Chapter Sixteen

ON THE NEXT MORNING, which was the twenty-fourth day of June, the general bustle of departure began. There was packing of belongings, buying and parcelling of food and drink for the journey, and much leave-taking from friends newly made, and arranging of company for the road. No doubt the saint would have due regard for her own reputation, and keep the June sun shining until all her devotees were safely home, and with a wonderful tale to tell. Most of them knew only half the wonder, but even that was wonder enough.

Among the early departures went Brother Adam of Reading, in no great hurry along the way, for today he would go no farther than Reading’s daughter-house of Leominster, where there would be letters waiting for him to carry home to his abbot. He set out with a pouch well filled with seeds of species his garden did not yet possess, and a scholarly mind still pondering the miraculous healing he had witnessed from every theological angle, in order to be able to expound its full significance when he reached his own monastery. It had been a most instructive and enlightening festival.

“I’d meant to start for home today, too,” said Mistress Weaver to her cronies Mistress Glover and the apothecary’s widow, with whom she had formed a strong matronly alliance during these memorable days, “but now there’s such work doing, I hardly know whether I’m waking or sleeping, and I must stay over yet a night or two. Who’d ever have thought what would come of it, when I told my lad we ought to come and make our prayers here to the good saint, and have faith that she’d be listening? Now it seems I’m to lose the both of them, my poor sister’s chicks; for Rhun, God bless him, is set on staying here and taking the cowl, for he says he won’t ever leave the blessed girl who healed him. And truly I don’t wonder at it, and won’t stand in his way, for he’s too good for this wicked world outside, so he is! And now comes young Matthew, no, but it seems we must call him Luc, now, and he’s well-born, if from a poor landless branch, and will come in for a manor or two in time, by his good kinswoman’s taking him in…”

“Well, and so did you take the boy and girl in,” pointed out the apothecary’s widow warmly, “and gave them a roof and a living. There’s good sound justice there.”

“Well, so Matthew, I mean Luc, he comes to me and asks for my girl for his wife, last night it was, and when I answered honestly, for honest I am and always will be, that my Melangell has but a meagre dowry, though the best I can give her I will, what says he? That as at this moment he himself has not one penny to his name in this world, but must go debtor to the young lord’s charity that came to find him, and as for the future, if fortune favours him he’ll be thankful, and if not, he has hands and a will, and can make a way for two to live. Provided the other is my girl, he says, for there’s none other for him. So what can I say but God bless them both, and stay to see them wedded?”

“It’s a woman’s duty,” said Mistress Glover heartily, “to make sure all’s done properly, when she hands over a young girl to a husband. But sure, you’ll miss the two of them.”

“So I will,” agreed Dame Alice, shedding a few tears rather of pride and joy than of grief, at the advancement to semi-sainthood and promising matrimony of the charges who had cost her dear enough, and could now be blessed and sped on their respective and respectable ways with a quiet mind. “So I will! But to see them both set up where they would be… And good children both, that will take pains for me when I come to need, as I have for them.”

“And they’re to marry here, tomorrow?” asked the apothecary’s widow, visibly considering putting off her own departure for another day.

“They are indeed, before Mass in the morning. So it seems I’ll have none to take home but my sole self,” said Dame Alice, dropping another proud tear or two, and wearing her reflected glory with admirable grace, “when I take to the road again. But the day after tomorrow there’s a sturdy company leaving southward, and with them I’ll go.”

“And duty well done, my dear soul,” said Mistress Glover, embracing her friend in a massive arm, “duty very well done!”

They were married in the privacy of the Lady Chapel, by Brother Paul, who was not only master of the novices, but the chief of their confessors, too, and already had Rhun under his care and instruction, and felt a fatherly interest in him, which the boy’s affection very readily extended to embrace the sister. No one else was present but the family and their witnesses, and the bridal pair wore no festal garments, for they had none. Luc was in the serviceable brown cotte and hose he had slept in, out in the fields, and the same crumpled shirt, though newly washed and smoothed. Melangell was neat and modest in her homespun, proudly balancing her coronal of braided, deep-gold hair. They were pale as lilies, bright as stars, and solemn as the grave.

After high and moving events, daily life must still go on. Cadfael went to his work that afternoon well content. With the meadow grasses in ripe seed and the harvest imminent he had preparations to make for two seasonal ailments which could be relied upon to recur every year. There were some who suffered with eruptions on their hands when working in the harvest, and others who took to sneezing and wheezing, with running eyes, and needed lotions to help them.

