The Pilgram of Hate (12 page)

Cadfael
put up his feet on the wooden bench, and closed his eyes for a brief respite.

Matthew
was there at her back before she knew it. The sudden rustle as he stepped into
sun-dried long grass at the edge of the field startled her, and she swung round
in alarm, scrambling to her knees and staring up into his face with dilated
eyes, half-blinded by the blaze of the sunset into which she had been steadily
staring. Her face was utterly open, vulnerable and childlike. She looked as she
had looked when he had swept her up in his arms and leaped the ditch with her,
clear of the galloping horses. Just so she had opened her eyes and looked up at
him, still dazed and frightened, and just so had her fear melted away into
wonder and pleasure, finding in him nothing but reassurance, kindness and
admiration.

That
pure, paired encounter of eyes did not last long. She blinked, and shook her
head a little to clear her dazzled vision, and looked beyond him, searching,
not believing he could be here alone.

“Ciaran…?
Is there something you need for him?”

“No,”
said Matthew shortly, and for a moment turned his head away. “He’s in his bed.”

“But
you never leave his bed!” It was said in innocence, even in anxiety. Whatever
she grudged to Ciaran, she still pitied and understood him.

“You
see I have left it,” said Matthew harshly. “I have needs, too… a breath of air.
And he is very well where he is, and won’t stir.”

“I
was well sure,” she said with resigned bitterness, “that you had not come out
to look for me.” She made to rise, swiftly and gracefully enough, but he put
out a hand, almost against his will, as it seemed, to take her under the wrist
and lift her. It was withdrawn as abruptly when she evaded his touch, and rose
to her feet unaided. “But at least,” she said deliberately, “you did not turn
and run from me when you found me. I should be grateful even for that.”

“I
am not free,” he protested, stung. “You know it better than any.”

“Then
neither were you free when we kept pace along the road,” said Melangell
fiercely, “when you carried my burden, and walked beside me, and let Ciaran
hobble along before, where he could not see how you smiled on me then and were
gallant and cherished me when the road was rough and spoke softly, as if you
took delight in being beside me. Why did you not give me warning then that you
were not free? Or better, take him some other way, and leave us alone? Then I
might have taken good heed in time, and in time forgotten you. As now I never shall!
Never, to my life’s end!”

All
the flesh of his lips and cheeks shrank and tightened before her eyes, in a
contortion of either rage or pain, she could not tell which. She was staring
too close and too passionately to see very clearly. He turned his head sharply
away, to evade her eyes.

“You
charge me justly,” he said in a harsh whisper, “I was at fault. I never should
have believed there could be so clean and sweet a happiness for me. I should
have left you, but I could not… Oh, God! You think I could have turned him? He
clung to you, to your good aunt… Yet I should have been strong enough to hold
off from you and let you alone…” As rapidly as he had swung away from her he
swung back again, reaching a hand to take her by the chin and hold her face to
face with him, so ungently that she felt the pressure of his fingers bruising
her flesh. “Do you know how hard a thing you are asking? No! This countenance
you never saw, did you, never but through someone else’s eyes. Who would
provide you a mirror to see yourself? Some pool, perhaps, if ever you had the
leisure to lean over and look. How should you know what this face can do to a
man already lost? And you marvel I took what I could get for water in a
drought, when it walked beside me? I should rather have died than stay beside
you, to trouble your peace. God forgive me!”

She
was five years nearer childhood than he, even taking into account the two years
or more a girl child has advantage over the boys of her own age. She stood
entranced, a little frightened by his intensity, and inexpressibly moved by the
anguish she felt emanating from him like a raw, drowning odour. The
long-fingered hand that held her shook terribly, his whole body quivered. She
put up her own hand gently and closed it over his, uplifted out of her own
wretchedness by his greater and more inexplicable distress.

