Chapter Eleven

THEY WENT OUT INTO THE CLOISTER all three together, and that in itself was memorable and good, for they had never been together before. Those trusting intimacies which had once passed between Cadfael and Olivier, on a winter night in Bromfield priory, were unknown still to Hugh, and there was a mysterious constraint still that prevented Olivier from openly recalling them. The greetings they exchanged were warm but brief, only the reticence behind them was eloquent, and no doubt Hugh understood that well enough, and was willing to wait for enlightenment, or courteously to make do without it. For that there was no haste, but for Luc Meverel there might be.

“Our friend has a quest,” said Hugh, “in which we mean to enlist Brother Denis’s help, but we shall also be very glad of yours. He is looking for a young man by the name of Luc Meverel, strayed from his place and known to be travelling north. Tell him the way of it, Olivier.”

Olivier told the story over again, and was listened to with close attention. “Very gladly,” said Cadfael then, “would I do whatever man can do not only to bring off an innocent man from such a charge, but also to bring the charge home to the guilty. We know of this murder, and it sticks in every gullet that a decent man, protecting his honourable opponent, should be cut down by one of his own faction…”

“Is that certain?” wondered Hugh sharply.

“As good as certain. Who else would so take exception to the man standing up for his lady and doing his errand without fear? All who still held to Stephen in their hearts would approve, even if they dared not applaud him. And as for a chance attack by sneak-thieves, why choose to prey on a mere clerk, with nothing of value on him but the simple needs of his journey, when the town was full of nobles, clerics and merchants far better worth robbing? Rainald died only because he came to the clerk’s aid. No, an adherent of the empress, like Rainald himself but most unlike, committed that infamy.”

“That’s good sense,” agreed Olivier. “But my chief concern now is to find Luc, and send him home again if I can.”

“There must be twenty or more young fellows in that age here today,” said Cadfael, scrubbing thoughtfully at his blunt brown nose, “but I dare wager most of them can be pricked out of the list as well known to some of their companions by their own right names, or by reason of their calling or condition. Solitaries may come, but they’re few and far between. Pilgrims are like starlings, they thrive on company. We’d best go and talk to Brother Denis. He’ll have sorted out most of them by now.”

Brother Denis had a retentive memory and an appetite for news and rumours that usually kept him the best-informed person in the enclave. The fuller his halls, the more pleasure he took in knowing everything that went on there, and the name and vocation of every guest. He also kept meticulous books to record the visitations.

They found him in the narrow cell where he kept his accounts and estimated his future needs, thoughtfully reckoning up what provisions he still had, and how rapidly the demands on them were likely to dwindle from the morrow. He took his mind from his store-book courteously in order to listen to what Brother Cadfael and the sheriff required of him, and produced answers with exemplary promptitude when asked to sieve out from his swollen household males of about twenty-five years, bred gentle or within modest reach of gentility, lettered, of dark colouring and medium tall build, answering to the very bare description of Luc Meverel. As his forefinger flew down the roster of his guests the numbers shrank remarkably. It seemed to be true that considerably more than half of those who went on pilgrimage were women, and that among the men the greater part were in their forties or fifties, and of those remaining, many would be in minor orders, either monastics or secular priests or would-be priests. And Luc Meverel was none of these.

“Are there any here,” asked Hugh, viewing the final list, which was short enough, “who came solitary?”

Brother Denis cocked his round, rosy, tonsured head aside and ran a sharp brown eye, very remiscent of a robin’s, down the list. “Not one. Young squires of that age seldom go as pilgrims, unless with an exigent lord—or an equally exigent lady. In such a summer feast as this we might have young friends coming together, to take the fill of the time before they settle down to sterner disciplines. But alone… Where would be the pastime in that?”

“Here are two, at any rate,” said Cadfael, “who came together, but surely not for pastime. They have puzzled me, I own. Both are of the proper age, and such word as we have of the man we’re looking for would fit either. You know them, Denis, that youngster who’s on his way to Aberdaron, and his friend who bears him company. Both lettered, both bred to the manor. And certainly they came from the south, beyond Abingdon, according to Brother Adam of Reading, who lodged there the same night.”

“Ah, the barefoot traveller,” said Denis, and laid a finger on Ciaran in the shrunken toll of young men, “and his keeper and worshipper. Yes, I would not put half a year between them, and they have the build and colouring, but you needed only one.”

