The Potter's Field (33 page)

He spoke in formal English, a little hesitantly, for he was obviously Welsh. A burly, muscular man, and handsome in his own black fashion, with sharply cut features and a very erect presence, the ring of his cropped hair barely salted with grey. The girl had her colouring from him, and her dark, brilliant eyes, but in her eyes the spark was of gaiety, even mischief, and in his it gave an impression of faint uneasiness behind the commanding brow. A proud, ambitious man not quite certain of himself and his powers. And perhaps in a delicate situation now that he had become one of the canons attendant on a Norman bishop? It was a possibility. If there was an acknowledged daughter to be accounted for, there must also be a wife. Canterbury would hardly be pleased. They assured him that the lodging provided them was in every way satisfactory, even lavish by monastic principles, and Mark willingly brought out from his saddle-roll Bishop Roger's sealed letter, beautifully inscribed and superscribed, and the little carved wood casket which held the silver cross. Canon Meirion drew pleased breath, for the Lichfield silversmith was a skilled artist, and the work was beautiful.

“He will be pleased and glad, of that you may be sure. I need not conceal from you, as men of the Church, that his lordship's situation here is far from easy, and any gesture of support is a help to him. If you will let me suggest it, it would be well if you make your appearance in form, when all are assembled at table, and there deliver your errand publicly. I will bring you into the hall as your herald, and have places left for you at the bishop's table.” He was quite blunt about it, the utmost advantage must be made of this ceremonious reminder not simply from Lichfield, but from Theobald and Canterbury, that the Roman rite had been accepted and a Norman prelate installed in Saint Asaph. The prince had brought up his own power and chivalry on one side, Canon Meirion meant to deploy Brother Mark, inadequate symbol though he might appear, upon the other.

“And, Brother, although there is no need for translation for the bishop's benefit, it would be good if you would repeat in Welsh what Deacon Mark may say in hall. The prince knows some English, but few of his chiefs understand it.” And it was Canon Meirion's determined intent that they should all, to the last man of the guard, be well aware of what passed. “I will tell the bishop beforehand of your coming, but say no word as yet to any other.”

“Hywel ab Owain already knows,” said Cadfael.

“And doubtless will have told his father. But the spectacle will not suffer any diminution by that. Indeed, it's a happy chance that you came on this of all days, for tomorrow the royal party is leaving to return to Aber.”

“In that case,” said Mark, choosing to be open with a host who was certainly being open with them, “we can ride on among his company, for I am the bearer of a letter also to Bishop Meurig of Bangor.”

The canon received this with a short pause for reflection, and then nodded approvingly. He was, after all, a Welshman himself, even if he was doing his able best to hold on to favour with a Norman superior. “Good! Your bishop is wise. It puts us on a like footing, and will please the prince. As it chances, my daughter Heledd and I will also be of the party. She is to be betrothed to a gentleman in the prince's service, who holds land in Anglesey, and he will come to meet us at Bangor. We shall be companions along the way.”

“Our pleasure to ride in company,” said Mark.

“I'll come for you as soon as they take their places at table,” the canon promised, well content, and left them to an hour of rest. Not until he was gone did the girl come back, bearing a dish of honey cakes and a jar of mead. She served them in silence, but made no move to go. After a moment of sullen thought she asked abruptly: “What did he tell you?”

“That he and his daughter are bound for Bangor tomorrow, as we two are. It seems,” said Cadfael equably, and watching her unrevealing face, “that we shall have a prince's escort as far as Aber.”

“So he does still own he is my father,” she said with a curling lip.

“He does, and why should he not profess it proudly? If you look in your mirror,” said Cadfael candidly, “you will see very good reason why he should boast of it.” That coaxed a reluctant smile out of her. He pursued the small success: “What is it between you two? Is it some threat from the new bishop? If he's bent on ridding himself of all the married priests in his diocese he has an uphill row to hoe. And your father seems to me an able man, one a new incumbent can ill afford to lose.”

