Brother Cadfael emerged from the enclave just after Prime, his scrip of medicaments at his belt, and turned westward towards bridge and town. He passed the mill pond and the house being prepared for the noble guest, windows and doors were all open to the summer air and the rhythmic sweep of energetically wielded brooms could be heard from within. Outside a young brother scythed down grass in the overgrown garden while another pulled up brambles. My lady de Joyeaux was due today and already a small crowd of the idle and curious was gathered to await her coming, with more appearing by dribs and drabs from town and countryside to join them. The distinguished guest's arrival was far from a matter of indifference to Cadfael, and his perpetual sin of curiosity, but at the moment he had pressing business elsewhere. There would doubtless be chances enough to glimpse the lady even if he missed her first appearance.

He climbed the Wyle to High Street then descended by way of Maerdol to the western gate and the Welsh bridge beyond which stood the populous suburb of Frankwell, a small town in its own right, its houses and shops lining the highway towards Wales. Cadfael's goal was the inn, not far from the bridge and convenient for travelers come late after the town gates closed.

He went in by way of the stable yard rather then through the common hall, crossing the cobbles to the wing at the back. Dame Margaret Taverner had been waiting and watching for him, the door opened almost as soon as he hove into sight and she was out on the step gushing anxious words like a freshet in full spate:

"Thank God you're come, Brother. We must have more of that poppy syrup of yours, my poor boy barely closed his eyes last night for the pain. And I'm sure he's feverish, though it does come and go. And I fear there is a whiff, just a whiff of corruption from under his dressing -"

Cadfael interrupted the flow, taking the lady by the arm and pouring soothing words into her ear as he steered her through the big inn kitchen and past the busy maids and pot boys towards a door at the far end. Margaret Taverner had been formed by God for comfort and good sense. Warm in color, round and ripe of flesh with a bright eye - blue as the cloudless summer sky above - that normally showed the good nature and quick wits necessary to her calling. But now those eyes were red from tears and sleeplessness and the normally competent hands wrung one another in helpless anxiety.

The door led to a dry larder where Cadfael's patient lay. The family quarters above were accessible by a stair from the stable yard but Cadfael had ruled against moving him. Jack Taverner, Dame Margaret's treasured only son, lay between linen sheets on a good wool stuffed mattress. He was a large boned and well fleshed boy of sixteen but his tow colored hair clung damply to his brow and his cheeks shone a hectic red.

Brother Cadfael went directly to the opposite door and opened it onto the yard before turning in reproach to Dame Margaret. "How many times must I tell you to leave this door open for coolness sake?"

"We closed it against the night air," Jack's sister, Orielda, pleaded softly from the inner door having abandoned her work in the kitchen. "Everyone knows how bad night air is for the sick."

Cadfael shook his head resignedly. "Night air is no different from day, Girl, save for the one being cooler this time of year. Leave that door open!" He turned to his patient. "Now then, Jack, let us see how you do."

The boy was suffering from a compound fracture of the right thighbone where a traveler's restive mount had caught him, the sharp edge of the hoof lacerating the flesh from without as the snapped bone did from within. It was in all conscience a wound serious enough to justify his womenfolk's fears. Fortunately Cadfael's experience had included many such injuries - got in battle or accident - and he knew very well what to do for them.

Cadfael had guessed that Jack's supposed fever was due to nothing worse than the over warm air of this stuffy little room, made thicker by the odors of flour and meal and pot herbs. And sure enough the cool morning breeze eddying through the open door swiftly dried the sweat on his brow and soothed the unhealthy red from his cheeks. Nor was any corruption to be found beneath his dressing, only misused young flesh knitting with almost indecent speed.

"You do very, well boy Jack and are a credit to me," Cadfael said heartily. "Now, what is this I hear of pain?"

The young man cast a reproachful look at his mother. "I won't say it doesn't ache, but no worse than the times I've overdone and strained myself. Naught I cannot bear!"