“We could at least look at two,” said Cadfael. “If neither of them is what we’re seeking, yet coming from that region they may have encountered such a single traveller somewhere on the road. If we have not the authority to question them closely about who they are and whence they come, and how and why thus linked, then Father Abbot has. And if they have no reason to court concealment, then they’ll willingly declare to him what they might not as readily utter to us.”

“We may try it,” said Hugh, kindling. “At least it’s worth the asking, and if they have nothing to do with the man we are looking for, neither they nor we have lost more than half an hour of time, and surely they won’t grudge us that.”

“Granted what is so far related of these two hardly fits the case,” Cadfael acknowledged doubtfully, “for the one is said to be mortally ill and going to Aberdaron to die, and the other is resolute to keep him company to the end. But a young man who wishes to disappear may provide himself with a circumstantial story as easily as with a new name. And at all events, between Abingdon and Shrewsbury it’s possible they may have encountered Luc Meverel alone and under his own name.”

“But if one of these two, either of these two, should truly be the man I want,” said Olivier doubtfully, “then who, in the name of God, is the other?”

“We ask each other questions,” said Hugh practically, “which either of these two could answer in a moment. Come, let’s leave Abbot Radulfus to call them in, and see what comes of it.”

It was not difficult to induce the abbot to have the two young men sent for. It was not so easy to find them and bring them to speak for themselves. The messenger, sent forth in expectation of prompt obedience, came back after a much longer time than had been expected, and reported ruefully that neither of the pair could be found within the abbey walls. True, the porter had not actually seen either of them pass the gatehouse. But what had satisfied him that the two were leaving was that the young man Matthew had come, no long time after dinner, to reclaim his dagger, and had left behind him a generous gift of money to the house, saying that he and his friend were already bound away on their journey, and desired to offer thanks for their lodging. And had he seemed, it was Cadfael who asked it, himself hardly knowing why, had he seemed as he always was, or in any way disturbed or alarmed or out of countenance and temper, when he came for his weapon and paid his and his friend’s score?

The messenger shook his head, having asked no such question at the gate. Brother Porter, when enquiry was made direct by Cadfael himself, said positively: “He was like a man on fire. Oh, as soft as ever in voice, and courteous, but pale and alight, you’d have said his hair stood on end. But what with every soul within here wandering in a dream, since this wonder, I never thought but here were some going forth with the news while the furnace was still white-hot.”

“Gone?” said Olivier, dismayed, when this word was brought back to the abbot’s parlour. “Now I begin to see better cause why one of these two, for all they come so strangely paired, and so strangely account for themselves, may be the man I’m seeking. For if I do not know Luc Meverel by sight, I have been two or three times his lord’s guest recently, and he may well have taken note of me. How if he saw me come, today, and is gone hence thus in haste because he does not wish to be found? He could hardly know I am sent to look for him, but he might, for all that, prefer to put himself clean out of sight. And an ailing companion on the way would be good cover for a man wanting a reason for his wanderings. I wish I might yet speak with these two. How long have they been gone?”

“It cannot have been more than an hour and a half after noon,” said Cadfael, “according to when Matthew reclaimed his dagger.”

“And afoot!” Olivier kindled hopefully. “And even unshod, the one of them! It should be no great labour to overtake them, if it’s known what road they will have taken.”

“By far their best way is by the Oswestry road, and so across the dyke into Wales. According to Brother Denis, that was Ciaran’s declared intent.”

“Then, Father Abbot,” said Olivier eagerly, “with your leave I’ll mount and ride after them, for they cannot have got far. It would be a pity to miss the chance, and even if they are not what I’m seeking, neither they nor I will have lost anything. But with or without my man, I shall return here.”

“I’ll ride through the town with you,” said Hugh, “and set you on your way, for this will be new country to you. But then I must be about my own business, and see if we’ve gathered any harvest from this morning’s hunt. I doubt they’ve gone deeper into the forest, or I should have had word by now. We shall look for you back before night, Olivier. One more night at the least we mean to keep you and longer if we can.”

Olivier took his leave hastily but gracefully, made a dutiful reverence to the abbot, and turned upon Brother Cadfael a brief, radiant smile that shattered his preoccupation for an instant like a sunburst through clouds. “I will not leave here,” he said in simple reassurance, “without having quiet conference with you. But this I must see finished, if I can.”

They were gone away briskly to the stables, where they had left their horses before Mass. Abbot Radulfus looked after them with a very thoughtful face.

“Do you find it surprising, Cadfael, that these two young pilgrims should leave so soon, and so abruptly? Is it possible the coming of Messire de Bretagne can have driven them away?”