He was busy bruising fresh leaves of dock and mandrake in a mortar for a soothing ointment, when he heard light, long-striding steps approaching along the gravel of the path, and then half of the sunlight from the wide-open door was cut off, as someone hesitated in the doorway. He turned with the mortar hugged to his chest, and the green-stained wooden pestle arrested in his hand, and there stood Olivier, dipping his tall head to evade the hanging bunches of herbs, and asking, in the mellow, confident voice of one assured of the answer, “May I come in?”

He was in already, smiling, staring about him with a boy’s candid curiosity, for he had never been here before. “I’ve been a truant, I know, but with two days to wait before Luc’s marriage I thought best to get on with my errand to the sheriff of Stafford, being so close, and then come back here. I was back, as I said I’d be, in time to see them wedded. I thought you would have been there.”

“So I would, but I was called out to Saint Giles. Some poor soul of a beggar stumbled in there overnight covered with sores, they were afraid of a contagion, but it’s no such matter. If he’d had treatment earlier it would have been an easy matter to cure him, but a week or so resting in the hospital will do him no harm. Our pair of youngsters here had no need of me. I’m a part of what’s over and done with for them, you’re a part of what’s beginning.”

“Melangell told me where I should find you, however, you were missed. And here I am.”

“And as welcome as the day,” said Cadfael, laying his mortar aside. Long, shapely hands gripped both his hands heartily, and Olivier stooped his olive cheek for the greeting kiss, as simply as for the parting kiss when they had separated at Bromfield. “Come, sit, let me offer you wine, my own making. You knew, then, that those two would marry?”

“I saw them meet, when I brought him back here. Small doubt how it would end. Afterwards he told me his intent.

When two are agreed, and know their own minds,” said Olivier blithely, “everything else will give way. I shall see them both properly provided for the journey home, since I must go by a more roundabout way.”

When two are agreed, and know their own minds! Cadfael remembered confidences now a year and a half past. He poured wine carefully, his hand being a shade less steady than usual, and sat down beside his visitor, the young, wide shoulder firm and vital against his elderly and stiff one, the clear, elegant profile close, and a pleasure to his eyes. “Tell me,” he said, “about Ermina,” and was sure of the answer even before Olivier turned on him his sudden blinding smile.

“If I had known my travels would bring me to you, I should have had so many messages to bring you, from both of them. From Yves, and from my wife!”

“Aaaah!” breathed Cadfael, on a deep, delighted sigh. “So, as I thought, as I hoped! You have made good, then, what you told me, that they would acknowledge your worth and give her to you.” Two, there, who had indeed known their own minds, and been invincibly agreed! “When was this match made?”

“This Christmas past, in Gloucester. She is there now, so is the boy. He is Laurence’s heir, just fifteen now. He wanted to come to Winchester with us, but Laurence wouldn’t let him be put in peril. They are safe, I thank God. If ever this chaos is ended,” said Olivier very solemnly, “I will bring her to you, or you to her. She does not forget you.”

“Nor I her, nor I her! Nor the boy. He rode with me twice, asleep in my arms, I still recall the warmth and the shape and the weight of him. A good boy as ever stepped!”

“He’d be a load for you now,” said Olivier, laughing. This year past, he’s shot up like a weed, he’ll be taller than you.”

“Ah, well, I’m beginning to shrink like a spent weed. And you are happy?” asked Cadfael, thirsting for more blessedness even than he already had. “You and she both?”

“Beyond what I know how to express,” said Olivier no less gravely. “How glad I am to have seen you again, and been able to tell you so! Do you remember the last time? When I waited with you in Bromfield to take Ermina and Yves home? And you drew me maps on the floor to show me the ways?”

There is a point at which joy is only just bearable. Cadfael got up to refill the wine-cups, and turn his face away for a moment from a brightness almost too bright. “Ah, now, if this is to be a contest in “do-you-remembers” we shall be at it until Vespers, for not one detail of that time have I forgotten. So let’s have this flask here within reach, and settle down to it in comfort.”

But there was an hour and more left before Vespers when Hugh put an abrupt end to remembering. He came in haste, with a face blazingly alert, and full of news. Even so he was slow to speak, not wishing to exult openly in what must be only shock and dismay to Olivier.

“There’s news. A courier rode in from Warwick just now, they’re passing the word north by stages as fast as horse can go.” They were both on their feet by then, intent upon his face, and waiting for good or evil, for he contained it well. A good face for keeping secrets, and under strong control now out of courteous consideration. “I fear,” he said, “it will not come as gratefully to you, Olivier, as I own it does to me.”

“From the south…” said Olivier, braced and still. “From London? The empress?”

