The Devils Novice Read Online Free PDF Page B

more diligent student. But the others don’t like him, Cadfael. He shuns
them. Those who have tried to approach him say he turns from them, and is rough
and short in making his escape. He’d rather go solitary. I tell you, Cadfael, I
never knew a postulant pursue his novitiate with so much passion, and so little
joy. Have you once seen him smile since he entered here?”
    Yes,
once, thought Cadfael; this afternoon before Wolstan fell, when he was picking
apples in the orchard, the first time he’s left the enclave since his father
brought him in.
    “Do
you think it would be well to bring him to chapter?” he wondered dubiously.
    “I
did better than that, or so I hoped. With such a nature, I would not seem to be
complaining where I have no just cause for complaint. I spoke to Father Abbot
about him. “Send him to me,” says Radulfus, “and reassure him,” he says, “that
I am here to be open to any who need me, the youngest boy as surely as any of
my obedientiaries, and he may approach me as his own father, without fear.” And
send him I did, and told him he could open his thoughts with every confidence.
And what came of it? “Yes, Father, no, Father, I will, Father!” and never a
word blurted out from the heart. The only thing that opens his lips freely is
the mention that he might be mistaken in coming here, and should consider
again. That brings him to his knees fast enough. He begs to have his probation
shortened, to be allowed to take his vows soon. Father Abbot read him a lecture
on humility and the right use of the year’s novitiate, and he took it to heart,
or seemed to, and promised patience. But still he presses. Books he swallows
faster than I can feed them to him, he’s bent on hurrying to his vows at all
costs. The slower ones resent him. Those who can keep pace with him, having the
start of him by two months or more, say he scorns them. That he avoids I’ve
seen for myself. I won’t deny I’m troubled for him.”
    So
was Cadfael, though he did not say how deeply.
    “I
couldn’t but wonder…” went on Paul thoughtfully. “Tell him he may come to me as
to his father, without fear, says the abbot. What sort of reassurance should
that be to a young fellow new from home? Did you see them, Cadfael, when they
came? The pair of them together?”
    “I
did,” said Cadfael cautiously, “though only for moments as they lighted down
and shook off the rain, and went within.”
    “When
did you need more than moments?” said Brother Paul. “As to his own father,
indeed! I was present throughout, I saw them part. Without a tear, with few
words and hard, his sire went hence and left him to me. Many, I know, have done
so before, fearing the parting as much as their young could fear it, perhaps
more.” Brother Paul had never engendered, christened, nursed, tended young of
his own, and yet there had been some quality in him that the old Abbot
Heribert, no subtle nor very wise man, had rightly detected, and confided to
him the boys and the novices in a trust he had never betrayed. “But I never saw
one go without the kiss,” said Paul. “Never before. As Aspley did.”
    In
the darkness of the long dortoir, almost two hours past Compline, the only
light was the small lamp left burning at the head of the night stairs into the
church, and the only sound the occasional sigh of a sleeper turning, or the
uneasy shifting of a wakeful brother. At the head of the great room Prior
Robert had his cell, commanding the whole length of the open corridor between
the two rows of cells. There had been times when some of the younger brothers,
not yet purged of the old Adam, had been glad of the fact that the prior was a
heavy sleeper. Sometimes Cadfael himself had been known to slip out by way of
the night stairs, for reasons he considered good enough. His first encounters
with Hugh Beringar, before that young man won his Aline or achieved his office,
had been by