Cadfael considered, and shook his head. “No, I think not. In the great press this morning, and the excitement, why should one man among the many be noticed, and one not looked for at all in these parts? But, yes, their going does greatly surprise me. For the one, he should surely be only too glad of an extra day or two of rest before taking barefoot to the roads again. And for the other, Father, there is a girl he certainly admires and covets, whether he yet knows it to the full or no, and with her he spent this morning, following Saint Winifred home, and I am certain there was then no other thought in his mind but of her and her kin, and the greatness of this day. For she is sister to the boy Rhun, who came by so great a mercy and blessing before our eyes. It would take some very strong compulsion to drag him away suddenly like this.”

“The boy’s sister, you say?” Abbot Radulfus recalled an intent which had been shelved in favour of Olivier’s quest. There is still an hour or more before Vespers. I should like to talk with this youth. You have been treating his condition, Cadfael. Do you think your handling has had anything to do with what we witnessed today? Or could he, though I would not willingly attribute falsity to one so young, could he have made more of his distress than it was, in order to produce a prodigy?”

“No,” said Cadfael very decidedly. “There is no deceit at all in him. And as for my poor skills, they might in a long time of perseverance have softened the tight cords that hampered the use of his limb, and made it possible to set a little weight on it, but straighten that foot and fill out the sinews of the leg, never! The greatest doctor in the world could not have done it. Father, on the day he came I gave him a draught that should have eased his pain and brought him sleep. After three nights he sent it back to me untouched. He saw no reason why he should expect to be singled out for healing, but he said that he offered his pain freely, who had nothing else to give. Not to buy grace, but of his goodwill to give and want nothing in return. And further, it seems that thus having accepted his pain out of love, his pain left him. After Mass we saw that deliverance completed.”

“Then it was well deserved,” said Radulfus, pleased and moved. “I must indeed talk with this boy. Will you find him for me, Cadfael, and bring him here to me now?”

“Very gladly, Father,” said Cadfael, and departed on his errand.

Dame Alice was sitting in the sunshine of the cloister garth, the centre of a voluble circle of other matrons, her face so bright with the joy of the day that it warmed the very air; but Rhun was not with them. Melangell had withdrawn into the shadow of the arcade, as though the light was too bright for her eyes, and kept her face averted over the mending of a frayed seam in a linen shirt which must belong to her brother. Even when Cadfael addressed her she looked up only very swiftly and timidly, and again stooped into shadow, but even in that glimpse he saw that the joy which had made her shine like a new rose in the morning was dimmed and pale now in the lengthening afternoon. And was he merely imagining that her left cheek showed the faint bluish tint of a bruise? But at the mention of Rhun’s name she smiled, as though at the recollection of happiness rather than its presence.

“He said he was tired, and went away into the dortoir to rest. Aunt Weaver thinks he is lying down on his bed, but I think he wanted only to be left alone, to be quiet and not have to talk. He is tired by having to answer things he seems not to understand himself.”

“He speaks another tongue today from the rest of mankind,” said Cadfael. “It may well be we who don’t understand, and ask things that have no meaning for him.” He took her gently by the chin and turned her face up to the light, but she twisted nervously out of his hold. “You have hurt yourself?” Certainly it was a bruise beginning there.

“It’s nothing,” she said. “My own fault. I was in the garden, I ran too fast and I fell. I know it’s unsightly, but it doesn’t hurt now.”

Her eyes were very calm, not reddened, only a little swollen as to the lids. Well, Matthew had gone, abandoned her to go with his friend, letting her fall only too disastrously after the heady running together of the morning hours. That could account for tears now past. But should it account for a bruised cheek? He hesitated whether to question further, but clearly she did not wish it. She had gone back doggedly to her work, and would not look up again.

Cadfael sighed, and went out across the great court to the guest-hall. Even a glorious day like this one must have its vein of bitter sadness.

In the men’s dortoir Rhun sat alone on his bed, very still and content in his blissfully restored body. He was deep in his own rapt thoughts, but readily aware when Cadfael entered. He looked round and smiled.

“Brother, I was wishing to see you. You were there, you know. Perhaps you even heard… See, how I’m changed!” The leg once maimed stretched out perfect before him, he bent and stamped the boards of the floor. He flexed ankle and toes, drew up his knee to his chin, and everything moved as smoothly and painlessly as his ready tongue. “I am whole! I never asked it, how dared I? Even then, I was praying not for this, and yet this was given…” He went away again for a moment into his tranced dream.

Cadfael sat down beside him, noting the exquisite fluency of those joints hitherto flawed and intransigent. The boy’s beauty was perfected now.

