‘He pays more heed to you,’ said Aline, looking on with smiling serenity, ‘than he does to me. But he’ll tire you out before you can do as much for him. Well for you it’s near his bedtime.’
She was as fair as Hugh was black, primrose-fair, and fine-boned, and a shade taller than her husband. The child was built on the same long, slender lines, and flaxen like her. Some day he would top his father by a head. Hugh himself had foretold it, when first he saw his newborn heir, a whiter child, come with the approach of Christmas, the finest of gifts for the festival. Now at three years old he had the boisterous energy of a healthy pup, and the same whole-hearted abandonment to sleep when energy was spent. He was carried away at length in Aline’s arms to his bed, and Hugh and Cadfael were left to sit down companionably together over their wine, and look back over the events of the day.
‘Ruald’s field?’ said Hugh, when he heard of the morning’s business at chapter. “That’s the big field the near side of Longner, where he used to have his croft and his kiln? I remember the gift to Haughmond, I was a witness to it. Early October of last year, that was. The Blounts were always good patrons to Haughmond. Not that the canons ever made much use of that land when they had it. It will do better in your hands.’
‘It’s a long time since I passed that way close,’ said Cadfael. ‘Why is it so neglected? When Ruald came into the cloister there was no one to take over his craft, I know, but at least Haughmond put a tenant into the cottage.’
‘So they did, an old widow woman, what could she do with the ground? Now even she is gone, to her daughter’s household in the town. The kiln has been looted for stone, and the cottage is falling into decay. It’s time someone took the place over. The canons never even bothered to take the hay crop in, this year, they’ll be glad to get it off their hands.’
‘It suits both sides very well,’ said Cadfael thoughtfully. ‘And young Eudo Blount at Longner has no objection, so Matthew reports. Though the prior of Haughmond must have asked his leave beforehand, since the gift came from his father in the first place. A pity,’ he said ruefully,’the giver is gone to his maker untimely, and isn’t here to say a word for himself in the matter.’
Eudo Blount the elder, of the manor of Longner, had left his lands in the charge of his son and heir only a few weeks after making the gift of the field to the priory, and gone in arms to join King Stephen’s army, then besieging the Empress and her forces in Oxford. That campaign he had survived, only to die a few months later in the unexpected rout of Wilton. The king, not for the first time, had underestimated his most formidable opponent, Earl Robert of Gloucester, miscalculated the speed at which the enemy could move, and ridden with only his vanguard into a perilous situation from which he had extricated himself safely only by virtue of a heroic rearguard action, which had cost the king’s steward, William Martel, his liberty, and Eudo Blount his life. Stephen, in honour bound, had paid a high price to redeem Martel. No one, in this world, could ransom back Eudo Blount. His elder son became lord of Longner in his place. His younger son, Cadfael recalled, a novice at the abbey of Ramsey, had brought his father’s body home for burial in March.
‘A fine, tall man he was,’ Hugh recalled, ‘no more than two or three years past forty. And handsome! There’s neither of his lads can match him. Strange how the lot falls. The lady’s some years older, and sick with some trouble that’s worn her to a shadow and gives her no rest from pain, yet she lingers on here, and he’s gone. Does she ever send to you for medicines? The lady of Longner? I forget her name.’
‘Donata,’ said Cadfael. ‘Donata is her name. Now you mention it, there was a time when her maid used to come for draughts to help her with the pain. But not for a year or more now. I thought she might have been on the mend, and felt less need of the herbs. Little enough I could ever do for her. There are diseases beyond any small skill of mine.’
‘I saw her when they buried Eudo,’ said Hugh, gazing sombrely out through the open hall door at the summer dusk gathering blue and luminous above his garden. ‘No, there’s no remission. So little flesh she has between her skin and bone, I swear the light shone through her hand when she raised it, and her face grey as lavender, and shrunken into deep lines. Eudo sent for me when he made up his mind to go to Oxford, to the siege. I did wonder how he could bear to leave her in such case. Stephen had not called him, and even if he had, there was no need for him to go himself. His only due was an esquire, armed and mounted, for forty days. Yet he saw his affairs in order, made over his manor to his son, and went.
‘It may well be,’ Cadfael said,’that he could no longer bear to stay, and look on daily at a distress he could neither prevent nor help.’
His voice was very low, and Aline, re-entering the hall at that moment, did not hear the words. The very sight of her, radiantly content in her fulfilment, happy wife and mother, banished all such thoughts, and caused them both to shake off in haste all trace of a solemnity that might have cast a shadow on her serenity. She came to sit with them, her hands for once empty, for the light was too far gone for sewing or even spinning, and the warm, soft evening too beautiful to be banished by lighting candles.
‘He’s fast asleep. He was nodding over his prayers. But still he could rouse enough to demand his story from Constance. He’ll have heard no more than the first words, but custom is custom. And I want my story, too,’ she said, smiling at Cadfael, ‘before I let you leave us. What is the news with you, there at the abbey? Since the fair I’ve got no further afield than Saint Mary’s for Mass. Do you find the fair a success this year? There were fewer Remings there, I thought, but some excellent cloths, just the same. I bought well, some heavy Welsh woollen for winter gowns. The sheriff,’ she said, and made an impish face at Hugh, ‘cares nothing what he puts on, but I won’t have my husband go threadbare and cold. Will you believe, his best indoor gown is ten years old, and twice relined, and still he won’t part with it?’
‘Old servants are the best,’ said Hugh absently. ‘Truth to tell, it’s only habit sends me looking for it, you may clothe me new, my heart, whenever you wish. And for what else is new, Cadfael tells me there’s an exchange of lands agreed between Shrewsbury and Haughmond. The field they call the Potter’s Field, by Longner, will come to the abbey. In good time for the ploughing, if that’s what you decide, Cadfael.’
‘It may well be,’ Cadfael conceded. ‘At least on the upper part, well clear of the river. The lower part is good grazing.’
‘I used to buy from Ruald,’ said Aline rather ruefully. ‘He was a good craftsman. I still wonderwhat was it made him leave the world for the cloister, and all so suddenly?’
‘Who can tell?’ Cadfael looked back, as now he seldom did, to the turning-point of his own life, many years past. After all manner of journeying, fighting, endurance of heat and cold and hardship, after the pleasures and the pains of experience, the sudden irresistible longing to turn about and withdraw into quietness remained a mystery. Not a retreat, certainly. Rather an emergence into light and certainty. ‘He never could explain it or describe it. All he could say was that he had had a revelation of God, and had turned where he was pointed, and come where he was called. It happens. I think Radulfus had his doubts at first. He kept him the full term and over in his novitiate. His desire was extreme, and our abbot suspects extremes. And then, the man had been fifteen years married, and his wife was by no means consenting. Ruald left her everything he had to leave, and all of it she scorned. She fought his resolve for many weeks, but he would not be moved. After he was admitted among us she did not stay long in the croft, or avail herself of anything he had left behind for her. She went away, only a few weeks later, left the door open and everything in its place, and vanished.’