“Oh, there are some of us have a sort of silent understanding. He’ll have taken the biggest, but only four. He thieves in moderation. Partly from decent obligation, partly because half the sport is to tempt providence again and again.”
Hugh’s agile black eyebrow signalled amused enquiry. “Why four?”
“Because we have but four boys still in school, and if he thieves at all, he thieves for all. There are several novices not very much older, but to them he has no obligation. They must do their own thieving, or go without. And do you know,” asked Cadfael complacently, “who that young limb is?”
“I do not, but you are about to astonish me.”
“I doubt if I am. That is Master Richard Ludel, the new lord of Eaton. Though plainly,” said Cadfael, wryly contemplating shadowed innocence, “he does not yet know it.”
Richard was sitting cross-legged on the grassy bank above the mill-pond, thoughtfully nibbling out the last shreds of white flesh from round his apple core, when one of the novices came looking for him. “Brother Paul wants you,” announced the messenger, with the austerely complacent face of one aware of his own virtue, and delivering a probably ominous summons to another. “He’s in the parlour. You’d best hurry.”
“Me?” said Richard, round-eyed, looking up from his enjoyment of the stolen apple. No one had any great cause to be afraid of Brother Paul, the master of the novices and the children, who was the gentlest and most patient of men, but even a reproof from him was to be evaded if possible. “What does he want me for?”
“You should best know that,” said the novice, with mildly malicious intent. “It was not likely he’d tell me. Go and find out for yourself, if you truly have no notion.”
Richard committed his denuded core to the pond, and rose slowly from the grass. “In the parlour, you say?” The use of so private and ceremonial a place argued something grave, and though he was unaware of any but the most venial of misdeeds that could be laid to his account during the past weeks, it behoved him to be wary. He went off slowly and thoughtfully, trailing his bare feet in the coolness of the grass, deliberately scuffing hard little soles along the cobbles of the court, and duly presented himself in the small, dim parlour, where visitors from the outside world might occasionally talk in private with their cloistered sons.
Brother Paul was standing with his back to the single window, rendering the small room even dimmer than it need have been. The straight, close-shorn ring of hair round his polished crown was still black and thick at fifty, and he habitually stood, as indeed he also sat, stooped a little forward, from so many years of dealing with creatures half his size, and desiring to reassure them rather than awe them with his stature and bearing. A kindly, scholarly, indulgent man, but a good teacher for all that, and one who could keep his chicks in order without having to keep them in terror. The oldest remaining oblatus, given to God when he was five years old, and now approaching fifteen and his novitiate, told awful stories of Brother Paul’s predecessor, who had ruled with the rod, and been possessed of an eye that could freeze the blood. Richard made his small obligatory obeisance, and stood squarely before his master, lifting to the light an impenetrable countenance, lit by two blue-green eyes of radiant innocence. A thin, active child, small for his years but agile and supple as a cat, with a thick, curly crest of light brown hair, and a band of golden freckles over both cheekbones and the bridge of his neat, straight nose. He stood with feet braced sturdily apart, toes gripping the floorboards, and stared up into Brother Paul’s face, dutiful and guileless. Paul was well acquainted with that unblinking gaze.
“Richard,” he said gently, “come, sit down with me. I have something I must tell you.”
That in itself was enough to discount one slight childish unease, only to replace it with another and graver, for the tone was so considerate and indulgent as to prophesy the need for comfort. But what Richard’s sudden flickering frown expressed was simple bewilderment. He allowed himself to be drawn to the bench and seated there within the circle of Brother Paul’s arm, bare toes just touching the floor, and braced there hard. He could be prepared for scolding, but here was surely something for which he was not prepared, and had no idea how to confront.
“You know that your father fought at Lincoln for the king, and was wounded? And that he has since been in poor health.” Secure in robust, well-fed and well-tended youth, Richard hardly knew what poor health might be, except that it was something that happened to the old.
But he said: “Yes, Brother Paul!” in a small, accommodating voice, since it was expected of him.
“Your grandmother sent a groom to the lord sheriff this morning. He has brought a sad message, Richard. Your father has made his last confession and received his Saviour. He is dead, my child. You are his heir, and you must be worthy of him. In life and in death,” said Brother Paul, “he is in the hand of God. So are we all.”
The look of thoughtful bewilderment had not changed. Richard’s toes shoved hard against the floor, and his hands gripped the edge of the bench on which he was perched.
“My father is dead?” he repeated carefully.
“Yes, Richard. Soon or late, it touches us all. Every son must one day step into his father’s place and take up his father’s duties.”
“Then I shall be the lord of Eaton now?”
Brother Paul did not make the mistake of taking this for a simple expression of self-congratulation on a personal gain, rather as an intelligent acceptance of what he himself had just said. The heir must take up the burden and the privilege his sire had laid down.
“Yes, you are the lord of Eaton, or you will be as soon as you are of fit age. You must study to get wisdom, and manage your lands and people well. Your father would expect that of you.”
Still struggling with the practicalities of his new situation, Richard probed back into his memory for a clear vision of this father who was now challenging him to be worthy. In his rare recent visits home at Christmas and Easter he had been admitted on arrival and departure to a sick-room that smelled of herbs and premature aging, and allowed to kiss a grey, austere face and listen to a deep voice, indifferent with weakness, calling him son and exhorting him to study and be virtuous. But there was little more, and even the face had grown dim in his memory. Of what he did remember he went in awe. They had never been close enough for anything more intimate.