Chapter Ten

IT WAS NOT UNTIL DINNER was almost over in the guest-hall that Matthew, seated at Melangell’s side and still flushed and exalted from the morning’s heady wonders, suddenly bethought him of sterner matters, and began to look back with a thoughtful frown which as yet only faintly dimmed the unaccustomed brightness of his face. Being in attendance on Mistress Weaver and her young people had made him a part, for a while, of their unshadowed joy, and caused him to forget everything else. But it could not last, though Rhun sat there half-lost in wonder still, with hardly a word to say, and felt no need of food or drink, and his womenfolk fawned on him unregarded. So far away had he been that the return took time.

“I haven’t seen Ciaran,” said Matthew quietly in Melangell’s ear, and he rose a little in his place to look round the crowded room. “Did you catch ever a glimpse of him in the church?”

She, too, had forgotten until then, but at sight of his face she remembered all too sharply, with a sickening lurch of her heart. But she kept her countenance, and laid a persuasive hand on his arm to draw him down again beside her. “Among so many? But he surely would be there. He must have been among the first, he stayed here, he would find a good place. We didn’t see all those who went to the altar—we all stayed with Rhun, and his place was far back.” Such a mingling of truth and lies, but she kept her voice confident, and clung to her shaken hope.

“But where is he now? I don’t see him within here.” Though there was so much excitement, so much moving about from table to table to talk with friends, that one man might easily avoid detection. “I must find him,” said Matthew, not yet greatly troubled but wanting reassurance, and rose.

“No, sit down! You know he must be here somewhere. Let him alone, and he’ll appear when he chooses. He may be resting on his bed, if he has to go forth again barefoot tomorrow. Why look for him now? Can you not do without him even one day? And such a day?”

Matthew looked down at her with a face from which all the openness and joy had faded, and freed his sleeve from her grasp gently enough, but decidedly. “Still, I must find him. Stay here with Rhun, I’ll come back. All I want is to see him, to be sure…”

He was away, slipping quietly out between the festive tables, looking sharply about him as he went. She was in two minds about following him, but then she thought better of it, for while he hunted time would be slipping softly away, and Ciaran would be dwindling into distance, as later she prayed he could fade even out of mind, and be forgotten. So she remained with the happy company, but not of it, and with every passing moment hesitated whether to grow more reassured or more uneasy. At last she could not bear the waiting any longer. She rose quietly and slipped away. Dame Alice was in full spate, torn between tears and smiles, sitting proudly by her prodigy, and surrounded by neighbours as happy and voluble as herself, and Rhun, still somehow apart though he was the centre of the group, sat withdrawn into his revelation, even as he answered eager questions, lamely enough but as well as he could. They had no need of Melangell, they would not miss her for a little while.

When she came out into the great court, into the brilliance of the noonday sun, it was the quietest hour, the pause after meat. There never was a time of day when there was no traffic about the court, no going and coming at the gatehouse, but now it moved at its gentlest and quietest. She went down almost fearfully into the cloister, and found no one there but a single copyist busy reviewing what he had done the previous day, and Brother Anselm in his workshop going over the music for Vespers; into the stable-yard, though there was no reason in the world why Matthew should be there, having no mount, and no expectation that his companion would or possibly could acquire one; into the gardens, where a couple of novices were clipping back the too exuberant shoots of a box hedge; even into the grange court, where the barns and storehouses were, and a few lay servants were taking their ease, and harrowing over the morning’s marvel, like everyone else within the enclave, and most of Shrewsbury and the Foregate into the bargain. The abbot’s garden was empty, neat, glowing with carefully-tended roses, his lodging showed an open door, and some ordered bustle of guests within.

She turned back towards the garden, now in deep anxiety. She was not good at lying, she had no practice, even for a good end she could not but botch the effort. And for all the to and fro of customary commerce within the pale, never without work to be done, she had seen nothing of Matthew. But he could not be gone, no, the porter could tell him nothing, Ciaran had not passed there; and she would not, never until she must, never until Matthew’s too fond heart was reconciled to loss, and open and receptive to a better gain.

She turned back, rounding the box hedge and out of sight of the busy novices, and walked breast to breast into Matthew.

They met between the thick hedges, in a terrible privacy. She started back from him in a brief revulsion of guilt, for he looked more distant and alien than ever before, even as he recognised her, and acknowledged with a contortion of his troubled face her right to come out in search of him, and almost in the same instant frowned her off as irrelevant.

“He’s gone!” he said in a chill and grating voice, and looked through her and far beyond. “God keep you, Melangell, you must fend for yourself now, sorry as I am. He’s gone, fled while my back was turned. I’ve looked for him everywhere, and never a trace of him. Nor has the porter seen him pass the gate, I’ve asked there. But he’s gone! Alone! And I must go after him. God keep you, girl, as I cannot, and fare you well!”

And he was going so, with so few words and so cold and wild a face! He had turned on his heel and taken two long steps before she flung herself after him, caught him by the arms in both hands, and dragged him to a halt.

