He went with them, still wordless, too aware of his dignity to make any resistance, or put them to any anxiety on his account. Cadfael watched him go with particular interest, for it was as if he saw him for the first time. The habit no longer hampered him, he strode disdainfully, held his head lightly erect, and if it was not quite a sneer that curled his lips and his still roused nostrils, it came very close to it. Chapter would see him brought to book, and sharply, but he .did not care. In a sense he had had his satisfaction.
As for Brother Jerome, they picked him up, put him to bed, fussed over him, brought him soothing draughts which Cadfael willingly provided, bound up his bruised throat with comforting oils, and listened dutifully to the feeble, croaking sounds he soon grew wary of assaying, since they were painful to him. He had taken no great harm, but he would be hoarse for some while, and perhaps for a time he would be careful and civil in dealing with the still unbroken sons of the nobility who came to cultivate the cowl. Mistakenly? Cadfael brooded over the inexplicable predilection of Meriet Aspley. If ever there was a youngster bred for the manor and the field of honour, for horse and arms, Meriet was the man.
‘For shame, son! An old man!’ And he had opened his hands and let his enemy go, and marched off the field prisoner, but with all the honours.
The outcome at chapter was inevitable; there was nothing to be done about that. Assault upon a priest and confessor could have cost him excommunication, but that was set aside in clemency. But his offence was extreme, and there was no fitting penalty but the lash. The discipline, there to be used only in the last resort, was nevertheless there to be used. It was used upon Meriet. Cadfael had expected no less. The criminal, allowed to speak, had contented himself with saying simply that he denied nothing of what was alleged against him. Invited to plead in extenuation, he refused, with impregnable dignity. And the scourge he endured without a sound.
In the evening, before Compline, Cadfael went to the abbot’s lodging to ask leave to visit the prisoner, who was confined to his solitary cell for some ten days of penance.
‘Since Brother Meriet would not defend himself,’ said Cadfael, ‘and Prior Robert, who brought him before you, came on the scene only late, it is as well that you should know all that happened, for it may bear on the manner in which this boy came to us.’ And he recounted the sad history of the keepsake Meriet had concealed in his cell and fondled by night. ‘Father, I don’t claim to know. But the elder brother of our most troublous postulant is affianced, and is to marry soon, as I understand.’ ‘I take your meaning,’ said Radulfus heavily, leaning linked hands upon his desk, ‘and I, too, have thought of this. His father is a patron of our house, and the marriage is to take place here in December. I had wondered if the younger son’s desire to be out of the world… It would, I think, account for him.’ And he smiled wryly for all the plagued young who believe that frustration in love is the end of their world, and there is nothing left for them but to seek another. ‘I have been wondering for a week or more,’ he said, ‘whether I should not send someone with knowledge to speak with his sire, and examine whether we are not all doing this youth a great disservice, in allowing him to take vows very ill-suited to his nature, however much he may desire them now.’ ‘Father,’ said Cadfael heartily, ‘I think you would be doing right.’ The boy has qualities admirable in themselves, even here,’ said Radulfus half-regretfully, ‘but alas, not at home here. Not for thirty years, and after satiety with the world, after marriage, and child-getting and child-rearing, and the transmission of a name and a pride of birth. We have our ambience, but they-they are necessary to continue both what they know, and what we can teach them. These things you understand, as do all too few of us who harbour here and escape the tempest. Will you go to Aspley in my behalf?’ ‘With all my heart, Father,’ said Cadfael.
‘Tomorrow?’ ‘Gladly, if you so wish. But may I, then, go now and see both what can be done to settle Brother Meriet, mind and body, and also what I can learn from him?’ ‘Do so, with my goodwill,’ said the abbot.
