The Pilgram of Hate (8 page)

The
girl was there, still and solitary against the sun-warmed wall, the brightness
of her face clouded over, as though some eager expectation had turned into a
grey disappointment; but at the sight of Rhun emerging she rose with a resolute
smile for him, and her voice was as gay and heartening as ever as they moved
slowly away.

He
had an opportunity to study all of them next day at High Mass, when doubtless
his mind should have been on higher things, but obstinately would not rise
above the quivering crest of Mistress Weaver’s head-cloth, and the curly dark
crown of Matthew’s thick crop of hair. Almost all the inhabitants of the
guest-halls, the gentles who had separate apartments as well as the male and
female pilgrims who shared the two common dortoirs, came in their best to this
one office of the day, whatever they did with the rest of it. Mistress Weaver
paid devout attention to every word of the office, and several times nudged
Melangell sharply in the ribs to recall her to duty, for as often as not her
head was turned sidewise, and her gaze directed rather at Matthew than at the
altar. No question but her fancy, if not her whole heart, was deeply engaged
there. As for Matthew, he stood at Ciaran’s shoulder, always within touch. But
twice at least he looked round, and his brooding eyes rested, with no change of
countenance, upon Melangell. Yet on the one occasion when their glances met, it
was Matthew who turned abruptly away.

That
young man, thought Cadfael, aware of the broken encounter of eyes, has a thing
to do which no girl must be allowed to hinder or spoil: to get his fellow
safely to his journey’s end at Aberdaron.

He
was already a celebrated figure in the enclave, this Ciaran. There was nothing
secret about him, he spoke freely and humbly of himself. He had been intended
for ordination, but had not yet gone beyond the first step as sub-deacon, and
had not reached, and now never would reach, the tonsure. Brother Jerome, always
a man to insinuate himself as close as might be to any sign of superlative
virtue and holiness, had cultivated and questioned him, and freely retailed
what he had learned to any of the brothers who would listen. The story of
Ciaran’s mortal sickness and penitential pilgrimage home to Aberdaron was known
to all. The austerities he practised upon himself made a great impression.
Brother Jerome held that the house was honoured in receiving such a man. And
indeed that lean, passionate face, burning-eyed beneath the uncropped brown
hair, had a vehement force and fervour.

Rhun
could not kneel, but stood steady and stoical on his crutches throughout the
office, his eyes fixed, wide and bright, upon the altar. In this soft, dim
light within, already reflecting from every stone surface the muted brightness
of a cloudless day outside, Cadfael saw that the boy was beautiful, the planes
of his face as suave and graceful as any girl’s, the curving of his fair hair
round ears and cheeks angelically pure and chaste. If the woman with no son of
her own doted on him, and was willing to forsake her living for a matter of
weeks on the off-chance of a miracle that would heal him, who could wonder at
her?

Since
both his attention and his eyes were straying, Cadfael gave up the struggle and
let them stray at large over all those devout heads, gathered in a close
assembly and filling the nave of the church. An important pilgrimage has much
of the atmosphere of a public fair about it, and brings along with it all the
hangers-on who frequent such occasions, the pickpockets, the plausible salesmen
of relics, sweetmeats, remedies, the fortune-tellers, the gamblers, the
swindlers and cheats of all kinds. And some of these cultivate the most
respectable of appearances, and prefer to work from within the pale rather than
set up in the Foregate as at a market. It was always worth running an eye over
the ranks within, as Hugh’s sergeants were certainly doing along the ranks
without, to mark down probable sources of trouble before ever the trouble
began.

This
congregation certainly looked precisely what it purported to be. Nevertheless,
there were a few there worth a second glance. Three modest, unobtrusive
tradesmen who had arrived closely one after another and rapidly and openly made
acquaintance, to all appearances until then strangers: Walter Bagot, glover;
John Shure, tailor; William Hales, farrier. Small craftsmen making this their
summer holiday, and modestly out to enjoy it. And why not? Except that Cadfael
had noted the tailor’s hands devoutly folded, and observed that he cultivated
the long, well-tended nails of a fairground sharper, hardly suitable for a
tailor’s work. He made a mental note of their faces, the glover rounded and
glossy, as if oiled with the same dressing he used on his leathers, the tailor
lean-jowled and sedate, with lank hair curtaining a lugubrious face, the
farrier square, brown and twinkling of eye, the picture of honest good-humour.

