“These we should gather today and tomorrow. In this heat they’llpass their best in a day. And these spent ones have to be cleared. You canbegin that for me. Don’t pull them up, take the sickle and cut them offlow to the ground, and the roots we plough in, they’re good food for thesoil.” He was talking in an easy, good-humoured flow, to pass offpeacefully whatever residue of regret and strangeness there might be in thisabrupt change. “How old are you, Godric?”

“Seventeen,” said the husky voice beside him. He was on thesmall side for seventeen; let him try his hand at digging later on, the groundCadfael was working was heavy to till. “I can work hard,” said theboy, almost as though he had guessed at the thought, and resented it. “I don’t know much, but I can do whatever you tell me.”

“So you shall, then, and you can begin with the pease. Stack the drystuff aside here, and it goes to provide stable litter. And the roots go backto the ground.”

“Like humankind,” said Godric unexpectedly.

“Yes, like humankind.” Too many were going back to the earthprematurely now in this fratricidal war. He saw the boy turn his head, almostinvoluntarily, and look across the abbey grounds and roofs to where thebattered towers of the castle loomed in their pall of smoke. “Have youkin within there, child?” asked Cadfael gently.

“No!” said the boy, too quickly. “But I can’t butthink of them. They’re saying in the town it can’t lastlong—that it may fall tomorrow. And surely they’ve done onlyrightly! Before King Henry died he made his barons acknowledge the Empress Maudas his heir, and they all swore fealty. She was his only living child, she shouldbe queen. And yet when her cousin, Count Stephen, seized the throne and hadhimself crowned, all too many of them took it meekly and forgot their oaths.That can’t be right. And it can’t be wrong to stand by the empressfaithfully. How can they excuse changing sides? How can they justify CountStephen’s claim?”