Well, at any rate there was no nonsense of that kind with the other one!Brother John was as plain and practical as his name, a square young man with asnub nose and an untamable ring of wiry russet curls round his tonsure. He wasalways hungry, and his chief interest in all things that grew in gardens waswhether they were eatable, and of agreeable flavour. Come autumn he wouldcertainly find a way of working his passage into the orchards. Just now he wascontent to help Brother Cadfael prick out early lettuces, and wait for the softfruits to come into season. He was a handsome, lusty, good-natured soul, whoseemed to have blundered into this enclosed life by some incomprehensibleerror, and not yet to have realised that he had come to the wrong place.Brother Cadfael detected a lively sense of mischief the fellow to his own, butnever yet given its head in a wider world, and confidently expected that someday this particular red-crested bird would certainly fly. Meantime, he got hisentertainment wherever it offered, and found it sometimes in unexpected places.

“I must be in good tune,” he said, unkilting his gown anddusting his hands cheerfully on his seat. “I’m reader thisweek.” So he was, Cadfael recalled, and however dull the passages theychose for him in the refectory, and innocuous the saints and martyrs he would haveto celebrate at chapter, John would contrive to imbue them with drama and gustofrom his own sources. Give him the beheading of Saint John the Baptist, and hewould shake the foundations.

“You read for the glory of God and the saints, brother,”Columbanus reminded him, with loving reproof and somewhat offensive humility,“not for your own!” Which showed either how little he knew aboutit, or how false he could be, one or the other.