Outlander (95 page)

“You know, there are two aspects to this curious situation of yours,” Anselm said, absorbed in tearing bread. He glanced aside at me, a sudden smile lighting his face. He shook his head in wonderment. “I can scarcely believe it still, you know. Such a marvel! Truly, God has been good, to show me such things.”

“Well, that’s nice,” I said, a bit dryly, “I don’t know whether He’s been quite so obliging to me.”

“Really?
I
think so.” Anselm sank down on his haunches, crumbling bread between his fingers. “True,” he said, “the situation has caused you no little personal inconvenience—”

“That’s one way of putting it,” I muttered.

“But it may also be regarded as a signal mark of God’s favor,” he went on, disregarding my interruption. The bright brown eyes regarded me speculatively.

“I prayed for guidance, kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament,” he went on, “and as I sat in the silence of the chapel, I seemed to see you as a shipwrecked traveler. And it seems to me that that is a good parallel to your present situation, is it not? Imagine such a soul, Madame, suddenly cast away in a strange land, bereft of friends and familiarity, without resources save what the new land can provide. Such a happening is disaster, truly, and yet may be the opening for great opportunity and blessings. What if the new land shall be rich? New friends may be made, and a new life begun.”

“Yes, but—” I began.

“So”—he said authoritatively, holding up a finger to hush me—“if you have been deprived of your earlier life, perhaps it is only that God has seen fit to bless you with another, that may be richer and fuller.”

“Oh, it’s full, all right,” I agreed. “But—”

“Now, from the standpoint of canon law,” he said frowning, “there is no difficulty regarding your marriages. Both were valid marriages, consecrated by the church. And strictly speaking, your marriage to the young chevalier in there antedates your marriage to Monsieur Randall.”

“Yes, ‘strictly speaking,’ ” I agreed, getting to finish a sentence for once. “But not in
my
time. I don’t believe canon law was constructed with such contingencies in mind.”

Anselm laughed, the pointed end of his beard quivering in the slight breeze.

“More than true,
ma chère,
more than true. All that I meant was that, considered from a strictly legal standpoint, you have committed neither sin nor crime in what you have done regarding these two men. Those were the two aspects of your situation, of which I spoke earlier: what you have done, and what you
will
do.” He reached up a hand and took mine, tugging me down to sit beside him, so our eyes were on a level.

“That is what you asked me when I heard your confession, is it not? What have I done? And what shall I do?”

“Yes, that’s it. And you’re telling me that I haven’t done anything wrong? But I’ve—”

He was, I thought, nearly as bad as Dougal MacKenzie for interrupting.

“No, you have not,” he said firmly. “It is possible to act in strict accordance with God’s law and with one’s conscience, you comprehend, and still to encounter difficulties and tragedy. It is the painful truth that we still do not know why
le bon Dieu
allows evil to exist, but we have His word for it that this is true. ‘I created good,’ He says in the Bible, ‘and I created evil.’ Consequently, even good people sometimes, I think,
especially
good people,” he added meditatively, “may encounter great confusion and difficulties in their lives. For example, take the young boy you were obliged to kill. No,” he said, raising a hand against my interruption, “make no mistake. You were obliged to kill him, given the exigencies of your situation. Even Holy Mother Church, which teaches the sanctity of life, recognizes the need for defense of oneself and of one’s family. And having seen the earlier condition of your husband”—he cast a look back at the guests’ wing—“I have no doubt that you were obliged to take the path of violence. That being so, you have nothing with which to reproach yourself. You do, of course, feel pity and regret for the action, for you are, Madame, a person of great sympathy and feeling.” He gently patted the hand that rested on my drawn-up knees.

“Sometimes our best actions result in things that are most regrettable. And yet you could not have acted otherwise. We do not know what God’s plan for the young man was—perhaps it was His will that the boy should join him in heaven at that time. But you are not God, and there are limits to what you can expect of yourself.”

I shivered briefly as a cold wind came round the corner, and drew my shawl closer. Anselm saw it, and motioned toward the pool.

