Brother Cadfael was back from the hospital of Saint Giles and busy in his workshop, sorting beans for next year’s seed, when Hugh came back from the abbot’s lodging and made his way to the herbarium. Recognising the swift, light tread on the gravel, Cadfael greeted him without turning his head. “Brother Porter told me you’d be here. Business with Father Abbot, he says.
What’s in the wind? Nothing new from Oxford?”
“No,” said Hugh, seating himself comfortably on the bench against the timber wall, “nearer home. This is from no farther off than Eaton. Richard Ludel is dead. The dowager sent a groom with the news this morning. You’ve got the boy here at school.”
Cadfael turned then, with one of the clay saucers, full of seed dried on the vine, in his hand. “So we have. Well, so his sire’s gone, is he? We heard he was dwindling. The youngster was no more than five when he was sent here, and they fetch him home very seldom. I think his father thought the child was better here with a few fellows near his own age than kept around a sick man’s bed.”
“And under the rule of a strong-willed grandmother, from all I hear. I don’t know the lady,” said Hugh thoughtfully, “except by reputation. I did know the man, though I’ve seen nothing of him since we got our wounded back from Lincoln. A good fighter and a decent soul, but dour, no talker. What’s the boy like?”
“Sharp venturesome… A very fetching imp, truth to tell, but as often in trouble as out of it. Bright at his letters, but he’d rather be out at play. Paul will have the task of telling him his father’s dead, and himself master of a manor. It may trouble Paul more than it does the boy. He hardly knows his sire. I suppose there’s no question about his tenure?”
“None in the world! I’m all for letting well alone, and Ludel earned his immunity. It’s a good property, too, fat land, and much of it under the plough. Good grazing, water-meadows and woodland, and it’s been well tended, seemingly, for it’s valued higher now than ten years since. But I must get to know the steward, and make sure he’ll do the boy right.”
“John of Longwood,” said Cadfael promptly. “He’s a good man and a good husbandman. We know him well, we’ve had dealings with him, and always found him reasonable and fair. That land falls between the abbey holdings of Eyton-by-Severn on the one side, and Aston-under-Wrekin on the other, and John has always given our forester free access between the two woodlands whenever needed, to save him time and labour. We bring wood out from our part of the Wrekin forest that way. It suits us both very well. Ludel’s part of Eyton forest bites into ours there, it would be folly to fall out. Ludel had left everything to John these last two years, you’ll have no trouble there.”
“The abbot tells me,” said Hugh, nodding satisfaction with this good-neighbourliness, “that Ludel gave the boy as ward into his hands, four years ago, should he himself not live to see his son grown to manhood. It seems he made all possible provision for the future, as if he saw his own death coming towards him.” And he added, somewhat grimly: “As well most of us have no such clear sight, or there’d be some hundreds in Oxford now hurrying to buy Masses for their souls. By this time the king must hold the town. It would fall into his hands of itself once he was over the ford. But the castle could hold out to the year’s end, at a pinch, and there’s no cheap way in there, it’s a matter of starving them out. And if Robert of Gloucester in Normandy has not had word of all this by now, then his intelligencers are less able than I gave them credit for. If he knows how his sister’s pressed, he’ll be on his way home in haste. I’ve known the besiegers become the besieged before now, it could as well happen again.”
“It will take him some time to get back,” Cadfael pointed out comfortably. “And by all accounts no better provided than when he went.” The empress’s half-brother and best soldier had been sent overseas, much against his inclination, to ask help for the lady from her less than loving husband, but Count Geoffrey of Anjou was credibly reported to be much more interested in his own ambitions in Normandy than in his wife’s in England, and had been astute enough to inveigle Earl Robert into helping him pick off castle after castle in the duchy, instead of rushing to his wife’s side to assist her to the crown of England. As early as June Robert had sailed from Wareham, against his own best judgement but at his sister’s urgent entreaty, and Geoffrey’s insistence, if he was to entertain any ambassador from her at all. And here was September ended, Wareham back in King Stephen’s hands, and Robert still detained in Geoffrey’s thankless service in Normandy. No, it would not be any quick or easy matter for him to come to his sister’s rescue. The iron grip of siege tightened steadily round Oxford castle, and for once Stephen showed no sign of abandoning his purpose. Never yet had he come so close to making his cousin and rival his prisoner, and forcing her acceptance of his sovereignty. “Does he realise,” wondered Cadfael, closing the lid of a stone jar on his selected seed, “how near he’s come to getting her into his power at last? How would you feel, Hugh, if you were in his shoes, and truly got your hands on her?”
