The Pilgram of Hate (27 page)

He
recalled also, when he was most diligent in prayer, that these few days while
Saint Winifred was manifesting her virtue in disentangling the troubled lives
of some half-dozen people in Shrewsbury, were also the vital days when the fates
of Englishmen in general were being determined, perhaps with less compassion
and wisdom. For by this time the date of the empress’s coronation might well be
settled, the crown even now placed upon her head. No doubt God and the saints
had that consideration in mind, too.

Matthew-Luc
came once again to ask audience of the abbot, a little before Vespers. Radulfus
had him admitted without question, and sat with him alone, divining his present
need.

“Father,
will you hear me my confession? For I need absolution from the vow I could not
keep. And I do earnestly desire to be clean of the past before I undertake the
future.”

“It
is a right and a wise desire,” said Radulfus. “One thing tell me, are you
asking absolution for failing to fulfil the oath you swore?”

Luc,
already on his knees, raised his head for a moment from the abbot’s knee, and
showed a face open and clear. “No, Father, but for ever swearing such an oath.
Even grief has its arrogance.”

“Then
you have learned, my son, that vengeance belongs only to God?”

“More
than that, Father,” said Luc. “I have learned that in God’s hands vengeance is
safe. However long delayed, however strangely manifested, the reckoning is
sure.”

When
it was done, when he had raked out of his heart, with measured voice and long
pauses for thought, every drifted grain of rancour and bitterness and
impatience that fretted him, and received absolution, he rose with a great
sigh, and raised a bright and resolute face.

“Now,
Father, if I may pray of you one more grace, let me have one of your priests to
join me to a wife before I go from here. Here, where I am made clean and new, I
would have love and life begin together.”

Chapter Sixteen

ON
THE NEXT MORNING, which was the twenty-fourth day of June, the general bustle
of departure began. There was packing of belongings, buying and parcelling of
food and drink for the journey, and much leave-taking from friends newly made,
and arranging of company for the road. No doubt the saint would have due regard
for her own reputation, and keep the June sun shining until all her devotees
were safely home, and with a wonderful tale to tell. Most of them knew only
half the wonder, but even that was wonder enough.

Among
the early departures went Brother Adam of Reading, in no great hurry along the
way, for today he would go no farther than Reading’s daughter-house of
Leominster, where there would be letters waiting for him to carry home to his
abbot. He set out with a pouch well filled with seeds of species his garden did
not yet possess, and a scholarly mind still pondering the miraculous healing he
had witnessed from every theological angle, in order to be able to expound its
full significance when he reached his own monastery. It had been a most
instructive and enlightening festival.

“I’d
meant to start for home today, too,” said Mistress Weaver to her cronies
Mistress Glover and the apothecary’s widow, with whom she had formed a strong
matronly alliance during these memorable days, “but now there’s such work
doing, I hardly know whether I’m waking or sleeping, and I must stay over yet a
night or two. Who’d ever have thought what would come of it, when I told my lad
we ought to come and make our prayers here to the good saint, and have faith
that she’d be listening? Now it seems I’m to lose the both of them, my poor
sister’s chicks; for Rhun, God bless him, is set on staying here and taking the
cowl, for he says he won’t ever leave the blessed girl who healed him. And
truly I don’t wonder at it, and won’t stand in his way, for he’s too good for
this wicked world outside, so he is! And now comes young Matthew, no, but it
seems we must call him Luc, now, and he’s well-born, if from a poor landless
branch, and will come in for a manor or two in time, by his good kinswoman’s
taking him in…”

“Well,
and so did you take the boy and girl in,” pointed out the apothecary’s widow
warmly, “and gave them a roof and a living. There’s good sound justice there.”

