The Pilgram of Hate (2 page)

Hugh
raised quizzical brows, and cast a glance over his shoulder towards the long
roof of the great abbey church, where reputedly the lady in question slept in a
sealed reliquary on her own altar. An elegant coffin just long enough to
contain a small and holy Welshwoman, with the neat, compact bones of her race.

“Hardly
room within there for two,” he said mildly.

“Not
two of our gross make, no, not there. There was space enough where we put
them.” He knew he was listened to, now, and heard with sharp intelligence, if
not yet understood.

“Are
you telling me,” wondered Hugh no less mildly, “that she is not there in that
elaborate shrine of yours, where everyone else knows she is?”

“Can
I tell? Many a time I’ve wished it could be possible to be in two places at
once. A thing too hard for me, but for a saint, perhaps, possible? Three nights
and three days she was in there, that I do know. She may well have left a
morsel of her holiness within, if only by way of thanks to us who took her out
again, and put her back where I still, and always shall, believe she wished to
be. But for all that,” owned Cadfael, shaking his head, “there’s a trailing fringe
of doubt that nags at me. How if I read her wrong?”

“Then
your only resort is confession and penance,” said Hugh lightly.

“Not
until Brother Mark is full-fledged a priest!” Young Mark was gone from his
mother-house and from his flock at Saint Giles, gone to the household of the
bishop of Lichfield, with Leoric Aspley’s endowment to see him through his
studies, and the goal of all his longings shining distant and clear before him,
the priesthood for which God had designed him. “I’m saving for him,” said
Cadfael, “all those sins I feel, perhaps mistakenly, to be no sins. He was my
right hand and a piece of my heart for three years, and knows me better than
any man living. Barring, it may be, yourself?” he added, and slanted a
guileless glance at his friend. “He will know the truth of me, and by his
judgement and for his absolution I’ll embrace any penance. You might deliver
the judgement, Hugh, but you cannot deliver the absolution.”

“Nor
the penance, neither,” said Hugh, and laughed freely. “So tell it to me, and go
free without penalty.”

The
idea of confiding was unexpectedly pleasing and acceptable. “It’s a long
story,” said Cadfeel warningly.

“Then
now’s your time, for whatever I can do here is done, nothing is asked of me but
watchfulness and patience, and why should I wait unentertained if there’s a
good story to be heard? And you are at leisure until Vespers. You may even get
merit,” said Hugh, composing his face into priestly solemnity, “by unburdening
your soul to the secular arm. And I can be secret,” he said, “as any
confessional.”

“Wait,
then,” said Cadfael, “while I fetch a draught of that maturing wine, and come
within to the bench under the north wall, where the afternoon sun falls. We may
as well be at ease while I talk.”

“It
was a year or so before I knew you,” said Cadfael, bracing his back comfortably
against the warmed, stony roughness of the herb-garden wall. “We were without a
tame saint to our house, and somewhat envious of Wenlock, where the Cluny
community had discovered their Saxon foundress Milburga, and were making great
play with her. And we had certain signs that sent off an ailing brother of ours
into Wales, to bathe at Holywell, where this girl Winifred died her first
death, and brought forth her healing spring. There was her own patron, Saint
Beuno, ready and able to bring her back to life, but the spring remained, and
did wonders. So it came to Prior Robert that the lady could be persuaded to
leave Gwytherin, where she died her second death and was buried, and come and
bring her glory to us here in Shrewsbury. I was one of the party he took with
him to deal with the parish there, and bring them to give up the saint’s
bones.”

“All
of which,” said Hugh, warmed and attentive beside him, “I know very well, since
all men here know it.”

“Surely!
But you do not know to the end what followed. There was one Welsh lord in
Gwytherin who would not suffer the girl to be disturbed, and would not be
persuaded or bribed or threatened into letting her go. And he died, Hugh,
murdered. By one of us, a brother who came from high rank, and had his eyes
already set on a mitre. And when we came near to accusing him, it was his life
or a better. There were certain young people of that place put in peril by him,
the dead lord’s daughter and her lover. The boy lashed out in anger, with good
reason, seeing his girl wounded and bleeding. He was stronger than he knew. The
murderer’s neck was broken.”

