Chapter Twelve

“AND WILL YOU KEEP HIM?” asked Cadfael, when the boy had been dismissed, made his deep reverence, and departed in his rapt, unwitting perfection.

“If his intent holds, yes, surely. He is the living proof of grace. But I will not let him take vows in haste, to regret them later. Now he is transported with joy and wonder, and would embrace celibacy and seclusion with delight. If his will is still the same in a month, then I will believe in it, and welcome him gladly. But he shall serve his full notiviate, even so. I will not let him close the door upon himself until he is sure. And now,” said the abbot, frowning down thoughtfully at the linen scrip that lay upon his desk, “what is to be done with this? You say it was fallen between the two beds, and might have belonged to either?”

“So the boy said. But, Father, if you remember, when the bishop’s ring was stolen, both those young men gave up their scrips to be examined. What each of them carried, apart from the dagger that was duly delivered over at the gatehouse, I cannot say with certainty, but Father Prior, who handled them, will know.”

“True, so he will. But for the present,” said Radulfus, “I cannot think we have any right to probe into either man’s possessions, nor is it of any great importance to discover to which of them this belongs. If Messire de Bretagne overtakes them, as he surely must, we shall learn more, he may even persuade them to return. We’ll wait for his word first.

In the meantime, leave it here with me. When we know more we’ll take whatever steps we can to restore it.”

The day of wonders drew in to its evening as graciously as it had dawned, with a clear sky and soft, sweet air. Every soul within the enclave came dutifully to Vespers, and supper in the guest-hall as in the refectory was a devout and tranquil feast. The voices hasty and shrill with excitement at dinner had softened and eased into the grateful languor of fulfilment.

Brother Cadfael absented himself from Collations in the chapter house, and went out into the garden. On the gentle ridge where the gradual slope of the pease fields began he stood for a long while watching the sky. The declining sun had still an hour or more of its course to run before its rim dipped into the feathery tops of the copses across the brook. The west which had reflected the dawn as this day began triumphed now in pale gold, with no wisp of cloud to dye it deeper or mark its purity. The scent of the herbs within the walled garden rose in a heady cloud of sweetness and spice. A good place, a resplendent day, why should any man slip away and run from it?

A useless question. Why should any man do the things he does? Why should Ciaran submit himself to such hardship? Why should he profess such piety and devotion, and yet depart without leave-taking and without thanks in the middle of so auspicious a day? It was Matthew who had left a gift of money on departure. Why could not Matthew persuade his friend to stay and see out the day? And why should he, who had glowed with excited joy in the morning, and run hand in hand with Melangell, abandon her without remorse in the afternoon, and resume his harsh pilgrimage with Ciaran as if nothing had happened?

Were they two men or three? Ciaran, Matthew and Luc Meverel? What did he know of them, all three, if three they were? Luc Meverel had been seen for the last time south of Newbury, walking north towards that town, and alone. Ciaran and Matthew were first reported, by Brother Adam of Reading, coming from the south into Abingdon for their night’s lodging, two together. If one of them was Luc Meverel, then where and why had he picked up his companion, and above all, who was his companion?

By this time, surely Olivier should have overhauled his quarry and found the answers to some of these questions. And he had said he would return, that he would not leave Shrewsbury without having some converse with a man remembered as a good friend. Cadfael took that assurance to his heart, and was warmed.

It was not the need to tend any of his herbal potions or bubbling wines that drew him to walk on to his workshop, for Brother Oswin, now in the chapter house with his fellows, had tidied everything for the night, and seen the brazier safely out. There was flint and tinder there in a box, in case it should be necessary to light it again in the night or early in the morning. It was rather that Cadfael had grown accustomed to withdrawing to his own special solitude to do his best thinking, and this day had given him more than enough cause for thought, as for gratitude. For where were his qualms now? Miracles may be spent as frequently on the undeserving as on the deserving. What marvel that a saint should take the boy Rhun to her heart, and reach out her sustaining hand to him? But the second miracle was doubly miraculous, far beyond her sorry servant’s asking, stunning in its generosity. To bring him back Olivier, whom he had resigned to God and the great world, and made himself content never to see again! And then Hugh’s voice, unwitting herald of wonders, said out of the dim choir, “And are you demanding yet a second miracle?” He had rather been humbling himself in wonder and thanks for one, demanding nothing more; but he had turned his head, and beheld Olivier.

The western sky was still limpid and bright, liquid gold, the sun still clear of the treetops, when he opened the door of his workshop and stepped within, into the timber-warm, herb-scented dimness. He thought and said afterwards that it was at that moment he saw the inseparable relationship between Ciaran and Matthew suddenly overturned, twisted into its opposite, and began, in some enclosed and detached part of his intelligence, to make sense of the whole matter, however dubious and flawed the revelation. But he had no time to catch and pin down the vision, for as his foot crossed the threshold there was a soft gasp somewhere in the shadowy corner of the hut, and a rustle of movement, as if some wild creature had been disturbed in its lair, and shrunk into the last fastness to defend itself.

