The Rose Rent by Ellis Peters

good thought, do nothing in haste. But should it come to that, there’s nothing to hold you back.”
    No, nothing! And sometimes the world did seem to Judith a waste, a tedium, hardly worth keeping. And in a day or two, perhaps tomorrow, Sister Magdalen would be coming from Godric’s Ford, from the forest cell of the abbey of Polesworth, to fetch away Brother Edmund’s niece as a postulant. She could as well take back with her two aspiring novices as one.
     
    Judith was in the spinning room with the women when Sister Magdalen arrived, early the following afternoon. As heiress to the clothier’s business for want of a brother, she had learned all the skills involved, from teasing and carding to the loom and the final cutting of garments, though she found herself much out of practice now at the distaff. The sheaf of carded wool before her was russet-red. Even the dye-stuffs came seasonally, and last summer’s crop of woad for the blues was generally used up by April or May, to be followed by these variations on reds and browns and yellows, which Godfrey Fuller produced from the lichens and madders. He knew his craft. The lengths of cloth he would finally get back for fulling had a clear, fast colour, and fetched good prices.
    It was Miles who came looking for her. “You have a visitor,” he said, reaching over Judith’s shoulder to rub a strand of wool from the distaff between finger and thumb, with cautious approval. “There’s a nun from Godric’s Ford sitting in your small chamber, waiting for you. She says they told her at the abbey you’d be glad of a word with her. You’re not still playing with the notion of quitting the world, are you? I thought that nonsense was over.”
    “I did tell Brother Cadfael I should like to see her,” said Judith, stilling her spindle. “No more than that. She’s here to fetch a new novice away—the infirmarer’s sister’s girl.”
    “Then don’t you be fool enough to offer her a second. Though you do have your follies, as I know,” he said lightly, and clapped her affectionately on the shoulder. “Like giving away for a rose leaf the best property in the Foregate. Do you intend to cap that by giving away yourself?”
    He was two years older than his cousin, and given to playing the elder, full of sage advice, though with a lightness that tempered the image. A young man very neatly and compactly made, strong and lissome, and as good at riding and wrestling and shooting at the butts by the riverside as he was at managing a clothier’s business. He had his mother’s blue, alert eyes and light-brown hair, but none of her blurred complacency. All that was, or seemed, vague and shallow in the mother became clear and decisive in the son. Judith had had good cause to be glad of him, and to rely on his solid good sense in all matters concerning commerce.
    “I may do as I please with myself,” she said, rising and laying her spindle down in safety with its cone of russet yarn, “if only I knew what does best please me! But truth to tell, I’m utterly in the dark. All I’ve done is to say I should be glad to talk to her. So I shall. I like Sister Magdalen.”
    “So do I,” agreed Miles heartily. “But I should grudge you to her. This house would founder without you.”
    “Folly!” said Judith sharply. “You know well enough it could fare as well without me as with me. It’s you who hold up the roof, not I.”
    If he disclaimed that, she did not wait to hear, but gave him a sudden reassuring smile and a touch of her hand on his sleeve as she passed, and went to join her guest. Miles had a ruthless honesty, he knew that what she had said was no more than truth, he could have run everything here without her. The sharp reminder pricked her. She was indeed expendable, a woman without purpose here in this world, she might well consider whether there was not a better use for her out of the world. In urging her against it, he had reopened the hollow in her heart, and