Cadfael looked gravely at Dame Margaret. "Syrup of poppy is a true gift from God but if overused the body comes to crave it as a drunkard does his wine, and then there is sad work breaking its hold - if it can be done at all. So spend what I give you as sparingly as you might! As for you, young man," he continued, returning his attention to his patient. "There is no need to play the hero. A spoonful or two in a posset bedtimes will help you to sleep." He climbed stiffly to his feet, brushing at his knees. "You may give the boy another spoonful or so if he should ask for it, mistress, but do not press it on him! And you, Jack, do not hesitate to ask if you must, for sleep is as necessary to you as food but you are wise to do without if you can." With that Cadfael took the good dame by the arm and steered her firmly from her son's room. She went with him willingly, bubbling over with thanks and promises and tears.

"T'is you I should be dosing with poppy," he admonished lightly, but serious enough beneath. "You must use yourself more kindly, Margaret! You have a business here to run and cannot do so if exhausted from watching by your son's bed. There is no need of it I promise you. The boy does very well and all the signs are set for a full recovery. Do you give him a bell or clapper that he might use to call for attendance if he needs it and go to your own bed and sleep! I know you, daughter, and vapors and hysterics are most unlike you."

"So they are," she dabbed her eyes. "I have done myself no credit, but I have been so afraid! Jack is my only son."

"I know, I know. And it was a bad wound I grant you. But all goes well and soon he'll be a hale as ever he was save for perhaps an ache in the bone when it promises rain like a wise old grandfather." And, praise God, she laughed and some color came back into cheeks normally round and rosy but gone pale and thin these last days.

The stableyard was no longer still and empty but full of color and movement. A fine tall blood bay with gold on his harness stood proud and scornful as a king as grooms fussed around him. Nearby two stout hackneys carried a litter, its tapestried curtains looped back to show the well cushioned chair within.

Cadfael paused in the doorway to gaze appreciatively. "You have important guests."

"The lord and lady of Clun," Margaret answered, mind still on her son. "On their way to you at the Abbey but came late and had to bide here overnight."

"Do you tell me so? They are early for the fair." Cadfael answered with quickening interest. Helias' kin, and even more early for his profession. Unless they were come to prevent it?

"Perhaps they have other business with you." Margaret shrugged. The affairs of barons concerned her not at all.

Perhaps! The reclaiming of a younger son maybe - or so Cadfael hoped. The lady emerged from the hall, maid and gentlewoman in close attendance. Helias favored his mother; here was the same rounded face with good, firm bones beneath. A shapely mouth set in a decisive line and high, squared brow framed by wimple and hood.

A handsome lady but the young man following her went far beyond her. Tall, broad in the shoulders but slim of waist and flank and notably long and well turned of leg his fine figure was set off by a green silk gown with embroidered borders. A finely tooled belt of gilded leather supported an equally ornate dagger on his hip. The head topping this superb body was capped by thick, golden hair, cut straight across the brow and curling into the neck below the chin. The nobly boned face with its high arched nose was inclined downward, large deep set eyes bent on the girl at his side, as his long supple mouth curved in a smile of pleasure.

And no wonder, Orielda Taverner was a sight to gladden the heart of any young man. Slender as a willow wand she tipped his shoulder, the perfect oval of her face with its wide set cornflower blue eyes and dimpled chin tilted upward to glow radiance back upon her beaming admirer. She had pulled the net from her head and her hair, golden as his, flowed in curls down her back, all the prettier for their disorder. She shone like a maiden in a troubador's song her beauty set off rather than eclipsed by her plain work-a-day dress.

Dame Margaret, still absorbed in fears and hopes for her son, turned to go back to him failing to note her daughter's perilous brightness, but Cadfael saw it with apprehension. And yet - why should a fair young maid not take pleasure in the notice of a handsome man? And why should he not be captivated by this vision of beauty however humble her circumstances? A hundred, no a thousand times every day young men must touch sleeves with young women and each take momentary light, only to pass on and forget in the next moment.

With manifest reluctance the young lord dragged his eye from the fairness beside him to light on Cadfael. He bent to ask a question of the girl, received her answer with a smile then kissed her hand in farewell, as he would have taken leave of a great lady, and left her radiant, nursing that same hand, to cross the cobbles briskly towards Cadfael.

