true! He has a talisman from his demon, he hides it in his bed. I know! I’ve seen him slip some small thing under his blanket, out of sight, when I looked in upon him in his cell. All I wanted was to ask him a line in the psalm, for you know he’s learned, and he had something in his hand, and slipped it away very quickly, and stood between me and the bed, and wouldn’t let me in further. He looked black as thunder at me, brother, I was afraid! But I’ve watched since. It’s true, I swear, he has a charm hidden there, and at night he takes it to him to his bed. Surely this is the symbol of his familiar, and it will bring evil on us all!’ ‘I cannot believe…’ began Brother Jerome, and broke off there, reconsidering the scope of his own credulity. ‘You have seen this? In his bed, you say? Some alien thing hidden away? That is not according to the Rule.’ For what should there be in a dortoir cell but cot and stool, a small desk for reading, and the books for study? These, and the privacy and quiet which can exist only by virtue of mutual consideration, since mere token partitions of wainscot separate cell from cell. ‘A novice entering here must give up all wordly possessions,’ said Jerome, squaring his meagre shoulders and scenting a genuine infringement of the approved order of things. Grist to his mill! Nothing he loved better than an occasion for admonition. ‘I shall speak to Brother Meriet about this.’ Half a dozen voices, encouraged, urged him to more immediate action. ‘Brother, go now, while he’s away, and see if I have not told you truth! If you take away his charm the demon will have no more power over him.’ ‘And we shall have quiet again…’ ‘Come with me!’ said Brother Jerome heroically, making up his mind. And before Cadfael could stir, Jerome was off, out of the lavatorium and surging towards the dortoir stairs, with a flurry of novices hard on his heels.
Cadfael went after them hunched with resigned disgust, but not foreseeing any great urgency. The boy was safely out of this, hobnobbing with Hugh in the stables, and of course they would find nothing in his cell to give them any further hold on him, malice being a great stimulator of the imagination. The flat disappointment might bring them down to earth. So he hoped! But for all that, he made haste on the stairs.
But someone else was in an even greater hurry. Light feet beat a sharp drum-roll on the wooden treads at Cadfael’s back, and an impetuous body overtook him in the doorway of the long dortoir, and swept him several yards down the tiled corridor between the cells. Meriet thrust past with long, indignant strides, his habit flying.
‘I heard you! I heard you! Let my things alone!’ Where was the low, submissive voice now, the modestly lowered eyes and folded hands? This was a furious young lordling peremptorily ordering hands off his possessions, and homing on the offenders with fists clenched and eyes flashing. Cadfael, thrust off-balance fora moment, made a grab at a flying sleeve, but only to be dragged along in Meriet’s wake.
The covey of awed, inquisitive novices gathered round the opening of Meriet’s cell, heads thrust cautiously within and rusty black rumps protruding without, whirled in alarm at hearing this angry apparition bearing down on them, and broke away with agitated clucking like so many flurried hens. In the very threshold of his small domain Meriet came nose to nose with Brother Jerome emerging.
On the face of it it was a very uneven confrontation: a mere postulant of a month or so, and one who had already given trouble and been cautioned, facing a man in authority, the prior’s right hand, a cleric and confessor, one of the two appointed for the novices. The check did give Meriet pause for one moment, and Cadfael leaned to his ear to whisper breathlessly: ‘Hold back, you fool! He’ll have your hide!’ He might have saved the breath of which he was short, for Meriet did not even hear him. The moment when he might have come to his senses was already past, for his eye had fallen on the small, bright thing Jerome dangled before him from outraged fingers, as though it were unclean. The boy’s face blanched, not with the pallor of fear, but the blinding whiteness of pure anger, every line of bone in a strongly-boned countenance chiselled in ice.
