The Pilgram of Hate (18 page)

When
she came out into the great court, into the brilliance of the noonday sun, it
was the quietest hour, the pause after meat. There never was a time of day when
there was no traffic about the court, no going and coming at the gatehouse, but
now it moved at its gentlest and quietest. She went down almost fearfully into
the cloister, and found no one there but a single copyist busy reviewing what he
had done the previous day, and Brother Anselm in his workshop going over the
music for Vespers; into the stable-yard, though there was no reason in the
world why Matthew should be there, having no mount, and no expectation that his
companion would or possibly could acquire one; into the gardens, where a couple
of novices were clipping back the too exuberant shoots of a box hedge; even
into the grange court, where the barns and storehouses were, and a few lay
servants were taking their ease, and harrowing over the morning’s marvel, like
everyone else within the enclave, and most of Shrewsbury and the Foregate into
the bargain. The abbot’s garden was empty, neat, glowing with carefully-tended
roses, his lodging showed an open door, and some ordered bustle of guests
within.

She
turned back towards the garden, now in deep anxiety. She was not good at lying,
she had no practice, even for a good end she could not but botch the effort.
And for all the to and fro of customary commerce within the pale, never without
work to be done, she had seen nothing of Matthew. But he could not be gone, no,
the porter could tell him nothing, Ciaran had not passed there; and she would
not, never until she must, never until Matthew’s too fond heart was reconciled
to loss, and open and receptive to a better gain.

She
turned back, rounding the box hedge and out of sight of the busy novices, and
walked breast to breast into Matthew.

They
met between the thick hedges, in a terrible privacy. She started back from him
in a brief revulsion of guilt, for he looked more distant and alien than ever
before, even as he recognised her, and acknowledged with a contortion of his
troubled face her right to come out in search of him, and almost in the same
instant frowned her off as irrelevant.

“He’s
gone!” he said in a chill and grating voice, and looked through her and far
beyond. “God keep you, Melangell, you must fend for yourself now, sorry as I
am. He’s gone, fled while my back was turned. I’ve looked for him everywhere,
and never a trace of him. Nor has the porter seen him pass the gate, I’ve asked
there. But he’s gone! Alone! And I must go after him. God keep you, girl, as I
cannot, and fare you well!”

And
he was going so, with so few words and so cold and wild a face! He had turned
on his heel and taken two long steps before she flung herself after him, caught
him by the arms in both hands, and dragged him to a halt.

“No,
no, why? What need has he of you, to match with my need? He’s gone? Let him go!
Do you think your life belongs to him? He doesn’t want it! He wants you free,
he wants you to live your own life, not die his death with him. He knows, he
knows you love me! Dare you deny it? He knows I love you. He wants you happy!
Why should not a friend want his friend to be happy? Who are you to deny him
his last wish?”

She
knew by then that she had said too much, but never knew at what point the error
had become mortal. He had turned fully to her again, and frozen where he stood,
and his face was like chiselled marble. He tugged his sleeve out of her grasp
this time with no gentleness at all.

“He
wants!” hissed a voice she had never heard before, driven through narrowed
lips. “You’ve spoken with him! You speak for him! You knew! You knew he meant
to go, and leave me here bewitched, damned, false to my oath. You knew! When?
When did you speak with him?”

He
had her by the wrists, he shook her mercilessly, and she cried out and fell to
her knees.

“You
knew he meant to go?” persisted Matthew, stooping over her in a cold frenzy.

“Yes,
yes! This morning he told me… he wished it…”

“He
wished it! How dared he wish it? How could he dare, robbed of his bishop’s ring
as he was? He dared not stir without it, he was terrified to set foot outside
the pale…”

“He
has the ring,” she cried, abandoning all deceit. “The lord abbot gave it back
to him this morning, you need not fret for him, he’s safe enough, he has his
protection… He doesn’t need you!”

Matthew
had fallen into a deadly stillness, stooping above her. “He has the ring? And
you knew it, and never said word! If you know so much, how much more do you
know. Speak! Where is he?”

