I would recommend it,’ said Brother Richard, secure in the experience of his farming stock, and set off up the field to the crest, by the same rural instinct keeping to the headland instead of wading through the grass. ‘We should leave the lower strip for pasture, and plough this upper level.’
Cadfael was of the same mind. The field they had parted with, distant beyond Haughton, had been best left under stock; here they could very well take a crop of wheat or barley, and turn the stock from the lower pasture into the stubble afterwards, to manure the land for the next year. The place pleased him, and yet had an undefined sadness about it. The remnants of the garden fence, when they reached it, the tangled growth in which herb and weed contended for root and light and space, the doorless doorway and shutterless window, all sounded a note of humanity departed and human occupation abandoned. Without the remnants this would have been a scene wholly placid, gentle and content. But it was impossible to look at the deserted croft without reflecting that two lives had been lived there for fifteen years, joined in a childless marriage, and that of all the thoughts and feelings they had shared not a trace now remained here. Nor to note the bare, levelled site from which every stone had been plundered, without recalling that a craftsman had laboured here at loading his kiln and firing it, where now the hearth was barren and cold. There must surely have been human happiness here, satisfaction of the mind, fulfilment of the hands. There had certainly been grief, bitterness and rage, but only the detritus of that past life clung about the spot now, coldly, indifferently melancholy.
Cadfael turned his back upon the corner which had once been inhabited, and there before him lay the sweep of meadow, gently steaming as the sun drew off the morning mist and dew, and the sharp, small colours of the flowers brightened among the seeding grasses. Birds skimmed the bushes of the headland and flickered among the trees of the crest, and the uneasy memory of man was gone from the Potter’s Field.
‘Well, what’s your judgement?’ asked Brother Richard.
‘I think we should do well to sow a winter crop. Deep-plough now, then do a second ploughing, and sow winter wheat, and some beans with it. So much the better if we can get some marl on to it for the second ploughing.’
‘As good a use as any,’ agreed Richard contentedly, and led the way down the slope towards the curve and glimmer of the river under its miniature cliffs of sand. Cadfael followed, the dry grasses rustling round his ankles in long, rhythmic sighs, as if for a tragedy remembered. As well, he thought, break the ground up there as soon as maybe, and get the soil to bear. Let’s have young corn greening over where the kiln was, and either pull down the cottage or put a live tenant into it, and see to it he clears and tends the garden. Either that, or plough up all. Better forget it ever was a potter’s croft and field.
In the first days of October the abbey’s plough team of six oxen, with the heavy, high-wheeled plough, was brought over by the ford, and cut and turned the first sod in Ruald’s field. They began at the upper corner, close to the derelict cottage, and drove the first furrow along beneath the ridge, under the strong growth of bushes and brambles that formed the headland. The ox-driver urged his team, the oxen lumbered stolidly ahead, the coulter bit deep through turf and soil, the ploughshare sheared through the matted roots, and the furrow-board heaved the sod widely away like a sullenly breaking wave, turning up black soil and the strong scent of the earth. Brother Richard and Brother Cadfael had come to see the work begun, Abbot Radulfus had blessed the plough, and every augury was good. The first straight furrow drove the length of the field, brightly black against the autumnal pallor of the grasses, and the ploughman, proud of his skill, swung his long team in a swooping curve to bring them about as neatly as possible on the return course. Richard had been right, the soil was not so heavy, the work would go briskly.
Cadfael had turned his back on the work, and stood in the gaping doorway of the cottage, gazing into the empty interior. A full year ago, after the woman had shaken off the dust of this place from her feet and walked away from the debris of her life to look for a new beginning elsewhere, all the movable belongings of Ruald’s marriage had been removed, with the consent of his overlord at Longner, and given to Brother Ambrose the almoner, to be shared among his petitioners according to their needs. Nothing remained within. The hearthstone was still soiled with the last cold ashes, and leaves had been blown into corners and silted there into nesting-places for the hibernating hedge-pig and the dormouse. Long coils of bramble had found their way in at the vacant window from the bushes outside, and a branch of hawthorn nodded in over his shoulder, half its leaves shed, but starred with red berries. Nettle and groundsel had rooted and grown in the crevices of the flooring. It takes a very short time for earth to seal over the traces of humankind.
He heard the distant shout from across the field, but thought nothing of it but that the driver was bawling at his team, until Richard caught at his sleeve and said sharply into his ear: ‘Something’s amiss, over there! Look, they’ve stopped. They’ve turned up something?or broken something?Oh, surely not the coulter!’ He had flashed easily into vexation. A plough is a costly machine, and an iron-shod coulter on new and untried ground might well be vulnerable.
Cadfael turned to stare towards the spot where the team had halted, at the far edge of the field where the tangle of bushes rose. They had taken the plough close, making the fullest use possible of the ground, and now the oxen stood still and patient in their harness, only a few yards advanced into the new furrow, while teamster and ploughman were stooped with their heads together over something in the ground. And in a moment the ploughman came springing to his feet and running headlong for the cottage, arms pumping, feet stumbling in the tufted grasses.
‘Brother
Brother Cadfael
Will you come? Come and see! There’s something there
‘
Richard had opened his mouth to question, in some irritation at so incoherent a summons, but Cadfael had taken a look at the ploughman’s face, startled and disquieted, and was off across the field at a trot. For clearly this something, whatever it might be, was as unwelcome as it was unforeseen, and of a nature for which higher authority would have to take the responsibility. The ploughman ran beside him, blurting distracted words that failed to shed much light.
The coulter dragged it up?there’s more underground, no telling what
‘
The teamster had risen to his feet and stood waiting for them with hands dangling helplessly.
‘Brother, we could take no charge here, there’s no knowing what we’ve come on.’ He had led the team a little forward to leave the place clear and show what had so strangely interrupted the work. Close under the slight slope of the bank which marked the margin of the field, with broom brushes leaning over the curve of the furrow, where the plough had turned, the coulter had cut in more deeply, and dragged along the furrow after it something that was not root or stem. Cadfael went on his knees, and stooped close to see the better. Brother Richard, shaken at last by the consternation that had rendered his fellows inarticulate and now chilled them into silence, stood back and watched warily, as Cadfael drew a hand along the furrow, touching the long threads that had entangled the coulter and been drawn upward into the light of day.