“So he is,” she agreed, warming, “and the bishop wants to keep him. His case would have been much worse, but my mother was in her last illness when Bishop Gilbert arrived, and it seemed she could not last long, so they waited! Can you conceive of it? Waiting for a wife to die, so that he need not part with her husband, who was useful to him! And die she did, last Christmas, and ever since then I have kept his house, cooked and cleaned for him, and thought we could go on so. But no, I am a reminder of a marriage the bishop says was unlawful and sacrilegious. In his eyes I never should have been born! Even if my father remains celibate the rest of his life, I am still here, to call to mind what he wants forgotten. Yes,
he
, not only the bishop! I stand in the way of his advancement.”

“Surely,” said Mark, shocked, “you do him injustice. I am certain he feels a father's affection for you, as I do believe you feel a daughter's for him.”

“It never was tested before,” she said simply. “No one grudged us a proper love. Oh, he wishes me no ill, neither does the bishop. But very heartily they both wish that I may go somewhere else to thrive, so far away I shall trouble them no more.”

“So that is why they've planned to match you with a man of Anglesey. As far away,” said Cadfael ruefully, “as a man could get and still be in North Wales. Yes, that would certainly settle the bishop's mind. But what of yours? Do you know the man they intend for you?”

“No, that was the prince's doing, and he meant it kindly, and indeed I take it kindly. No, the bishop wanted to send me away to a convent in England, and make a nun of me. Owain Gwynedd said that would be a wicked waste unless it was my wish, and asked me there in front of everyone in the hall if I had any mind to it, and very loudly and clearly I said no. So he proposed this match for me. His man is looking for a wife, and they tell me he's a fine fellow, not so young but barely past thirty, which is not so old, and good to look at, and well regarded. Better at least,” she said without great enthusiasm, “than being shut up behind a grid in an English nunnery.”

“So it is,” agreed Cadfael heartily, “unless your own heart drives you there, and I doubt that will ever happen to you. Better, too, surely, than living on here and being made to feel an outcast and a burden. You are not wholly set against marriage?”

“No!” she said vehemently.

“And you know of nothing against this man the prince has in mind?”

“Only that I have not chosen him,” she said, and set her red lips in a stubborn line.

“When you see him you may approve him. It would not be the first time,” said Cadfael sagely, “that an intelligent matchmaker got the balance right.”

“Well or ill,” she said, rising with a sigh, “I have no choice but to go. My father goes with me to see that I behave, and Canon Morgant, who is as rigid as the bishop himself, goes with us to see that we both behave. Any further scandal now, and goodbye to any advancement under Gilbert. I could destroy him if I so wished,” she said, dwelling vengefully on something she knew could never be a possibility, for all her anger and disdain. And from the evening light in the doorway she looked back to add: “I can well live without him. Soon or late, I should have gone to a husband. But do you know what most galls me? That he should give me up so lightly, and be so thankful to get rid of me.”

*

Canon Meirion came for them as he had promised, just as the bustle in the courtyard was settling into competent quietness, building work abandoned for the day, all the domestic preparations for the evening's feast completed, the small army of servitors mustered into their places, and the household, from princes to grooms, assembled in hall. The light was still bright, but softening into the gilded silence before the sinking of the sun.

Dressed for ceremony, the canon was brushed and immaculate but plain, maintaining the austerity of his office, perhaps, all the more meticulously to smooth away from memory all the years when he had been married to a wife. Time had been, once, long ago in the age of the saints, when celibacy had been demanded of all Celtic priests, just as insistently as it was being demanded now by Bishop Gilbert, by reason of the simple fact that the entire structure of the Celtic Church was built on the monastic ideal, and anything less was a departure from precedent and a decline in sanctity. But long since even the memory of that time had grown faint to vanishing, and there would be just as indignant a reaction to the reimposition of that ideal as there must once have been to its gradual abandonment. For centuries now priests had lived as decent married men and raised families like their parishioners. Even in England, in the more remote country places, there were plenty of humble married priests, and certainly no one thought the worse of them. In Wales it was not unknown for son to follow sire in the cure of a parish, and worse, for the sons of bishops to take it for granted they should succeed their mitred fathers, as though the supreme offices of the Church had been turned into heritable fiefs. Now here came this alien bishop, imposed from without, to denounce all such practices as abominable sin, and clear his diocese of all but the celibate clergy.

