“Do you tell me so?” Cadfael’s eyes opened wide in astonishment and curiosity. “So there’s a new star on the horizon, is there? And starting young! It seems one soul at least has a blessed Christmas assured, with her liberty won, and her son in her arms again. His coming will give her heart, no question. But I doubt if he’ll do much more for her cause.”
“Not yet!” said Hugh, with prophetic caution. “We’ll wait and see what his mettle is. With his mother’s stomach and Geoffrey’s wit he may give the king trouble enough in a few years’ time. We’d best make better use of what time we have, and see to it the boy goes back to Anjou and stays there, and best of all, takes his mother with him. I wish,” said Hugh fervently, rising with a sigh, “Stephen’s own son promised better, we’d have no need to fear what the empress’s sprig may have to show.” He shook off present doubts with an impatient twitch of his lean shoulders. “Well, I’ll be off and make ready for the road. We’ll be away at first light.”
Cadfael lifted his cooling pot aside to the earth floor, and went out with his friend through the walled stillness of the herb garden, where all his small, neat beds slept warmly through the frosts under deep snow. As soon as they let themselves out onto the path that skirted the frozen pools, they could see distantly, beyond the glassy surface and the broad gardens on the northern side, the long slope of the guest hall roof overhanging the drainage channel, the dark timber cage of scaffolding and ladders, and the two muffled figures working on the uncovered slates.
“I see you have your troubles, too,” said Hugh.
“Who escapes them, in winter? It’s the weight of the snow that’s shifted the slates, broken some of them, and found a way through to douse the bishop’s chaplain in his bed. If we left it till the thaw we’d have a flood, and far worse damage to repair.”
“And your master builder reckons he can make it good, frost or no frost.” Hugh had recognized the brawny figure halfway up the long ladder, hefting a hodful of slates surely few of his younger laborers could have lifted. “Bitter work up there, though,” said Hugh, eyeing the highest platform of the scaffolding, stacked with a great pile of slates, and the two diminutive figures moving with painful caution on the exposed roof.
“We take it in short spells, and there’s a fire in the warming room when we come down. We elders are excused the service, but most of us take a turn, barring the sick and infirm. It’s fair, but I doubt if it pleases Conradin. It irks him having foolhardy youngsters up there, and he’d just as soon work only the ones he’s sure of, though I will say he keeps a close watch on them. If he sees any blanch at being up so high, he soon has them on solid earth again. We can’t all have the head for it.”
“Have you been up there?” asked Hugh curiously.
“I did my stint yesterday, before the light began to fail. Short days are no help, but another week should see it finished.”
Hugh narrowed his eyes against a sudden brief lance of sunlight that reflected back dazzlingly from the crystalline whiteness. “Who are those two up there now? Is that Brother Urien? The dark fellow? Who’s the other one?”
“Brother Haluin.” The thin, alert figure was all but obscured by the jut of the scaffolding, but Cadfael had seen the pair climb the ladders barely an hour earlier.
“What, Anselm’s best illuminator? How comes it you allow such abuse of an artist? He’ll ruin his hands in this bitter cold. Small chance of him handling a fine brush for the next week or two, after grappling with slates.”
“Anselm would have begged him off,” Cadfael admitted, “but Haluin would have none of it. No one would have grudged him the mercy, seeing how valuable his work is, but if there’s a hair shirt anywhere within reach Haluin will claim it and wear it. A lifelong penitent, that lad, God knows for what imagined sins, for I never knew him so much as break a rule, since he entered as a novice, and seeing he was no more than eighteen when he took his first vows, I doubt if he’d had time to do the world much harm up to then. But there are some born to do penance by nature. Maybe they, lift the load for some of us who take it quite comfortably that we’re humankind, and not angels. If the overflow from Haluin’s penitence and piety washes off a few of my shortcomings, may it redound to him for credit in the accounting. And I shan’t complain.”
It was too cold to linger very long in the deep snow, watching the cautious activities on the guest hall roof. They resumed their passage through the gardens, skirting the frozen pools where Brother Simeon had chopped jagged holes to let in air to the fish below, and crossing the mill leat that fed the ponds by the narrow plank bridge glazed over with a thin and treacherous crust of ice. Closer now, the piers of the scaffolding jutted from the south wall of the guest hall across the drainage channel, and the workers on the roof were hidden from sight.
“I had him with me among the herbs as a novice, long ago,” said Cadfael as they threaded the snowy beds of the upper garden and emerged into the great court. “Haluin, I mean. It was not long after I ended my own novitiate. I came in at past forty, and he barely turned eighteen. They sent him to me because he was lettered and had the Latin at his finger ends, and after three or four years I was still learning. He comes of a landed family, and would have inherited a good manor if he hadn’t chosen the cloister. A cousin has it now. The boy had been put out to a noble household, as the custom is, and was clerk to his lord’s estate, being uncommonly bright at learning and figuring. I often wondered why he changed course, but as every man within here knows, there’s no questioning a vocation. It comes when it will, and there’s no refusal.”
“It would have been simpler to plant the lad straight into the scriptorium, if he came in with so much learning,” said Hugh practically. “I’ve seen some of his work, he’d be wasted on any other labor.”
“Ah, but his conscience would have him pass through every stage of the common apprenticeship before he came to rest. I had him for three years among the herbs, then he did two years more at the hospital of Saint Giles, among the sick and crippled, and two more laboring in the gardens at the Gaye, and helping with the sheep out at Rhydycroesau, before he’d settle to do what we found he could do best. Even now, as you saw, he’ll have no privilege because he has a delicate hand with the brushes and pens. If others must slither perilously on a snowy roof, so will he. A good fault, mind you,” admitted Cadfael, “but he takes it to extremes, and the Rule disapproves extremes.”
They crossed the great court towards the gatehouse, where Hugh’s horse was tethered, the tall, rawboned grey that was always his favorite mount, and could have carried twice or three times his master’s light weight.
“There’ll be no more snow tonight,” said Cadfael, eyeing the veiled sky and sniffing the light, languid wind, “nor for a few days more, I fancy. Nor hard frost, either, we’re on the edge of it. I pray you’ll have a tolerable ride south.”
“We’ll be away at dawn. And back, God willing, by the new year.” Hugh gathered his bridle and swung himself into the high saddle, “May the thaw hold off until your roof’s weatherproof again! And don’t forget Aline will be expecting you.”
He was off out of the gate, with a sharp echo of hooves ringing from the cobbles, and a single brilliant spark that had come and gone almost before the iron shoe left the frozen ground. Cadfael turned back to the door of the infirmary, and went to check the stores in Brother Edmund’s medicine cupboard. Another hour, and the light would be already dimming, in these shortest days of the year. Brother Urien and Brother Haluin would be the last pair up on the roof for this day.