The Raven in the Foregate Read Online Free PDF Page B

his perilous brightness. “He said you could make use of me here,”
said the vibrant voice, meekly muted. “Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”
    “And a very proper attitude to work,” allowed Cadfael.
“You’ll be sharing the life here within the enclave, so I’m told. Where have
they lodged you? Among the lay servants?”
    “Nowhere yet,” said the boy, his voice cautiously
recovering its spring and resonance. “But I’m promised a bed here within. I’d
just as soon be out of the priest’s house. There’s a parish fellow looks after
his glebe, they tell me, so there’s no need for me there.”
    “Well, there’s need enough here,” said Cadfael
heartily, “for what with one thing and another I’m behind with the rough
digging that ought to be done before the frosts come, and I’ve half a dozen
fruit trees here in the small orchard that need pruning about Christmas time.
Brother Bernard will be wanting to borrow you to help with the ploughing in the
Gaye, where our main gardens are—you’ll scarcely be familiar with the lie of
the land yet, but you’ll soon get used to it. I’ll see you’re not snatched away
until I’ve had the worth of you here. Come, then, and see what we have for you
within the walls.”
    Benet had come a few paces more into the hut, and was
looking about him with curiosity and mild awe at the array of bottles, jars and
flagons that furnished Brother Cadfael’s shelves, the rustling bunches of herbs
that sighed overhead in the faint stirrings of air from the open door, the
small brass scales, the three mortars, the single gently bubbling wine-jar, the
little wooden bowls of medicinal roots, and a batch of small white lozenges
drying on a marble slab. His round-eyed, open-mouthed stare spoke for him.
Cadfael half-expected him to cross himself defensively against such ominous
mysteries, but Benet stopped short of that. Just as well, thought Cadfael,
alerted and amused, for I should not quite have believed in it.
    “This, too, you can learn, if you put your mind to it
diligently enough,” he said drily, “but it will take you some years. Mere
medicines—God made every ingredient that goes into them, there’s no other
magic. But let’s begin with what’s needed most. There’s a good acre of
vegetable garden beds to rough-dig, and a small mountain of well-weathered
stable muck to cart and spread on the main butts and the rose beds. And the
sooner we get down to it, the sooner it will be done. Come and see!”
    The boy followed him willingly enough, his light,
lively eyes scanning everything with interest. Beyond the fish ponds, in the
two pease fields that ran down the slope to the Meole Brook, the western
boundary of the enclave, the haulms had long since been cut close and dried for
stable bedding, and the roots ploughed back into the soil, but there would be a
heavy and dirty job there spreading much of the ripened and tempered manure
from the stable yard and the byres. There were the few fruit trees in the small
orchard to be pruned, but such growth as remained in the grass, in this mild
opening of the month, was cropped neatly by two yearling lambs. The flower beds
wore their usual somewhat ragged autumn look, but would do with one last
weeding, if time served, before all growth ceased in the cold. The kitchen
garden, cleared of its crops, lay weedy and trampled, waiting for the spade, a
dauntingly large expanse. But it seemed that nothing could daunt Benet.
    “A goodish stretch,” he said cheerfully, eyeing the
long main butt with no sign of discouragement. “Where will I find the tools?”
    Cadfael showed him the low shed where they were to be
found, and was interested to note that the young man looked round him among the
assembly with a slightly doubtful face, though he soon selected the iron-shod
wooden spade appropriate to the job in hand, and even viewed the length of the
ground ahead and started his first row