Ellis Peters - The Rose Rent

The Rose Rent

Ellis Peters

The Thirteenth Chronicle of Brother Cadfael

EBook Design Group [EDG] digital edition

v2 HTML January 20,2003

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

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter One

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By reason of the prolonged cold, which lingeredfar into April, and had scarcely mellowed when the month of Maybegan, everything came laggard and reluctant that spring of 1142.The birds kept close about the roofs, finding warmer places toroost. The bees slept late, depleted their stores, and had to befed, but neither was there any early burst of blossom for them tomake fruitful. In the gardens there was no point in planting seedthat would rot or be eaten in soil too chilly to engender life.

The affairs of men, stricken with the same petrifying chill,seemed to have subsided into hibernation. Faction held its breath.King Stephen, after the first exhilaration of liberation from hisprison, and the Easter journey north to draw together the frayedstrings of his influence, had fallen ill in the south, so ill thatthe rumour of his death had spread throughout England, and hiscousin and rival, the Empress Maud, had cautiously moved herheadquarters to Oxford, and settled down there to wait patientlyand vainly for him to make truth of rumour, which he stubbornlydeclined to do. He had still business to settle with the lady, andhis constitution was more than a match for even this virulentfever. By the end of May he was on his way manfully back to health.By the early days of June the long sub-frost broke. The biting windchanged to a temperate breeze, the sun came out over the earth likea warm hand stroking, the seed stirred in the ground and put forthgreen blades, and a foam of flowers, all the more exuberant forhaving been so long restrained, burst forth in gold and purple andwhite over garden and meadow. The belated sowing began in jubilanthaste. And King Stephen, like a giant breaking loose from somecrippling enchantment, surged out of his convalescence intovigorous action, and bearing down on the port of Wareham, the mosteasterly still available to his enemies, seized both town andcastle with hardly a graze to show for it.

And is making north again now towards Cirencester,reported Hugh Beringar, elated by the news, to pick off theempresss outposts one by one, if only he can keep up thisstorm of energy. It was the one fatal flaw in thekings military make-up that he could not sustain action forlong if he failed to get instant results, but would abandon a siegeafter three days, and go off to start another elsewhere,squandering for no gain the energy devoted to both. We maysee a tidy end to it yet!

Brother Cadfael, preoccupied with his own narrower concerns,continued to survey the vegetable patch outside the wall of hisherb-garden, digging an experimental toe into soil grown darker andkinder after a mild morning shower. By rights, hesaid thoughtfully, carrots should have been in more than amonth ago, and the first radishes will be fibrous and shrunken asold leather, but we might get something with more juices in it fromnow on. Lucky the fruit-blossom held back until the bees began towake up, but even so it will be a thin crop this year.Everythings four weeks behind, but the seasons have a way ofcatching up, somehow. Wareham, you were saying? What ofWareham?

Why, that Stephen has taken it, town and castle andharbour and all. So Robert of Gloucester, who went out by that gatebarely ten days earlier, has it slammed in his face now. Did I nottell you? The word came three days since. It seems there was ameeting back in April, in Devizes, between the empress and herbrother, and they made it up between them that it was high time theladys husband should pay a little heed to her affairs, andcome over in person to help her get her hands on Stephenscrown. They sent envoys over to Normandy to meet with Geoffrey, buthe sent back to say he was well disposed, no question, but the mensent out to him were unknown to him, name or reputation, and hewould be uneasy in dealing with any but the Earl of Gloucesterhimself. If Robert will not come, says Geoffrey, no use sending meany other.

Cadfael was momentarily distracted from his laggard crops.And Robert let himself be persuaded? he said,marvelling.

Very reluctantly. He feared to leave his sister to theloyalties of some who were all but ready to desert her after theWestminster shambles, and I doubt if he has any great hopes ofgetting anything out of the Count of Anjou. But yes, he let himselfbe persuaded. And hes sailed from Wareham, with less troublethan hell have sailing back into the same port, now the kingholds it. A good, fast move, that was. If he can but maintain itnow!

We said a Mass in thanksgiving for his recovery,said Cadfael absently, and plucked out a leggy sow-thistle fromamong his mint. How is it that weeds grow three times fasterthan the plants we nurse so tenderly? Three days ago that was noteven there. If the kale shot up like that I should be pricking theplants out by tomorrow.

No doubt your prayers will stiffen Stephensresolution, Hugh said, though with less than completeconviction. Have they not given you a helper yet, here inthe garden? Its high time, theres more thanones work here in this season.

So I urged at chapter this morning. What theylloffer me theres no knowing. Prior Robert has one or twoamong the younger ones hed be glad to shuffle off his handsand into mine. Happily the ones he least approves tend to be thosewith more wit and spirit than the rest, not less. I may yet belucky in my apprentice.

He straightened his back, and stood looking out over the newlyturned beds, and the pease-fields that sloped down to the MeoleBrook, mentally casting an indulgent eye back over the most recentof his helpers here in the herbarium. Big, jaunty, comely BrotherJohn, who had blundered into the cloister by mistake, and backedout of it, not without the connivance of friends, in Wales, toexchange the role of brother for that of husband and father;Brother Mark, entering here as an undersized and maltreatedsixteen-year-old, shy and quiet, and grown into a clear, serenematurity of spirit that drew him away inevitably towards thepriesthood. Cadfael still missed Brother Mark, attached now to thehousehold chapel of the Bishop of Lichfield, and already a deacon.And after Mark, Brother Oswin, cheerful, confident and ham-fisted,gone now to do his years service at the lazarhouse of SaintGiles at the edge of the town. What next, wondered Cadfael? Put adozen young men into the same rusty black habits, shave theirheads, fit them into a single horarium day after day and year afteryear, and still they will all be irremediably different, every oneunique. Thank God!

Whatever they send you, said Hugh, keeping pacewith him along the broad green path that circled the fish-ponds,youll have transformed by the time he leaves you. Whyshould they waste a simple, sweet saint like Rhun on you?Hes made already, he came into the world made. Youllget the rough, the obdurate, the unstable to lick into shape. Notthat it ever comes out the shape that was expected, headded, with a flashing grin and a slanted glance along his shoulderat his friend.

Rhun has taken upon himself the custody of SaintWinifreds altar, said Cadfael. He has aproprietorial interest in the little lady. He makes the candles forher himself, and borrows essences from me to scent them for her.No, Rhun will find his own duties, and no one will stand in hisway. He and she between them will see to that.