“Yes, from London. All is overturned in a day. There’ll be no coronation. Yesterday as they sat at dinner in Westminster, the Londoners suddenly rang the tocsin, all the city bells. The entire town came out in arms, and marched on Westminster. They’re fled, Olivier, she and all her court, fled in the clothes they wore and with very little else, and the city men have plundered the palace and driven out even the last hangers-on. She never made move to win them, nothing but threats and reproaches and demands for money ever since she entered. She’s let the crown slip through her fingers for want of a few soft words and a queen’s courtesy. For your part,” said Hugh, with real compunction, “I’m sorry! For mine, I find it a great deliverance.”

“With that I find no fault,” said Olivier simply. “Why should you not be glad? But she… she’s safe? They have not taken her?”

“No, according to the messenger she’s safely away, with Robert of Gloucester and a few others as loyal, but the rest, it seems, scattered and made off for their own lands, where they’d feel safe. That’s the word as he brought it, barely a day old. The city of London was being pressed hard from the south,” said Hugh, somewhat softening the load of folly that lay upon the empress’s own shoulders, “with King Stephen’s queen harrying their borders. To get relief their only way was to drive the empress out and let the queen in, and their hearts were on her side, no question, of the two they’d liefer have her.”

“I knew,” said Olivier,”she was not wise, the Empress Maud. I knew she could not forget grudges, no matter how sorely she needed to close her eyes to them. I have seen her strip a man’s dignity from him when he came submissive, offering support… Better at making enemies than friends. All the more she needs,” he said, “the few she has. Where is she gone? Did your messenger know?”

“Westward for Oxford. And they’ll reach it safely. The Londoners won’t follow so far, their part was only to drive her out.”

“And the bishop? Is he gone with her?” The entire enterprise had rested upon the efforts of Henry of Blois, and he had done his best for her, not entirely creditably but understandably and at considerable cost, and his best she herself had undone. Stephen was a prisoner in Bristol, but Stephen was still crowned and anointed king of England. No wonder Hugh’s eyes shone.

“Of the bishop I know nothing as yet. But he’ll surely join her in Oxford. Unless…”

“Unless he changes sides again,” Olivier ended for him, and laughed. “It seems I shall have to leave you in more haste than I expected,” he said with regret. “One fortune rises, another falls. No sense in quarrelling with the lot.”

“What will you do?” asked Hugh, watching him steadily. “You know, I think, that whatever you may ask of us here, is yours, and the choice is yours. Your horses are fresh. Your men will not yet have heard the news, they’ll be waiting on your word. If you need stores for a journey, take whatever you will. Or if you choose to stay…”

Olivier shook his blue-black head, and the clasping curves of glossy hair danced on his cheeks. “I must go. Not north, where I was sent. What use in that, now? South for Oxford. Whatever she may be else, she is my liege lord’s liege lady, where she is he will be, and where he is, I go.”

They eyed each other silently for a moment, and Hugh said softly, quoting remembered words: “To tell you truth, now I’ve met you I expected nothing less.”

“I’ll go and rouse my men, and we’ll get to horse. You’ll follow to your house, before I go? I must take leave of Lady Beringar.”

“I’ll follow you,” said Hugh.

Olivier turned to Brother Cadfael without a word but with the brief golden flash of a smile breaking through his roused gravity for an instant, and again vanishing. “Brother… remember me in your prayers!” He stooped his smooth cheek yet again in farewell, and as the elder’s kiss was given he embraced Cadfael vehemently, with impulsive grace. “Until a better time!”

“God go with you!” said Cadfael.

And he was gone, striding rapidly along the gravel path, breaking into a light run, in no way disheartened or down, a match for disaster or for triumph. At the corner of the box hedge he turned in flight to look back, and waved a hand before he vanished.

“I wish to God,” said Hugh, gazing after him, “he was of our party! There’s an odd thing, Cadfael! Will you believe, just then, when he looked round, I thought I saw something of you about him. The set of the head, something…”

Cadfael, too, was gazing out from the open doorway to where the last sheen of blue had flashed from the burnished hair, and the last echo of the light foot on the gravel died into silence. “Oh, no,” he said absently, “he is altogether the image of his mother.”

An unguarded utterance. Unguarded from absence of mind, or design?

The following silence did not trouble him, he continued to gaze, shaking his head gently over the lingering vision, which would stay with him through all his remaining years, and might even, by the grace of God and the saints, be made flesh for him yet a third time. Far beyond his deserts, but miracles are neither weighed nor measured, but as uncalculated as the lightnings.

“I recall,” said Hugh with careful deliberation, perceiving that he was permitted to speculate, and had heard only what he was meant to hear, “I do recall that he spoke of one for whose sake he held the Benedictine order in reverence… one who had used him like a son…”

Cadfael stirred, and looked round at him, smiling as he met his friend’s fixed and thoughtful eyes. “I always meant to tell you, some day,” he said tranquilly, “what he does not know, and never will from me. He is my son.”