They
might be what they claimed. They might not. Hugh would be on the watch, so
would the careful tavern-keepers of the Foregate and the town, by no means
eager to hold their doors open to the fleecers and skinners of their own
neighbours and customers.

Cadfael
went out from Mass with his brethren, very thoughtful, and found Rhun already
waiting for him in the herbarium.

The
boy sat passive and submitted himself to Cadfael’s handling, saying no word
beyond his respectful greeting. The rhythm of the questing fingers, patiently
coaxing apart the rigid tissues that lamed him, had a soothing effect, even
when they probed deeply enough to cause pain. He let his head lean back against
the timbers of the wall, and his eyes gradually closed. The tension of his
cheeks and lips showed that he was not sleeping, but Cadfael was able to study
the boy’s face closely as he worked on him, and note his pallor, and the dark
rings round his eyes.

“Well,
did you take the dose I gave you for the night?” asked Cadfael, guessing at the
answer.

“No.”
Rhun opened his eyes apprehensively, to see if he was to be reproved for it,
but Cadfael’s face showed neither surprise nor reproach.

“Why
not?”

“I
don’t know. Suddenly I felt there was no need. I was happy,” said Rhun, his
eyes again closed, the better to examine his own actions and motives. “I had
prayed. It’s not that I doubt the saint’s power. Suddenly it seemed to me that
I need not even wish to be healed… that I ought to offer up my lameness and
pain freely, not as a price for favour. People bring offerings, and I have
nothing else to offer. Do you think it might be acceptable? I meant it humbly.”

There
could hardly be, thought Cadfael, among all her devotees, a more costly
oblation. He has gone far along a difficult road who has come to the point of
seeing that deprivation, pain and disability are of no consequence at all,
beside the inward conviction of grace, and the secret peace of the soul. An
acceptance which can only be made for a man’s own self, never for any other.
Another’s grief is not to be tolerated, if there can be anything done to
alleviate it.

“And
did you sleep well?”

“No.
But it didn’t matter. I lay quiet all night long. I tried to bear it gladly.
And I was not the only one there wakeful.” He slept in the common dormitory for
the men, and there must be several among his fellows there afflicted in one way
or another, besides the sick and possibly contagious whom Brother Edmund had
isolated in the infirmary. “Ciaran was restless, too,” said Rhun reflectively,
“When it was all silent, after Lauds, he got up very quietly from his cot,
trying not to disturb anyone, and started wards the door. I thought then how
strange it was that he took his belt and scrip with him…”

Cadfael
was listening intently enough by this time. Why, indeed, if a man merely needed
relief for his body during the night, should he burden himself with carrying
his possessions about with him? Though the habit of being wary of theft, in
such shared accommodation, might persist even when half-asleep, and in monastic
care into the bargain.

“Did
he so, indeed? And what followed?”

“Matthew
has his own pallet drawn close beside Ciaran’s, even in the night he lies with
a hand stretched out to touch. Besides, you know, he seems to know by instinct
whatever ails Ciaran. He rose up in an instant, and reached out and took Ciaran
by the arm. And Ciaran started and gasped, and blinked round at him, like a man
startled awake suddenly, and whispered that he’d been asleep and dreaming, and
had dreamed it was time to start out on the road again. So then Matthew took
the scrip from him and laid it aside, and they both lay down in their beds
again, and all was quiet as before. But I don’t think Ciaran slept well, even
after that, his dream had disturbed his mind too much, I heard him twisting and
turning for a long time.”

“Did
they know,” asked Cadfael, “that you were also awake, and had heard what
passed?”

“I
can’t tell. I made no pretence, and the pain was bad, I think they must have
heard me shifting… I couldn’t help it. But of course I made no sign, it would
have been discourteous.”

