The Pilgram of Hate

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Authors: Ellis Peters

Tags: #english, #Detective and mystery stories, #Monks, #Cadfael, #Brother (Fictitious character)

BOOK: The Pilgram of Hate
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The Pilgrim

 
of Hate

The
Tenth Chronicle of Brother Cadfael, of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Peter and
Saint Paul, at Shrewsbury

 

Ellis Peters

 

Chapter
One

Chapter
Two

Chapter
Three

Chapter
Four

Chapter
Five

Chapter
Six

Chapter
Seven

Chapter
Eight

Chapter
Nine

Chapter
Ten

Chapter
Eleven

Chapter
Twelve

Chapter
Thirteen

Chapter
Fourteen

Chapter
Fifteen

Chapter
Sixteen

 

 

 

 

Chapter One

 

THEY
WERE TOGETHER in Brother Cadfael’s hut in the herbarium, in the afternoon of
the twenty-fifth day of May, and the talk was of high matters of state, of
kings and empresses, and the unbalanced fortunes that plagued the
irreconcilable contenders for thrones.

“Well,
the lady is not crowned yet!” said Hugh Beringar, almost as firmly as if he saw
a way of preventing it.

“She
is not even in London yet,” agreed Cadfael, stirring carefully round the pot
embedded in the coals of his brazier, to keep the brew from boiling up against
the sides and burning. “She cannot well be crowned until they let her in to
Westminster. Which it seems, from all I gather, they are in no hurry to do.”

“Where
the sun shines,” said Hugh ruefully, “there whoever’s felt the cold will
gather. My cause, old friend, is out of the sun. When Henry of Blois shifts,
all men shift with him, like starvelings huddled in one bed. He heaves the
coverlet, and they go with him, clinging by the hems.”

“Not
all,” objected Cadfael, briefly smiling as he stirred. “Not you. Do you think
you are the only one?”

“God
forbid!” said Hugh, and suddenly laughed, shaking off his gloom. He came back
from the open doorway, where the pure light spread a soft golden sheen over the
bushes and beds of the herb-garden and the moist noon air drew up a heady languor
of spiced and drunken odours, and plumped his slender person down again on the
bench against the timber wall, spreading his booted feet on the earth floor. A
small man in one sense only, and even so trimly made. His modest stature and
light weight had deceived many a man to his undoing. The sunshine from without,
fretted by the breeze that swayed the bushes, was reflected from one of
Cadfael’s great glass flagons to illuminate by flashing glimpses a lean, tanned
face, clean shaven, with a quirky mouth, and agile black eyebrows that could
twist upward sceptically into cropped black hair. A face at once eloquent and
inscrutable. Brother Cadfael was one of the few who knew how to read it.
Doubtful if even Hugh’s wife Aline understood him better. Cadfael was in his
sixty-second year, and Hugh still a year or two short of thirty but, meeting
thus in easy companionship in Cadfael’s workshop among the herbs, they felt
themselves contemporaries.

“No,”
said Hugh, eyeing circumstances narrowly, and taking some cautious comfort,
“not all. There are a few of us yet, and not so badly placed to hold on to what
we have. There’s the queen in Kent with her army. Robert of Gloucester is not
going to turn his back to come hunting us here while she hangs on the southern
fringes of London. And with the Welsh of Gwynedd keeping our backs against the
earl of Chester, we can hold this shire for King Stephen and wait out the time.
Luck that turned once can turn again. And the empress is not queen of England
yet.”

But
for all that, thought Cadfael, mutely stirring his brew for Brother Aylwin’s
scouring calves, it began to look as though she very soon would be. Three years
of civil war between cousins fighting for the sovereignty of England had done
nothing to reconcile the factions, but much to sicken the general populace with
insecurity, rapine and killing. The craftsman in the town, the cottar in the
village, the serf on the demesne, would be only too glad of any monarch who
could guarantee him a quiet and orderly country in which to carry on his modest
business. But to a man like Hugh it was no such indifferent matter. He was King
Stephen’s liege man, and now King Stephen’s sheriff of Shropshire, sworn to
hold the shire for his cause. And his king was a prisoner in Bristol castle since
the lost battle of Lincoln. A single February day of this year had seen a total
reversal of the fortunes of the two claimants to the throne. The Empress Maud
was up in the clouds, and Stephen, crowned and anointed though he might be, was
down in the midden, close-bound and close-guarded, and his brother Henry of
Blois, bishop of Winchester and papal legate, far the most influential of the
magnates and hitherto his brother’s supporter, had found himself in a dilemma.
He could either be a hero, and adhere loudly and firmly to his allegiance, thus
incurring the formidable animosity of a lady who was in the ascendant and could
be dangerous, or trim his sails and accommodate himself to the reverses of
fortune by coming over to her side. Discreetly, of course, and with
well-prepared arguments to render his about-face respectable. It was just
possible, thought Cadfael, willing to do justice even to bishops, that Henry
also had the cause of order and peace genuinely at heart, and was willing to
back whichever contender could restore them.

“What
frets me,” said Hugh restlessly, “is that I can get no reliable news. Rumours
enough and more than enough, every new one laying the last one dead, but
nothing a man can grasp and put his trust in. I shall be main glad when Abbot
Radulfus comes home.”

“So
will every brother in this house,” agreed Cadfael fervently. “Barring Jerome,
perhaps, he’s in high feather when Prior Robert is left in charge, and a fine
time he’s had of it all these weeks since the abbot was summoned to Winchester.
But Robert’s rule is less favoured by the rest of us, I can tell you.”

