Monk's Hood (29 page)

“I
meant them,” said Cadfael, “every word. Pity, indeed, that ever you went so far
aside from your own nature, and poisoned yourself as surely as you poisoned
your father. Tell me, Meurig, in these last days you have not been back to your
grandfather’s house, or had any word from him?”

“No,”
said Meurig, very low, and shuddered at the thought of the upright old man now
utterly bereft.

“Then
you do not know that Edwin was fetched away from there by the sheriff’s men,
and is now in prison in Shrewsbury.”

No,
he had not known. He looked up aghast, seeing the implication, and shook with
the fervour of his denial: “No, that I swear I did not do. I was tempted… I
could not prevent that they cast the blame on him, but I did not betray him… I
sent him here, I would have seen that he got clear… I know it was not enough,
but oh, this at least don’t lay to my charge! God knows I liked the boy well.”

“I
also know it,” said Cadfael, “and know it was not you who sent them to take
him. No one wittingly betrayed him. None the less, he was taken. Tomorrow will
see him free again. Take that for one thing set right, where many are past
righting.”

Meurig
laid his clasped hands, white-knuckled with tension, on Cadfael’s knees, and
lifted a tormented face into the soft light of the lantern. “Brother, you have
been conscience to other men in your time, for God’s sake do as much by me, for
I am sick, I am maimed, I am not my own. You said… great pity! Hear me all my
evil!”

“Child,”
said Cadfael, shaken, and laid his own hand over the stony fists that felt
chill as ice, “I am not a priest, I cannot give absolution, I cannot appoint
penance…”

“Ah,
but you can, you can, none but you, who found out the worst of me! Hear me my
confession, and I shall be better prepared, and then deliver me to my penalty,
and I will not complain.”

“Speak,
then, if it gives you ease,” said Cadfael heavily, and kept his hand closed
over Meurig’s as the story spilled out in broken gouts of words, like blood
from a wound: how
he had gone to the infirmary with no ill
thought, to pleasure an old man, and learned by pure chance of the properties of
the oil he was using for its true purpose, and how it could be put to a very
different use. Only then had the seed been planted in his mind. He had a few
weeks, perhaps, of grace before Mallilie was lost to him forever, and here was
a means of preventing the loss.

“And
it grew in me, the thought that it would not be a hard thing to do… and the
second time I went there I took the vial with me, and filled it. But it was
still only a mad dream… Yet I carried it with me, that last day, and I told
myself it would be easy to put in his mead, or mull wine for him… I might never
have done it, only willed it, though that is sin enough. But when I came to the
house, they were all in the inner room together, and I heard Aldith saying how
the prior had sent a dish from his own table, a dainty to please my father. It
was there simmering on the hob, a spoon in it… The thing was done almost before
I knew I meant to do it… And then I heard Aelfric and Aldith coming back from
the table, and I had no time for more than to step quickly outside the door
again, as if I had just opened it, and I was scraping my shoes clean to come in
when they came into the kitchen… What could they think but that I had only just
come? A score of times in the next hour, God knows how wildly, I wished it
undone, but such things cannot be undone, and I am damned… What could I do but
go forward, when there was no going back?”

What,
indeed, short of what he was doing now, and this had been forced on him. Yet it
was not to kill that he had flown like a homing bird to this meeting, whatever
he himself had believed.

“So
I went on. I fought for the fruit of my sin, for Mallilie, as best I could. I
never truly hated my father, but Mallilie I truly loved, and it was mine, mine…
if only I could have come by it cleanly! But there is justice, and I have lost,
and I make no complaint. Now deliver me up, and let me pay for his death with
mine, as is due. I will go with you willingly, if you will wish me peace.”

