‘That in itself, my son,’ said Radulfus, ‘may be good reason why the Order should abandon you. Many have entered for the wrong reasons, and later remained for the right ones, but to remain against the grain and against the truth, out of obstinancy and pride, that would be a sin.’ And he smiled to see the boy’s level brown brows draw together in despairing bewilderment. ‘Am I confusing you still more? I do not ask why you entered, though I think it may have been to escape the world without rather than to embrace the world within. You are young, and of that outer world you have seen as yet very little, and may have misjudged what you did see. There is no haste now. For the present take your full place here among us, but apart from the other novices. I would not have them troubled with your trouble. Rest some days, pray constantly for guidance, have faith that it will be granted, and then choose. For the choice must be yours, let no one take it from you.’
‘First Cambridge,’ said Hugh, tramping the inner ward of the castle with long, irritated strides as he digested the news from the Fen country, ‘now Ramsey. And Ely in danger! Your young man’s right there, a rich prize that would be for a wolf like de Mandeville. I tell you what, Cadfael, I’d better be going over every lance and sword and bow in the armoury, and sorting out a few good lads ready for action. Stephen is slow to start, sometimes, having a vein of laziness in him until he’s roused, but he’ll have to take action now against this rabble. He should have wrung de Mandeville’s neck while he had him, he was warned often enough.’
‘He’s unlikely to call on you,’ Cadfael considered judicially, ‘even if he does decide to raise a new force to flush out the wolves. He can call on the neighbouring shires, surely. He’ll want men fast.’
‘He shall have them fast,’ said Hugh grimly, ‘for I’ll be ready to take the road as soon as he gives the word. True, he may not need to fetch men from the border here, seeing he trusts Chester no more than he did Essex, and Chester’s turn will surely come. But whether or no, I’ll be ready for him. If you’re bound back, Cadfael, take my thanks to the abbot for his news. We’ll set the armourers and the fletchers to work, and make certain of our horses. No matter if they turn out not to be needed, it does the garrison no harm to be alerted in a hurry now and then.’ He turned towards the outer ward and the gatehouse with his departing friend, still frowning thoughtfully over this new complexity in England’s already confused and troublous situation. ‘Strange how great and little get their lives tangled together, Cadfael. De Mandeville takes his revenge in the east, and sends this lad from Longner scurrying home again here to the Welsh border. Would you say fate had done him any favour? It could well be. You never knew him until now, did you? He never seemed to me a likely postulant for the cloister.’
‘I did gather,’ said Cadfael cautiously,’that he may not yet have taken his final vows. He said he came with a trouble of his own unresolved, that his abbot charged him bring with him here to Radulfus. It may be he’s taken fright, now the time closes upon him. It happens! I’ll be off back and see what Radulfus intends for him.’
What Radulfus had in mind for the troubled soul was made plain when Cadfael returned, as bidden, to the abbot’s parlour. The abbot was alone at his desk by this time, the new entrant sent away with Brother Paul to rest from his long journey afoot and take his place, with certain safeguards, among his peers, if not of them.
‘He has need of some days of quietude,’ said Radulfus, ‘with time for prayer and thought, for he is in doubt of his vocation, and truth to tell, so am I. But I know nothing of his state of mind and his behaviour when he conceived his desire for the cloister, and am in no position to judge how genuine were his motives then, or are his reservations now. It is something he must resolve for himself. All I can do is ensure that no further shadow or shock shall fall upon him, to distract his mind when most he needs a clear head. I do not want him perpetually reminded of the fate of Ramsey, nor, for that matter, upset by any talk of this matter of the Potter’s Field. Let him have stillness and solitude to think out his own deliverance first. When he is ready to see me again, I have told Brother Vitalis to admit him at once. But in the meantime, it may be as well if you would take him to help you in the herb garden, apart from the brothers except at worship. In frater and dortoir Paul will keep a watchful eye on him, during the hours of work he will be best with you, who already know his situation.’
‘I have been thinking,’ said Cadfael, scrubbing reflectively at his forehead,’that he knows Ruald is here among us. It was some months after Ruald’s entry that this young fellow made up his mind for the cloister. Ruald was Blount’s tenant lifelong, and close by the manor, and Hugh tells me this boy Sulien was in and out of that workshop from a child, and a favourite with them, seeing they had none of their own. He has not spoken of Ruald, or asked to see him? How if he seeks him out?’
‘If he does, well. He has that right, and I do not intend to hedge him in for long. But I think he is too full of Ramsey and his own trouble to have any thought to spare for other matters as yet. He has not yet taken his final vows,’ said Radulfus, pondering with resigned anxiety over the complex agonies of the young. ‘All we can do is provide him a time of shelter and calm. His will and his acts are still his own. And as for this shadow that hangs over Rualdwhat use would it be to ignore the threat?if the relations between them were as Hugh says, that will be one more grief and disruption to the young man’s mind. As well if he is spared it for a day or so. But if it comes, it comes. He is a man grown, we cannot take his rightful burdens from him.’
It was on the morning of the second day after his arrival that Sulien encountered Brother Ruald face to face at close quarters and with no one else by except Cadfael. At every service in church he had seen him among all the other brothers, once or twice had caught his eye, and smiled across the dim space of the choir, but received no more acknowledgement than a brief, lingering glance of abstracted sweetness, as if the older man saw him through a veil of wonder and rapture in which old associations had no place. Now they emerged at the same moment into the great court, converging upon the south door of the cloister, Sulien from the garden, with Cadfael ambling a yard or two behind him, Ruald from the direction of the infirmary. Sulien had a young man’s thrusting, impetuous gait, now that his blistered feet were healed, and he rounded the corner of the tall box hedge so precipitately that the two almost collided, their sleeves brushing, and both halted abruptly and drew back a step in hasty apology. Here in the open, under a wide sky still streaked with trailers of primrose gold from a bright sunrise, they met like humble mortal men, with no veil of glory between them.
‘Sulien!’ Ruald opened his arms with a warm, delighted smile, and embraced the young man briefly cheek to cheek. ‘I saw you in church the first day. How glad I am that you are here, and safe!’
Sulien stood mute for a moment, looking the older man over earnestly from head to foot, captivated by the serenity of his thin face, and the curious air he had of having found his way home, and being settled and content here as he had never been before, in his craft, in his cottage, in his marriage, in his community. Cadfael, holding aloof at the turn of the box hedge, with a shrewd eye on the pair of them, saw Ruald briefly as Sulien was seeing him, a man secure in the rightness of his choice, and radiating his unblemished joy upon all who drew near him. To one ignorant of any threat or shadow hanging over this man, he must seem the possessor of perfect happiness. The true revelation was that, indeed, so he was. A marvel!