He halted, and set the door wide open behind him for reassurance that there was a possibility of escape. “Be easy!” he said mildly. “May I not come into my own workshop without leave? And should I be entering here to threaten any soul with harm?”

His eyes, growing accustomed rapidly to the dimness, which seemed dark only by contrast with the radiance outside, scanned the shelves, the bubbling jars of wine in a fat row, the swinging, rustling swathes of herbs dangling from the beams of the low roof. Everything took shape and emerged into view. Stretched along the broad wooden bench against the opposite wall, a huddle of tumbled skirts stirred slowly and reared itself upright, to show him the spilled ripe-corn gold of a girl’s hair, and the tear-stained, swollen-lidded countenance of Melangell.

She said no word, but she did not drop blindly into her sheltering arms again. She was long past that, and past being afraid to show herself so to one secret, quiet creature whom she trusted. She set down her feet in their scuffed leather shoes to the floor, and sat back against the timbers of the wall, bracing slight shoulders to the solid contact. She heaved one enormous, draining sigh that was dragged up from her very heels, and left her weak and docile. When he crossed the beaten earth floor and sat down beside her, she did not flinch away.

“Now,” said Cadfael, settling himself with deliberation, to give her time to compose at least her voice. The soft light would spare her face. “Now, child dear, there is no one here who can either save you or trouble you, and therefore you can speak freely, for everything you say is between us two only. But we two together need to take careful counsel. So what is it you know that I do not know?”

“Why should we take counsel?” she said in a small, drear voice from below his solid shoulder. “He is gone.”

“What is gone may return. The roads lead always two ways, hither as well as yonder. What are you doing out here alone, when your brother walks erect on two sound feet, and has all he wants in this world, but for your absence?”

He did not look directly at her, but felt the stir of warmth and softness through her body, which must have been a smile, however flawed. “I came away,” she said, very low, “not to spoil his joy. I’ve borne most of the day. I think no one has noticed half my heart was gone out of me. Unless it was you,” she said, without blame, rather in resignation.

“I saw you when we came from Saint Giles,” said Cadfael, “you and Matthew. Your heart was whole then, so was his. If yours is torn in two now, do you suppose his is preserved without wound? No! So what passed, afterwards? What was this sword that shore through your heart and his? You know! You may tell it now. They are gone, there is nothing left to spoil. There may yet be something to save.”

She turned her forehead into his shoulder and wept in silence for a little while. The light within the hut grew rather than dimming, now that his eyes were accustomed. She forgot to hide her forlorn and bloated face, he saw the bruise on her cheek darkening into purple. He laid an arm about her and drew her close for the comfort of the flesh. That of the spirit would need more of time and thought.

“He struck you?”

“I held him,” she said, quick in his defence. “He could not get free.”

“And he was so frantic? He must go?”

“Yes, whatever it cost him or me. Oh, Brother Cadfael, why? I thought, I believed he loved me, as I do him. But see how he used me in his anger!”

“Anger?” said Cadfael sharply, and turned her by the shoulders to study her more intently. “Whatever the compulsion on him to go with his friend, why should he be angry with you? The loss was yours, but surely no blame.”

“He blamed me for not telling him,” she said drearily. “But I did only what Ciaran asked of me. For his sake and yours, he said, yes, and for mine, too, let me go, but hold him fast. Don’t tell him I have the ring again, he said, and I will go. Forget me, he said, and help him to forget me. He wanted us to remain together and be happy…”

“Are you telling me,” demanded Cadfael sharply, “that they did not go together! That Ciaran made off without him?”

“It was not like that,” sighed Melangell. “He meant well by us, that’s why he stole away alone…”

“When was this? When? When did you have speech with him? When did he go?”

“I was here at dawn, you’ll remember. I met Ciaran by the brook…” She drew a deep, desolate breath and loosed the whole flood of it, every word she could recall of that meeting in the early morning, while Cadfael gazed appalled, and the vague glimpse he had had of enlightenment awoke and stirred again in his mind, far clearer now.

“Go on! Tell me what followed between you and Matthew. You did as you were bidden, I know, you drew him with you, I doubt he ever gave a thought to Ciaran all those morning hours, believing him still penned withindoors, afraid to stir. When was it he found out?”

“After dinner it came into his mind that he had not seen him. He was very uneasy. He went to look for him everywhere… He came to me here in the garden. “God keep you, Melangell,” he said, “you must fend for yourself now, sorry as I am…” Almost every word of that encounter she had by heart, she repeated them like a tired child repeating a lesson. “I said too much, he knew I had spoken with Ciaran, he knew that I knew he’d meant to go secretly…”

“And then, after you had owned as much?”