He
laid his head on Cadfael’s steadying hand with a great sigh, and fell silent;
and after a long moment Cadfael laid his other hand on the thick dark hair, and
held him so. Priest he might not be, and absolution he could not give, yet here
he was in the awful situation of being both judge and confessor. Poison is the
meanest of killings, the steel he could respect. And yet… Was not Meurig also a
man gravely wronged? Nature had meant him to be amiable, kindly, unembittered,
circumstances had so deformed him that he turned against his nature once, and
fatally, and he was all too well aware of his mortal sickness. Surely one death
was enough, what profit in a second? God knew other ways of balancing the
scale.

“You
asked your penance of me,” said Cadfael at last. “Do you still ask it? And will
you bear it and keep faith, no matter how terrible it may be?”

The
heavy head stirred on his knee. “I will,” said Meurig in a whisper, “and be
grateful.”

“You
want no easy penalty?”

“I
want all my due. How else can I find peace?”

“Very
well, you have pledged yourself. Meurig, you came for my life, but when it came
to the stroke, you could not take it. Now you lay your life in my hands, and I
find that I cannot take it, either, that I should be wrong to take it. What
benefit to the world would your blood be? But your hands, your strength, your
will, that virtue you still have within you, these may yet be of the greatest
profit. You want to pay in full. Pay, then! Yours is a lifelong penance,
Meurig, I rule that you shall live out your life—and may it be long!—and pay
back all your debts by having regard to those who inhabit this world with you.
The tale of your good may yet outweigh a thousand times the tale of your evil.
This is the penance I lay on you.”

Meurig
stirred slowly, and raised a dazed and wondering face, neither relieved nor
glad, only utterly bewildered. “You mean it? This is what I must do?”

“This
is what you must do. Live, amend, in your dealings with sinners remember your
own frailty, and in your dealings with the innocent, respect and use your own
strength in their
service. Do as well as you can, and leave
the rest to God, and how much more can saints do?”

“They
will be hunting for me,” said Meurig, still doubting and marvelling. “You will
not hold that I’ve failed you if they take and hang me?”

“They
will not take you. By tomorrow you will be well away from here. There is a
horse in the stable next to the barn, the horse I rode today. Horses in these
parts can very easily be stolen, it’s an old Welsh game, as I know. But this
one will not be stolen. I give it, and I will be answerable. There is a whole
world to reach on horseback, where a true penitent can make his way step by
step through a long life towards grace. Were I you, I should cross the hills as
far west as you may before daylight, and then bear north into Gwynedd, where
you are not known. But you know these hills better than I.”

“I
know them well,” said Meurig, and now his face had lost its anguish in open and
childlike wonder. “And this is all? All you ask of me?”

“You
will find it heavy enough,” said Brother Cadfael. “But yes, there is one thing
more. When you are well clear, make your confession to a priest, ask him to
write it down and have it sent to the sheriff at Shrewsbury. What has passed
today in Llansilin will release Edwin, but I would not have any doubt or shadow
left upon him when you are gone.”

“Neither
would I,” said Meurig. “It shall be done.”

“Come,
then, you have a long pilgrimage to go. Take up your knife again.” And he
smiled. “You will need it to cut your bread and hunt your meat.”

It
was ending strangely. Meurig rose like one in a dream, both spent and renewed,
as though some rainfall from heaven had washed him out of his agony and out of
his wits, to revive, a man half-drowned and wholly transformed. Cadfael had to
lead him by the hand, once they had put out the lantern. Outside, the night was
very still and starlit, on the edge of frost. In the stable Cadfael himself
saddled the horse.

“Rest
him when you safely may. He’s carried me today, but that was no great journey.
I’d give you the mule, for he’s
fresh, but he’d be slower, and
more questionable under a Welshman. There, mount and go. Go with God!”

Meurig
shivered at that, but the pale, fixed brightness of his face did not change.
With a foot already in the stirrup, he said with sudden inexpressibly grave and
burdened humility:

“Give
me your blessing! For I am bound by you while I live.”

He
was gone, up the slope above the folds, by ways he knew better than did the man
who had set him free to ride them, back into the world of the living. Cadfael
looked after him for only a moment, before turning down towards the house. He
thought as he went: Well, if I have loosed you on the world unchanged and
perilous, if this cleansing wears off once you are safe, then on me be the
guilt. But he found he could not feel greatly afraid; the more he reviewed the
course he had taken, the more profound became his soul’s tranquillity.

