Read Brother Cadfael 03: Monk's Hood for Free Online Page B

rising from table, when the door flew open almost in Brother Richard's face, and a lay brother from the porter's lodge burst in, babbling incoherently for Brother Edmund, but too short of breath from running to explain the need.
    "Master Bonel - his serving-maid has come running for help ..." He gulped breath deep, and suppressed his panting long enough to get out clearly: "He's taken terribly ill, she said he looks at death's door ... the mistress begs someone to come to him quickly!"
    Brother Edmund gripped him by the arm. "What ails him? Is it a stroke? A convulsion?"
    "No, from what the girl said, not that. He ate his dinner, and seemed well and well content, and not a quarter of an hour after he was taken with tingling of the mouth and throat, and then willed to vomit, but could not, and lips and neck are grown stiff and hard ... So she said!"
    By the sound of it, she was a good witness, too, thought Cadfael, already making for the door and his workshop at a purposeful trot. "Go before, Edmund, I'll join you as fast as I may. I'll bring what may be needed."
    He ran, and Edmund ran, and behind Brother Edmund the messenger scuttled breathlessly towards the gatehouse, and the agitated girl waiting there. Prickling of the lips, mouth and throat, Cadfael was reckoning as he ran, tingling and then rigidity, and urgent need, but little ability, to rid himself of whatever it was he had consumed. And a quarter of an hour since he got it down, more by now, if it was in the dinner he had eaten. It might be late to give him the mustard that would make him sick, but it must be tried. Though surely this was merely an attack of illness from some normal disagreement between an indisposed man and his perfectly wholesome food, nothing else was possible. But then, that prickling of the flesh of mouth and throat, and the stiffness following ... that sounded all too like at least one violent illness he had witnessed, which had almost proved fatal; and the cause of that he knew. Hurriedly he snatched from the shelves the preparations he wanted, and ran for the gatehouse.
    For all the chill of the December day, the door of the first house beyond the mill-pond stood wide, and for all the awed quietness that hung about it, a quivering of agitation and confusion seemed to well out at the doorway to meet him, an almost silent panic of fluttering movements and hushed voices. A good house, with three rooms and the kitchen, and a small garden behind, running down to the pond; he knew it well enough, having visited a previous inmate upon less desperate business. The kitchen door faced away from the pond, towards the prospect of Shrewsbury beyond the river, and the north light at this time of day and year made the interior dim, although the window that looked out southwards stood unshuttered to let in light and air upon the brazier that did duty as all the cooking facilities such pensioners needed. He caught the grey gleam of a reflection from the water, as the wind ruffled it; the strip of garden was narrow here, though the house stood well above the water level.
    By the open inner door through which the murmur of frightened voices emerged, stood a woman, obviously watching for him, her hands gripped tightly together under her breast, and quivering with tension. She started eagerly towards him as he came in, and then he saw her more clearly; a woman of his own years and his own height, very neat and quiet in her dress, her dark hair laced with silver and braided high on her head, her oval face almost unlined except for the agreeable grooves of good-nature and humour that wrinkled the corners of her dark-brown eyes, and made her full mouth merry and attractive. The merriment was quenched now, she wrung her hands and fawned on him; but attractive she was, even beautiful. She had held her own against the years, all forty-two of them that had come between.
    He knew her at once. He had not seen her since they were both seventeen, and affianced, though