“No, no, why? What need has he of you, to match with my need? He’s gone? Let him go! Do you think your life belongs to him? He doesn’t want it! He wants you free, he wants you to live your own life, not die his death with him. He knows, he knows you love me! Dare you deny it? He knows I love you. He wants you happy! Why should not a friend want his friend to be happy? Who are you to deny him his last wish?”

She knew by then that she had said too much, but never knew at what point the error had become mortal. He had turned fully to her again, and frozen where he stood, and his face was like chiselled marble. He tugged his sleeve out of her grasp this time with no gentleness at all.

“He wants!” hissed a voice she had never heard before, driven through narrowed lips. “You’ve spoken with him! You speak for him! You knew! You knew he meant to go, and leave me here bewitched, damned, false to my oath. You knew! When? When did you speak with him?”

He had her by the wrists, he shook her mercilessly, and she cried out and fell to her knees.

“You knew he meant to go?” persisted Matthew, stooping over her in a cold frenzy.

“Yes, yes! This morning he told me… he wished it…”

“He wished it! How dared he wish it? How could he dare, robbed of his bishop’s ring as he was? He dared not stir without it, he was terrified to set foot outside the pale…”

“He has the ring,” she cried, abandoning all deceit. “The lord abbot gave it back to him this morning, you need not fret for him, he’s safe enough, he has his protection… He doesn’t need you!”

Matthew had fallen into a deadly stillness, stooping above her. “He has the ring? And you knew it, and never said word! If you know so much, how much more do you know. Speak! Where is he?”

“Gone,” she said in a trembling whisper, “and wished you well, wished us both well… wished us to be happy… Oh, let him go, let him go, he sets you free!”

Something that was certainly a laugh convulsed Matthew, she heard it with her ears and felt it shiver through her flesh, but it was like no other laughter she had ever heard, it chilled her blood. “He sets me free! And you must be his confederate! Oh, God! He never passed the gate. If you know all, then tell all—how did he go?”

She faltered, weeping: “He loved you, he willed you to live and forget him, and be happy…”

“How did he go?” repeated Matthew, in a voice so ill-supplied with breath it seemed he might strangle on the words.

“Across the brook,” she said in a broken whisper, “making the quickest way for Wales. He said… he has kin there…”

He drew in hissing breath and took his hands from her, leaving her drooping forward on her face as he let go of her wrists. He had turned his back and flung away from her, all they had shared forgotten, his obsession plucking him away. She did not understand, there was no way she could come to terms so rapidly with all that had happened, but she knew she had loosed her hold of her love, and he was in merciless flight from her in pursuit of some incomprehensible duty in which she had no part and no right.

She sprang up and ran after him, caught him by the arm, wound her own arms about him, lifted her imploring face to his stony, frantic stare, and prayed him passionately: “Let him go! Oh, let him go! He wants to go alone and leave you to me…”

Almost silently above her the terrible laughter, so opposed to that lovely sound as he followed the reliquary with her, boiled like some thick, choking syrup in his throat. He struggled to shake off her clinging hands, and when she fell to her knees again and hung upon him with all her despairing weight he tore loose his right hand, and struck her heavily in the face, sobbing, and so wrenched himself loose and fled, leaving her face-down on the ground.

In the abbot’s lodging Radulfus and his guests sat long over their meal, for they had much to discuss. The topic which was on everyone’s lips naturally came first.

“It would seem,” said the abbot, “that we have been singularly favoured this morning. Certain motions of grace we have seen before, but never yet one so public and so persuasive, with so many witnesses. How do you say? I grow old in experience of wonders, some of which turn out to fall somewhat short of their promise. I know of human deception, not always deliberate, for sometimes the deceiver is himself deceived. If saints have power, so have demons. Yet this boy seems to me as crystal. I cannot think he either cheats or is cheated.”

“I have heard,” said Hugh, “of cripples who discarded their crutches and walked without them, only to relapse when the fervour of the occasion was over. Time will prove whether this one takes to his crutches again.”

“I shall speak with him later,” said the abbot, “after the excitement has cooled. I hear from Brother Edmund that Brother Cadfael has been treating the boy these three days he has been here. That may have eased his condition, but it can scarcely have brought about so sudden a cure. No, I must say it, I truly believe our house has been the happy scene of divine grace. I will speak also with Cadfael, who must know the boy’s condition.”

Olivier sat quiet and deferential in the presence of so reverend a churchman as the abbot, but Hugh observed that his arched lids lifted and his eyes kindled at Cadfael’s name. So he knew who it was he sought, and something more than a distant salute in action had passed between that strangely assorted pair.

“And now I should be glad,” said the abbot, “to hear what news you bring from the south. Have you been in Westminster with the empress’s court? For I hear she is now installed there.”

Olivier gave his account of affairs in London readily, and answered questions with goodwill. “My lord has remained in Oxford, it was at his wish I undertook this errand. I was not in London, I set out from Winchester. But the empress is in the palace of Westminster, and the plans for her coronation go forward, admittedly very slowly. The city of London is well aware of its power, and means to exact due recognition of it, or so it seems to me.” He would go no nearer than that to voicing whatever qualms he felt about his liege lady’s wisdom or want of it, but he jutted a dubious underlip, and momentarily frowned. “Father, you were there at the council, you know all that happened. My lord lost a good knight there, and I a valued friend, struck down in the street.”

