and vainly for him to make truth of rumour, which he stubbornlydeclined to do. He had still business to settle with the lady, andhis constitution was more than a match for even this virulentfever. By the end of May he was on his way manfully back to health.By the early days of June the long sub-frost broke. The biting windchanged to a temperate breeze, the sun came out over the earth likea warm hand stroking, the seed stirred in the ground and put forthgreen blades, and a foam of flowers, all the more exuberant forhaving been so long restrained, burst forth in gold and purple andwhite over garden and meadow. The belated sowing began in jubilanthaste. And King Stephen, like a giant breaking loose from somecrippling enchantment, surged out of his convalescence intovigorous action, and bearing down on the port of Wareham, the mosteasterly still available to his enemies, seized both town andcastle with hardly a graze to show for it.

“And is making north again now towards Cirencester,”reported Hugh Beringar, elated by the news, “to pick off theempress’s outposts one by one, if only he can keep up thisstorm of energy.” It was the one fatal flaw in theking’s military make-up that he could not sustain action forlong if he failed to get instant results, but would abandon a siegeafter three days, and go off to start another elsewhere,squandering for no gain the energy devoted to both. “We maysee a tidy end to it yet!”

Brother Cadfael, preoccupied with his own narrower concerns,continued to survey the vegetable patch outside the wall of hisherb-garden, digging an experimental toe into soil grown darker andkinder after a mild morning shower. “By rights,” hesaid thoughtfully, “carrots should have been in more than amonth ago, and the first radishes will be fibrous and shrunken asold leather, but we might get something with more juices in it fromnow on. Lucky the fruit-blossom held back until the bees began towake up, but even so it will be a thin crop this year.Everything’s four weeks behind, but the seasons have a way ofcatching up, somehow. Wareham, you were saying? What ofWareham?”