“Not all,” objected Cadfael, briefly smiling as hestirred. “Not you. Do you think you are the onlyone?”

“God forbid!” said Hugh, and suddenly laughed,shaking off his gloom. He came back from the open doorway, wherethe pure light spread a soft golden sheen over the bushes and bedsof the herb-garden and the moist noon air drew up a heady languorof spiced and drunken odours, and plumped his slender person downagain on the bench against the timber wall, spreading his bootedfeet on the earth floor. A small man in one sense only, and even sotrimly made. His modest stature and light weight had deceived manya man to his undoing. The sunshine from without, fretted by thebreeze that swayed the bushes, was reflected from one ofCadfael’s great glass flagons to illuminate by flashingglimpses a lean, tanned face, clean shaven, with a quirky mouth,and agile black eyebrows that could twist upward sceptically intocropped black hair. A face at once eloquent and inscrutable.Brother Cadfael was one of the few who knew how to read it.Doubtful if even Hugh’s wife Aline understood him better.Cadfael was in his sixty-second year, and Hugh still a year or twoshort of thirty but, meeting thus in easy companionship inCadfael’s workshop among the herbs, they felt themselvescontemporaries.

“No,” said Hugh, eyeing circumstances narrowly, andtaking some cautious comfort, “not all. There are a few of usyet, and not so badly placed to hold on to what we have.There’s the queen in Kent with her army. Robert of Gloucesteris not going to turn his back to come hunting us here while shehangs on the southern fringes of London. And with the Welsh ofGwynedd keeping our backs against the earl of Chester, we can holdthis shire for King Stephen and wait out the time. Luck that turnedonce can turn again. And the empress is not queen of Englandyet.”