Hermit of Eyton Forest (28 page)

“I
have transgressed against my vocation,” said Cadfael, at once solaced and
saddened by the season and the hour. “I know it. I undertook the monastic life,
but now I am not sure I could support it without you, without these stolen
excursions outside the walls. For so they are. True, I am often sent upon
legitimate labours here without, but also I steal, I take more than is my due
by right. Worse, Hugh, I do not repent me! Do you suppose there is room within
the bounds of grace for one who has set his hand to the plough, and every
little while abandons his furrow to turn back among the sheep and lambs?”

“I
think the sheep and lambs might think so,” said Hugh, gravely smiling. “He
would have their prayers. Even the black sheep and the grey, like some you’ve
argued for against God and me in your time.”

“There
are very few all black,” said Cadfael. “Dappled, perhaps, like this great rangy
beast you choose to ride. Most of us have a few mottles about us. As well,
maybe, it makes for a more tolerant judgement of the rest of God’s creatures.
But I have sinned, and most of all in relishing my sin. I shall do penance by
biding dutifully within the walls through the winter, unless I’m sent forth,
and then I’ll make haste with my task and hurry back.”

“Until
the next waif stumbles across your path. And when is this penance to begin?”

“As
soon as this matter is fittingly ended.”

“Why,
these are oracular utterances!” said Hugh, laughing. “And when will that be?”

“Tomorrow,”
said Cadfael. “If God wills, tomorrow.”

Chapter Fourteen

ON
HIS WAY DOWN THE COURT TO THE STABLES, leading his horse, and with the better
part of an hour left before Compline, Cadfael saw Dame Dionisia coming from the
abbot’s lodging, and walking with sober step and decorously covered head
towards the guest hall. Her back was as erect as ever, her gait as firm and
proud, but somewhat slower than was her wont, and the draped head was lowered,
with eyes on the ground rather than fixed challengingly into the distance
before her. Not a word would ever be said concerning her confession, but
Cadfael doubted if she had left anything out. She was not one to do things by
halves. There would be no more attempts to extract Richard from the abbot’s
care. Dionisia had suffered too profound a reverse to take any such risks again
until time had dimmed the recollection of sudden unshriven death coming to meet
her. It seemed she meant to stay overnight, perhaps to make her peace tomorrow,
in her own arbitrary fashion, with a grandson by this time fast asleep in his
bed, blessedly unmarried still, and back where he preferred to be. The boys
would sleep well tonight, absolved of their sins and with their lost member
restored. Matter for devout thanksgiving. And as for the dead man in the
mortuary chapel, bearing a name which it seemed could hardly be his name, he
cast no shadow on the world of the children.

Cadfael
led his horse into the stable yard, lighted by two torches at the gate,
unsaddled him and rubbed him down. There was no sound within there but a small
sighing of the breeze that had sprung up with evening, and the occasional easy
shift and stir of hooves in the stalls. He stabled his beast and hung up his
harness, and turned to depart.

There
was someone standing in the gateway, compact and still. “Good even, Brother!”
said Rafe of Coventry.

“Is
it you?” said Cadfael. “And were you looking for me? I’m sorry to have kept you
up late, and you with a journey to make in the morning.”

“I
saw you come down the court. You made an offer,” said the quiet voice. “If it
is still open I should like to take advantage of it. I find it is not so easy
to dress a wound neatly with one hand.”

“Come!”
said Cadfael. “Let’s go to my hut in the garden, we can be private there.”

It
was deep dusk, but not yet dark. The late roses in the garden loomed spikily on
overgrown stems, half their leaves shed, ghostly floating pallors in the
dimness. Within the walls of the herb garden, high and sheltering, warmth
lingered. “Wait,” said Cadfael, “till I make light.” It took him a few minutes
to get a spark he could blow gently into flame, and set to the wick of his
lamp. Rafe waited without murmur or movement until the light burned up
steadily, and then came into the hut and looked about him with interest at the
array of jars and flasks, the scales and mortars, and the rustling bunches of
herbs overhead, stirring headily in the draught from the doorway. Silently he
stripped off his coat, and drew down his shirt from the shoulder until he could
withdraw his arm from the sleeve. Cadfael brought the lamp, and set it where
the light would best illuminate the stained and crumpled bandage that covered
the wound. Rafe sat patient and attentive on the bench against the wall,
steadily eyeing the weathered face that stooped over him. “Brother,” he said
deliberately, “I think I owe you a name.”

