“Oh, they must be coming! Look—the prior!”
Robert sailed forth from his appropriated lodging, immaculately robed, majestically tall, visible above all the peering heads. His face was composed into otherworldly serenity, benevolence and piety, ready to welcome his old superior with hypocritical reverence, and assume his office with hypocritical humility; all of which he would do very beautifully, and with noble dignity.
And in at the gate ambled Heribert, a small, rotund, gentle elderly man of unimpressive appearance, who rode like a sack on his white mule, and had the grime and mud and weariness of the journey upon him. He wore, at sight, the print of demotion and retirement in his face and bearing, yet he looked pleasantly content, like a man who has just laid by a heavy burden, and straightened up to draw breath. Humble by nature, Heribert was uncrushable. His own clerk and grooms followed a respectful few yards behind; but at his elbow rode a tall, spare, sinewy Benedictine with weathered features and shrewd blue eyes, who kept pace with him in close attendance, and eyed him, Cadfael thought, with something of restrained affection. A new brother for the house, perhaps.
Prior Robert sailed through the jostling, whispering brothers like a fair ship through disorderly breakers, and extended both hands to Heribert as soon as his foot touched ground. “Father, you are most heartily welcome home! There is no one here but rejoices to see you back among us, and I trust blessed and confirmed in office, our superior as before.”
To do him justice, thought Cadfael critically, it was not often he lied as blatantly as that, and certainly he did not realise even now that he was lying. And to be honest, what could he or any man say in this situation, however covetously he exulted in the promotion he foresaw for himself? You can hardly tell a man to his face that you’ve been waiting for him to go, and he should have done it long ago.
“Indeed, Robert, I’m happy to be back with you,” said Heribert, beaming. “But no, I must inform all here that I am no longer their abbot, only their brother. It has been judged best that another should have charge, and I bow to that judgment, and am come home to serve loyally as a simple brother under you.”
“Oh, no!” whispered Brother Mark, dismayed. “Oh, Cadfael, look, he grows taller!”
And indeed it seemed that Robert’s silver head was suddenly even loftier, as if by the acquisition of a mitre. But equally suddenly there was another head as lofty as his; the stranger had dismounted at leisure, almost unremarked, and stood at Heribert’s side. The ring of thick, straight dark hair round his tonsure was hardly touched with grey, yet he was probably at least as old as Robert, and his intelligent hatchet of a face was just as incisive, if less beautiful.
“Here I present to you all,” said Heribert almost fondly, “Father Radulfus, appointed by the legatine council to have rule here in our abbey as from this day. Receive your new abbot and reverence him, as I, Brother Heribert of this house, have already learned to do.”
There was a profound hush, and then a great stir and sigh and smile that ran like a quiet wave all through the assembly in the great court. Brother Mark clutched Cadfael’s arm and buried what might otherwise have been a howl of delight in his shoulder. Brother Jerome visibly collapsed, like a pricked bladder, and turned the identical wrinkled mud-colour. Somewhere at the rear there was a definite crow, like a game-cock celebrating a kill, though it was instantly suppressed, and no one could trace its origin. It may well have been Brother Petrus, preparing to rush back into his kitchen and whip all his pots and pans into devoted service for the newcomer who had disjointed Prior Robert’s nose in the moment of its most superb elevation.
As for the prior himself, he had not the figure or the bearing to succumb to deflation like his clerk, nor the kind of complexion that could be said to blench. His reaction was variously reported afterwards. Brother Denis the hospitaller claimed that Robert had rocked back on his heels so alarmingly that it was a wonder he did not fall flat on his back. The porter alleged that he blinked violently, and remained glassy-eyed for minutes afterwards. The novices, after comparing notes, agreed that if looks could have killed, they would have had a sudden death in their midst, and the victim would not have been the new abbot, but the old, who by so ingenuously acknowledging his future subordination to Robert as prior had led him to believe in his expected promotion to the abbacy, only to shatter the illusion next moment. Brother Mark, very fairly, said that only a momentary marble stillness, and the subsequent violent agitation of the prior’s Adam’s-apple as he swallowed gall, had betrayed his emotions. Certainly he had been forced to a heroic effort at recovery, for Heribert had proceeded benignly:
“And to you, Father Abbot, I make known Brother Robert Pennant, who has been an exemplary support to me as prior, and I am sure will serve you with the same selfless devotion.”
“It was beautiful!” said Brother Mark later, in the garden workshop where he had submitted somewhat self- consciously to having his stewardship reviewed, and been relieved and happy at being commended. “But I feel ashamed now. It was wicked of me to feel such pleasure in someone else’s downfall.”
“Oh, come, now!” said Cadfael absently, busy unpacking his scrip and replacing the jars and bottles he had brought back with him. “Don’t reach for the halo too soon. You have plenty of time to enjoy yourself, even a little maliciously sometimes, before you settle down to being a saint. It was beautiful, and almost every soul there rejoiced in it. Let’s have no hypocrisy.”
Brother Mark let go of his scruples, and had the grace to grin. “But all the same, when Father Heribert could meet him with no malice at all, and such affection …”
“Brother Heribert! And you do yourself less than justice,” said Cadfael fondly. “You’re still endearingly green, it seems. Did you think all those well-chosen words were hit upon by accident? ‘A simple brother under you …’ He could as well have said among you, since he was speaking to us all a moment before. And ‘with the same selfless devotion,’ indeed! Yes, the very same! And by the look of our new abbot, Robert will be waiting a long, long time before there’s another vacancy there.”
Brother Mark dangled his legs from the bench by the wall, and gaped in startled consternation. “Do you mean he did it all on purpose?”
“He could have sent one of the grooms a day ahead, couldn’t he, if he’d wished to give warning? He could at least have sent one on from St Giles to break the news gently. And privately! A long-suffering soul, but he took a small revenge today.” He was touched by Brother Mark’s stricken face. “Don’t look so shocked! You’ll never get to be a saint if you deny the bit of the devil in you. And think of the benefit he’s conferred on Prior Robert’s soul!”
“In showing the vanity of ambition?” hazarded Mark doubtfully.
“In teaching him not to count his chickens. There, now be off to the warming-room, and get me all the gossip, and I’ll join you in a little while, after I’ve had a word or two with Hugh Beringar.”
“Well, it’s over, and as cleanly as we could have hoped,” said Beringar, comfortable beside the brazier with a beaker of mulled wine from Cadfael’s store in his hand. “Documented and done with, and the cost might well have been higher. A very fine woman, by the way, your Richildis, it was a pleasure to hand her boy back to her. I’ve no doubt he’ll be in here after you as soon as he hears you’re back, as he soon will, for I’ll call at the house on my way into the town.”