“You were praying,” said Cadfael gently, “for Melangell.”

“Yes. And Matthew too. I truly thought… But you see he is gone. They are both gone, gone together. Why could I not bring my sister into bliss? I would have gone on crutches all my life for that, but I couldn’t prevail.”

“That is not yet determined,” said Cadfael firmly. “Who goes may also return. And I think your prayers should have strong virtue, if you do not fall into doubt now, because heaven has need of a little time. Even miracles have their times. Half our lives in this world are spent in waiting. It is needful to wait with faith.”

Rhun sat listening with an absent smile, and at the end of it he said: “Yes, surely, and I will wait. For see, one of them left this behind in his haste when he went away.”

He reached down between the close-set cots, and lifted to the bed between them a bulky but lightweight scrip of unbleached linen, with stout leather straps for the owner’s belt. “I found it dropped between the two beds they had, drawn close together. I don’t know which of them owned this one, the two they carried were much alike. But one of them doesn’t expect or want ever to come back, does he? Perhaps Matthew does, and has forgotten this, whether he meant it or no, as a pledge.”

Cadfael stared and wondered, but this was a heavy matter, and not for him. He said seriously: “I think you should bring this with you, and give it into the keeping of Father Abbot. For he sent me to bring you to him. He wants to speak with you.”

“With me?” wavered Rhun, stricken into a wild and rustic child again. “The lord abbot himself?”

“Surely, and why not? You are Christian soul as he is, and may speak with him as equal.”

The boy faltered: “I should be afraid…”

“No, you would not. You are not afraid of anything, nor need you ever be.”

Rhun sat for a moment with fists doubled into the blanket of his bed; then he lifted his clear, ice-blue gaze and blanched, angelic face and smiled blindingly into Cadfael’s eyes. “No, I need not. I’ll come.” And he hoisted the linen scrip and stood up stately on his two long, youthful legs, and led the way to the door.

“Stay with us,” said Abbot Radulfus, when Cadfael would have presented his charge and left the two of them together. “I think he might be glad of you.” Also, said his eloquent, austere glance, your presence may be of value to me as witness. “Rhun knows you. Me he does not yet know, but I trust he shall, hereafter.” He had the drab, brownish scrip on the desk before him, offered on entry with a word to account for it, until the time came to explore its possibilities further.

“Willingly, Father,” said Cadfael heartily, and took his seat apart on a stool withdrawn into a corner, out of the way of those two pairs of formidable eyes that met, and wondered, and probed with equal intensity across the small space of the parlour. Outside the windows the garden blossomed with drunken exuberance, in the burning colours of summer, and the blanched blue sky, at its loftiest in the late afternoon, showed the colour of Rhun’s eyes, but without their crystal blaze. The day of wonders was drawing very slowly and radiantly towards its evening.

“Son,” said Radulfus at his gentlest, “you have been the vessel for a great mercy poured out here. I know, as all know who were there, what we saw, what we felt. But I would know also what you passed through. I know you have lived long with pain, and have not complained. I dare guess in what mind you approached the saint’s altar. Tell me, what was it happened to you then?”

Rhun sat with his empty hands clasped quietly in his lap, and his face at once remote and easy, looking beyond the walls of the room. All his timidity was lost.

“I was troubled,” he said carefully, “because my sister and my Aunt Alice wanted so much for me, and I knew I needed nothing. I would have come, and prayed, and passed, and been content. But then I heard her call.”

“Saint Winifred spoke to you?” asked Radulfus softly.

“She called me to her,” said Rhun positively.

“In what words?”

“No words. What need had she of words? She called me to go to her, and I went. She told me, here is a step, and here, and here, come, you know you can. And I knew I could, so I went. When she told me, kneel, for so you can, then I kneeled, and I could. Whatever she told me, that I did. And so I will still,” said Rhun, smiling into the opposing wall with eyes that paled the sun.

“Child,” said the abbot, watching him in solemn wonder and respect, “I do believe it. What skills you have, what gifts to stead you in your future life, I scarcely know. I rejoice that you have to the full the blessing of your body, and the purity of your mind and spirit. I wish you whatever calling you may choose, and the virtue of your resolve to guide you in it. If there is anything you can ask of this house, to aid you after you go forth from here, it is yours.”

“Father,” said Rhun earnestly, withdrawing his blinding gaze into shadow and mortality, and becoming the child he was, “need I go forth? She called me to her, how tenderly I have no words to tell. I desire to remain with her to my life’s end. She called me to her, and I will never willingly leave her.”