He had reached the shelter of the guest-hall porch, and was drawing breathbefore splashing through the puddles to the cloister, when three horsemen rodein from the Foregate, and halted under the archway of the gatehouse to shakeoff the rain from their cloaks. The porter came out in haste to greet them,slipping sidelong in the shelter of the wall, and a groom came running from thestable-yard, splashing through the rain with a sack over his head.

So that must be Leoric Aspley of Aspley, thought Cadfael, and the son whodesires to take the cowl here among us. And he stood to gaze a moment, partlyout of curiosity, partly out of a vain hope that the downpour would ease, andlet him cross to the scriptorium without getting wetter than he need.

A tall, erect, elderly man in a thick cloak led the arrivals, riding a biggrey horse. When he shook off his hood he uncovered a head of bushy, grizzledhair and a face long, austere and bearded. Even at that distance, across thewide court, he showed handsome, unsmiling, unbending, with a high-bridged,arrogant nose and a grimly proud set to his mouth and jaw, but his manner toporter and groom, as he dismounted, was gravely courteous. No easy man,probably no easy parent to please. Did he approve his son’s resolve, or was heaccepting it only under protest and with displeasure? Cadfael judged him to bein the mid-fifties, and thought of him, in all innocence, as an old man,forgetting that his own age, to which he never gave much thought, was pastsixty.

He gave rather closer attention to the young man who had followed decorouslya few respectful yards behind his father, and lighted down from his black ponyquickly to hold his father’s stirrup. Almost excessively dutiful, and yet there