank interest were of almost the same colour, dark as damsons, bright as the sparkles of mica in the river pebbles.
“You are one of the monks from Shrewsbury,” she said with certainty. And to his astonishment she said it in fluent and easy English.
“I am,” said Cadfael. “But how did you come to know all about us so soon? I think you were not among those who made it their business to walk along Huw’s garden fence while we were talking. There was one very young girl, I remember, but not a black lass like you.”
She smiled. She had an enchanting smile, sudden and radiant. “Oh, that would be Annest. But everybody in Gwytherin knows by now all about you, and what you’ve come for. Father Huw is right, you know,” she warned seriously, “we shan’t like it at all. Why do you want to take Saint Winifred away? When she’s been here so long, and nobody ever paid any attention to her before? It doesn’t seem neighbourly or honest to me.”
It was an excellent choice of words, he thought, and marvelled how a Welsh girl came by it, for she was using English as if she had been born to it, or come to it for love.
“I question the propriety of it myself, to be truthful,” he agreed ruefully. “When Father Huw spoke up for his parish, I confess I found myself inclining to his side of the argument.” That made her look at him more sharply and carefully than before, frowning over some sudden doubt or suspicion in her own mind. Whoever had informed her had certainly witnessed all that went on in Father Huw’s garden. She hesitated a moment, pondering, and then launched at him unexpectedly in Welsh: “You must be the one who speaks our language, the one who translated what Father Huw said.” It seemed to trouble her more than was reasonable. “You do know Welsh! You understand me now.”
“Why, I’m as Welsh as you, child,” he admitted mildly, “and only a Benedictine in my middle years, and I haven’t forgotten my mother-tongue yet, I hope. But I marvel how you’ve come to speak English as well as I do myself, here in the heart of Rhos.”
“Oh, no,” she said defensively, “I’ve only learned a very little. I tried to use it for you, because I thought you were English. How was I to know you’d be just that one?” Now why should his being bilingual cause her uneasiness? he wondered. And why was she casting so many rapid, furtive glances aside towards the river, brightly glimpsed through the trees? Where, as he saw in a glance just as swift as hers, the tall, fair youngster who was no Welshman, and was certainly the finest ox-caller in Gwynedd, had broken away from his placidly-drinking team, and was wading the river thigh-deep towards this particular tall oak, in a flurry of sparkling spray. The girl had been ensconced in this very tree, whence, no doubt, she had a very good view of the ploughing. And came down as soon as it was finished! “I’m shy of my English,” she said, pleading and vulnerable. “Don’t tell anyone!”
She was wishing him away from here, and demanding his discretion at the same time. His presence, he gathered, was inconvenient.
“I’ve known the same trouble myself,” he said comfortably, “when first I tried getting my tongue round English. I’ll never call your efforts into question. And now I’d better be on my way back to our lodgings, or I shall be late for Vespers.”
“God go with you, then, Father,” she said, radiant and relieved.
“And with you, my child.”
He withdrew by a carefully chosen route that evaded any risk of bumping into the fair young man. And she watched him go for a long moment, before she turned eagerly to meet the ox-caller as he came splashing through the shallows and climbed the bank. Cadfael thought that she was perfectly aware how much he had observed and understood, and was pleased by his reticence. Pleased and reassured. A Welsh girl of status, with embroidery along the hems of her gown, had good need to go softly if she was meeting an outlander, a man landless and rootless here in a clan society, where to be without place in a kinship was to be without the means of living. And yet a very pleasing, comely young man, good at his work and feeling for his beasts. Cadfael looked back, when he was sure the bushes covered him, and saw the two of them draw together, still and glad, not touching, almost shy of each other. He did not look back again.
Now what I really need here, he thought as he walked back towards the church of Gwytherin, is a good, congenial acquaintance, someone who knows every man, woman and child in the parish, without having to carry the burden of their souls. A sound drinking companion with good sense is what I need.
Chapter Three
He found not one of what he wanted, but three at one stroke, after Compline that evening, when he walked back with Brother John in the twilight to the smithy and croft at the edge of the valley fields. Prior Robert and Brother Richard had already withdrawn for the night into Huw’s house, Jerome and Columbanus were on their way through the woods to Cadwallon’s holding, and who was to question whether Brother Cadfael had also gone to his pallet in the priest’s loft, or was footloose among the gossips of Gwytherin? The lodging arrangements were working out admirably. He had never felt less inclined for sleep at this soft evening hour, nor was anyone going to rouse them at midnight here for Matins. Brother John was delighted to introduce him into the smith’s household, and Father Huw favoured the acquaintance for his own reasons. It was well that others besides himself should speak for the people of the parish, and Bened the smith was a highly respected man, like all of his craft, and his words would carry weight. There were three men sitting on the bench outside Bened’s door when they arrived, and the mead was going round as fast as the talk. All heads went up alertly at the sound of their steps approaching, and a momentary silence marked the solidarity of the local inhabitants. But Brother John seemed already to have made himself welcome, and Cadfael cast them a greeting in Welsh, like a fisherman casting a line, and was accepted with something warmer than the strict courtesy the English would have found. Annest with the light-brown, sunflecked hair had spread word of his Welshness far and wide. Another bench was pulled up, and the drinking-horns continued their circling in a wider ring. Over the river the light was fading gradually, the dimness green with the colours of meadow and forest, and threaded through with the string of silver water.