“The water is warm, Madame. Perhaps you would care to soak your feet?”

“Warm?” I gaped incredulously at the water. I hadn’t noticed before, but there were no broken sheets of ice in the corners of the trough, as there were on the holy water fonts outside the church, and small green plants floated in the water, sprouting from the cracks between the rocks that lined the pool.

In illustration, Anselm slipped off his own leather sandals. Cultured as his face and voice were, he had the square, sturdy hands and feet of a Normandy peasant. Hiking the skirt of his habit to his knees, he dipped his feet into the pool. The carp dashed away, turning almost at once to nose curiously at this new intrusion.

“They don’t bite, do they?” I asked, viewing the myriad voracious mouths suspiciously.

“Not flesh, no,” he assured me. “They have no teeth to speak of.”

I shed my own sandals and gingerly inserted my feet into the water. To my surprise, it was pleasantly warm. Not hot, but a delightful contrast to the damp, chilly air.

“Oh, that’s nice!” I wiggled my toes with pleasure, causing considerable consternation among the carp.

“There are several mineral springs near the abbey,” Anselm explained. “They bubble hot from the earth, and the waters hold great healing powers.” He pointed to the far end of the trough, were I could see a small opening in the rocks, half obscured by the drifting water plants.

“A small amount of the hot mineral water is piped here from the nearest spring. That is what enables the cook to maintain live fish for the table at all seasons; normally the winter weather would be too bitter for them.”

We paddled our feet in congenial silence for a time, the heavy bodies of the fish flicking past, occasionally bumping into our legs with a surprisingly weighty impact. The sun came out again, bathing us in a weak but perceptible warmth. Anselm closed his eyes, letting the light wash over his face. He spoke again without opening them.

“Your first husband—Frank was his name?—he, too, I think, must be commended to God as one of the regrettable things that you can do nothing about.”

“But I could have done something,” I argued. “I could have gone back—perhaps.”

He opened one eye and regarded me skeptically.

“Yes, ‘perhaps,’ ” he agreed. “And perhaps not. You need not reproach yourself for hesitating to risk your life.”

“It wasn’t the risk,” I said, flicking my toes at a big black-and-white splotched carp. “Or not entirely. It was—well, it was partly fear, but mostly it was that I—I couldn’t leave Jamie.” I shrugged helplessly. “I—simply couldn’t.”

Anselm smiled, opening both eyes.

“A good marriage is one of the most precious gifts from God,” he observed. “If you had the good sense to recognize and accept the gift, it is no reproach to you. And consider…” He tilted his head to one side, like a brown sparrow.

“You have been gone from your place for nearly a year. Your first husband will have begun to reconcile himself to your loss. Much as he may have loved you, loss is common to all men, and we are given means of overcoming it for our good. He will have started, perhaps, to build a new life. Would it do good for you to desert the man who needs you so deeply, and whom you love, to whom you are united in the bonds of holy matrimony, to return and disrupt this new life? And in particular, if you were to go back from a sense of duty, but feeling that your heart is given elsewhere—no.” He shook his head decisively.

“No man can serve two masters, and no more can a woman. Now, if that were your only valid marriage, and this”—he nodded again toward the guest wing—“merely an irregular attachment, then your duty might lie elsewhere. But you were bound by God, and I think you may honor your duty to the chevalier.

“Now, as to the other aspect—what you shall do. That may require some discussion.” He pulled his feet from the water, and dried them on the skirt of his habit.

“Let us adjourn this meeting to the abbey kitchens, where perhaps Brother Eulogius may be persuaded to provide us with a warming drink.”

Finding a stray bit of bread on the ground, I tossed it to the carp and stooped to put my sandals on.

“I can’t tell you what a relief it is to talk to someone about it,” I said. “And I still can’t get over the fact that you really do believe me.”

He shrugged, gallantly offering me an arm to hold while I slipped the rough straps of the sandal over my instep.

“
Ma chère,
I serve a man who multiplied the loaves and fishes”—he smiled, nodding at the pool, where the swirls of the carps’ feeding were still subsiding—“who healed the sick and raised the dead. Shall I be astonished that the master of eternity has brought a young woman through the stones of the earth to do His will?”

