‘No, nor I. I deserved none, but they would have told me, in kindness, if anything was known of her. She was fond of you from a babe, I thought perhaps
I should dearly like to know that all is well with her.’
Sulien stood with lowered eyes, silent for a long moment. Then he said in a very low voice: ‘And so should I, God knows how dearly!’
Chapter Five
IT DID NOT PLEASE Brother Jerome that anything should be going on within the precinct of which he was even marginally kept in ignorance, and he felt that in the matter of the refugee novice from Ramsey not quite everything had been openly declared. True, Abbot Radulfus had made a clear statement in chapter concerning the fate of Ramsey and the terror in the Fens, and expressed the hope that young Brother Sulien, who had brought the news and sought refuge here, should be allowed a while of quietness and peace to recover from his experiences. There was reason and kindness in that, certainly. But everyone in the household, by now, knew who Sulien was, and could not help connecting his return with the matter of the dead woman found in the Potter’s Field, and the growing shadow hanging over Brother Ruald’s head, and wondering if he had yet been let into all the details of that tragedy, and what effect it would have on him if he had. What must he be thinking concerning his family’s former tenant? Was that why the abbot had made a point of asking for peace and quietness for him, and seeing to it that his daily work should be somewhat set apart from too much company? And what would be said, what would be noted in the bearing of the two, when Sulien and Ruald met?
And now everyone knew that they had met. Everyone had seen them enter the church for Mass side by side, in quiet conversation, and watched them separate to their places without any noticeable change of countenance on either part, and go about their separate business afterwards with even step and unshaken faces. Brother Jerome had watched avidly, and was no wiser. That aggrieved him. He took pride in knowing everything that went on within and around the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and his reputation would suffer if he allowed this particular obscurity to go unprobed. Moreover, his status with Prior Robert might feel the draught no less. Robert’s dignity forbade him to point his own aristocratic nose into every shadowy corner, but he expected to be informed of what went on there, just the same. His thin silver brows might rise, with unpleasant implications, if he found his trusted source, after all, fallible.
So when Brother Cadfael sallied forth with a full scrip to visit a new inmate at the hospital of Saint Giles, that same afternoon, and to replenish the medicine cupboard there, leaving the herb garden to his two assistants, of whom Brother Winfrid was plainly visible digging over the depleted vegetable beds ready for the winter, Brother Jerome seized his opportunity and went visiting on his own account.
He did not go without an errand. Brother Petrus wanted onions for the abbot’s table, and they were newly lifted and drying out in trays in Cadfael’s store-shed. In the ordinary way Jerome would have delegated this task to someone else, but this day he went himself.
In the workshop in the herb garden the young man Sulien was diligently sorting beans dried for next year’s seed, discarding those flawed or suspect, and collecting the best into a pottery jar almost certainly made by Brother Ruald in his former life. Jerome looked him over cautiously from the doorway before entering to interrupt his work. The sight only deepened his suspicion that things were going on of which he, Jerome, was insufficiently informed. For one thing, Sulien’s crown still bore its new crop of light brown curls, growing more luxuriant every day, and presenting an incongruous image grossly offensive to Jerome’s sense of decorum. Why was he not again shaven- headed and seemly, like all the brothers? Again, he went about his simple task with the most untroubled serenity and a steady hand, apparently quite unmoved by what he must have learned by now from Ruald’s own lips. Jerome could not conceive that the two of them had walked together from the great court into the church before Mass, without one word being said about the murdered woman, found in the field once owned by the boy’s father and tenanted by Ruald himself. It was the chief subject of gossip, scandal and speculation, how could it be avoided? And this boy and his family might be a considerable protection to a man threatened with the charge of murder, if they chose to stand by him. Jerome, in Ruald’s place, would most heartily have enlisted that support, would have poured out the story as soon as the chance offered. He took it for granted that Ruald had done the same. Yet here this unfathomable youth stood earnestly sorting his seed, apparently without anything else on his mind, even the tension and stress of Ramsey already mastered.
Sulien turned as the visitor’s shadow fell within, and looked up into Jerome’s face, and waited in dutiful silence to hear what was required of him. One brother was like another to him here as yet, and with this meagre little man he had not so far exchanged a word. The narrow, grey face and stooped shoulders made Jerome look older than he was, and it was the duty of young brothers to be serviceable and submissive to their elders.
Jerome requested onions, and Sulien went into the store-shed and brought what was wanted, choosing the soundest and roundest, since these were for the abbot’s own kitchen. Jerome opened benevolently: ‘How are you faring now, here among us, after all your trials elsewhere? Have you settled well here with Brother Cadfael?’
‘Very well, I thank you,’ said Sulien carefully, unsure yet of this solicitous visitor whose appearance was not precisely reassuring, nor his voice, even speaking sympathy, particularly sympathetic. ‘I am fortunate to be here, I thank God for my deliverance.’
‘In a very proper spirit,’ said Jerome wooingly. ‘Though I fear that even here there are matters that must trouble you. I wish that you could have come back to us in happier circumstances.’
‘Indeed, so do I!’ agreed Sulien warmly, still harking back in his own mind to the upheaval of Ramsey.
Jerome was encouraged. It seemed the young man might, after all, be in a mood to confide, if sympathetically prompted. ‘I feel for you,’ he said mellifluously. ‘A shocking thing it must be, after such terrible blows, to come home to yet more ill news here. This death that has come to light, and worse, to know that it casts so black a shadow of suspicion upon a brother among us, and one well known to all your family -‘
He was weaving his way so confidently into his theme that he had not even noticed the stiffening of Sulien’s body, and the sudden blank stillness of his face.
‘Death?’ said the boy abruptly. ‘What death?’
Thus sharply cut off in full flow, Jerome blinked and gaped, and leaned to peer more intently into the young, frowning face before him, suspecting deception. But the blue eyes confronted him with a wide stare of such crystal clarity that not even Jerome, himself adept at dissembling and a cause of defensive evasion in others, could doubt the young man’s honest bewilderment.
‘Do you mean,’ demanded Jerome incredulously,’that Ruald has not told you?’
‘Told me of what? Nothing of a death, certainly! I don’t know what you mean, Brother!’
‘But you walked with him to Mass this morning,’ protested Jerome, reluctant to relinquish his certainty. ‘I saw you come, you had some talk together