And this able and impressive man who came to summon them to the support of his master had no intention of suffering diminution simply because, though he had buried his wife just in time, the survival of a daughter continued to accuse him. Nothing against the girl, and he would see her provided for, but somewhere else, out of sight and mind.

To do him justice, he made no bones about going straight for what he wanted, what would work to his most advantage. He meant to exploit his two visiting monastics and their mission to his bishop's pleasure and satisfaction.

“They are just seated. There will be silence until princes and bishop are settled. I have seen to it there is a clear space below the high table, where you will be seen and heard by all.”

Do him justice, too, he was no way disappointed or disparaging in contemplating Brother Mark's smallness of stature and plain Benedictine habit, or the simplicity of his bearing; indeed he looked him over with a nod of satisfied approval, pleased with a plainness that would nevertheless carry its own distinction.

Mark took the illuminated scroll of Roger de Clinton's letter and the little carved casket that contained the cross in his hands, and they followed their guide across the courtyard to the door of the bishop's hall. Within, the air was full of the rich scent of seasoned timber and the resiny smoke of torches, and the subdued murmur of voices among the lower tables fell silent as the three of them entered, Canon Meirion leading. Behind the high table at the far end of the hall an array of faces, bright in the torchlight, fixed attentively upon the small procession advancing into the cleared space below the dais. The bishop in the midst, merely a featureless presence at this distance, princes on either side of him, the rest clerics and Welsh noblemen of Owain's court disposed alternately, and all eyes upon Brother Mark's small, erect figure, solitary in the open space, for Canon Meirion had stepped aside to give him the floor alone, and Cadfael had remained some paces behind him.

“My lord bishop, here is Deacon Mark, of the household of the bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, asking audience.”

“The messenger of my colleague of Lichfield is very welcome,” said the formal voice from the high table.

Mark made his brief address in a clear voice, his eyes fixed on the long, narrow countenance that confronted him. Straight, wiry steel-grey hair about a domed tonsure, a long, thin blade of a nose flaring into wide nostrils, and a proud, tight-lipped mouth that wore its formal smile somewhat unnervingly for lack of practice.

“My lord, Bishop Roger de Clinton bids me greet you reverently in his name, as his brother in Christ and his neighbour in the service of the Church, and wishes you long and fruitful endeavour in the diocese of Saint Asaph. And by my hand he sends you in all brotherly love this letter, and this casket, and begs you accept them in kindness.”

All of which Cadfael took up, after the briefest of pauses for effect, and turned into ringing Welsh that brought an approving stir and murmur from his fellow-countrymen among the assembly.

The bishop had risen from his seat, and made his way round the high table to approach the edge of the dais. Mark went to meet him, and bent his knee to present letter and casket into the large, muscular hands that reached down to receive them.

“We accept our brother's kindness with joy,” said Bishop Gilbert with considered and gratified grace, for the secular power of Gwynedd was there within earshot, and missing nothing that passed. “And we welcome his messengers no less gladly. Rise, Brother, and make one more honoured guest at our table. And your comrade also. It was considerate indeed of Bishop de Clinton to send a Welsh speaker with you into a Welsh community.”

Cadfael stood well back, and followed only at a distance on to the dais. Let Mark have all the notice and the attention, and be led to a place of honour next to Hywel ab Owain, who sat at the bishop's left. Was that Canon Meirion's doing, the bishop's own decision to make the most of the visit, or had Hywel had a hand in it? He might well be interested in learning more about what other cathedral chapters thought of the resurrection of Saint Kentigern's throne, and its bestowal on an alien prelate. And probing from him might be expected to find a more guileless response than if it came from his formidable father, and produce a more innocent and lavish crop. A first occasion, it might be, for Mark to say little and listen much.