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a stool beside him, waiting on him
good-humouredly and pouring voluble Welsh into his ears like a mountain spring.
The old man’s gown was stripped down from his bony shoulders, and his attendant
was busily massaging oil into the joints with probing fingers, drawing grunts
of pleasure from his patient.
    “I
see I’m forestalled,” said Cadfael into Brother Edmund’s ear, in the doorway.
    “A
kinsman,” said Brother Edmund as softly. “Some young Welshman from up in the
north of the shire, where Rhys comes from. It seems he came here today to help
the new tenants move in at the house by the mill-pond. He’s connected
somehow—journeyman to the woman’s son, I believe. And while he was here he
thought to ask after the old man, which was a kind act. Rhys was complaining of
his pains, and the young fellow offered, so I set him to work. Still, now
you’re here, have a word. They’ll neither of them need to speak English for
you.”
    “You’ll
have warned him to wash his hands well, afterwards?”
    “And
shown him where, and where to stow the bottle away safely when he’s done. He
understands. I’d hardly let a man take risks with such a brew, after your
lecture. I’ve told him what the stuff could do, misused.”
    The
young man ceased his ministrations momentarily when Brother Cadfael approached,
and made to stand up respectfully, but Cadfael waved him down again. “No, sit,
lad, I won’t disturb you. I’m here for a word with an old friend, but I see
you’ve taken on my work for me, and doing it well, too.”
    The
young man, with cheerful practicality, took him at his word, and went on
kneading the pungent oils into Brother Rhys’s aged shoulders. He was perhaps
twenty-four or twenty-five years old, sturdily built and strong; his square,
good-natured face was brown and weathered, and plentifully supplied with bone,
a Welsh face, smooth-shaven and decisive, his hair and brows thick, wiry and
black. His manner towards Brother Rhys was smiling, merry, almost teasing, as
it probably would have been towards a child; and that was engaging in him, and
won Brother Cadfael’s thoughtful approval, for Brother Rhys was indeed a child
again. Livelier than usual today, however, the visitor had done him a deal of
good.
    “Well,
now, Cadfael!” he piped, twitching a shoulder pleasurably at the young man’s
probing. “You see my kinsmen remember me yet. Here’s my niece Angharad’s boy
come to see me, my great-nephew Meurig. I mind the timehe was
born… Eh, I mind the time she was born, for that matter, my sister’s little
lass. It’s many years since I’ve seen her—or you, boy, come to think of it, you
could have come to see me earlier. But there’s no family feeling in the young,
these days.” But he was very complacent about it, enjoying handing out praise
one moment and illogical reproof the next, a patriarch’s privilege. “And why didn’t
the girl come her-self? Why didn’t you bring your mother with you?”
    “It’s
a long journey from the north of the shire,” said the young man Meurig, easily,
“and always more than enough to be done at home. But I’m nearer now, I work for
a carpenter and carver in the town here, you’ll be seeing more of me. I’ll come
and do this for you again—have you out on a hillside with the sheep yet, come
spring.”
    “My
niece Angharad,” murmured the old man, benignly smiling, “was the prettiest
little thing in half the shire, and she grew up a beauty. What age would she be
now? Five and forty, it may be, but I warrant she’s still as beautiful as ever
she was—don’t you tell me different, I never yet saw the one to touch her…”
    “Her
son’s not likely to tell you any different,” agreed Meurig comfortably. Are not
all one’s lost nieces beautiful? And the weather of the summers when they were
children always radiant, and the wild fruit they gathered then sweeter than any
that grows now? For