“I
dare not speak for God,” she said steadily, “but whatever there may be for me
to forgive, that I dare. It is not your fault that I love you. All you ever did
was be kinder to me than ever man was since I left Wales. And I did know, love,
you did tell me, if I had heeded then, you did tell me you were a man under
vow. What it was you never told me, but never grieve, oh, my own soul, never
grieve so…”

While
they stood rapt, the sunset light had deepened, blazed and burned silently into
glowing ash, and the first feathery shade of twilight, like the passing of a
swift’s wings, fled across their faces and melted into sudden pearly, radiant
light. Her wide eyes were brimming with tears, almost the match of his. When he
stooped to her, there was no way of knowing which of them had begun the kiss.

The
little bell for Compline sounded clearly through the gardens on so limpid an
evening, and stirred Brother Cadfael out of his half-doze at once. He was
accustomed, in this refuge of his maturity as surely as in the warfaring of his
youth, to awake fresh and alert, as he fell asleep, making the most of the twin
worlds of night and day. He rose and went out into the earliest glowing image
of evening, and closed the door after him.

It
was but a few moments back to church through the herbarium and the rose garden.
He went briskly, happy with the beauty of the evening and the promise for the
morrow, and never knew why he should look aside to westward in passing, unless
it was that the whole expanse of the sky on that side was delicate, pure and
warming, like a girl’s blush. And there they were, two clear shadows clasped
together in silhouette against the fire of the west, outlined on the crest
above the slope to the invisible brook. Matthew and Melangell, unmistakable,
constrained still but in each other’s arms, linked in a kiss that lasted while
Brother Cadfael came, passed and slipped away to his different devotions, but
with that image printed indelibly on his eyes, even in his prayers.

Chapter Seven

THE
OUTRIDER of the bishop-legate’s envoy—or should he rather be considered the
empress’s envoy?—arrived within the town and was directed through to the
gatehouse of the castle in mid-evening of that same twenty-first day of June,
to be presented to Hugh Beringar just as he was marshalling a half-dozen men to
go down to the bridge and take an unpredicted part in the plans of Master
Simeon Poer and his associates. Who would almost certainly be armed, being so
far from home and in hitherto unexplored territory. Hugh found the visitor an
unwelcome hindrance, but was too well aware of the many perils hemming the
king’s party on every side to dismiss the herald without ceremony. Whatever
this embassage might be, he needed to know it, and make due preparation to deal
with it. In the gatehouse guard-room he found himself facing a stolid
middle-aged squire, who delivered his errand word perfect.

“My
lord sheriff, the Lady of the English and the lord bishop of Winchester entreat
you to receive in peace their envoy, who comes to you with offerings of peace
and good order in their name, and in their name asks your aid in resolving the
griefs of the kingdom. I come before to announce him.”

So
the empress had assumed the traditional title of a queen-elect before her
coronation! The matter began to look final.

“The
lord bishop’s envoy will be welcome,” said Hugh, “and shall be received with
all honour here in Shrewsbury. I will lend an attentive ear to whatever he may
have to say to me. As at this moment I have an affair in hand which will not
wait. How far ahead of your lord do you ride?”

“A
matter of two hours, perhaps,” said the squire, considering.

“Good,
then I can set forward all necessary preparations for his reception, and still
have time to clear up a small thing I have in hand. With how many attendants
does he come?”

“Two
men-at-arms only, my lord, and myself.”

“Then
I will leave you in the hands of my deputy, who will have lodgings made ready
for you and your two men here in the castle. As for your lord, he shall come to
my own house, and my wife shall make him welcome. Hold me excused if I make
small ceremony now, for this business is a twilight matter, and will not wait.
Later I will see amends made.”

The
messenger was well content to have his horse stabled and tended, and be led
away by Alan Herbard to a comfortable lodging where he could shed his boots and
leather coat, and be at his ease, and take his time and his pleasure over the
meat and wine that was presently set before him. Hugh’s young deputy would play
the host very graciously. He was still new in office, and did everything
committed to him with a flourish. Hugh left them to it, and took his half-dozen
men briskly out through the town.