“I
have a name for you,” said Cadfael. “Rafe is enough.”

“For
you, perhaps. Not for me. Where I take help, generously given, there I repay
with truth. My name is Rafe de Genville…”

“Hold
still now,” said Cadfael. “This is stuck fast, and will hurt.” The soiled
dressing came away with a wrench, but if it did indeed hurt, de Genville
suffered it as indifferently as he did the foregoing pain. The gash was long,
running down from the shoulder into the upper arm, but not deep; but the flesh
was so sliced that the lips gaped, and a single hand had not been able to clamp
them together. “Keep still! We can better this, you’ll have an ugly scar else.
But you’ll need help when it’s dressed again.”

“Once
away from here I can get help, and who’s to know how I got the gash? But you do
know, Brother. He drew blood, you said. There is not very much you do not know,
but perhaps a little I can still tell you. My name is Rafe de Genville, I am a
vassal, and God knows a friend to Brian FitzCount, and a liege man to my
overlord’s lady, the empress. I will not suffer gross wrong to be done to
either, while I have my life. Well, he’ll draw no more blood, neither from any
of the king’s party nor oversea, in the service of Geoffrey of Anjou—which I
think was his final intent, when the time seemed right.” Cadfael folded a new
dressing closely about the long gash.

“Lend
your right hand here, and hold this firmly, it shuts the wound fast. You’ll get
no more bleeding, or very little, and it should heal closed. But rest it as
best you can on the road.”

“I
will so.” The bandage rolled firmly over the shoulder and round the arm, flat
and neat. “You have a skilled hand, Brother. If I could I would take you with
me as a prize of war.”

“They’ll
have need of all the surgeons and physicians they can get in Oxford, I fear,”
Cadfael acknowledged ruefully.

“Ah,
not there, not this tide. There’ll be no breaking into Oxford until the earl
brings up his army. I doubt it even then. No, I go back to Brian at Wallingford
first, to restore him what is his.” Cadfael secured the bandage above the
elbow, and held the sleeve of the shirt carefully as Rafe thrust his arm back
into it. It was done. Cadfael sat down beside him, face to face, eye to eye.
The silence that came down upon them was like the night, mild, tranquil, gently
melancholy. “It was a fair fight,” said Rafe after a long pause, looking into and
through Cadfael’s eyes to see again the bare stony chapel in the forest. “I
laid by my sword, seeing he had none. His dagger he’d kept.”

“And
used,” said Cadfael, “on the man who had seen him in his own shape at Thame,
and might have called his vocation in question. As the son did, after Cuthred
was dead, and never knew he was looking at his father’s murderer.”

“Ah,
so that was it! I wondered.”

“And
did you find what you came for?”

“I
came for him,” said Rafe grimly. “But, yes, I understand you. Yes, I found it,
in the reliquary on the altar. Not all in coin. Gems go into a small compass,
and are easily carried. Her own jewels, that she valued. And valued even more
the man to whom she sent them.”

“They
said that there was also a letter.”

“There
is a letter. I have it. You saw the breviary?”

“I
saw it. A prince’s book.”

“An
empress’s. There is a secret fold in the binding, where a fine, small leaf can
be hidden. When they were apart, the breviary went back and forth between them
by trusted messenger. God he knows what she may not have written to him now, at
the lowest ebb of fortune, separated from him by a few miles that might as well
be the width of the world, and with the king’s army gripping her and her few to
strangulation. In the extreme of despair, who regards wisdom, who puts a guard
on tongue or pen? I have not sought to know. He shall have it and read it for
whose heart’s consolation it was meant. One other has read it, and might have
made use of it,” said Rafe harshly, “but he is of no account now.” His voice
had gathered a great tide of passion that yet could not disrupt its steely
control, though it caused his disciplined body to quiver like an arrow in
flight, vibrating to the force of his devoted love and implacable hate. The
letter he carried, with its broken seal as testimony to a cold and loathsome
treachery, he would never unfold, the matter within was sacred as the
confessional, between the woman who had written and the man to whom it was
written. Cuthred had trespassed even into this holy ground, but Cuthred was
dead. It did not seem to Cadfael that the penalty was too great for the wrong
committed.