“Rainald Bossard,” said Radulfus sombrely. “I have not forgotten.”

“Father, I have been telling the lord sheriff here what I should like to tell also to you. For I have a second errand to pursue, wherever I go on the business of the empress, an errand for Rainald’s widow. Rainald had a young kinsman in his household, who was with him when he was killed, and after that death this young man left the lady’s service without a word, secretly. She says he had grown closed and silent even before he vanished, and the only trace of him afterwards was on the road to Newbury, going north. Since then, nothing. So knowing I was bound north, she begged me to enquire for him wherever I came, for she values and trusts him, and needs him at her side. I may not deceive you, Father, there are those who say he has fled because he is guilty of Rainald’s death. They claim he was besotted with Dame Juliana, and may have seized his chance in this brawl to widow her, and get her for himself, and then taken fright because these things were so soon being said. But I think they were not being said at all until after he had vanished. And Juliana, who surely knows him better than any, and looks upon him as a son, for want of children of her own, she is quite sure of him. She wants him home and vindicated, for whatever reason he left her as he did. And I have been asking at every lodging and monastery along the road for word of such a young man. May I also ask here? Brother Hospitaller will know the names of all his guests. Though a name,” he added ruefully, “is almost all I have, for if ever I saw the man it was without knowing it was he. And the name he may have left behind him.”

“It is not much to go on,” said Abbot Radulfus with a smile, “but certainly you may enquire. If he has done no wrong, I should be glad to help you to find him and bring him off without reproach. What is his name?”

“Luc Meverel. Twenty-four years old, they tell me, middling tall and well made, dark of hair and eye.”

“It could fit many hundreds of young men,” said the abbot, shaking his head, “and the name I doubt he will have put off if he has anything to hide, or even if he fears it may be unfairly besmirched. Yet try. I grant you in such a gathering as we have here now a young man who wished to be lost might bury himself very thoroughly. Denis will know which of his guests is of the right age and quality. For clearly your Luc Meverel is well-born, and most likely tutored and lettered.”

“Certainly so,” said Olivier.

“Then by all means, and with my blessing, go freely to Brother Denis, and see what he can do to help you. He has an excellent memory, he will be able to tell you which, among the men here, is of suitable years, and gentle. You can but try.”

On leaving the lodging they went first, however, to look for Brother Cadfael. And Brother Cadfael was not so easily found. Hugh’s first resort was the workshop in the herbarium, where they habitually compounded their affairs. But there was no Cadfael there. Nor was he with Brother Anselm in the cloister, where he well might have been debating some nice point in the evening’s music. Nor checking the medicine cupboard in the infirmary, which must surely have been depleted during these last few days, but had clearly been restocked in the early hours of this day of glory. Brother Edmund said mildly: “He was here. I had a poor soul who bled from the mouth, too gorged, I think, with devotion. But he’s quiet and sleeping now, the flux has stopped. Cadfael went away some while since.”

Brother Oswin, vigorously fighting weeds in the kitchen garden, had not seen his superior since dinner. “But I think,” he said, blinking thoughtfully into the sun in the zenith, “he may be in the church.”

Cadfael was on his knees at the foot of Saint Winifred’s three-tread stairway to grace, his hands not lifted in prayer but folded in the lap of his habit, his eyes not closed in entreaty but wide open to absolution. He had been kneeling there for some time, he who was usually only too glad to rise from knees now perceptibly stiffening. He felt no pains, no griefs of any kind, nothing but an immense thankfulness in which he floated like a fish in an ocean. An ocean as pure and blue and drowningly deep and clear as that well-remembered eastern sea, the furthest extreme of the tideless midland sea of legend, at the end of which lay the holy city of Jerusalem, Our Lord’s burial-place and hard-won kingdom. The saint who presided here, whether she lay here or no, had launched him into a shining infinity of hope. Her mercies might be whimsical, they were certainly magisterial. She had reached her hand to an innocent, well deserving her kindness. What had she intended towards this less innocent but no less needy being?

Behind him, approaching quietly from the nave, a known voice said softly: “And are you demanding yet a second miracle?”

He withdrew his eyes reluctantly from the reflected gleams of silver along the reliquary, and turned to look towards the parish altar. He saw the expected shape of Hugh Beringar, the thin dark face smiling at him. But over Hugh’s shoulder he saw a taller head and shoulders loom, emerging from dimness in suave, resplendent planes, the bright, jutting cheekbones, the olive cheeks smoothly hollowed below, the falcon’s amber eyes beneath high-arched black brows, the long, supple lips tentatively smiling upon him.

It was not possible. Yet he beheld it. Olivier de Bretagne came out of the shadows and stepped unmistakable into the light of the altar candles. And that was the moment when Saint Winifred turned her head, looked fully into the face of her fallible but faithful servant, and also smiled.

A second miracle! Why not? When she gave she gave prodigally, with both hands.