The Pilgram of Hate (5 page)

Cadfael
smiled into the glow of the brazier and did not deny it. “So his lord is there
in the empress’s train, is he? And this knight who was killed was in d’Angers’
service? That was a very ill thing, Hugh.”

“So
Abbot Radulfus thinks,” said Hugh sombrely.

“In
the dusk and in confusion—and all got clean away, even the one who used the
knife. A foul thing, for surely that was no chance blow. The clerk Christian
escaped out of their hands, yet one among them turned on the rescuer before he
fled. It argues a deal of hate at being thwarted, to have ventured that last
moment before running. And is it left so? And Winchester full of those who
should most firmly stand for justice?”

“Why,
some among them would surely have been well enough pleased if that bold clerk
had spilled his blood in the gutter, as well as the knight. Some may well have
set the hunt on him.”

“Well
for the empress’s good name,” said Cadfael, “that there was one at least of her
men stout enough to respect an honest opponent, and stand by him to the death.
And shame if that death goes unpaid for.”

“Old
friend,” said Hugh ruefully, rising to take his leave, “England has had to
swallow many such a shame these last years. It grows customary to sigh and
shrug and forget. At which, as I know, you are a very poor hand. And I have
seen you overturn custom more than once, and been glad of it. But not even you
can do much now for Rainald Bossard, bar praying for his soul. It is a very
long way from here to Winchester.”

“It
is not so far,” said Cadfael, as much to himself as to his friend, “not by many
a mile, as it was an hour since.”

He
went to Vespers, and to supper in the refectory, and thereafter to Collations
and Compline, and all with one remembered face before his mind’s eye, so that
he paid but fractured attention to the readings, and had difficulty in
concentrating his thoughts on prayer. Though it might have been a kind of
prayer he was offering throughout, in gratitude and praise and humility.

So
suave, so young, so dark and vital a face, startling in its beauty when he had
first seen it over the girl’s shoulder, the face of the young squire sent to
bring away the Hugonin children to their uncle and guardian. A long, spare,
wide-browed face, with a fine scimitar of a nose and a supple bow of a mouth,
and the fierce, fearless, golden eyes of a hawk. A head capped closely with
curving, blue-black hair, coiling crisply at his temples and clasping his
cheeks like folded wings. So young and yet so formed a face, east and west at
home in it, shaven clean like a Norman, olive-skinned like a Syrian, all his
memories of the Holy Land in one human countenance. The favourite squire of
Laurence d’Angers, come home with him from the Crusade. Olivier de Bretagne.

If
his lord was there in the south with his following, in the empress’s retinue,
where else would Olivier be? The abbot might even have rubbed shoulders with
him, unbeknown, or seen him ride past at his lord’s elbow, and for one absent
moment admired his beauty. Few such faces blaze out of the humble mass of our
ordinariness, thought Cadfael, the finger of God cannot choose but mark them
out for notice, and his officers here will be the first to recognise and own
them.

And
this Rainald Bossard who is dead, an honourable man doing right by an
honourable opponent, was Olivier’s comrade, owning the same lord and pledged to
the same service. His death will be grief to Olivier. Grief to Olivier is grief
to me, a wrong done to Olivier is a wrong done to me. As far away as Winchester
may be, here am I left mourning in that dark street where a man died for a
generous act, in which, by the same token, he did not fail, for the clerk Christian
lived on to return to his lady, the queen, with his errand faithfully done.

The
gentle rustlings and stirrings of the dortoir sighed into silence outside the
frail partitions of Cadfael’s cell long before he rose from his knees, and
shook off his sandals. The little lamp by the night stairs cast only the
faintest gleam across the beams of the roof, a ceiling of pearly grey above the
darkness of his cell, his home now for—was it eighteen years or nineteen?—he
had difficulty in recalling. It was as if a part of him, heart, mind, soul,
whatever that essence might be, had not so much retired as come home to take
seisin of a heritage here, his from his birth. And yet he remembered and
acknowledged with gratitude and joy the years of his sojourning in the world,
the lusty childhood and venturous youth, the taking of the Cross and the
passion of the Crusade, the women he had known and loved, the years of his
sea-faring off the coast of the Holy Kingdom of Jerusalem, all that pilgrimage
that had led him here at last to his chosen retreat. None of it wasted, however
foolish and amiss, nothing lost, nothing vain, all of it somehow fitting him to
the narrow niche where now he served and rested. God had given him a sign, he
had no need to regret anything, only to lay all open and own it his. For God’s
viewing, not for man’s.