“Heaven forefend!” said Hugh fervently, and grinned at the very thought. “For I shouldn’t know what to do with her! And the devil of it is, neither will Stephen, if ever it comes to that. He could have kept her tight shut into Arundel the day she landed, if he’d had the sense. And what did he do? Gave her an escort, and sent her off to Bristol to join her brother! But if the queen ever gets the lady into her power, that will be another story. If he’s a grand fighter, she’s the better general, and knows how to hold on to her advantages.” Hugh rose and stretched, and a rising breeze from the open door ruffled his smooth black hair, and rustled the dangling bunches of dried herbs hanging from the roof beams. “Well, there’s no hurrying the siege to an end, we must wait and see. I hear they’ve finally given you a lad to help you in the herb garden, is it true? I noticed your hedge has had a second clipping, was that his work?”
“It was.” Cadfael went out with him along the gravel path between the patterned beds of herbs, grown a little wiry at this end of the growing season. The box hedge at one side had indeed been neatly trimmed of the straggling shoots that come late in the summer. “Brother Winfrid—you’ll see him busy in the patch where we’ve cleared the bean vines, digging in the holms. A big, gangling lad all elbows and knees. Not long out of his novitiate. Willing, but slow. But he’ll do. They sent him to me, I fancy, because he turned out fumble-fisted with either pen or brush, but give him a spade, and that’s more his measure. He’ll do!”
Outside the walled herb garden the vegetable plots extended, and beyond the slight rise on their right the harvested pease fields ran down to the Meole Brook, which was the rear border of the abby enclave. And there was Brother Winfrid in full vigorous action, a big, loose-jointed youth with a shock-head of wiry hair hedging in his shaven crown, his habit kilted to brawny knees, and a broad foot shod in a wooden clog driving the steel-edged spade through the fibrous tangle of bean holms as through blades of grass. He gave them one beaming glance as they passed, and returned to his work without breaking the rhythm. Hugh had one glimpse of a weather-browned country face and round, guileless blue eyes.
“Yes, I should think he might do very well,” he said, impressed and amused, “whether with a spade or a battle-axe. I could do with a dozen such at the castle whenever they care to offer their services.”
“He’d be no use to you,” said Cadfael with certainty. “Like most big men, the gentlest soul breathing. He’d throw his sword away to pick up the man he’d flattened. It’s the little, shrill terriers that bare their teeth.” They emerged into the band of flowerbeds beyond the kitchen garden, where the rose bushes had grown leggy and begun to shed their leaves. Rounding the corner of the box hedge, they came out into the great court, at this working hour of the morning almost deserted but for one or two travellers coming and going about the guest hall, and a stir of movement down in the stables. Just as they rounded the tall hedge to step into the court, a small figure shot out of the gate of the grange court, where the barns and storage lofts lined three sides of a compact yard, and made off at a run across the narrows of the court into the cloister, to emerge a minute later at the other end at a decorous walk, with eyes lowered in seemly fashion, and plump, childish hands devoutly linked at his belt, the image of innocence. Cadfael halted considerately, with a hand on Hugh’s arm, to avoid confronting the boy too obviously. The child reached the corner of the infirmary, rounded it, and vanished. There was a distinct impression that as he quit the sight of any watchers in the great court he broke into a run again, for a bare heel flashed suddenly and was gone. Hugh was grinning. Cadfael caught his friend’s eye, and said nothing. “Let me hazard!” said Hugh, twinkling. “You picked your apples yesterday, and they’re not yet laid up in the trays in the loft. Lucky it was not Prior Robert who saw him at it, and he with the breast of his cotte bulging like a portly dame!”