A Rare Benedictine by Ellis Peters

And I have troubles
of my own nearer home, into the bargain, with that rogue son of mine nothing
but brawler and gamester as he is. If I’ve told him once I’ve told him a score
of times, the next time he comes to me to pay his debts or buy him out of
trouble, he’ll come in vain, he may sweat it out in gaol, and serve him right.
A man would think he could get a little peace and comfort from his own flesh
and blood. All I get is vexation.”
    Once
launched upon this tune, he was liable to continue the song indefinitely, and
Brother Ambrose was already looking apologetic and abject, as though not
William, but he, had engendered the unsatisfactory son. Cadfael could not
recall that he had ever spoken with young Rede, beyond exchanging the time of
day, and knew enough about fathers and sons, and the expectations each had of
the other, to take all such complaints with wary reserve. Report certainly said
the young man was a wild one, but at twenty-two which of the town hopefuls was
not? By thirty they were most of them working hard, and minding their own
purses, homes and wives. “Your lad will mend, like many another,” said Cadfael
comfortably, edging the voluble visitor out from the infirmary into the
sunshine of the great court. Before them on their left the great west tower of
the church loomed; on their right, the long block of the guest-halls, and
beyond, the crowns of the garden trees just bursting into leaf and bud, with a
moist, pearly light filming over stonework and cobbles and all with a soft
Spring sheen. “And as for the rents, you know very well, old humbug, that you
have your finger on every line of the leiger book, and tomorrow’s affair will
go like a morning walk. At any rate, you can’t complain of your prentice hand.
He’s worked hard enough over those books of yours.”
    “Jacob
has certainly shown application,” the steward agreed cautiously. “I own I’ve
been surprised at the grasp he has of abbey affairs, in so short a time. Young
people nowadays take so little interest in what they’re set to do fly-by-nights
and frivolous, most of them. It’s been heartening to see one of them work with
such zeal. I daresay he knows the value due from every property of the house by
this time. Yes, a good boy. But too ingenuous, Cadfael, there’s his flaw too
affable. Figures and characters on vellum cannot baffle him, but a rogue with a
friendly tongue might come over him. He cannot stand men off he cannot put
frost between. It’s not well to be too open with all men.”
    It
was mid-afternoon; in an hour or so it would be time for Vespers. The great
court had always some steady flow of activity, but at this hour it was at its
quietest. They crossed the court together at leisure, Brother Cadfael to return
to his workshop in the herb garden, the steward to the north walk of the
cloister, where his assistant was hard at work in the scriptorium. But before
they had reached the spot where their paths would divide, two young men emerged
from the cloister in easy conversation, and came towards them.
    Jacob
of Bouldon was a sturdy, square-set young fellow from the south of the shire,
with a round, amiable face, large, candid eyes, and a ready smile. He came with
a vellum leaf doubled in one hand, and a pen behind his ear, in every
particular the eager, hard-working clerk. A little too open to any man’s
approaches, perhaps, as his master had said. The lanky, narrow-headed fellow
attentive at his side had a very different look about him, weather-beaten,
sharp-eyed and drab in hard-wearing dark clothes, with a leather jerkin to bear
the rubbing of a heavy pack. The back of the left shoulder was scrubbed pallid
and dull from much carrying, and his hat was wide and drooping of brim, to shed
off rain. A travelling haberdasher with a few days’ business in Shrewsbury, no
novelty in the commoners’ guest-hall of the abbey. His like were always on the
roads,