He
lay quiet in the darkness, straight and still like a man coffined, but easy,
with his arms lax at his sides, and his half-closed eyes dreaming on the vault
above him, where the faint light played among the beams.

There
was no lightning that night, only a consort of steady rolls of thunder both
before and after Matins and Lauds, so unalarming that many among the brothers
failed to notice them. Cadfael heard them as he rose, and as he returned to his
rest. They seemed to him a reminder and a reassurance that Winchester had
indeed moved nearer to Shrewsbury, and consoled him that his grievance was not
overlooked, but noted in heaven, and he might look to have his part yet in
collecting the debt due to Rainald Bossard. Upon which warranty, he fell
asleep.

Chapter Three

ON
THE SEVENTEENTH DAY of June Saint Winifred’s elaborate oak coffin,
silver-ornamented and lined with lead behind all its immaculate seals, was
removed from its place of honour and carried with grave and subdued ceremony
back to its temporary resting-place in the chapel of the hospital of Saint
Giles, there to wait, as once before, for the auspicious day, the twenty-second
of June. The weather was fair, sunny and still, barely a cloud in the sky, and
yet cool enough for travelling, the best of weather for pilgrims. And by the
eighteenth day the pilgrims began to arrive, a scattering of fore-runners
before the full tide began to flow.

Brother
Cadfael had watched the reliquary depart on its memorial journey with a
slightly guilty mind, for all his honest declaration that he could hardly have
done otherwise than he had done, there in the summer night in Gwytherin. So
strongly had he felt, above all, her Welshness, the feeling she must have for
the familiar tongue about her, and the tranquil flow of the seasons in her
solitude, where she had slept so long and so well in her beatitude, and worked
so many small, sweet miracles for her own people. No, he could not believe he
had made a wrong choice there. If only she would glance his way, and smile, and
say, well done!

The
very first of the pilgrims came probing into the walled herb-garden, with
Brother Denis’s directions to guide him, in search of a colleague in his own
mystery.

Cadfael
was busy weeding the close-planted beds of mint and thyme and sage late in the
afternoon, a tedious, meticulous labour in the ripeness of a favourable June,
after spring sun and shower had been nicely balanced, and growth was a green
battlefield. He backed out of a cleansed bed, and backed into a solid form,
rising startled from his knees to turn and face a rusty black brother shaped
very much like himself, though probably fifteen years younger. They stood at
gaze, two solid, squarely built brethren of the Order, eyeing each other in
instant recognition and acknowledgement.

“You
must be Brother Cadfael,” said the stranger-brother in a broad, melodious bass
voice. “Brother Hospitaller told me where to find you. My name is Adam, a
brother of Reading. I have the very charge there that you bear here, and I have
heard tell of you, even as far south as my house.”

His
eye was roving, as he spoke, towards some of Cadfael’s rarer treasures, the
eastern poppies he had brought from the Holy Land and reared here with anxious
care, the delicate fig that still contrived to thrive against the sheltering
north wall, where the sun nursed it. Cadfael warmed to him for the quickening
of his eye, and the mild greed that flushed the round, shaven face. A sturdy,
stalwart man, who moved as if confident of his body, one who might prove a man
of his hands if challenged. Well-weathered, too, a genuine outdoor man.

“You’re
more than welcome, brother,” said Cadfael heartily. “You’ll be here for the
saint’s feast? And have they found you a place in the dortoir? There are a few
cells vacant, for any of our own who come, like you.”