"God give you good day, Brother!" he said in a full, ringing voice and with a very suitable reverence. "Let me present myself to you, Henry de Say of Clun. I have a brother in your house -"

"Named Helias," Cadfael finished for him. "I know the lad well, he assists me in the gardens."

Young Lord Henry kindled. "Do you tell me so?" He swung around to call to his mother, now comfortably installed in her chair. "Mother, this brother knows Helias, he works with him!"

She too brightened into a smile. "Is it so? Come closer, Brother, if you will and tell me how my boy does."

"Very well indeed," Cadfael said, approaching readily. "A good worker and good student, careful and devote in his following of the rule. No we have no complaint to make of Helias." He watched her closely, surely that was love as well as pride shining there in her eyes?

"Helias was always my good boy. Not like this tall rogue beside you!" but the glance she threw her handsome eldest was indulgent rather than chiding. "Sorry I was to lose him, even to Mother Church, but he would go and who was I to stand in his way?"

"His mother," Henry said dryly.

My Lady Clun snorted and leaned forward to confide in Cadfael, "Hal cannot reconcile himself to losing his brother, nor understand how Helias might prefer to make a name and fame for himself, even in the cloister, rather than tag forever at his elder brother's heels."

A large hand fell on Cadfael's shoulder. "Are you headed back to your Abbey now, Brother? Walk with me and tell me of my little brother."

They followed the horse litter out of the yard side by side Henry curbing his long stride to Cadfael's pace and leading his horse with servants and sumpter ponies trailing behind.

"I know very well that I cast a long shadow," he said quietly and seriously. "And that a younger brother might well tire of trailing behind and seek to forge his own path but there are other ways than the cloister." Henry slanted a smile sidelong at his companion. "I would not say as much to you, Brother, but you have the look to me of a man who saw a deal of the world and of men before taking the cowl. Does my Helias seem to you as one meant for the church?"

"I have had my doubts," Cadfael conceded, a thoughtful eye on his companion's face.

"Have you suspected us of forcing him?" Henry asked, and answered himself. "Of course you have, and why not? Such things are done every day. But I promise you this is no such case. The honor of Clun is great enough to spare a manor or two to a younger brother and I can attest that Helias is good enough a man of his hands to win further lands for himself in these unquiet days. She," he nodded towards the litter ahead of them, "sees mitres and cardinal hats, nay even the papal tiara itself! in his future and perhaps she is right, for Helias is cleverer than I, and I am no fool. I would not for the world stand in the way of a true vocation but I cannot believe that Helias was meant for such a life..." his low, heated voice trailed off unhappily.

"I have been reminded that the choice, mistaken or no, is his to make," Cadfael said wryly, remembering Hugh. "Helias knows very well what he is doing. Tell me, could he have a reason other then ambition for embracing the monastic life?"

"What other reason could he have?" Henry wondered.

Cadfael cracked a rueful smile. "A girl usually."

Henry laughed aloud at that. "Oh no, not Helias! He has never been one for the girls. Not that he has abnormal appetites either," the brother added hastily. "I mean only that he is not given to the sins of the flesh."

"Emulation then?" Cadfael suggested. "Did you brother have any friend or a teacher or kinsman he admired who took the cowl?"

"That is more likely," Henry said slowly. "Our father, before his death, received the habit as is often done. And our uncle, our mother's brother, who was on Crusade also took vows as an anchorite. And then there is our sister, Isabella, who was promised to God at her birth and took the veil at Brewood when we were boys."

"Was Helias close to this uncle of yours, or to your sister?"

Henry shrugged helplessly. "I would not have thought so. Indeed I would have said that he and I were nearer each other than to any of them, and God knows I have no leaning to the religious life!"

"I saw that plain enough," Cadfael said with amusement, then; "What is this?" for the litter had come to a dead stop in front of them.

"Hold Flambeau for me, if you would, Brother," Henry said surrendering the reins, then strode ahead to see what the matter was.