Read Online Brother Cadfael 17: The Potter's Field by Ellis Peters - Free Book Online Page A

'He may not think it so,' said Cadfael. 'But come, and we'll put it to the test.' And he led the way briskly down the great court towards the abbot's lodging, leaving the porter to retire into the comfort of his own lodge, out of the clinging rain.

'How long have you been on the road?' asked Cadfael of the young man limping at his elbow.

'Seven days.' His voice was low-pitched and clear, and matched every other evidence of his youth. Cadfael judged he could not yet be past twenty, perhaps not even so much.

'Sent out alone on so long an errand?' said Cadfael, marvelling.

'Brother, we are all sent out, scattered. Pardon me if I keep what I have to say, to deliver first to the lord abbot. I would as soon tell it only once, and leave all things in his hands.'

'That you may do with confidence,' Cadfael assured him, and asked nothing further. The implication of crisis was there in the words, and the first note of desperation, quietly constrained, in the young voice. At the door of the abbot's lodging Cadfael let them both in without ceremony into the ante-room, and knocked at the half-open parlour door. The abbot's voice, preoccupied and absent, bade him enter. Radulfus had a folder of documents before him, and a long forefinger keeping his place, and looked up only briefly to see who entered.

'Father, there is here a young brother, from a distant house of our Order, come with orders from his own abbot to report himself to you, and with what seems to be grave news. He is here at the door. May I admit him?'

Radulfus looked up with a lingering frown, abandoning whatever had been occupying him, and gave his full attention to this unexpected delivery.

'From what distant house?'

'I have not asked,' said Cadfael, 'and he has not said. His instructions are to deliver all to you. But he has been on the road seven days to reach us.'

'Bring him in,' said the abbot, and pushed his parchments aside on the desk.

The young man came in, made a deep reverence to authority, and as though some seal on his mind and tongue had been broken, drew a great breath and suddenly poured out words, crowding and tumbling like a gush of blood.

'Father, I am the bearer of very ill news from the abbey of Ramsey. Father, in Essex and the Fens men are become devils. Geoffrey de Mandeville has seized our abbey to be his fortress, and cast us out, like beggars on to the roads, those of us who still live. Ramsey Abbey is become a den of thieves and murderers.'

He had not even waited to be given leave to speak, or to allow his news to be conveyed by orderly question and answer, and Cadfael had barely begun to close the door upon the pair of them, admittedly slowly and with pricked ears, when the abbot's voice cut sharply through the boy's breathless utterance.

'Wait! Stay with us, Cadfael. I may need a messenger in haste.' And to the boy he said crisply: 'Draw breath, my son. Sit down, take thought before you speak, and let me hear a plain tale. After seven days, these few minutes will scarcely signify. Now, first, we here have had no word of this until now. If you have been so long afoot reaching us, I marvel it has not been brought to the sheriff's ears with better speed. Are you the first to come alive out of this assault?'

The boy submitted, quivering, to the hand Cadfael laid on his shoulder, and subsided obediently on to the bench against the wall. 'Father, I had great trouble in getting clear of de Mandeville's lines, and so would any other envoy have. In particular a man on horseback, such as might be sent to take the word to the king's sheriffs, would hardly get through alive. They are taking every horse, every beast,