“My
abbot sent me from Reading with a mission to our daughter house of Leominster,”
said Brother Adam, probing with an experimental toe into the rich, well-fed
loam of Brother Cadfael’s bed of mint, and raising an eyebrow respectfully at
the quality he found. “I asked if I might prolong the errand to attend on the
translation of Saint Winifred, and I was given the needful permission. It’s
seldom I could hope to be sent so far north, and it would be pity to miss such
an opportunity.”

“And
they’ve found you a brother’s bed?” Such a man, Benedictine, gardener and
herbalist, could not be wasted on a bed in the guest-hall. Cadfael coveted him,
marking the bright eye with which the newcomer singled out his best endeavours.

“Brother
Hospitaller was so gracious. I am placed in a cell close to the novices.”

“We
shall be near neighbours,” said Cadfael contentedly. “Now come, I’ll show you
whatever we have here to show, for the main garden is on the far side of the
Foregate, along the bank of the river. But here I keep my own herber. And if
there should be anything here that can be safely carried to Reading, you may
take cuttings most gladly before you leave us.”

They
fell into a very pleasant and voluble discussion, perambulating all the walks
of the closed garden, and comparing experiences in cultivation and use. Brother
Adam of Reading had a sharp eye for rarities, and was likely to go home laden
with spoils. He admired the neatness and order of Cadfael’s workshop, the
collection of rustling bunches of dried herbs hung from the roof-beams and
under the eaves, and the array of bottles, jars and flagons along the shelves.
He had hints and tips of his own to propound, too, and the amiable contest kept
them happy all the afternoon. When they returned together to the great court
before Vespers it was to a scene notably animated, as if the bustle of
celebration was already beginning. There were horses being led down into the
stableyard, and bundles being carried in at the guest-hall. A stout elderly man,
well equipped for riding, paced across towards the church to pay his first
respects on arrival, with a servant trotting at his heels.

Brother
Paul’s youngest charges, all eyes and curiosity, ringed the gatehouse to watch
the early arrivals, and were shooed aside by Brother Jerome, very busy as usual
with all the prior’s errands. Though the boys did not go very far, and formed
their ring again as soon as Jerome was out of sight. A few of the citizens of
the Foregate had gathered in the street to watch, excited dogs running among
their legs.

“Tomorrow,”
said Cadfael, eyeing the scene, “there will be many more. This is but the
beginning. Now if the weather stays fair we shall have a very fine festival for
our saint.”

And
she will understand that all is in her honour, he thought privately, even if
she does lie very far from here. And who knows whether she may not pay us a
visit, out of the kindness of her heart? What is distance to a saint, who can
be where she wills in the twinkling of an eye?

The
guest-hall filled steadily on the morrow. All day long they came, some singly,
some in groups as they had met and made comfortable acquaintance on the road,
some afoot, some on ponies, some whole and hearty and on holiday, some who had
travelled only a few miles, some who came from far away, and among them a
number who went on crutches, or were led along by better-sighted friends, or
had grievous deformities or skin diseases, or debilitating illnesses; and all
these hoping for relief.

Cadfael
went about the regular duties of his day, divided between church and herbarium,
but with an interested eye open for all there was to see whenever he crossed
the great court, boiling now with activity. Every arriving figure, every face,
engaged his notice, but as yet distantly, none being provided with a name, to
make him individual. Such of them as needed his services for relief would be
directed to him, such as came his way by chance would be entitled to his whole
attention, freely offered.

It
was the woman he noticed first, bustling across the court from the gatehouse to
the guest-hall with a basket on her arm, fresh from the Foregate market with
new-baked bread and little cakes, soon after Prime. A careful housewife, to be
off marketing so early even on holiday, decided about what she wanted, and not
content to rely on the abbey bakehouse to provide it. A sturdy, confident
figure of a woman, perhaps fifty years of age but in full rosy bloom. Her dress
was sober and plain, but of good material and proudly kept, her wimple
snow-white beneath her head-cloth of brown linen. She was not tall, but so
erect that she could pass for tall, and her face was round, wide-eyed and
broad-cheeked, with a determined chin to it.