“Seventeen,” said the husky voice beside him. He was on the small side for seventeen; let him try his hand at digging later on, the ground Cadfael was working was heavy to till. “I can work hard,” said the boy, almost as though he had guessed at the thought, and resented it. “I don’t know much, but I can do whatever you tell me.”
“So you shall, then, and you can begin with the pease. Stack the dry stuff aside here, and it goes to provide stable litter. And the roots go back to the ground.”
“Like humankind,” said Godric unexpectedly.
“Yes, like humankind.” Too many were going back to the earth prematurely now in this fratricidal war. He saw the boy turn his head, almost involuntarily, and look across the abbey grounds and roofs to where the battered towers of the castle loomed in their pall of smoke. “Have you kin within there, child?” asked Cadfael gently.
“No!” said the boy, too quickly. “But I can’t but think of them. They’re saying in the town it can’t last long — that it may fall tomorrow. And surely they’ve done only rightly! Before King Henry died he made his barons acknowledge the Empress Maud as his heir, and they all swore fealty. She was his only living child, she should be queen. And yet when her cousin, Count Stephen, seized the throne and had himself crowned, all too many of them took it meekly and forgot their oaths. That can’t be right. And it can’t be wrong to stand by the empress faithfully. How can they excuse changing sides? How can they justify Count Stephen’s claim?”
“Justify may not be the apt word, but there are those among the lords, more by far than take the opposite view, who would say, better a man for overlord than a woman. And if a man, why, Stephen was as near as any to the throne. He is King William’s grandchild, just as Maud is.”
“But not son to the last king. And in any ease, through his mother, who was a woman like Maud, so where’s the difference?” The young voice had emerged from its guarded undertone, and rang clear and vehement. “But the real difference was that Count Stephen rushed here and took what he wanted, while the empress was far away in Normandy, thinking no evil. And now that half the barons have recollected their oaths and declared for her, after all, it’s late, and what’s to come of it but bloodshed and deaths? It begins here, in Shrewsbury, and this won’t be the end.”
“Child,” said Cadfael mildly, “are you not trusting me to extremes?”
The boy, who had picked up the sickle and was swinging it in a capable, testing hand, turned and looked at him with blue eyes suddenly wide open and unguarded. “Well, so I do,” he said.
“And so you may, for that matter. But keep your lips locked among others. We are in the battlefield here, as sure as in the town, our gates never being closed to any. All manner of men rub shoulders here, and in rough times some may try to buy favour with carrying tales. Some may even be collectors of such tales for their living. Your thoughts are safe in your head, best keep them there.”
The boy drew back a little, and hung his head. Possibly he felt himself reproved. Possibly not! “I’ll pay you trust for trust,” said Cadfael. “In my measure there’s little to. choose between two such monarchs, but much to be said for keeping a man’s fealty and word. And now let me see you hard at work, and when I’ve finished my cabbage patch I’ll come and help you.”
He watched the boy set to work, which he did with immense vigour. The coarse tunic was cut very full, turning a lissome body into a bundle of cloth tied at the waist; possibly he had got it from some older and larger relative after the best of the wear was out of it. My friend, thought Cadfael, in this heat you won’t keep up that pace very long, and then we shall see!
By the time he joined his assistant in the rustling field of bleached pea-stems, the boy was red in the face and sweating, and puffing audibly with the strokes of the sickle, but had not relaxed his efforts. Cadfael swept an armful of cut haulms to the edge of the field, and said earnestly: “No need to make a penance of it, lad. Strip off to the waist and be comfortable” And he slid his own frock, already kilted to the knee, down from powerful brown shoulders, and let the folds hang at his middle.
The effect was complex, but by no means decisive. The boy checked momentarily in. his stroke, said: “I’m well enough as I am!” with admirable composure, but several tones above the gruff, young-mannish level of his earlier utterances, and went on resolutely with his labours, at the same time as a distinct wave of red arose from his collar to engulf his slender neck and the curve of his cheek. Did that necessarily mean what it seemed to mean? He might have lied about his age, his voice might be but newly broken and still unstable. And perhaps he wore no shirt beneath the cotte, and was ashamed to reveal his lacks to a new acquaintance. Ah, well, there were other tests. Better make sure at once. If what Cadfael suspected was true, the matter was going to require very serious thought.
“There’s that heron that robs our hatcheries, again!” he cried suddenly, pointing across the Meole brook, where the unsuspecting bird waded, just folding immense wings. “Toss a stone across at him, boy, you’re nearer than I!” The heron was an innocent stranger, but if Cadfael was right he was unlikely to come to any harm.
Godric stared, clawed up a sizeable stone, and heaved it heartily. His arm swung far back, swung forward with his slight weight willingly behind it, and hurled the stone under-arm across the brook and into the shallows, with a splash that sent the heron soaring, certainly, but several feet from where he had been standing.
“Well, well!” said Cadfael silently, and settled down to do some hard thinking.
In his siege camp, deployed across the entire land approach to the Castle Foregate, between broad coils of the river Severn, King Stephen fretted, fumed and feasted, celebrating the few loyal Salopians — loyal to him, that is! — who came to offer him aid, and planning his revenge upon the many disloyal who absented themselves.
He was a big, noisy, handsome, simple-minded man, very fair in colouring, very comely in countenance, and at this stage in his fortunes totally bewildered by the contention between his natural good nature and his smarting sense of injury. He was said to be slow-witted, but when his Uncle Henry had died and left no heir but a daughter, and she handicapped by an Angevin husband and far away in France, no matter how slavishly her father’s vassals had bowed to his will and accepted her as queen, Stephen for once in his life had moved with admirable speed and precision, and surprised his potential subjects into accepting him at his own valuation before they even had time to consider their own interests, much less remember reluctant vows. So why had such a successful coup abruptly turned sour? He would never understand. Why had half of his more influential subjects, apparently stunned into immobility for a time, revived into revolt now? Conscience? Dislike of the king imposed upon them? Superstitious dread of King Henry and his influence with God?
Forced to take the opposition seriously and resort to arms, Stephen had opened in the way that came naturally to him, striking hard where he must, but holding the door cheerfully open for penitents to come in. And what had been the result? He had spared, and they had taken advantage and despised him for it. He had invited submission without penalty, as he moved north against the rebel holds, and the local baronage had held off from him with contempt. Well, tomorrow’s dawn attack should settle the fate of the Shrewsbury garrison, and make an example once for all. If these midlanders would not come peacefully and loyally at his invitation, they should come scurrying like rats to save their own skins. As for Arnulf of Hesdin … The obscenities and defiances he had hurled from the towers of Shrewsbury should be regretted bitterly, if briefly.
