“Good even, Brothers,” said a high, girlish voice, joyously self-important. “You’re late on the road tonight. Can we offer you a roof and a rest?”
“We were about to ask it,” said Cadfael heartily. “Can you lodge us overnight?”
“And longer if you need,” she said cheerfully. “Men of the Order will always be welcome here. We’re off the beaten track, and not yet well known, and with the place still building we offer less comfort, I daresay, than some older houses, but we have room for such guests as you. Wait till I unbar the doors.”
She was about it already, they heard the bolt shot back and the latch of the wicket lifted, and then the door opened wide in exuberant welcome, and the portress waved them in.
She could not, Cadfael thought, be more than seventeen, and new in her novitiate, one of those superfluous daughters of poorly endowed small nobility for whom there was little to spare by way of dowry, and little prospect of an advantageous marriage. She was small and softly rounded, plain of face but fresh and wholesome as new bread, and blessedly she glowed with enthusiasm in her new life, with no apparent regret for the world she had left behind. The satisfaction of trusted office became her, and so did the white wimple and black cowl framing her bright and candid face.
“Have you traveled far?” she asked, viewing Haluin’s labored gait with wide-eyed concern.
“From Vivers,” said Haluin, quick in reassurance, “It is not so far, and we have taken it gently.”
“And have you very far still to go?”
“To Shrewsbury,” said Cadfael, “where we belong to the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul.”
“It’s a long way,” she said, shaking her head over them. “You’ll be needing your rest. Will you wait here in the lodge for me, till I tell Sister Ursula she has guests? Sister Ursula is our hospitaler. The lord bishop asked for two experienced elder sisters to come to us from Polesworth for a season, to instruct the novices. We are all so new, and there’s so much to learn, besides all the work we have to do in the building and the garden. And they sent us Sister Ursula and Sister Benedicta. Sit and warm yourselves but a few minutes, and I’ll be back.” And she was off, with her light, dancing step, as blithe in her cloistered calling as any of her secular sisters could have been in approaching a more worldly marriage.
“She is truly happy,” said Brother Haluin, wondering and pleased. “No, it is not a second-best. So I have found it in the end, but she from the beginning. The sisters from Polesworth must be women of wisdom and grace, if this is their work.
Sister Ursula the hospitaler was a tall, thin woman perhaps fifty years old, with a lined, experienced face at once serene, resigned, and even mildly amused, as if she had seen and come to terms with all the vagaries of human behavior, and nothing could now surprise or disconcert her. If the other borrowed instructress measures up to this one, Cadfael thought, these green girls of Farewell have been fortunate.
“You’re warmly welcome,” said Sister Ursula, sailing briskly into the lodge with the young portress beaming at her elbow. “The lady abbess will be happy to receive you in the morning, but you must be most in need now of food and rest and a bed, all the more if you have such a long journey before you. Come with me, there’s a chamber prepared for chance comers always, and our own brothers are all the more welcome.”
She led them out from the lodge into a narrow outer court, where the church lay before them, a modest building of stone, with the traces of the continuing work, ashlar and timber, cords and scaffolding boards, stacked neatly under its walls, in token that nothing here was finished. But in only three years they had raised the church and the entire frame of the cloister, but for the south range, where only the lower floor which housed the refectory was completed.
“The bishop has provided us the labor and a generous endowment,” said Sister Ursula, “but we shall be building for some years yet. Meantime we live simply. We want for nothing that’s needful, and hanker after nothing beyond our needs. I suppose when all these timber housings are replaced in stone my work here will be done, and I should be returning to Polesworth, where I took my vows years ago, but I don’t know but I’d rather stay here, if I’m offered a choice. There’s something about bringing a new foundation to birth, you feel towards it as towards a child of your own body.”
The enclave fence, doubtless, would eventually be replaced by a stone wall, the wooden buildings that lined it, infirmary, domestic offices, guest hall and storehouses, gradually rebuilt one by one. But already the glimpse they had into the cloister in passing showed that the garth had been grassed, and a shallow stone basin in the center held water to attract the birds.
“By next year,” said Sister Ursula, “we shall have flowers. Sister Benedicta, our best gardener at Polesworth, came here with me, the garth is her preserve. Things grow for her, birds come to her hand. That gift I never had.”
“And has Polesworth also provided you your abbess?” asked Cadfael.
“No, Bishop de Clinton brought Mother Patrice from Coventry. We two must go back to our own house when we’re no longer needed here, unless, as I say, they let us remain for life. We should need the bishop’s dispensation, but who knows, he may see fit to grant it.”
Beyond the cloister a small private court opened, and the guest hall stood on the further side of it, close to the pale fence. The small room that awaited the first travelers was dim and full of the warmth and fragrance of wood, furnished simply with two beds and a little table, with a crucifix on the wall and a prayer desk below it.
“Use it as your domain,” said Sister Ursula cheerfully, “and I’ll have supper brought to you here. You come too late for Vespers, but if you please to join us at Compline later, you’ll hear the bell. Use our church for prayer as you wish. It is but young yet, the more good souls it harbors under its roof, the better. And now, if you have all you need, I’ll leave you to your rest.”
In the blessed virginal quiet of this new abbey of Farewell, Brother Haluin fell rapturously asleep as soon as he returned from Compline, and slept like a child all through the night and deep into the dawn of a soft, clear morning, free of any touch of frost. He awoke to find Cadfael already up, and preparing to go and recite the morning office and offer his private prayers in the church.
“Has the bell sounded for Prime?” asked Haluin, rising in haste.
“No, nor will for half an-hour yet, by the light. We can have the church to ourselves for a while, if you’re so minded.”
“A good thought,” said Haluin, and went with him gladly, out into the small court, and across it to the south door into the cloister. The turf in the garth was moist and green, the bleached pallor of winter vanished overnight.
