The Pilgram of Hate (11 page)

There
was a stir of agreement and support, perhaps slightly delayed, as every man and
woman eyed a neighbour, and then in haste elected to speak first. They came
from every direction, hitherto unknown to one another, mingling and forming
friendships now with the abandon of holiday. But how did they know who was
immaculate and who was suspect, now the world had probed a merciless finger
within the fold?

“Father,”
pleaded Ciaran, still sweating and shaking with distress, “here I offer in this
scrip all that I brought into this enclave. Examine it, show that I have indeed
been robbed. Here I came without even shoes to my feet, my all is here in your
hands. And my fellow Matthew will open to you his own scrip as freely, an
example to all these others that they may deliver themselves pure of blame.
What we offer, they will not refuse.”

Matthew
had withdrawn his hand from Melangell’s sharply at this word. He shifted the
unbleached cloth scrip, very like Ciaran’s, round upon his hip. Ciaran’s meagre
travelling equipment lay open in the prior’s hands. Robert slid them back into
the pouch from which they had come, and looked where Ciaran’s distressed gaze
guided him.

“Into
your hands, Father, and willingly,” said Matthew, and stripped the bag from its
buckles and held it forth.

Robert
acknowledged the offering with a grave bow, and opened and probed it with
delicate consideration. Most of what was there within he did not display,
though he handled it. A spare shirt and linen drawers, crumpled from being
carried so, and laundered on the way, probably more than once. The means of a
gentleman’s sparse toilet, razor, morsel of lye soap, a leather-bound breviary,
a lean purse, a folded trophy of embroidered ribbon. Robert drew forth the only
item he felt he must show, a sheathed dagger, such as any gentleman might carry
at his right hip, barely longer than a man’s hand.

“Yes,
that is mine,” said Matthew, looking Abbot Radulfus straightly in the eyes. “It
has not slashed through those cords. Nor has it left my scrip since I entered
your enclave, Father Abbot.”

Radulfus
looked from the dagger to its owner, and briefly nodded. “I well understand
that no young man would set forth on these highroads today without the means of
defending himself. All the more if he had another to defend, who carried no
weapons. As I understand is your condition, my son. Yet within these walls you
should not bear arms.”

“What,
then, should I have done?” demanded Matthew, with a stiffening neck, and a note
in his voice that just fell short of defiance.

“What
you must do now,” said Radulfus firmly. “Give it into the care of Brother
Porter at the gatehouse, as others have done with their weapons. When you leave
here you may reclaim it freely.”

There
was nothing to be done but bow the head and give way gracefully, and Matthew
managed it decently enough, but not gladly. “I will do so, Father, and pray your
pardon that I did not ask advice before.”

“But,
Father,” Ciaran pleaded anxiously, “my ring… How shall I survive the way if I
have not that safe-conduct to show?”

“Your
ring shall be sought throughout this enclave, and every man who bears no guilt
for its loss,” said the abbot, raising his voice to carry to the distant
fringes of the silent crowd, “will freely offer his own possessions for
inspection. See to it, Robert!”

With
that he proceeded on his way, and the crowd, after some moments of stillness as
they watched him out of sight, dispersed in a sudden murmur of excited
speculation. Prior Robert took Ciaran under his wing, and swept away with him
towards the guest-hall, to recruit help from Brother Denis in his enquiries
after the bishop’s ring; and Matthew, not without one hesitant glance at
Melangell, turned on his heel and went hastily after them.

A
more innocent and co-operative company than the guests at Shrewsbury abbey that
day it would have been impossible to find. Every man opened his bundle or box
almost eagerly, in haste to demonstrate his immaculate virtue. The quest,
conducted as delicately as possible, went on all the afternoon, but they found
no trace of the ring. Moreover, one or two of the better-off inhabitants of the
common dormitory, who had had no occasion to penetrate to the bottom of their
baggage so far, made grievous discoveries when they were obliged to do so. A
yeoman from Lichfield found his reserve purse lighter by half than when he had
tucked it away. Master Simeon Poer, one of the first to fling open his
possessions, and the loudest in condemning so blasphemous a crime, claimed to
have been robbed of a silver chain he had intended to present at the altar next
day. A poor parish priest, making this pilgrimage the one fulfilled dream of
his life, was left lamenting the loss of a small casket, made by his own hands
over more than a year, and decorated with inlays of silver and glass, in which
he had hoped to carry back with him some memento of his visit, a dried flower
from the garden, even a thread or two drawn from the fringe of the altar-cloth
under Saint Winifred’s reliquary. A merchant from Worcester could not find his
good leather belt to his best coat, saved up for the morrow. One or two others
had a suspicion that their belongings had been fingered and scorned, which was
worst of all.

