again, the slope being gentle enough, in a series of somersaults.
Arrived again at the level where the vegetable gardens and the enclosed herbarium began, he uncurled himself, flushed and pleased, to find himself gazing up at a couple of yards distance into the scandalised countenance of a sour-faced brother almost as meagre as himself. He stared, abashed, into eyes rounded and ferocious with outrage.
‘Is this how you reverence this holy enclave?’ demanded Brother Jerome, genuinely incensed. ‘Is such foolery and lightmindedness fit for our abbey? And have you, fellow, so little gratitude for the shelter afforded you here? You do not deserve sanctuary, if you value it so lightly. How dared you so affront God’s enclosure?’
Liliwin shrank and stammered, out of breath and abased to the ground. ‘I meant no offence. I am grateful, I do hold the abbey in reverence. I only wanted to see if I could still master my craft. It is my living, I must practise it! Pardon if I’ve done wrong!’ He was easily intimidated, here where he was in debt, and in doubt how to comport himself in a strange world. All his brief gaiety, all the pleasure of the music, ebbed out of him. He got to his feet almost clumsily, who had been so lissome only moments ago, and stood trembling, shoulders bowed and eyes lowered.
Brother Jerome, who seldom had business in the gardens, being the prior’s clerk and having no taste for manual labour, had heard from the great court the small sound, strange in these precincts, of wooden balls clicking together in mid-air, and had come to investigate in relative innocence. But once in view of the performance, and himself screened by bushes fringing Brother Cadfael’s herb-garden, he had not called a halt at once and warned the offender of his offence, but remained in hiding, storing up a cumulative fund of indignation until the culprit uncoiled at his feet. It may be that a degree of guilt on his own part rendered more extreme the reproaches he loosed upon the tumbler.
‘Your living,’ he said mercilessly, ‘ought to engage you rather in prayers and self-searchings than in these follies. A man who has such charges hanging over him as you have must concern himself first with his soul’s welfare, for whether he has a living to make hereafter or none, he has a soul to save when his debt in this world is paid. Think on that, and go put your trumpery away, as long as you are sheltered here. It is not fitting! It is blasphemy! Have you not enough already unpaid on your account?’
Liliwin felt the terror of the outer world close in on him: it could not be long evaded. As some within here wore hovering haloes, so he wore a noose, invisible but ever-present.
‘I meant no harm,’ he whispered hopelessly and turned, half-blind with misery, to grope for his poor bundle of toys and blunder hastily away.
‘Tumbling and juggling, there in our gardens,’ Jerome reported, still burning with offence, ‘like a vagabond player at a fair. How can it be excused? Sanctuary is lawful for those who come in proper deference, but this
I reproved him, of course. I told him he should be thinking rather of his eternal part, having so mortal a charge against him. “My living,” he says! And he with a life owing!’
Prior Robert looked down his patrician nose, and maintained the fastidious and grieved calm of his noble countenance. ‘Father Abbot is right to observe the sanctity of sanctuary, it may not be discarded. We are not to blame, and need not be concerned, for the guilt or innocence of those who lay claim to it. But we are, indeed, concerned for the good order and good name of our house, and I grant you this present guest is little honour to us. I should be happier if he took himself off and submitted himself to the law, that is true. But unless he does so, we must bear with him. To reprove where he offends is not only our due, but our duty. To use any effort to influence or eject him is far beyond either. Unless he leaves of his own will,’ said Prior Robert, ‘both you and I, Brother Jerome, must succour, shelter and pray for him.’
How sincerely, how resolutely. But how reluctantly!
Chapter Five
Monday: from dawn to Compline
Sunday passed, clear and fine, and Monday came up no less sunnily, a splendid washing day, with a warm air and a light breeze, and bushes and turf dry and springy. The Aurifaber household was always up and active early on washing days, which were saved up two or three weeks at a time, to make but one upheaval of the heating of so much water, and such labour of scrubbing and knuckling with ash and lye. Rannilt was up first, to kindle the fire under the brick and clay boiler and hump the water from the well. She was stronger than she looked and used to the weight. What burdened her far more, and to that she was not used, was the terror she felt for Liliwin.
It was with her every moment. If she slept, she dreamed of him, and awoke sweating with fear that he might be hunted out already and taken and she none the wiser. And while she was awake and working, his image was ever in her mind, and a great stone of anxiety hot and heavy in her breast. Fear for yourself crushes and compresses you from without, but fear for another is a monster, a ravenous rat gnawing within, eating out your heart.
What they said of him was false, could not under any circumstances be true. And it was his life at stake! She could not help hearing all that was said of him among them, how they all united to accuse him, and promised themselves he should hang for what he had done. What she was certain in her heart and soul he had not done! It was not in him to strike down any man, or rob any man’s coffers.
The locksmith, up early for him, heard her drawing up the bucket from the well, and came out from his back door to stroll down into the garden in the sunlight and pass the time of day. Rannilt did not think he would have troubled if he had known it was only the maidservant. He made a point of being attentive to his landlord’s family, and never missed the common neighbourly courtesies, but his notice seldom extended to Rannilt. Nor did he linger on this fine morning, but took a short turn about the yard and returned to his own door. There he looked back, eyeing for a moment the obvious preparations at the goldsmith’s house, the great mound of washing in hand, and the normal bustle just beginning.
Susanna came down with her arms full of linen, and went to work with her usual brisk, silent competence. Daniel ate his breakfast and went to his workshop, leaving Margery solitary and irresolute in the hall. Too much had happened on her wedding night, she had had no time to grow used to house and household, or consider her own place in it. Wherever she turned to make herself useful, Susanna had been before her. Walter lay late, nursing his sore head, and Dame Juliana kept her own chamber, but Margery was too late to carry food and drink to either, it was already done. There was no need yet to think of cooking, and in any case all the household keys were on Susanna’s girdle. Margery turned her attention to the one place where she felt herself and her own wishes to be dominant, and set to work to rearrange Daniel’s bachelor chamber to her own taste, and clear out the chest and press which must now make room for her own clothes and stores of linen. In the process she discovered much evidence of Dame Juliana’s noted parsimony. There were garments which must have belonged to Daniel as a growing boy, and could certainly never again be worn by him. Neatly mended again and again, they had all been made to last as long as possible, and even when finally outgrown, had still been folded away and kept. Well, she was now Daniel’s wife, she would have this chamber as she wanted it, and be rid of these useless and miserly reminders of the past. Today the household might still be running on its customary wheels, as though she had no