“How
many knew of this?” asked Hugh, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully upon the
glossy-leaved rose-bushes.

“When
it befell, only the lovers, the dead man and I. And Saint Winifred, who had
been raised from her grave and laid in that casket of which you and all men
know. She knew. She was there. From the moment I raised her,” said Cadfael,
“and by God, it was I who took her from the soil, and I who restored her—and
still that makes me glad—from the moment I uncovered those slender bones, I
felt in mine they wished only to be left in peace. It was so little and so wild
and quiet a graveyard there, with the small church long out of use, meadow
flowers growing over all, and the mounds so modest and green. And Welsh soil!
The girl was Welsh, like me, her church was of the old persuasion, what did she
know of this alien English shire? And I had those young things to keep. Who
would have taken their word or mine against all the force of the church? They
would have closed their ranks to bury the scandal, and bury the boy with it,
and he guilty of nothing but defending his dear. So I took measures.”

Hugh’s
mobile lips twitched. “Now indeed you amaze me! And what measures were those?
With a dead brother to account for, and Prior Robert to keep sweet…”

“Ah,
well, Robert is a simpler soul than he supposes, and then I had a good deal of
help from the dead brother himself. He’d been busy building himself such a
reputation for sanctity, delivering messages from the saint herself—it was he
told us she was offering the grave she’d left to the murdered man—and going
into trance-sleeps, and praying to leave this world and be taken into bliss
living… So we did him that small favour. He’d been keeping a solitary
night-watch in the old church, and in the morning when it ended, there were his
habit and sandals fallen together at his prayer-stool, and the body of him
lifted clean out of them, in sweet odours and a shower of may-blossom. That was
how he claimed the saint had already visited him, why should not Robert recall
it and believe? Certainly he was gone. Why look for him? Would a modest brother
of our house be running through the Welsh woods mother-naked?”

“Are
you telling me,” asked Hugh cautiously, “That what you have there in the
reliquary is not… Then the casket had not yet been sealed?” His eyebrows were
tangling with his black forelock, but his voice was soft and unsurprised.

“Well…”
Cadfael twitched his blunt brown nose bashfully between finger and thumb.
“Sealed it was, but there are ways of dealing with seals that leave them
unblemished. It’s one of the more dubious of my remembered skills, but for all
that I was glad of it then.”

“And
you put the lady back in the place that was hers, along with her champion?”

“He
was a decent, good man, and had spoken up for her nobly. She would not grudge
him house-room. I have always thought,” confided Cadfael, “that she was not
displeased with us. She has shown her power in Gwytherin since that time, by
many miracles, so I cannot believe she is angry. But what a little troubles me
is that she has not so far chosen to favour us with any great mark of her
patronage here, to keep Robert happy, and set my mind at rest. Oh, a few little
things, but nothing of unmistakable note. How if I have displeased her, after
all? Well for me, who know what we have within there on the altar—and mea culpa
if I did wrongly! But what of the innocents who do not know, and come in good
faith, hoping for grace from her? What if I have been the means of their
deprivation and loss?”

“I
see,” said Hugh with sympathy, “that Brother Mark had better make haste through
the degrees of ordination, and come quickly to lift the load from you. Unless,”
he added with a flashing sidelong smile, “Saint Winifred takes pity on you
first, and sends you a sign.”

“I
still do not see,” mused Cadfael, “what else I could have done. It was an
ending that satisfied everyone, both here and there. The children were free to
marry and be happy, the village still had its saint, and she had her own people
round her. Robert had what he had gone to find—or thought he had, which is the
same thing. And Shrewsbury abbey has its festival, with every hope of a full
guest-hall, and glory and gain in good measure. If she would but just cast an
indulgent look this way, and wink her eye, to let me know I understood her
aright.”