It
was all over, and fruitless, when Cadfael at last repaired to his workshop in
time to await the coming of Rhun. The boy came prompt to his hour, great-eyed
and thoughtful, and lay submissive and mute under Cadfael’s ministrations,
which probed every day a little deeper into his knotted and stubborn tissues.

“Brother,”
he said at length, looking up, “you did not find a dagger in any other man’s
pouch, did you?”

“No,
no such thing.” Though there had been, understandably, a number of small,
homely knives, the kind a man needs to hack his bread and meat in lodgings
along the way, or meals under a hedge. Many of them were sharp enough for most
everyday purposes, but not sharp enough to leave stout cords sheared through
without a twitch to betray the assault. “But men who go shaven carry razors,
too, and a blunt razor would be an abomination. Once a thief comes into the
pale, child, it’s hard for honest men to be a match for him. He who has no scruple
has always the advantage of those who keep to rule. But you need not trouble
your heart, you’ve done no wrong to any man. Never let this ill thing spoil
tomorrow for you.”

“No,”
agreed the boy, still preoccupied. “But, brother, there is another dagger—one,
at least. Sheath and all, a good length—I know, I was pressed close against him
yesterday at Mass. You know I have to hold fast by my crutches to stand for
long, and he had a big linen scrip on his belt, hard against my hand and arm,
where we were crowded together. I felt the shape of it, cross-hilt and all. I
know! But you did not find it.”

“And
who was it,” asked Cadfael, still carefully working the tissues that resisted
his fingers, “who had this armoury about him at Mass?”

“It
was that big merchant with the good gown-made from valley wool. I’ve learned to
know cloth. They call him Simeon Poer. But you didn’t find it. Perhaps he’s
handed it to Brother Porter, just as Matthew has had to do now.”

“Perhaps,”
said Cadfael. “When was it you discovered this? Yesterday? And what of today?
Was he again close to you?”

“No,
not today.”

No,
today he had stood stolidly to watch the play, eyes and ears alert, ready to
open his pouch there before all if need be, smiling complacently as the abbot
directed the disarming of another man. He had certainly had no dagger on him
then, however he had disposed of it in the meantime. There were hiding-places
enough here within the walls, for a dagger and any amount of small, stolen
valuables. To search was itself only a pretence, unless authority was prepared
to keep the gates closed and the guests prisoned within until every yard of the
gardens had been dug up, and every bed and bench in dortoir and hall pulled to
pieces. The sinners have always the start of the honest men.

“It
was not fair that Matthew should be made to surrender his dagger,” said Rhun,
“when another man had one still about him. And Ciaran already so terribly
afraid to stir, not having his ring. He won’t even come out of the dortoir
until tomorrow. He is sick for loss of it.”

Yes,
that seemed to be true. And how strange, thought Cadfael, pricked into
realisation, to see a man sweating for fear, who has already calmly declared
himself as one condemned to death? Then why fear? Fear should be dead.

Yet
men are strange, he thought in revulsion. And a blessed and quiet death in
Aberdaron, well-prepared, and surrounded by the prayers and compassion of
like-minded votaries, may well seem a very different matter from crude
slaughter by strangers and footpads somewhere in the wilder stretches of the
road.

But
this Simeon Poer—say he had such a dagger yesterday, and therefore may well
have had it on him today, in the crowded array of the Mass. Then what did he do
with it so quickly, before Ciaran discovered his loss? And how did he know he
must perforce dispose of it quickly? Who had such fair warning of the need, if
not the thief?

“Trouble
your head no more,” said Cadfael, looking down at the boy’s beautiful,
vulnerable face, “for Matthew nor for Ciaran, but think only of the morrow,
when you approach the saint. Both she and God see you all, and have no need to
be told of what your needs are. All you have to do is wait in quiet for
whatever will be. For whatever it may be, it will not be wanton. Did you take your
dose last night?”