“Well,
so Matthew, I mean Luc, he comes to me and asks for my girl for his wife, last
night it was, and when I answered honestly, for honest I am and always will be,
that my Melangell has but a meagre dowry, though the best I can give her I
will, what says he? That as at this moment he himself has not one penny to his
name in this world, but must go debtor to the young lord’s charity that came to
find him, and as for the future, if fortune favours him he’ll be thankful, and
if not, he has hands and a will, and can make a way for two to live. Provided
the other is my girl, he says, for there’s none other for him. So what can I
say but God bless them both, and stay to see them wedded?”

“It’s
a woman’s duty,” said Mistress Glover heartily, “to make sure all’s done
properly, when she hands over a young girl to a husband. But sure, you’ll miss
the two of them.”

“So
I will,” agreed Dame Alice, shedding a few tears rather of pride and joy than
of grief, at the advancement to semi-sainthood and promising matrimony of the
charges who had cost her dear enough, and could now be blessed and sped on
their respective and respectable ways with a quiet mind. “So I will! But to see
them both set up where they would be… And good children both, that will take
pains for me when I come to need, as I have for them.”

“And
they’re to marry here, tomorrow?” asked the apothecary’s widow, visibly
considering putting off her own departure for another day.

“They
are indeed, before Mass in the morning. So it seems I’ll have none to take home
but my sole self,” said Dame Alice, dropping another proud tear or two, and
wearing her reflected glory with admirable grace, “when I take to the road
again. But the day after tomorrow there’s a sturdy company leaving southward,
and with them I’ll go.”

“And
duty well done, my dear soul,” said Mistress Glover, embracing her friend in a
massive arm, “duty very well done!”

They
were married in the privacy of the Lady Chapel, by Brother Paul, who was not
only master of the novices, but the chief of their confessors, too, and already
had Rhun under his care and instruction, and felt a fatherly interest in him,
which the boy’s affection very readily extended to embrace the sister. No one
else was present but the family and their witnesses, and the bridal pair wore
no festal garments, for they had none. Luc was in the serviceable brown cotte
and hose he had slept in, out in the fields, and the same crumpled shirt,
though newly washed and smoothed. Melangell was neat and modest in her
homespun, proudly balancing her coronal of braided, deep-gold hair. They were
pale as lilies, bright as stars, and solemn as the grave.

After
high and moving events, daily life must still go on. Cadfael went to his work
that afternoon well content. With the meadow grasses in ripe seed and the
harvest imminent he had preparations to make for two seasonal ailments which
could be relied upon to recur every year. There were some who suffered with
eruptions on their hands when working in the harvest, and others who took to
sneezing and wheezing, with running eyes, and needed lotions to help them.

He
was busy bruising fresh leaves of dock and mandrake in a mortar for a soothing
ointment, when he heard light, long-striding steps approaching along the gravel
of the path, and then half of the sunlight from the wide-open door was cut off,
as someone hesitated in the doorway. He turned with the mortar hugged to his
chest, and the green-stained wooden pestle arrested in his hand, and there
stood Olivier, dipping his tall head to evade the hanging bunches of herbs, and
asking, in the mellow, confident voice of one assured of the answer, “May I
come in?”

He
was in already, smiling, staring about him with a boy’s candid curiosity, for
he had never been here before. “I’ve been a truant, I know, but with two days
to wait before Luc’s marriage I thought best to get on with my errand to the
sheriff of Stafford, being so close, and then come back here. I was back, as I
said I’d be, in time to see them wedded. I thought you would have been there.”

“So
I would, but I was called out to Saint Giles. Some poor soul of a beggar
stumbled in there overnight covered with sores, they were afraid of a contagion,
but it’s no such matter. If he’d had treatment earlier it would have been an
easy matter to cure him, but a week or so resting in the hospital will do him
no harm. Our pair of youngsters here had no need of me. I’m a part of what’s
over and done with for them, you’re a part of what’s beginning.”

“Melangell
told me where I should find you, however, you were missed. And here I am.”

“And
as welcome as the day,” said Cadfael, laying his mortar aside. Long, shapely
hands gripped both his hands heartily, and Olivier stooped his olive cheek for
the greeting kiss, as simply as for the parting kiss when they had separated at
Bromfield. “Come, sit, let me offer you wine, my own making. You knew, then,
that those two would marry?”