“And
you’ve never said word of this to anyone?”

“Never
a word. But the whole village of Gwytherin knows it,” admitted Cadfael with a
remembering grin. “No one told, no one had to tell, but they knew. There wasn’t
a man missing when we took up the reliquary and set out for home. They helped
to carry it, whipped together a little chariot to bear it. Robert thought he
had them nicely tamed, even those who’d been most reluctant from the first. It
was a great joy to him. A simple soul at bottom! It would be great pity to undo
him now, when he’s busy writing his book about the saint’s life, and how he
brought her to Shrewsbury.”

“I
would not have the heart to put him to such distress,” said Hugh. “Least said,
best for all. Thanks be to God, I have nothing to do with canon law, the common
law of a land almost without law costs me enough pains.” No need to say that
Cadfael could be sure of his secrecy, that was taken for granted on both sides.
“Well, you speak the lady’s own tongue, no doubt she understood you well enough,
with or without words. Who knows? When this festival of yours takes place—the
twenty-second day of June, you say?—she may take pity on you, and send you a
great miracle to set your mind at rest.”

And
so she might, thought Cadfael an hour later, on his way to obey the summons of
the Vesper bell. Not that he had deserved so signal an honour, but there surely
must be one somewhere among the unceasing stream of pilgrims who did deserve
it, and could not with justice be rejected. He would be perfectly and humbly
and cheerfully content with that. What if she was eighty miles or so away, in
what was left of her body? It had been a miraculous body in this life, once
brutally dead and raised alive again, what limits of time or space could be set
about such a being? If it so pleased her she could be both quiet and content in
her grave with Rhisiart, lulled by bird-song in the hawthorn trees, and here
attentive and incorporeal, a little flame of spirit in the coffin of unworthy
Columbanus, who had killed not for her exaltation but for his own.

Brother
Cadfael went to Vespers curiously relieved at having confided to his friend a
secret from before the time when they had first known each other, in the
beginning as potential antagonists stepping subtly to outwit each other, then
discovering how much they had in common, the old man—alone with himself Cadfael
admitted to being somewhat over the peak of a man’s prime—and the young one,
just setting out, exceedingly well-equipped in shrewdness and wit, to build his
fortune and win his wife. And both he had done, for he was now undisputed
sheriff of Shropshire, if under a powerless and captive king, and up there in
the town, near St Mary’s church, his wife and his year-old son made a nest for
his private happiness when he shut the door on his public burdens.

Cadfael
thought of his godson, the sturdy imp who already clutched his way lustily
round the rooms of Hugh’s town house, climbed unaided into a godfather’s lap,
and began to utter human sounds of approval, enquiry, indignation and
affection. Every man asks of heaven a son. Hugh had his, as promising a sprig
as ever budded from the stem. So, by proxy, had Cadfael, a son in God.

There
was, after all, a great deal of human happiness in the world, even a world so
torn and mangled with conflict, cruelty and greed. So it had always been, and
always would be. And so be it, provided the indomitable spark of joy never went
out.

In
the refectory, after supper and grace, in the grateful warmth and lingering
light of the end of May, when they were shuffling their benches to rise from
table, Prior Robert Pennant rose first in his place, levering erect his more
than six feet of lean, austere prelate, silver-tonsured and ivory-featured.

“Brothers,
I have received a further message from Father Abbot. He has reached Warwick on
his way home to us, and hopes to be with us by the fourth day of June or
earlier. He bids us be diligent in making proper preparation for the
celebration of Saint Winifred’s translation, our most gracious patroness.” Perhaps
the abbot had so instructed, in duty bound, but it was Robert himself who laid
such stress on it, viewing himself, as he did, as the patron of their
patroness. His large patrician eye swept round the refectory tables, settling
upon those heads most deeply committed. “Brother Anselm, you have the music
already in hand?”