Well, I reflected, it was better than being denounced as the whore of Babylon.

The kitchens of the abbey were warm and cavelike, the arching roof blackened with centuries of grease-filled smoke. Brother Eulogius, up to his elbows in a vat of dough, nodded a greeting to Anselm and called in French to one of the lay brothers to come and serve us. We found a seat out of the bustle, and sat down with two cups of ale and a plate containing a hot pastry of some kind. I pushed the plate toward Anselm, too preoccupied to be interested in food.

“Let me put it this way,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “If I knew that some harm was going to occur to a group of people, should I feel obliged to try to avert it?”

Anselm rubbed his nose reflectively on his sleeve; the heat of the kitchen was beginning to make it run.

“In principle, yes,” he agreed. “But it would depend also upon a number of other things—what is the risk to yourself, and what are your other obligations? Also what is the chance of your success?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. Of any of those things. Except obligation, of course—I mean, there’s Jamie. But he’s one of the group who might be hurt.”

He broke off a piece of pastry and passed it to me, steaming. I ignored it, studying the surface of my ale. “The two men I killed,” I said, “either of them might have had children, if I hadn’t killed them. They might have done—” I made a helpless gesture with the cup, “—who knows what they might have done? I may have affected the future…no, I
have
affected the future. And I don’t know how, and that’s what frightens me so much.”

“Um.” Anselm grunted thoughtfully, and motioned to a passing lay brother, who hastened over with a fresh pasty and more ale. He refilled both cups before speaking.

“If you have taken life, you have also preserved it. How many of the sick you have treated would have died without your intervention? They also will affect the future. What if a person you have saved should commit an act of great evil? Is that your fault? Should you on that account have let that person die? Of course not.” He rapped his pewter mug on the table for emphasis.

“You say that you are afraid to take any actions here for fear of affecting the future. This is illogical, Madame.
Everyone’s
actions affect the future. Had you remained in your own place, your actions would still have affected what was to happen, no less than they will now. You have still the same responsibilities that you would have had then—that any man has at any time. The only difference is that you may be in a position to see more exactly what effects your actions have—and then again, you may not.” He shook his head, looking steadily across the table.

“The ways of the Lord are hidden to us, and no doubt for good reason. You are right,
ma chère;
the laws of the Church were not formulated with situations such as yours in mind, and therefore you have little guidance other than your own conscience and the hand of God. I cannot tell you what you should do, or not do.

“You have free choice; so have all the others in this world. And history, I believe, is the cumulation of all those actions. Some individuals are chosen by God to affect the destinies of many. Perhaps you are one of those. Perhaps not. I do not know why you are here. You do not know. It is likely that neither of us will ever know.” He rolled his eyes, comically. “Sometimes I don’t even know why
I
am here!” I laughed and he smiled in return. He leaned toward me across the rough planks of the table, intense.

“Your knowledge of the future is a tool, given to you as a shipwrecked castaway might find himself in possession of a knife or a fishing line. It is not immoral to use it, so long as you do so in accordance with the dictates of God’s law, to the best of your ability.”

He paused, drew a deep breath, and blew it out in an explosive sigh that ruffled his silky mustache. He smiled.

“And that,
ma chère madame,
is all I can tell you—no more than I can tell any troubled soul who comes to me for advice: put your trust in God, and pray for guidance.”

He shoved the fresh pastry toward me.

“But whatever you are to do, you will require strength for it. So take one last bit of advice: when in doubt, eat.”

When I came into Jamie’s room in the evening, he was asleep, head pillowed on his forearms. The empty broth bowl sat virtuously on the tray, the untouched platter of bread and meat beside it. I looked from the innocent, dreaming face to the platter and back. I touched the bread. My finger left a slight depression in the moist surface. Fresh.

I left him asleep and went in search of Brother Roger, who I found in the buttery.

“Did he eat the bread and meat?” I demanded, without preliminaries.

Brother Roger smiled in his fluffy beard. “Yes.”