So
it passed as a dream, perhaps for the benefit of Rhun, or any other who might
be wakeful as he was. True enough, a sick man troubled by night might very well
rise by stealth to leave his friend in peace, out of consideration. But then,
if he needed ease, he would have been forced to explain himself and go, when
his friend nevertheless started awake to restrain him. Instead, he had pleaded
a deluding dream, and lain down again. And men rousing in dreams do move
silently, almost as if by stealth. It could be, it must be, simply what it
seemed.

“You
travelled some miles of the way with those two, Rhun. How did you all fare
together on the road? You must have got to know them as well as any here.”

“It
was their being slow, like us, that kept us all together, after my sister was
nearly ridden down, and Matthew ran and caught her up and leaped the ditch with
her. They were just slowly overtaking us then, after that we went on all
together for company. But I wouldn’t say we got to know them—they are so rapt
in each other. And then, Ciaran was in pain, and that kept him silent, though
he did tell us where he was bound, and why. It’s true Melangell and Matthew
took to walking last, behind us, and he carried our few goods for her, having
so little of his own to carry. I never wondered at Ciaran being so silent,”
said Rhun simply, “seeing what he had to bear. And my Aunt Alice can talk for
two,” he ended guilelessly.

So
she could, and no doubt did, all the rest of the way into Shrewsbury.

“That
pair, Ciaran and Matthew,” said Cadfael, still delicately probing, “they never
told you how they came together? Whether they were kin, or friends, or had
simply met and kept company on the road? For they’re much of an age, even of a
kind, young men of some schooling, I fancy, bred to clerking or squiring, and
yet not kin, or don’t acknowledge it, and after their fashion very differently
made. A man wonders how they ever came to be embarked together on this journey.
It was south of Warwick when you met them? I wonder from how far south they
came.”

“They
never spoke of such things,” owned Rhun, himself considering them for the first
time. “It was good to have company on the way, one stout young man at least.
The roads can be perilous for two women, with only a cripple like me. But now
you speak of it, no, we did not learn much of where they came from, or what
bound them together. Unless my sister knows more. There were days,” said Rhun,
shifting to assist Brother Cadfael’s probings into the sinews of his thigh, “when
she and Matthew grew quite easy and talkative behind us.”

Cadfael
doubted whether the subject of their conversation then had been anything but
their two selves, brushing sleeves pleasurably along the summer highways, she
in constant recall of the moment when she was snatched up bodily and swung
across the ditch against Matthew’s heart, he in constant contemplation of the
delectable creature dancing at his elbow, and recollection of the feel of her
slight, warm, frightened weight on his breast.

“But
he’ll hardly look at her now,” said Rhun regretfully. “He’s too intent on
Ciaran, and Melangell will come between. But it costs him a dear effort to turn
away from her, all the same.”

Cadfael
stroked down the misshapen leg, and rose to scrub his oily hands. “There,
that’s enough for today. But sit quiet a while and rest before you go. And will
you take the draught tonight? At least keep it by you, and do what you feel to
be right and best. But remember it’s a kindness sometimes to accept help, a
kindness to the giver. Would you wilfully inflict torment on yourself as Ciaran
does? No, not you, you are too modest by far to set yourself up for braver and
more to be worshipped than other men. So never think you do wrong by sparing
yourself discomfort. Yet it’s your choice, make it as you see fit.”

When
the boy took up his crutches again and tapped his way out along the path
towards the great court, Cadfael followed him at a distance, to watch his
progress without embarrassing him. He could mark no change as yet. The
stretched toe still barely dared touch ground, and still turned inward. And yet
the sinews, cramped as they were, had some small force in them, instead of
being withered and atrophied as he would have expected. If I had him here long
enough, he thought, I could bring back some ease and use into that leg. But
he’ll go as he came. In three days now all will be over, the festival ended for
this year, the guest-hall emptying. Ciaran and his guardian shadow will pass on
northwards and westwards into Wales, and Dame Weaver will take her chicks back
home to Campden. And those two, who might very well have made a fair match if
things had been otherwise, will go their separate ways, and never see each
other again. It’s in the nature of things that those who gather in great
numbers for the feasts of the church should also disperse again to their
various duties afterwards. Still, they need not all go away unchanged.