“Gone,”
she said in a trembling whisper, “and wished you well, wished us both well…
wished us to be happy… Oh, let him go, let him go, he sets you free!”

Something
that was certainly a laugh convulsed Matthew, she heard it with her ears and
felt it shiver through her flesh, but it was like no other laughter she had
ever heard, it chilled her blood. “He sets me free! And you must be his
confederate! Oh, God! He never passed the gate. If you know all, then tell
all—how did he go?”

She
faltered, weeping: “He loved you, he willed you to live and forget him, and be
happy…”

“How
did he go?” repeated Matthew, in a voice so ill-supplied with breath it seemed
he might strangle on the words.

“Across
the brook,” she said in a broken whisper, “making the quickest way for Wales.
He said… he has kin there…”

He
drew in hissing breath and took his hands from her, leaving her drooping
forward on her face as he let go of her wrists. He had turned his back and
flung away from her, all they had shared forgotten, his obsession plucking him
away. She did not understand, there was no way she could come to terms so
rapidly with all that had happened, but she knew she had loosed her hold of her
love, and he was in merciless flight from her in pursuit of some
incomprehensible duty in which she had no part and no right.

She
sprang up and ran after him, caught him by the arm, wound her own arms about
him, lifted her imploring face to his stony, frantic stare, and prayed him
passionately: “Let him go! Oh, let him go! He wants to go alone and leave you
to me…”

Almost
silently above her the terrible laughter, so opposed to that lovely sound as he
followed the reliquary with her, boiled like some thick, choking syrup in his
throat. He struggled to shake off her clinging hands, and when she fell to her
knees again and hung upon him with all her despairing weight he tore loose his
right hand, and struck her heavily in the face, sobbing, and so wrenched
himself loose and fled, leaving her face-down on the ground.

In
the abbot’s lodging Radulfus and his guests sat long over their meal, for they
had much to discuss. The topic which was on everyone’s lips naturally came
first.

“It
would seem,” said the abbot, “that we have been singularly favoured this
morning. Certain motions of grace we have seen before, but never yet one so
public and so persuasive, with so many witnesses. How do you say? I grow old in
experience of wonders, some of which turn out to fall somewhat short of their
promise. I know of human deception, not always deliberate, for sometimes the
deceiver is himself deceived. If saints have power, so have demons. Yet this
boy seems to me as crystal. I cannot think he either cheats or is cheated.”

“I
have heard,” said Hugh, “of cripples who discarded their crutches and walked
without them, only to relapse when the fervour of the occasion was over. Time
will prove whether this one takes to his crutches again.”

“I
shall speak with him later,” said the abbot, “after the excitement has cooled.
I hear from Brother Edmund that Brother Cadfael has been treating the boy these
three days he has been here. That may have eased his condition, but it can
scarcely have brought about so sudden a cure. No, I must say it, I truly
believe our house has been the happy scene of divine grace. I will speak also
with Cadfael, who must know the boy’s condition.”

Olivier
sat quiet and deferential in the presence of so reverend a churchman as the abbot,
but Hugh observed that his arched lids lifted and his eyes kindled at Cadfael’s
name. So he knew who it was he sought, and something more than a distant salute
in action had passed between that strangely assorted pair.

“And
now I should be glad,” said the abbot, “to hear what news you bring from the
south. Have you been in Westminster with the empress’s court? For I hear she is
now installed there.”

Olivier
gave his account of affairs in London readily, and answered questions with
goodwill. “My lord has remained in Oxford, it was at his wish I undertook this
errand. I was not in London, I set out from Winchester. But the empress is in
the palace of Westminster, and the plans for her coronation go forward,
admittedly very slowly. The city of London is well aware of its power, and
means to exact due recognition of it, or so it seems to me.” He would go no
nearer than that to voicing whatever qualms he felt about his liege lady’s
wisdom or want of it, but he jutted a dubious underlip, and momentarily
frowned. “Father, you were there at the council, you know all that happened. My
lord lost a good knight there, and I a valued friend, struck down in the
street.”

“Rainald
Bossard,” said Radulfus sombrely. “I have not forgotten.”