Rhun’s
pale, brilliant eyes were startled wide open, sunlight and ice, blindingly
clear. “No. It was a good day, I wanted to give thanks. It isn’t that I don’t
value what you can do for me. Only I wished also to give something. And I did
sleep, truly I slept well…”

“So
do tonight also,” said Cadfael gently, and slid an arm round the boy’s body to
hoist him steadily upright. “Say your prayers, think quietly what you should
do, do it, and sleep. There is no man living, neither king nor emperor, can do
more or better, or trust in a better harvest.”

Ciaran
did not stir from within the guest-hall again that day. Matthew did, against
all precedent emerging from the arched doorway without his companion, and
standing at the head of the stone staircase to the great court with hands
spread to touch the courses of the deep doorway, and head drawn back to heave
in great breaths of evening air. Supper was eaten, the milder evening stir of
movement threaded the court, in the cool, grateful lull before Compline.
Brother Cadfael had left the chapter-house before the end of the readings,
having a few things to attend to in the herbarium, and was crossing towards the
garden when he caught sight of the young man standing there at the top of the
steps, breathing in deeply and with evident pleasure. For some reason Matthew
looked taller for being alone, and younger, his face closed but tranquil in the
soft evening light. When he moved forward and began to descend to the court,
Cadfael looked instinctively for the other figure that should have been close
behind him, if not in its usual place a step before him, but no Ciaran emerged.
Well, he had been urged to rest, and presumably was glad to comply, but never
before had Matthew left his side, by night or day, resting or stirring. Not
even to follow Melangell, except broodingly with his eyes and against his will.

People,
thought Cadfael, going on his way without haste, people are endlessly
mysterious, and I am endlessly curious. A sin to be confessed, no doubt, and
well worth a penance. As long as man is curious about his fellowman, that
appetite alone will keep him alive. Why do folk do the things they do? Why, if
you know you are diseased and dying, and wish to reach a desired haven before
the end, why do you condemn yourself to do the long journey barefoot, and
burden yourself with a weight about your neck? How are you thus rendered more
acceptable to God, when you might have lent a hand to someone on the road
crippled not by perversity but from birth, like the boy Rhun? And why do you
dedicate your youth and strength to following another man step by step the
length of the land, and why does he suffer you to be his shadow, when he should
be composing his mind to peace, and taking a decent leave of his friends, not
laying his own load upon them?

There
he checked, rounding the corner of the yew hedge into the rose garden. It was
not his fellow-man he beheld, sitting in the turf on the far side of the flower
beds, gazing across the slope of the pease fields beyond and the low, stony,
silvery summer waters of the Meole brook, but his fellow-woman, solitary and
still, her knees drawn up under her chin and encircled closely by her folded
arms. Aunt Alice Weaver, no doubt, was deep in talk with half a dozen worthy
matrons of her own generation, and Rhun, surely, already in his bed. Melangell
had stolen away alone to be quiet here in the garden and nurse her lame dreams
and indomitable hopes. She was a small, dark shape, gold-haloed against the
bright west. By the look of that sky, tomorrow, Saint Winifred’s day, would
again be cloudless and beautiful.

The
whole width of the rose garden was between them, and she did not hear him come
and pass by on the grassy path to his final duties of the day in his workshop,
seeing everything put away tidily, checking the stoppers of all his flagons and
flasks, and making sure the brazier, which had been in service earlier, was
safely quenched and cooled. Brother Oswin, young, enthusiastic and devoted, was
nonetheless liable to overlook details, though he had now outlived his tendency
to break things. Cadfael ran an eye over everything, and found it good. There
was no hurry now, he had time before Compline to sit down here in the
wood-scented dimness and think. Time for others to lose and find one another,
and use or waste these closing moments of the day. For those three blameless
tradesmen, Walter Bagot, glover; John Shure, tailor; William Hales, farrier; to
betake themselves to wherever their dice school was to meet this night, and run
their necks into Hugh’s trap. Time for that more ambiguous character, Simeon
Poer, to evade or trip into the same snare, or go the other way about some
other nocturnal business of his own. Cadfael had seen two of the former three
go out from the gatehouse, and the third follow some minutes later, and was
sure in his own mind that the self-styled merchant of Guildford would not be
long after them. Time, too, for that unaccountably solitary young man, somehow
loosed off his chain, to range this whole territory suddenly opened to him, and
happen upon the solitary girl.