‘That is mine,’ he said with soft and deadly authority, and held out his hand. ‘Give it to me!’ Brother Jerome rose on tiptoe and swelled like a turkey-cock at being addressed in such tones. His thin nose quivered with affronted rage. ‘And you openly avow it? Do you not know, impudent wretch, that in asking for admittance here you have forsworn “mine,” and may not possess property of any kind? To bring in any personal things here without the lord abbot’s permission is flouting the Rule. It is a sin! But wilfully to bring with you this-this! is to offend foully against the very vows you say you desire to take. And to cherish it in your bed is a manner of fornication. Do you dare? Do you dare? You shall be called to account for it!’ All eyes but Meriet’s were on the innocent cause of offence; Meriet maintained a burning stare upon his adversary’s face. And all the secret charm turned out to be was a delicate linen ribbon, embroidered with flowers in blue and gold and red, such a band as a girl would use to bind her hair, and knotted into its length a curl of that very hair, reddish gold.
‘Do you so much as know the meaning of the vows you say you wish to take?’ fumed Jerome. ‘Celibacy, poverty, obedience, stability-is there any sign in you of any of these? Take thought now, while you may, renounce all thought of such follies and pollutions as this vain thing implies, or you cannot be accepted here. Penance for this backsliding you will not escape, but you have time to amend, if there is any grace in you.’ ‘Grace enough, at any rate,’ said Meriet, unabashed and glittering,’to keep my hands from prying into another man’s sheets and stealing his possessions. Give me,’ he said through his teeth, very quietly, ‘what is mine!’ ‘We shall see, insolence, what the lord abbot has to say of your behaviour. Such a vain trophy as this you may not keep. And as for your insubordination, it shall be reported faithfully. Now let me pass!’ ordered Jerome, supremely confident still of his dominance and his tightness.
Whether Meriet mistook his intention, and supposed that it was simply a matter of sweeping the entire issue into chapter for the abbot’s judgment, Cadfael could never be sure. The boy might have retained sense enough to accept that, even if it meant losing his simple little treasure in the end; for after all, he had come here of his own will, and at every check still insisted that he wanted with all his heart to be allowed to remain and take his vows. Whatever his reason, he did step back, though with a frowning and dubious face, and allowed Jerome to come forth into the corridor.
Jerome turned towards the night-stairs, where the lamp was still burning, and all his mute myrmidons followed respectfully. The lamp stood in a shallow bowl on a bracket on the wall, and was guttering towards its end. Jerome reached it, and before either Cadfael or Meriet realised what he was about, he had drawn the gauzy ribbon through the flame. The tress of hair hissed and vanished in a small flare of gold, the ribbon fell apart in two charred halves, and smouldered in the bowl. And Meriet, without a sound uttered, launched himself like a hound leaping, straight at Brother Jerome’s throat. Too late to grasp at his cowl and try to restrain him, Cadfael lunged after.
No question but Meriet meant to kill. This was no noisy brawl, all bark and no bite, he had his hands round the scrawny throat, bringing Jerome crashing to the floor-tiles under him, and kept his grip and held to his purpose though half a dozen of the dismayed and horrified novices clutched and clawed and battered at him, themselves ineffective, and getting in Cadfael’s way. Jerome grew purple, heaving and flapping like a fish out of water, and wagging his hands helplessly against the tiles. Cadfael fought his way through until he could stoop to Meriet’s otherwise oblivious ear, and bellow inspired words into it.
‘For shame, son! An old man!’ In truth, Jerome lacked twenty of Cadfael’s own sixty years, but the need justified the mild exaggeration. Meriet’s ancestry nudged him in the ribs. His hands relaxed their grip, Jerome halsed in breath noisily and cooled from purple to brick-red, and a dozen hands hauled the culprit to his feet and held him, still breathing fire and saying no word, just as Prior Robert, tall and awful as though he wore the mitre already, came sailing down the tiled corridor, blazing like a bolt of the wrath of God.
In the bowl of the lamp, the two ends of flowered ribbon smouldered, giving off a dingy and ill-scented smoke, and the stink of the burned ringlet still hung upon the air.
Two of the lay servants, at Prior Robert’s orders, brought the manacles that were seldom used, shackled Meriet’s wrists, and led him away to one of the punishment cells isolated from all the communal uses of the house.