“He laughed,” she said, and her very voice froze into a despairing whisper. “I never heard him laugh until this morning, and then it was such a sweet sound. But this laughter was not so! Bitter and raging.” She stumbled through the rest of it, every word another fine line added to the reversed image that grew in Cadfael’s mind, mocking his memory. “He sets me free!” And “You must be his confederate!” The words were so burned on her mind that she even reproduced the savagery of their utterance. And how few words it took, in the end, to transform everything, to turn devoted attendance into remorseless pursuit, selfless love into dedicated hatred, noble self-sacrifice into calculated flight, and the voluntary mortification of the flesh into body armour which must never be doffed.

He heard again, abruptly and piercingly, Ciaran’s wild cry of alarm as he clutched his cross to him, and Matthew’s voice saying softly: “Yet he should doff it. How else can he truly be rid of his pains?”

How else, indeed! Cadfael recalled, too, how he had reminded them both that they were here to attend the feast of a saint who might have life itself within her gift, “even for a man already condemned to death!” Oh, Saint Winifred, stand by me now, stand by us all, with a third miracle to better the other two!

He took Melangell brusquely by the chin, and lifted her face to him. “Girl, look to yourself now for a while, for I must leave you. Do up your hair and keep a brave face, and go back to your kin as soon as you can bear their eyes on you. Go into the church for a time, it will be quiet there now, and who will wonder if you give a longer time to your prayers? They will not even wonder at past tears, if you can smile now. Do as well as you can, for I have a thing I must do.”

There was nothing he could promise her, no sure hope he could leave with her. He turned from her without another word, leaving her staring after him between dread and reassurance, and went striding in haste through the gardens and out across the court, to the abbot’s lodging.

If Radulfus was surprised to have Cadfael ask audience again so soon, he gave no sign of it, but had him admitted at once, and put aside his book to give his full attention to whatever this fresh business might be. Plainly it was something very much to the current purpose and urgent.

“Father,” said Cadfael, making short work of explanations, “there’s a new twist here. Messire de Bretagne has gone off on a false trail. Those two young men did not leave by the Oswestry road, but crossed the Meole brook and set off due west to reach Wales the nearest way. Nor did they leave together. Ciaran slipped away during the morning, while his fellow was with us in the procession, and Matthew has followed him by the same way as soon as he learned of his going. And, Father, there’s good cause to think that the sooner they’re overtaken and halted, the better surely for one, and I believe for both. I beg you, let me take a horse and follow. And send word of this to Hugh Beringar in the town, to come after us on the same trail.”

Radulfus received all this with a grave but calm face, and asked no less shortly: “How did you come by this word?”

“From the girl who spoke with Ciaran before he departed. No need to doubt it is all true. And, Father, one more thing before you bid me go. Open, I beg you, that scrip they left behind, let me see if it has anything more to tell us of this pair, at the least, of one of them.”

Without a word or an instant of hesitation, Radulfus dragged the linen scrip into the light of his candles, and unbuckled the fastening. The contents he drew out fully upon the desk, sparse enough, what the poor pilgrim would carry, having few possessions and desiring to travel light.

“You know, I think,” said the abbot, looking up sharply, “to which of the two this belonged?”

“I do not know, but I guess. In my mind I am sure, but I am also fallible. Give me leave!”

With a sweep of his hand he spread the meagre belongings over the desk. The purse, thin enough when Prior Robert had handled it before, lay flat and empty now. The leather-bound breviary, well-used, worn but treasured, had been rolled into the folds of the shirt, and when Cadfael reached for it the shirt slid from the desk and fell to the floor. He let it lie as he opened the book. Within the cover was written, in a clerk’s careful hand, the name of its owner: Juliana Bossard. And below, in newer ink and a less practised hand: Given to me, Luc Meverel, this Christmastide, 1140. God be with us all!

“So I pray, too,” said Cadfael, and stooped to pick up the fallen shirt. He held it up to the light, and his eye caught the thread-like outline of a stain that rimmed the left shoulder. His eye followed the line over the shoulder, and found it continued down and round the left side of the breast. The linen, otherwise, was clean enough, bleached by several launderings from its original brownish natural colouring. He spread it open, breast up, on the desk. The thin brown line, sharp on its outer edge, slightly blurred within, hemmed a great space spanning the whole left part of the chest and the upper part of the left sleeve. The space within the outline had been washed clear of any stain, even the rim was pale, but it stood clear to be seen, and the scattered shadowings of colour within it preserved a faint hint of what had been there.

Radulfus, if he had not ventured as far afield in the world as Cadfael, had nevertheless stored up some experience of it. He viewed the extended evidence and said composedly, “This was blood.”

“So it was,” said Cadfael, and rolled up the shirt.

“And whoever owned this scrip came from where a certain Juliana Bossard was chatelaine.” His deep eyes were steady and sombre on Cadfael’s face. “Have we entertained a murderer in our house?”

“I think we have,” said Cadfael, restoring the scattered fragments of a life to their modest lodging. A man’s life, shorn of all expectation of continuance, even the last coin gone from the purse. “But I think we may have time yet to prevent another killing, if you give me leave to go.”

“Take the best of what may be in the stable,” said the abbot simply, “and I will send word to Hugh Beringar, and have him follow you, and not alone.”