‘Abbot Radulfus is still in his lodging,’ said Cadfael, ‘for I left him there only a short while since. Shall I be your herald? He was alone. If it’s so grave he’ll surely see you at once.’
The young man put back the wet cowl from his head, and shook the drops that had slowly penetrated it from a tonsure growing somewhat long for conformity, and a crown covered with a strange fuzz of new growth, curly and of a dark, brownish gold. Yes, he had certainly been a long time on the way, pressing forward doggedly on foot from that distant cloister of his, wherever it might be. His face was oval, tapering slightly from a wide brow and wide-set eyes to a stubborn, probing jaw, covered at this moment by a fine golden down to match his unshaven crown. Weary and footsore he might be, but his long walk seemed to have done him no harm otherwise, for his cheeks had a healthy flush, and his eyes were of clear, light blue, and confronted Cadfael with a bright, unwavering gaze.
‘I shall be glad if he will,’ he said, ‘for I do need to get rid of the dirt of travel, but I’m charged to unburden to him first, and must do as I’m bid. And yes, it’s grave enough for the Orderand for me, though that’s of small account,’ he added, shrugging off with the moisture of his cowl and scapular the present consideration of his own problems.
‘He may not think it so,’ said Cadfael. ‘But come, and we’ll put it to the test.’ And he led the way briskly down the great court towards the abbot’s lodging, leaving the porter to retire into the comfort of his own lodge, out of the clinging rain.
‘How long have you been on the road?’ asked Cadfael of the young man limping at his elbow.
‘Seven days.’ His voice was low-pitched and clear, and matched every other evidence of his youth. Cadfael judged he could not yet be past twenty, perhaps not even so much.
‘Sent out alone on so long an errand?’ said Cadfael, marvelling.
‘Brother, we are all sent out, scattered. Pardon me if I keep what I have to say, to deliver first to the lord abbot. I would as soon tell it only once, and leave all things in his hands.’
‘That you may do with confidence,’ Cadfael assured him, and asked nothing further. The implication of crisis was there in the words, and the first note of desperation, quietly constrained, in the young voice. At the door of the abbot’s lodging Cadfael let them both in without ceremony into the anteroom, and knocked at the half-open parlour door. The abbot’s voice, preoccupied and absent, bade him enter. Radulfus had a folder of documents before him, and a long forefinger keeping his place, and looked up only briefly to see who entered.
‘Father, there is here a young brother, from a distant house of our Order, come with orders from his own abbot to report himself to you, and with what seems to be grave news. He is here at the door. May I admit him?’
Radulfus looked up with a lingering frown, abandoning whatever had been occupying him, and gave his full attention to this unexpected delivery.
‘From what distant house?’
‘I have not asked,’ said Cadfael, ‘and he has not said. His instructions are to deliver all to you. But he has been on the road seven days to reach us.’
‘Bring him in,’ said the abbot, and pushed his parchments aside on the desk.
The young man came in, made a deep reverence to authority, and as though some seal on his mind and tongue had been broken, drew a great breath and suddenly poured out words, crowding and tumbling like a gush of blood.
‘Father, I am the bearer of very ill news from the abbey of Ramsey. Father, in Essex and the Fens men are become devils. Geoffrey de Mandeville has seized our abbey to be his fortress, and cast us out, like beggars on to the roads, those of us who still live. Ramsey Abbey is become a den of thieves and murderers.’
He had not even waited to be given leave to speak, or to allow his news to be conveyed by orderly question and answer, and Cadfael had barely begun to close the door upon the pair of them, admittedly slowly and with pricked ears, when the abbot’s voice cut sharply through the boy’s breathless utterance.
‘Wait! Stay with us, Cadfael. I may need a messenger in haste.’ And to the boy he said crisply: ‘Draw breath, my son. Sit down, take thought before you speak, and let me hear a plain tale. After seven days, these few minutes will scarcely signify. Now, first, we here have had no word of this until now. If you have been so long afoot reaching us, I marvel it has not been brought to the sheriff’s ears with better speed. Are you the first to come alive out of this assault?’
The boy submitted, quivering, to the hand Cadfael laid on his shoulder, and subsided obediently on to the bench against the wall. ‘Father, I had great trouble in getting clear of de Mandeville’s lines, and so would any other envoy have. In particular a man on horseback, such as might be sent to take the word to the king’s sheriffs, would hardly get through alive. They are taking every horse, every beast, every bow or sword, from three shires, a mounted man would bring them down on him like wolves. I may well be the first, having nothing on me worth the trouble of killing me for it. Hugh Beringar may not know yet.’
The simple use of Hugh’s name startled both Cadfael and Radulfus. The abbot turned sharply to take a longer look at the young face confidingly raised to his. ‘You know the lord sheriff here? How is that?’
‘It is the reasonit is one reasonwhy I am sent here, Father. I am native here. My name is Sulien Blount. My brother is lord of Longner. You will never have seen me, but Hugh Beringar knows my family well.’
So this, thought Cadfael, enlightened, and studying the boy afresh from head to foot, this is the younger brother who chose to enter the Benedictine Order just over a year ago, and went off to become a novice at Ramsey in late September, about the time his father made over the Potter’s Field to Haughmond Abbey. Now why, I wonder, did he choose the Benedictines rather than his family’s favourite Augustinians? He could as well have gone with the field, and lived quietly and peacefully among the canons of Haughmond. Still, reflected Cadfael, looking down upon the young man’s tonsure, with its new fuzz of dark gold within the ring of damp brown hair, should I quarrel with a preference that flatters my own choice? He liked the moderation and good sense of human kindliness of Saint Benedict, as I did. It was a little disconcerting that this comfortable reflection should only raise other and equally pertinent questions. Why all the way to Ramsey? Why not here in Shrewsbury?
‘Hugh Beringar shall know from me, without delay,’ said the abbot reassuringly, ‘all that you can tell me. You say de Mandeville has seized Ramsey. When did this happen? And how?’
Sulien moistened his lips and put together, sensibly and calmly enough, the picture he had carried in his mind for seven days.
‘It was the ninth day back from today. We knew, as all that countryside knew, that the earl had returned to lands which formerly were his own, and gathered together those who had served him in the past and all those living wild, or at odds with law, willing to serve him now in his exile. But we did not know where his forces were, and had no warning of any intent towards us. You know that Ramsey is almost an island, with only one causeway dryshod into it? It is why it was first favoured as a place of retirement from the world.’