“Tell
me, Brother,” said Rafe de Genville, the wave of passion subsiding into his
customary calm, “was this sin?”

“What
do you need from me?” said Cadfael. “Ask your confessor when you come safely to
Wallingford. All I know is, time has been when I would have done as you have
done.”

Whether
de Genville’s secret would be preserved inviolate was a question never asked,
the answer being already clearly understood between them. “This is better than
by morning,” said Rafe, rising. “Your order of hours tomorrow need not be
broken, and I can be away early, and leave my place cleansed and furbished and
ready for another guest, and travel the lighter because I do not go without a
fair witness. I’ll say my farewell here. God be with you, Brother!”

“And
go with you,” said Cadfael.

He
was gone, out into the gathering darkness, his step firm and even on the gravel
path, silent when he reached the grass beyond. And sharp upon the last slight
sound of his going, the bell rang distantly for Compline.

Cadfael
went down into the stables before Prime, in a morning dry and sunny but chill,
a good day for riding. The bright chestnut with the white brow was gone from
his stall. It seemed empty and quiet there, but for the cheerful chirpings of
chatter and laughter from the last stall, where Richard had come down early to
pet and make much of his pony for carrying him so bravely, with Edwin, happily
restored to grace and to the company of his playmate, in loyal attendance. They
were making a merry noise like a brood of young swallows, until they heard
Cadfael come, and then they fell to a very prim and seemly quietness until they
peeped out and saw that he was neither Brother Jerome nor Prior Robert. By way
of apology they favoured him with broad and bountiful smiles, and went back to
the pony’s stall to caress and admire him. Cadfael could not but wonder if Dame
Dionisia had already visited her grandson, and gone as far as such a matriarch
could be expected to go to reestablish her standing with him. There would
certainly be no self-abasement. Something of a self-justifying homily, rather:
“Richard, I have been considering your future with the abbot, and I have
consented to leave you in his care for the present. I was grossly deceived in
Cuthred, he was not a priest, as he pretended. That episode is over, we had all
better forget it.” And she would surely end with something like: “If I let you
remain here, sir, take care that I get good reports of you. Be obedient to your
masters and attend to your books…” And on leaving him, a kiss perhaps a little
kinder than usual, or at least a little more warily respectful, seeing all he
could relate against her if he cared to. But Richard triumphant, released from
all anxieties for himself and others who mattered to him, bore no grudge
against anyone in the world. By this hour Rafe de Genville, vassal and friend
of Brian FitzCount and loyal servitor of the Empress Maud, must be well away
from Shrewsbury on his long ride south. So quiet, unobtrusive and unremarkable
a man, he had hardly been noticed even while he remained here, his stay would
soon be forgotten.

“He
is gone,” said Cadfael. “I would not slough off the burden of choice on to you,
though I think I know what you would have done. But I have done it for you. He
is gone, and I let him go.”

They
were sitting together, as so often they had sat at the last ebb of a crisis,
weary but eased, on the seat against the north wall of the herbarium, where the
warmth of noonday lingered and the light wind was shut out. In another week or
two it would be too cold and bleak for comfort here. This prolonged mild autumn
could not last much longer, the weather-wise were beginning to sniff the air
and foretell the first hard frost, and plentiful snow to come in December. “I
have not forgotten,” said Hugh, “that this is the tomorrow when you promised me
a fitting ending. So he is gone! And you let him go! Another he, not Bosiet.
You were aching for him to tire of his vengeance and depart, more likely to
urge him away than try to prevent. Say on, I’m listening.” He was always a good
listener, not given to exclamation or needless questions, he could sit gazing
meditatively across the dishevelled garden in receptive silence, and never
trouble his companion with a glance, and never miss a word, nor need many of
them for understanding.