a solution. King Stephen still held his own in the south and mostof the east; the Empress Maud, thanks to her loyal half-brother,Robert of Gloucester, was securely established in the southwest andmaintained her own court unmolested in Devizes. But for some monthsnow there had been very little fighting between them, whether fromexhaustion or policy, and a strange calm had settled over thecountry, almost peace. In the Fens the raging outlaw Geoffrey deMandeville, every man’s enemy, was still at liberty, but aliberty constricted by the king’s new encircling fortresses,and increasingly vulnerable. All in all, there was room for somecautious optimism, and the very freshness and luster of the springforbade despondency, even had despondency been amongCadfael’s propensities.

So he came to chapter, on this particular day at the end ofApril, in the most serene and acquiescent of spirits, full of mildgood intentions towards all men, and content that things shouldcontinue as bland and uneventful through the summer and into theautumn. He certainly had no premonition of any immediate change inthis idyllic condition, much less of the agency by which it was tocome.

As though compelled, half fearfully and half gratefully, to thesame precarious but welcome quietude, the business at chapter thatday was modest and aroused no dispute, there was no one in default,not even a small sin among the novices for Brother Jerome todeplore, and the schoolboys, intoxicated with the spring and thesunshine, seemed to be behaving like the angels they certainly werenot. Even the chapter of the Rule, read in the flat, deprecatingtones of Brother Francis, was the 34th, gently explaining that thedoctrine of equal shares for all could not always be maintained,since the needs of one might exceed the needs of another, and hewho received more accordingly must not preen himself on beingsupplied beyond his brothers, and he that received less but enoughmust not grudge the extra bestowed on his brothers. And above all,no grumbling, no envy. Everything was placid, conciliatory,moderate. Perhaps, even, a shade on the dull side?