An Excellent Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page A

Robert, and show you everything within the enclave, dortoir and
frater and gardens and herbarium, where he rules. He will find you refreshment
and rest, your first need. And at Vespers you shall join us in worship.”
     
    Word
of the arrivals from the south brought Hugh Beringar down hotfoot from the town
to confer first with the abbot, and then with Brother Humilis, who repeated
freely what he had already once related. When he had gleaned all he could, Hugh
went to find Cadfael in the herb-garden, where he was busy watering. There was
an hour yet before Vespers, the time of day when all the necessary work had
been done, and even a gardener could relax and sit for a while in the shade.
Cadfael put away his watering-can, leaving the open, sunlit beds until the cool
of the evening, and sat down beside his friend on the bench against the high
south wall.
    “Well,
you have a breathing-space, at least,” he said. “They are at each other’s
throats, not reaching for yours. Great pity, though, that townsmen and
monastics and poor nuns should be the sufferers. But so it goes in this world.
And the queen and her Flemings must be in the town by now, or very near. What
happens next? The besiegers may very well find themselves besieged.”
    “It
has happened before,” agreed Hugh. “And the bishop had fair warning he might
have need of a well-stocked larder, but she may have taken her supplies for
granted. If I were the queen’s general, I would take time to cut all the roads
into Winchester first, and make certain no food can get in. Well, we shall see.
And I hear you were the first to have speech with these two brothers from
Hyde.”
    “They
overtook me in the Foregate. And what do you make of them, now you’ve been
closeted with them so long?”
    “What
should I make of them, thus at first sight? A sick man and a dumb man. More to
the purpose, what do your brothers make of them?” Hugh had a sharp eye on his
old friend’s face, which was blunt and sleepy and private in the late afternoon
heat, but was never quite closed against him. “The elder is noble, clearly. Also
he is ill. I guess at a martial past, for I think he has old wounds. Did you
see he goes a little sidewise, favouring his left flank? Something has never
quite healed. And the young one… I well understand he has fallen under the
spell of such a man, and idolises him. Lucky for both! He has a powerful
protector, his lord has a devoted nurse. Well?” said Hugh, challenging
judgement with a confident smile.
    “You
haven’t yet divined who our new elder brother is? They may not have told you
all,” admitted Cadfael tolerantly, “for it came out almost by chance. A martial
past, yes, he avowed it, though you could have guessed it no less surely. The
man is past forty-five, I judge, and has visible scars. He has said, also, that
he was born here at Salton, then a manor of his father’s. And he has a scar on
his head, bared by the tonsure, that was made by a Seljuk scimitar, some years
back. A mere slice, readily healed, but left its mark. Salton was held formerly
by the Bishop of Chester, and granted to the church of Saint Chad, here within
the walls. They let it go many years since to a noble family, the Marescots.
There’s a local tenant holds it under them.” He opened a levelled brown eye,
beneath a bushy brow russet as autumn. “Brother Humilis is a Marescot. I know
of only one Marescot of this man’s age who went to the Crusade. Sixteen or
seventeen years ago it must be. I was newly monk, then, part of me still
hankered, and I had one eye always on the tale of those who took the Cross. As
raw and eager as I was, surely, and bound for as bitter a fall, but pure enough
in their going. There was a certain Godfrid Marescot who took three score with
him from his own lands. He made a notable name for valour.”
    “And
you think this is he? Thus fallen?”
    “Why
not? The great ones are open to