In his small stone penal cell, with nothing in it but a hard bed, a stool, a cross hung on the wall, and the necessary stone vessel for the prisoner’s bodily needs, Brother Meriet looked curiously more open, easy and content than Cadfael had yet seen him. Alone, unobserved and in the dark, at least he was freed from the necessity of watching his every word and motion, and fending off all such as came too near. When the door was suddenly unlocked, and someone came in with a tiny lamp in hand, he certainly stiffened for a moment, and reared his head from his folded arms to stare; and Cadfael took it as a compliment and an encouragement that on recognising him the young man just as spontaneously sighed, softened, and laid his cheek back on his forearms, though in such a way that he could watch the newcomer. He was lying on his belly on the pallet, shirtless, his habit stripped down to the waist to leave his weals open to the air. He was defiantly calm, for his blood was still up. If he had confessed to all that was charged against him, in perfect honesty, he had regretted nothing.
‘What do they want of me now?’ he demanded directly, but without noticeable apprehension.
‘Nothing. Lie still, and let me put this lamp somewhere steady. There, you hear? We’re locked in together. I shall have to hammer at the door before you’ll be rid of me again.’ Cadfael set his light on the bracket below the cross, where it would shine upon the bed. ‘I’ve brought what will help you to a night’s sleep, within and without. If you choose to trust my medicines? There’s a draught can dull your pain and put you to sleep, if you want it?’ ‘I don’t,’ said Meriet flatly, and lay watchful with his chin on his folded arms. His body was brown and lissome and sturdy, the bluish welts on his back were not too gross a disfigurement. Some lay servant had held his hand; perhaps he himself had no great love for Brother Jerome. ‘I want wakeful. This is quiet here.’ ‘Then at least keep still and let me salve this copper hide of yours. I told you he would have it!’ Cadfael sat down on the edge of the narrow pallet, opened his jar, and began to anoint the slender shoulders that rippled and twitched to his touch. ‘Fool boy,’ he said chidingly, ‘you could have spared yourself all.’ ‘Oh, that!’ said Meriet indifferently, nevertheless passive under the soothing fingers. ‘I’ve had worse,’ he said, lax and easy on his spread arms. ‘My father, if he was roused, could teach them something here.’ ‘He failed to teach you much sense, at any rate. Though I won’t say,’ admitted Cadfael generously,’that I haven’t sometimes wanted to strangle Brother Jerome myself. But on the other hand, the man was only doing his duty, if in a heavy-handed fashion. He is a confessor to the novices, of whom I hear-can I believe it?-you are one. And if you do so aspire, you are held to be renouncing all ado with women, my friend, and all concern with personal property. Do him justice he had grounds for complaint of you.’ ‘He had no grounds for stealing from me,’ flared Meriet hotly.
‘He had a right to confiscate what is forbidden here.’ ‘I still call it stealing. And he had no right to destroy it before my eyes-nor to speak as though women were unclean!’ ‘Well, if you’ve paid for your offences, so has he for his,’ said Cadfael tolerantly. ‘He has a sore throat will keep him quiet for a week yet, and for a man who likes the sound of his own sermons that’s no mean revenge. But as for you, lad, you’ve a long way to go before you’ll ever make a monk, and if you mean to go through with it, you’d better spend your penance here doing some hard thinking.’ ‘Another sermon?’ said Meriet into his crossed arms, and for the first time there was almost a smile in his voice, if a rueful one.
‘A word to the wise.’ That caused him to check and hold his breath, lying utterly still for one moment, before he turned his head to bring one glittering, anxious eye to bear on Cadfael’s face. The dark-brown hair coiled and curled agreeably in the nape of his summer-browned neck, and the neck itself had still the elegant, tender shaping of boyhood. Vulnerable still to all manner of wounds, on his own behalf, perhaps, but certainly on behalf of others all too fiercely loved. The girl with the red-gold hair?
‘They have not said anything?’ demanded Meriet, tense with dismay. ‘They don’t mean to cast me out? He wouldn’t do that-the abbot? He would have told me openly!’ He turned with a fierce, lithe movement, drawing up his legs and rising on one hip, to seize Cadfael urgently by the wrist and stare into his eyes. ‘What is it you know? What does he mean to do with me? I can’t, I won’t, give up now.’ ‘You’ve put your own vocation in doubt,’ said Cadfael bluntly, ‘no other has had any hand in it. If it had rested with me, I’d have clapped your pretty trophy back in your hand, and told you to be off out of here, and find either her or another as like her as one girl is to another equally