It
was past Compline then, neither light nor dark, but hesitant between. By the
time they reached the High Cross and turned down the steep curve of the Wyle
they had their twilight eyes. In full darkness their quarry might have a better
chance of eluding them, by daylight they would themselves have been too easily
observed from afar. If these gamesters were experts they would have a lookout
posted to give fair warning.

The
Wyle, uncoiling eastward, brought them down to the town wall and the English
gate, and there a thin, leggy child, shaggy-haired and bright-eyed, started out
of the shadows under the gate to catch at Hugh’s sleeve. Wat’s boy, a sharp
urchin of the Foregate, bursting with the importance of his errand and his own
wit in managing it, had pinned down his quarry, and waited to inform and
advise.

“My
lord, they’re met—all the four from the abbey, and a dozen or more from these
parts, mostly from the town.” His note of scorn implied that they were sharper
in the Foregate. “You’d best leave the horses and go afoot. Riders out at this
hour—they’d break and run as soon as you set hooves on the bridge. The sound
carries.”

Good
sense, that, if the meeting-place was close by. “Where are they, then?” asked
Hugh, dismounting.

“Under
the far arch of the bridge, my lord—dry as a bone it is, and snug.” So it would
be, with this low summer water. Only in full spate did the river prevent passage
beneath that arch. In this fine season it would be a nest of dried-out grasses.

“They
have a light, then?”

“A
dark lantern. There’s not a glimmer you’ll see from either side unless you go
down to the water, it sheds light only on the flat stone where they’re
throwing.”

Easily
quenched, then, at the first alarm, and they would scatter like startled birds,
every way. The fleecers would be the first and fleetest. The fleeced might well
be netted in some numbers, but their offence was no more than being foolish at
their own expense, not theft nor malpractice on any other.

“We
leave the horses here,” said Hugh, making up his mind. “You heard the boy.
They’re under the bridge, they’ll have used the path that goes down to the
Gaye, along the riverside. The other side of the arch is thick bushes, but
that’s the way they’ll break. Three men to either slope, and I’ll bear with the
western three. And let our own young fools by, if you can pick them out, but
hold fast the strangers.”

In
this fashion they went to their raiding. They crossed the bridge by ones and
twos, above the Severn water green with weedy shallows and shimmering with
reflected light, and took their places on either side, spaced among the
fringing bushes of the bank. By the time they were in place the afterglow had
dissolved and faded into the western horizon, and the night came down like a
velvet hand. Hugh drew off to westward along the by-road until at length he
caught the faint glimmer of light beneath the stone arch. They were there. If
in such numbers, perhaps he should have held them in better respect and brought
more men. But he did not want the townsmen. By all means let them sneak away to
their beds and think better of their dreams of milking cows likely to prove
drier than sand. It was the cheats he wanted. Let the provost of the town deal
with his civic idiots.

He
let the sky darken somewhat before he took them in. The summer night settled,
soft wings folding, and no moon. Then, at his whistle, they moved down from
either flank.

It
was the close-set bushes on the bank, rustling stealthily in a windless night,
that betrayed their coming a moment too soon. Whoever was on watch, below
there, had a sharp ear. There was a shrill whistle, suddenly muted. The lantern
went out instantly, there was black dark under the solid stonework of the
bridge. Down went Hugh and his men, abandoning stealth for speed. Bodies
parted, collided, heaved and fled, with no sound but the panting and gasping of
scared breath. Hugh’s officers waded through bushes, closing down to seal the
archway. Some of those thus penned beneath the bridge broke to left, some to
right, not venturing to climb into waiting arms, but wading through the
shallows and floundering even into deeper water. A few struck out for the
opposite shore, local lads well acquainted with their river and its reaches,
and water-borne, like its fish, almost from birth. Let them go, they were
Shrewsbury born and bred. If they had lost money, more fools they, but let them
get to their beds and repent in peace. If their wives would let them!