The Devils Novice by Ellis Peters Page B

made in the knowledge that he was well aware
of them, cobweb threads to entrammel one more unlikely fly.
    He
was careful not to look back, for it had dawned on him that she would
confidently expect him to.
    Just
within the fringe of the copse, at the end of the fields, there was a
stone-built sheepfold, close beside the ride, and someone was sitting on the
rough wall, dangling crossed ankles and small bare feet, and nursing in her lap
a handful of late hazelnuts, which she cracked in her teeth, dropping the
fragments of shell into the long grass. From a distance Cadfael had been
uncertain whether this was boy or girl, for her gown was kilted to the knee,
and her hair cropped just short enough to swing clear of her shoulders, and her
dress was the common brown homespun of the countryside. But as he drew nearer
it became clear that this was certainly a girl, and moreover, busy about the
enterprise of becoming a woman. There were high, firm breasts under the
close-fitting bodice, and for all her slenderness she had the swelling hips
that would some day make childbirth natural and easy for her. Sixteen, he
thought, might be her age. Most curiously of all, it appeared that she was both
expecting and waiting for him, for as he rode towards her she turned on her
perch to look towards him with a slow, confident smile of recognition and
welcome, and when he was close she slid from the wail, brushing off the last
nutshells, and shook down her skirts with the brisk movements of one making
ready for action. “Sir, I must talk to you,” she said with firmness, and put up
a slim brown hand to the mule’s neck. “Will you light down and sit with me?”
She had still her child’s face, but the woman was beginning to show through,
paring away the puppy-flesh to outline the elegant lines of her cheekbones and
chin. She was brown almost as her nutshells, with a warm rose-colour mantling
beneath the tanned, smooth skin, and a mouth rose-red, and curled like the
petals of a half-open rose. The short, thick mane of curling hair was richly
russet-brown, and her eyes one shade darker, and black-lashed. No cottar’s
girl, if she did choose to go plain and scorning finery. She knew she was an
heiress, and to be reckoned with.
    “I
will, with pleasure,” said Cadfael promptly, and did so. She took a step back,
her head on one side, scarcely having expected such an accommodating reception,
without explanation asked or given; and when he stood on level terms with her,
and barely half a head taller, she suddenly made up her mind, and smiled at him
radiantly.
    “I
do believe we two can talk together properly. You don’t question, and yet you
don’t even know me.”
    “I
think I do,” said Cadfael, hitching the mule’s bridle to a staple in the stone
wall. “You can hardly be anyone else but Isouda Foriet. For all the rest I’ve
already seen, and I was told already that you must be the youngest of the
tribe.”
    “He
told you of me?” she demanded at once, with sharp interest, but no noticeable
anxiety.
    “He
mentioned you to others, but it came to my ears.”
    “How
did he speak of me?” she asked bluntly, jutting a firm chin. “Did that also
come to your ears?”
    “I
did gather that you were a kind of young sister.” For some reason, not only did
he not feel it possible to lie to this young person, it had no value even to
soften the truth for her.
    She
smiled consideringly, like a confident commander weighing up the odds in a threatened
field. “As if he did not much regard me. Never mind! He will.”
    “If
I had the ruling of him,” said Cadfael with respect, “I would advise it now.
Well, Isouda, here you have me, as you wished. Come and sit, and tell me what
you wanted of me.”
    “You
brothers are not supposed to have to do with women,” said Isouda, and grinned
at him warmly as she hoisted herself back on to the wall. “That makes him safe
from her, at least, but