“Father,
I have been telling the lord sheriff here what I should like to tell also to
you. For I have a second errand to pursue, wherever I go on the business of the
empress, an errand for Rainald’s widow. Rainald had a young kinsman in his
household, who was with him when he was killed, and after that death this young
man left the lady’s service without a word, secretly. She says he had grown
closed and silent even before he vanished, and the only trace of him afterwards
was on the road to Newbury, going north. Since then, nothing. So knowing I was
bound north, she begged me to enquire for him wherever I came, for she values
and trusts him, and needs him at her side. I may not deceive you, Father, there
are those who say he has fled because he is guilty of Rainald’s death. They
claim he was besotted with Dame Juliana, and may have seized his chance in this
brawl to widow her, and get her for himself, and then taken fright because
these things were so soon being said. But I think they were not being said at all
until after he had vanished. And Juliana, who surely knows him better than any,
and looks upon him as a son, for want of children of her own, she is quite sure
of him. She wants him home and vindicated, for whatever reason he left her as
he did. And I have been asking at every lodging and monastery along the road
for word of such a young man. May I also ask here? Brother Hospitaller will
know the names of all his guests. Though a name,” he added ruefully, “is almost
all I have, for if ever I saw the man it was without knowing it was he. And the
name he may have left behind him.”

“It
is not much to go on,” said Abbot Radulfus with a smile, “but certainly you may
enquire. If he has done no wrong, I should be glad to help you to find him and
bring him off without reproach. What is his name?”

“Luc
Meverel. Twenty-four years old, they tell me, middling tall and well made, dark
of hair and eye.”

“It
could fit many hundreds of young men,” said the abbot, shaking his head, “and
the name I doubt he will have put off if he has anything to hide, or even if he
fears it may be unfairly besmirched. Yet try. I grant you in such a gathering
as we have here now a young man who wished to be lost might bury himself very
thoroughly. Denis will know which of his guests is of the right age and
quality. For clearly your Luc Meverel is well-born, and most likely tutored and
lettered.”

“Certainly
so,” said Olivier.

“Then
by all means, and with my blessing, go freely to Brother Denis, and see what he
can do to help you. He has an excellent memory, he will be able to tell you
which, among the men here, is of suitable years, and gentle. You can but try.”

On
leaving the lodging they went first, however, to look for Brother Cadfael. And
Brother Cadfael was not so easily found. Hugh’s first resort was the workshop
in the herbarium, where they habitually compounded their affairs. But there was
no Cadfael there. Nor was he with Brother Anselm in the cloister, where he well
might have been debating some nice point in the evening’s music. Nor checking
the medicine cupboard in the infirmary, which must surely have been depleted
during these last few days, but had clearly been restocked in the early hours
of this day of glory. Brother Edmund said mildly: “He was here. I had a poor
soul who bled from the mouth, too gorged, I think, with devotion. But he’s
quiet and sleeping now, the flux has stopped. Cadfael went away some while
since.”

Brother
Oswin, vigorously fighting weeds in the kitchen garden, had not seen his
superior since dinner. “But I think,” he said, blinking thoughtfully into the
sun in the zenith, “he may be in the church.”

Cadfael
was on his knees at the foot of Saint Winifred’s three-tread stairway to grace,
his hands not lifted in prayer but folded in the lap of his habit, his eyes not
closed in entreaty but wide open to absolution. He had been kneeling there for
some time, he who was usually only too glad to rise from knees now perceptibly
stiffening. He felt no pains, no griefs of any kind, nothing but an immense
thankfulness in which he floated like a fish in an ocean. An ocean as pure and
blue and drowningly deep and clear as that well-remembered eastern sea, the
furthest extreme of the tideless midland sea of legend, at the end of which lay
the holy city of Jerusalem, Our Lord’s burial-place and hard-won kingdom. The
saint who presided here, whether she lay here or no, had launched him into a
shining infinity of hope. Her mercies might be whimsical, they were certainly
magisterial. She had reached her hand to an innocent, well deserving her
kindness. What had she intended towards this less innocent but no less needy
being?