Free The Devils Novice by Ellis Peters Page A

oils, and listened dutifully to the feeble,
croaking sounds he soon grew wary of assaying, since they were painful to him.
He had taken no great harm, but he would be hoarse for some while, and perhaps
for a time he would be careful and civil in dealing with the still unbroken
sons of the nobility who came to cultivate the cowl. Mistakenly? Cadfael
brooded over the inexplicable predilection of Meriet Aspley. If ever there was
a youngster bred for the manor and the field of honour, for horse and arms,
Meriet was the man.
    “For
shame, son! An old man!” And he had opened his hands and let his enemy go, and
marched off the field prisoner, but with all the honours.
    The
outcome at chapter was inevitable; there was nothing to be done about that.
Assault upon a priest and confessor could have cost him excommunication, but
that was set aside in clemency. But his offence was extreme, and there was no
fitting penalty but the lash. The discipline, there to be used only in the last
resort, was nevertheless there to be used. It was used upon Meriet. Cadfael had
expected no less. The criminal, allowed to speak, had contented himself with
saying simply that he denied nothing of what was alleged against him. Invited
to plead in extenuation, he refused, with impregnable dignity. And the scourge
he endured without a sound.
    In
the evening, before Compline, Cadfael went to the abbot’s lodging to ask leave
to visit the prisoner, who was confined to his solitary cell for some ten days
of penance.
    “Since
Brother Meriet would not defend himself,” said Cadfael, “and Prior Robert, who
brought him before you, came on the scene only late, it is as well that you
should know all that happened, for it may bear on the manner in which this boy
came to us.” And he recounted the sad history of the keepsake Meriet had
concealed in his cell and fondled by night. “Father, I don’t claim to know. But
the elder brother of our most troublous postulant is affianced, and is to marry
soon, as I understand.”
    “I
take your meaning,” said Radulfus heavily, leaning linked hands upon his desk,
“and I, too, have thought of this. His father is a patron of our house, and the
marriage is to take place here in December. I had wondered if the younger son’s
desire to be out of the world… It would, I think, account for him.” And he
smiled wryly for all the plagued young who believe that frustration in love is
the end of their world, and there is nothing left for them but to seek another.
“I have been wondering for a week or more,” he said, “whether I should not send
someone with knowledge to speak with his sire, and examine whether we are not
all doing this youth a great disservice, in allowing him to take vows very
ill-suited to his nature, however much he may desire them now.”
    “Father,”
said Cadfael heartily, “I think you would be doing right.”
    The
boy has qualities admirable in themselves, even here,” said Radulfus
half-regretfully, “but alas, not at home here. Not for thirty years, and after
satiety with the world, after marriage, and child-getting and child-rearing,
and the transmission of a name and a pride of birth. We have our ambience, but
they—they are necessary to continue both what they know, and what we can teach
them. These things you understand, as do all too few of us who harbour here and
escape the tempest. Will you go to Aspley in my behalf?”
    “With
all my heart, Father,” said Cadfael.
    “Tomorrow?”
    “Gladly,
if you so wish. But may I, then, go now and see both what can be done to settle
Brother Meriet, mind and body, and also what I can learn from him?”
    “Do
so, with my goodwill,” said the abbot.
    In
his small stone penal cell, with nothing in it but a hard bed, a stool, a cross
hung on the wall, and the necessary stone vessel for the prisoner’s bodily
needs, Brother Meriet looked curiously more open, easy and content than Cadfael
had