Free The Brothers of Glastonbury by Kate Sedley

Novice Master during my novitiate, and who doubtless still enjoyed that thankless office. It was he, more than any other, who had patiently listened to all my fears and misgivings concerning my fitness for the religious life, and who had tried to answer my questions as honestly as he knew how without straying into the realms of heresy. Moreover, it was he who had persuaded Abbot Selwood that, in spite of my promises to my dead mother, I must not take my final vows, as much for the sake of the abbey as for my own.
    He was standing outside the porter’s lodge, and I crossed at once to greet him.
    ‘Brother Hilarion! Peace be with you!’
    ‘And with you, my child. What brings you back to Glastonbury?’
    ‘Chance,’ I said. Then, with those faded blue eyes fixed trustingly upon me, I amended, ‘God’s chance. I am staying with Dame Gildersleeve and her family. I was given the commission of escorting Mistress Cicely home from Farleigh Hungerford when … when her cousin Peter failed to arrive to claim her.’
    The gentle old face crumpled in distress. ‘Ah! Yes! We have heard. The whole enclave, indeed the whole town, is buzzing with rumours regarding the strange circumstances of his disappearance. How are Dame Joan and her niece bearing the uncertainty? I hear that Mark and the two apprentices were out searching all day yesterday, but found no trace of Peter. Yet Tom Porter tells me that he saw John Longbones down by the mill stream this morning, lifting skins from the vats, and that the shop is open.’
    I laughed. ‘Glastonbury hasn’t changed, I see – gossip is still its staple diet. So, what else are the good citizens saying about how Master Gildersleeve vanished?’
    Brother Hilarion looked even more troubled. ‘People are always suspicious of one of their own kind who can read, and especially of one who spends money on books and keeps a chestful of them in his workshop,’ he replied evasively.
    ‘You mean they’re saying that he was in league with the Devil?’
    The old monk was a shade too swift with his denial. ‘No, no! It’s much too soon for that sort of talk. Peter may yet turn up with a perfectly reasonable explanation of what has befallen him.’
    ‘But if he doesn’t…?’
    Brother Hilarion shivered. ‘We won’t think of that, my child.’ Almost involuntarily, he crossed himself. ‘Let us pray that these signs of normality in the Gildersleeve household mean that they have some knowledge of his whereabouts.’
    ‘They don’t, Brother,’ I told him bluntly, ‘but I ask you to keep that information to yourself. Mark and Dame Joan have entrusted the task of finding Peter to me.’
    ‘To you?’ Brother Hilarion was naturally astonished. ‘But you are a stranger to them, by your own account thrown in their way by chance.’
    ‘It would take far too long to make all plain to you now. I have work to do. But I promise to visit you as soon as possible and tell you everything that has happened to me since I left your care. Can you be patient?’
    He smiled ruefully. ‘Patience is no inconsiderable part of our calling – as you should know, for you were never much good at practising that virtue.’
    I laughed, bade him farewell and continued on my way down the busy thoroughfare, across the bustling market place and so to Northload Street and the stables, where I could almost have sworn that Barnabas was pleased to see me.
    *   *   *
    I was equally warmly welcomed by the Pennards when, just under an hour later, I rode into the courtyard of the long, low, single-storey farmhouse, with its slate-tiled roof and ample-sized undercroft, to make known my errand and to beg a word with Abel Fairchild.
    ‘A bad business. A bad business,’ Anthony Pennard said, rubbing his forehead in perplexity with a workmanlike hand.
    He was a smallish man with such gnarled and weather-beaten features that it was difficult to guess his age. But his hair, although liberally streaked with grey, retained much