“How
long is it he’s been away now?” pondered Hugh. “Seven or eight weeks! The
legate’s keeping his court well stocked with mitres all this time. Maintaining
his own state no doubt gives him some aid in confronting hers. Not a man to let
his dignity bow to princes, Henry, and he needs all the weight he can get at
his back.”

“He’s
letting some of his cloth disperse now, however,” said Cadfael. “By that token,
he may have got a kind of settlement. Or he may be deceived into thinking he
has. Father Abbot sent word from Reading. In a week he should be here. You’ll
hardly find a better witness.”

Bishop
Henry had taken good care to keep the direction of events in his own hands. Calling
all the prelates and mitred abbots to Winchester early in April, and firmly
declaring the gathering a legatine council, no mere church assembly, had
ensured his supremacy at the subsequent discussions, giving him precedence over
Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury, who in purely English church matters was his
superior. Just as well, perhaps. Cadfael doubted if Theobald had greatly minded
being outflanked. In the circumstances a quiet, timorous man might be only too
glad to lurk peaceably in the shadows, and let the legate bear the heat of the
sun.

“I
know it. Once let me hear his account of what’s gone forward, down there in the
south, and I can make my own dispositions. We’re remote enough here, and the
queen, God keep her, has gathered a very fair array, now she has the Flemings
who escaped from Lincoln to add to her force. She’ll move heaven and earth to
get Stephen out of hold, by whatever means, fair or foul. She is,” said Hugh
with conviction, “a better soldier than her lord. Not a better fighter in the
field, God knows you’d need to search Europe through to find such a one, I saw
him at Lincoln, a marvel! But a better general, that she is. She holds to her
purpose, where he tires and goes off after another quarry. They tell me, and I
believe it, she’s drawing her cordon closer and closer to London, south of the
river. The nearer her rival comes to Westminster, the tighter that noose will
be drawn.”

“And
is it certain the Londoners have agreed to let the empress in? We hear they
came late to the council, and made a faint plea for Stephen before they let
themselves be tamed. It takes a very stout heart, I suppose, to stand up to
Henry of Winchester face to face, and deny him,” allowed Cadfael, sighing.

“They’ve
agreed to admit her, which is as good as acknowledging her. But they’re arguing
terms for her entry, as I heard it, and every delay is worth gold to me and to
Stephen. If only,” said Hugh, the dancing light suddenly sharpening every line
of his intent and eloquent face, “if only I could get a good man into Bristol!
There are ways into castles, even into the dungeons. Two or three good, secret
men might do it. A fistful of gold to a malcontent gaoler… Kings have been
fetched off before now, even out of chains, and he’s not chained. She has not
gone so far, not yet. Cadfael, I dream! My work is here, and I am but barely
equal to it. I have no means of carrying off Bristol, too.”

“Once
loosed,” said Cadfael, “your king is going to need this shire ready to his
hand.”

He
turned from the brazier, hoisting aside the pot and laying it to cool on a slab
of stone he kept for the purpose. His back creaked a little as he straightened
it. In small ways he was feeling his years, but once erect he was spry enough.

“I’m
done here for this while,” he said, brushing his hands together to get rid of
the hollow worn by the ladle. “Come into the daylight, and see the flowers
we’re bringing on for the festival of Saint Winifred. Father Abbot will be home
in good time to preside over her reception from Saint Giles. And we shall have
a houseful of pilgrims to care for.”

They
had brought the reliquary of the Welsh saint four years previously from
Gwytherin, where she lay buried, and installed it on the altar of the church at
the hospital of Saint Giles, at the very edge of Shrewsbury’s Foregate suburb,
where the sick, the infected, the deformed, the lepers, who might not venture
within the walls, were housed and cared for. And thence they had borne her
casket in splendour to her altar in the abbey church, to be an ornament and a
wonder, a means of healing and blessing to all who came reverently and in need.
This year they had undertaken to repeat that last journey, to bring her from
Saint Giles in procession, and open her altar to all who came with prayers and
offerings. Every year she had drawn many pilgrims. This year they would be
legion.

“A
man might wonder,” said Hugh, standing spread-footed among the flower beds just
beginning to burn from the soft, shy colours of spring into the blaze of
summer, “whether you were not rather preparing for a bridal.”

Hedges
of hazel and may-blossom shed silver petals and dangled pale, silver-green
catkins round the enclosure where they stood, cowslips were rearing in the
grass of the meadow beyond, and irises were in tight, thrusting bud. Even the
roses showed a harvest of buds, erect and ready to break and display the first
colour. In the walled shelter of Cadfael’s herb-garden there were fat globes of
peonies, too, just cracking their green sheaths. Cadfael had medicinal uses for
the seeds, and Brother Petrus, the abbot’s cook, used them as spices in the
kitchen.

“A
man might not be so far out, at that,” said Cadfael, viewing the fruits of his
labours complacently. “A perpetual and pure bridal. This Welsh girl was virgin
until the day of her death.”

“And
you have married her off since?”

It
was idly said, in revulsion from pondering matters of state. In such a garden a
man could believe in peace, fruitfullness and amity. But it encountered
suddenly so profound and pregnant a silence that Hugh pricked up his ears, and
turned his head almost stealthily to study his friend, even before the
unguarded answer came. Unguarded either from absence of mind, or of design,
there was no telling.

“Not
wedded,” said Cadfael, “but certainly bedded. With a good man, too, and her
honest champion. He deserved his reward.”

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