“I
saw them meet, when I brought him back here. Small doubt how it would end.
Afterwards he told me his intent.

When
two are agreed, and know their own minds,” said Olivier blithely, “everything
else will give way. I shall see them both properly provided for the journey
home, since I must go by a more roundabout way.”

When
two are agreed, and know their own minds! Cadfael remembered confidences now a
year and a half past. He poured wine carefully, his hand being a shade less
steady than usual, and sat down beside his visitor, the young, wide shoulder
firm and vital against his elderly and stiff one, the clear, elegant profile
close, and a pleasure to his eyes. “Tell me,” he said, “about Ermina,” and was
sure of the answer even before Olivier turned on him his sudden blinding smile.

“If
I had known my travels would bring me to you, I should have had so many
messages to bring you, from both of them. From Yves, and from my wife!”

“Aaaah!”
breathed Cadfael, on a deep, delighted sigh. “So, as I thought, as I hoped! You
have made good, then, what you told me, that they would acknowledge your worth
and give her to you.” Two, there, who had indeed known their own minds, and
been invincibly agreed! “When was this match made?”

“This
Christmas past, in Gloucester. She is there now, so is the boy. He is
Laurence’s heir, just fifteen now. He wanted to come to Winchester with us, but
Laurence wouldn’t let him be put in peril. They are safe, I thank God. If ever
this chaos is ended,” said Olivier very solemnly, “I will bring her to you, or
you to her. She does not forget you.”

“Nor
I her, nor I her! Nor the boy. He rode with me twice, asleep in my arms, I
still recall the warmth and the shape and the weight of him. A good boy as ever
stepped!”

“He’d
be a load for you now,” said Olivier, laughing. This year past, he’s shot up
like a weed, he’ll be taller than you.”

“Ah,
well, I’m beginning to shrink like a spent weed. And you are happy?” asked
Cadfael, thirsting for more blessedness even than he already had. “You and she
both?”

“Beyond
what I know how to express,” said Olivier no less gravely. “How glad I am to
have seen you again, and been able to tell you so! Do you remember the last
time? When I waited with you in Bromfield to take Ermina and Yves home? And you
drew me maps on the floor to show me the ways?”

There
is a point at which joy is only just bearable. Cadfael got up to refill the
wine-cups, and turn his face away for a moment from a brightness almost too
bright. “Ah, now, if this is to be a contest in “do-you-remembers” we shall be
at it until Vespers, for not one detail of that time have I forgotten. So let’s
have this flask here within reach, and settle down to it in comfort.”

But
there was an hour and more left before Vespers when Hugh put an abrupt end to
remembering. He came in haste, with a face blazingly alert, and full of news.
Even so he was slow to speak, not wishing to exult openly in what must be only
shock and dismay to Olivier.

“There’s
news. A courier rode in from Warwick just now, they’re passing the word north
by stages as fast as horse can go.” They were both on their feet by then,
intent upon his face, and waiting for good or evil, for he contained it well. A
good face for keeping secrets, and under strong control now out of courteous
consideration. “I fear,” he said, “it will not come as gratefully to you,
Olivier, as I own it does to me.”

“From
the south…” said Olivier, braced and still. “From London? The empress?”

“Yes,
from London. All is overturned in a day. There’ll be no coronation. Yesterday
as they sat at dinner in Westminster, the Londoners suddenly rang the tocsin,
all the city bells. The entire town came out in arms, and marched on
Westminster. They’re fled, Olivier, she and all her court, fled in the clothes
they wore and with very little else, and the city men have plundered the palace
and driven out even the last hangers-on. She never made move to win them,
nothing but threats and reproaches and demands for money ever since she
entered. She’s let the crown slip through her fingers for want of a few soft
words and a queen’s courtesy. For your part,” said Hugh, with real compunction,
“I’m sorry! For mine, I find it a great deliverance.”