Brother Cadfael 18: The Summer of the Danes

involved it may well be serious business, and require official consideration before we disperse. He had good memories of Roger de Clinton, a man of decision and solid good sense, with an eye for the genuine and the bogus in other men, and a short way with problems of doctrine. By the spark in the abbot's eye, though his face remained impassive, Radulfus also recalled the bishop's last visit with appreciation.
    "The bishop's envoy is very welcome," he said, "and may lodge here for as long as he wishes. Has he some immediate request of us, before I close this chapter?"
    "Father, he would like to make his reverence to you at once, and let you know what his errand is. At your will whether it should be here or in private."
    "Let him come in," said Radulfus.
    The porter vanished, and the small, discreet buzz of curiosity and speculation that went round the chapterhouse like a ripple on a pond ebbed into anticipatory silence as the bishop's envoy came in and stood among them.
    A little man, of slender bones and lean but wiry flesh, diminutive as a sixteen-year-old boy, and looking very much like one, until discerning attention discovered the quality and maturity of the oval, beardless face. A Benedictine like these his brothers, tonsured and habited, he stood erect in the dignity of his office and the humility and simplicity of his nature, as fragile as a child and as durable as a tree. His straw-coloured ring of cropped hair had an unruly spikiness, recalling the child. His grey eyes, formidably direct and clear, confirmed the man.
    A small miracle! Cadfael found himself suddenly presented with a gift he had often longed for in the past few years, by its very suddenness and improbability surely miraculous. Roger de Clinton had chosen as his accredited envoy into Wales not some portly canon of imposing presence, from the inner hierarchy of his extensive see, but the youngest and humblest deacon in his household, Brother Mark, sometime of Shrewsbury abbey, and assistant for two fondly remembered years among the herbs and medicines of Cadfael's workshop.
    Brother Mark made a deep reverence to the abbot, dipping his ebullient tonsure with a solemnity which still retained, until he lifted those clear eyes again, the slight echo and charm of absurdity which had always clung about the mute waif Cadfael first recalled. When he stood erect he was again the ambassador; he would always be both man and child from this time forth, until the day when he became priest, which was his passionate desire. And that could not be for some years yet, he was not old enough to be accepted.
    "My lord," he said, "I am sent by my bishop on an errand of goodwill into Wales. He prays you receive and house me for a night or two among you."
    "My son," said the abbot, smiling, "you need here no credentials but your presence. Did you think we could have forgotten you so soon? You have here as many friends as there are brothers, and in only two days you will find it hard to satisfy them all. And as for your errand, or your lord's errand, we will do all we can to forward it. Do you wish to speak of it? Here, or in private?"
    Brother Mark's solemn face melted into a delighted smile at being not only remembered, but remembered with obvious pleasure. "It is no long story, Father," he said, "and I may well declare it here, though later I would entreat your advice and counsel, for such an embassage is new to me, and there is no one could better aid me to perform it faithfully than you. You know that last year the Church chose to restore the bishopric of Saint Asaph, at Llanelwy."
    Radulfus agreed, with an inclination of his head. The fourth Welsh diocese had been in abeyance for some seventy years, very few now living could remember when there had been a bishop on the throne of Saint Kentigern. The location of the see, with a foot either side the border, and all the power of Gwynedd to westward, had always made it difficult to maintain. The cathedral stood on land held by the earl of Chester, but all the Clwyd valley above it was in Owain Gwynedd's territory. Exactly why Archbishop Theobald had resolved on reviving the diocese at this time was not quite clear to anyone, perhaps not even the archbishop. Mixed motives of Church politics and secular manoeuvring apparently required a firmly English hold on this borderland, for the appointed man was a Norman. There was not much tenderness towards Welsh sensitivities in such a preferment, Cadfael reflected