Ellis Peters - The Devil's Novice

The Devils Novice

Ellis Peters

The Eighth Chronicle of Brother Cadfael

Contents

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CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

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v2 HTML January 3,2003

FAWCETT CREST NEW YORK

A Fawcett Crest Book

Published by Ballantine Books

Copyright 1983 by Ellis Peters

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

First published in Great Britain by Macmillan London Limited, 1983

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 83-63300

ISBN 0-449-20701-3

This edition published by arrangement with William Morrow and Company, Inc.

First Ballantine Books Edition: February 1986

Second Printing: February 1987

CHAPTER ONE

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In the middleof September of that year of Our Lord, 1140, two lordsof Shropshire manors, one north of the town of Shrewsbury, the other south,sent envoys to the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul on the same day,desiring the entry of younger sons of their houses to the Order.

One was accepted, the other rejected. For which different treatment therewere weighty reasons.

I have called you few together, said Abbot Radulfus, beforemaking any decision in this matter, or opening it to consideration in chapter,since the principle here involved is at question among the masters of our orderat this time. You, Brother Prior and Brother Sub-Prior, as bearing the dailyweight of the household and family, Brother Paul as master of the boys andnovices, Brother Edmund as an obedientiary and a child of the cloister frominfancy, to advise upon the one hand, and Brother Cadfael, as a conversus cometo the life at a ripe age and after wide venturings, to speak his mind upon theother.

So, thought Brother Cadfael, mute and passive on his stool in the corner ofthe abbots bare, wood-scented parlour, I am to be the devils lawman, thevoice of the outer world. Mellowed through seventeen years or so of a vocation,but still sharpish in the cloistered ear. Well, we serve according to ourskills, and in the degrees allotted to us, and this may be as good a way asany. He was more than a little sleepy, for he had been outdoors between theorchards of the Gaye and his own herb garden within the pale ever sincemorning, between the obligatory sessions of office and prayer, and was slightlydrunk with the rich air of a fine, fat September, and ready for his bed as soonas Compline was over. But not yet so sleepy that he could not prick a ready earwhen Abbot Radulfus declared himself in need of counsel, or even desirous ofhearing counsel he yet would not hesitate to reject if his own incisive mindpointed him in another direction.

Brother Paul, said the abbot, casting an authoritative eye round thecircle, has received requests to accept into our house two new devotionaries,in Gods time to receive the habit and the tonsure. The one we have to considerhere is from a good family, and his sire a patron of our church. Of what age,Brother Paul, did you report him?

He is an infant, not yet five years old, said Paul.

And that is the ground of my hesitation. We have now only four boys oftender age among us, two of them not committed to the cloistral life, but hereto be educated. True, they may well choose to remain with us and join thecommunity in due time, but that is left to them to decide, when they are of anage to make such a choice. The other two, infant oblates given to God by theirparents, are already twelve and ten years old, and are settled and happy amongus, it would be ill-done to disturb their tranquillity. But I am not easy in mymind about accepting any more such oblates, when they can have no conception ofwhat they are being offered or, indeed, of what they are being deprived. It isjoy, said Radulfus, to open the doors to a truly committed heart and mind,but the mind of a child barely out of nurse belongs with his toys, and thecomfort of his mothers lap.

Prior Robert arched his silver eyebrows and looked dubiously down his thin,patrician nose. The custom of offering children as oblates has been approvedfor centuries. The Rule sanctions it. Any change which departs from the Rulemust be undertaken only after grave reflection. Have we the right to deny whata father wishes for his child?

Have wehas the fatherthe right to determine the course of a life, beforethe unwitting innocent has a voice to speak for himself? The practice, I know,is long established, and never before questioned, but it is being questionednow.

In abandoning it, persisted Robert, we may be depriving some tender soulof its best way to blessedness. Even in the years of childhood a wrong turningmay be taken, and the way to divine grace lost.

I grant the possibility, agreed the abbot, but also I fear the reversemay be true, and many such children, better suited to another life and anotherway of serving God, may be shut into what must be for them a prison. On thismatter I know only my own mind. Here we have Brother Edmund, a child of thecloister from his fourth year, and Brother Cadfael, conversus after an activeand adventurous life and at a mature age. And both, as I hope and believe,secure in commitment. Tell us, Edmund, how do you look upon this matter? Haveyou regretted ever that you were denied experience of the world outside thesewalls?

Brother Edmund the infirmarer, only eight years short of Cadfaels robustsixty, and a grave, handsome, thoughtful creature who might have looked equallywell on horseback and in arms, or farming a manor and keeping a patrons eye onhis tenants, considered the question seriously, and was not disturbed. No, Ihave had no regrets. But neither did I know what there might be worthregretting. And I have known those who did rebel, even wanting that knowledge.It may be they imagined a better world without than is possible in this life,and it may be that I lack that gift of imagination. Or it may be only that Iwas fortunate in finding work here within to my liking and within my scope, andhave been too busy to repine. I would not change. But my choice would have beenthe same if I had grown to puberty here, and made my vows only when I wasgrown. I have cause to know that others would have chosen differently, had theybeen free.

That is fairly spoken, said Radulfus. Brother Cadfael, what of you? Youhave ranged over much of the world, as far as the Holy Land, and borne arms.Your choice was made late and freely, and I do not think you have looked back.Was that gain, to have seen so much, and yet chosen this small hermitage?

Cadfael found himself compelled to think before he spoke, and beneath thecomfortable weight of a whole days sunlight and labour thought was an effort.He was by no means certain what the abbot wanted from him, but had no doubtwhatever of his own indignant discomfort at the notion of a babe in arms beingswaddled willy-nilly in the habit he himself had assumed willingly.

I think it was gain, he said at length, and moreover, a better gift Ibrought, flawed and dinted though it might be, than if I had come in myinnocence. For I own freely that I had loved my life, and valued high thewarriors I had known, and the noble places and great actions I had seen, and ifI chose in my prime to renounce all these, and embrace this life of thecloister in preference to all other, then truly I think I paid the bestcompliment and homage I had to pay. And I cannot believe that anything I holdin my remembrance makes me less fit to profess this allegiance, but ratherbetter fits me to serve as well as I may. Had I been given in infancy, I shouldhave rebelled in manhood, wanting my rights. Free from childhood, I could wellafford to sacrifice my rights when I came to wisdom.