“You
were a long time, brother,” said Simon, welcoming him with pleasure into the
evening warmth within the house. “We were wondering about you.”

“I
was tempted to stay and meditate among the ewes,” said Brother Cadfael. “They
are so calming. And it is a beautiful night.”

Chapter Eleven

IT
WAS A GOOD CHRISTMAS; he had never known one more firelit and serene. The
simple outdoor labour was bliss after stress, he would not have exchanged it
for the ceremonial and comparative luxury of the abbey. The news that came in
from the town, before the first snow discouraged travel, made a kind of shrill
overtone to the homely Christmas music they made between them, with three willing
but unskilled voices and three contented and fulfilled hearts. Hugh Beringar
sent word, not only that he had received the record of the Llansilin court, but
also that Edwin’s well-meant conciliatory gift had been cast up in the shallows
near Atcham, in considerable disarray, but still recognisable. The boy was
restored to his doting mother, and the Bonel household could breathe freely
again, now that the culprit was known. The apologetic report that the horse
belonging to the Rhydycroesau sheepfolds had gone missing, due to Brother
Cadfael’s reprehensible failure to bar the stable door securely, had been noted
with appropriate displeasure by the chapter of the abbey, and repayment in some
form awaited him on his return.

As
for the fugitive Meurig, cried through Powys for murder, the hunt had never set
eyes on him since, and the trail was growing cold. Even the report of his
voluntary confession, sent by a priest from a hermitage in Penllyn, did not
revive the scent, for the man was long gone, and no one
knew
where. Nor was Owain Gwynedd likely to welcome incursions on his territory in
pursuit of criminals against whom he had no complaint, and who should never
have been allowed to slip through authority’s fingers in the first place.

In
fact, all was very well. Cadfael was entirely happy among the sheep, turning a
deaf ear to the outer world. He felt he had earned a while of retreat. His only
regret was that the first deep snow prevented him from riding to visit Ifor ap
Morgan, to whom he owed what consolation there was to be found for him. Frail
though it might seem, Cadfael found it worth cherishing, and so would Ifor; and
the very old are very durable.

They
had no less than three Christmas morning lambs, a single and twins. They
brought them all, with their dams, into the house and made much of them, for
these innocents shared their stars with the Christchild. Brother Barnabas,
wholly restored, nursed the infants in his great hands and capacious lap, and
was as proud as if he had produced them of his own substance. They were very
merry together, in a quiet celebration, before Brother Cadfael left them to
return to Shrewsbury. His patient was by this time the most vigorous force
within twenty miles round, and there was no more need for a physician here at Rhydycroesau.

The
snow had abated in a temporary thaw, when Cadfael mounted his mule, three days
after the feast, and set out southwards for Shrewsbury.

He
made a long day of it because he did not take the direct road to Oswestry, but
went round to pay his delayed visit on Ifor ap Morgan before cutting due east
from Croesau Bach to strike the main road well south of the town. What he had
to say to Ifor, and what Ifor replied to him, neither of them ever confided to
a third. Certainly when Cadfael mounted again, it was in better heart that he
set out, and in better heart that Ifor remained alone.

By
reason of this detour it was already almost dusk when Cadfael’s mule padded
over the Welsh bridge into Shrewsbury, and through the hilly streets alive with
people and
business again after the holiday. No time now to
turn aside from the Wyle for the pleasure of being let in by the shrewd little
housewife Alys, and viewing the jubilation of the Bellecote family; that would
have to keep for another day. No doubt Edwy was long since released from his
pledge to keep to home, and off with his inseparable uncle on whatever work,
play or mischief offered. The future of Mallilie still lay in the balance; it
was to be hoped that the lawmen would not manage to take the heart out of it in
their fees, before anyone got acknowledged possession.