The Pilgram of Hate (15 page)

“I
will so tell him, Father,” said the messenger, and forthwith took his leave.

Left
alone in his parlour, Abbot Radulfus stood for a moment looking down
thoughtfully at the ring in his palm. The sheltering hand of the bishop-legate
would certainly be a powerful protection to any traveller so signally favoured,
wherever there existed any order or respect for law, whether in England or
Wales. Only those already outside the pale of law, with lives or liberty
already forfeit if taken, would defy so strong a sanction. After this crowning
day many of the guests here would be leaving again for home. He must not forget
to give due warning, before they dispersed, that malefactors might be lurking
at large in the woods to westward, and that they were armed, and all too handy
at using their daggers. Best that the pilgrims should make sure of leaving in
companies stout enough to discourage assault.

Meantime,
there was satisfaction in returning to one pilgrim, at least, his particular
armour.

The
abbot rang the little bell that lay upon his desk, and in a few moments Brother
Vitalis came to answer the summons.

“Will
you enquire at the guest-hall, brother, for the man called Ciaran, and bid him
here to speak with me?”

Brother
Cadfael had also risen well before Prime, and gone to open his workshop and
kindle his brazier into cautious and restrained life, in case it should be
needed later to prepare tisanes for some ecstatic souls carried away by
emotional excitement, or warm applications for weaker vessels trampled in the
crowd. He was used to the transports of simple souls caught up in far from
simple raptures.

He
had a few things to tend to, and was happy to deal with them alone. Young Oswin
was entitled to his fill of sleep until the bell awoke him. Very soon now he
would graduate to the hospital of Saint Giles, where the reliquary of Saint
Winifred now lay, and the unfortunates who carried their contagion with them,
and might not be admitted into the town, could find rest, care and shelter for
as long as they needed it. Brother Mark, that dearly-missed disciple, was gone
from there now, already ordained deacon, his eyes fixed ahead upon his steady
goal of priesthood. If ever he cast a glance over his shoulder, he would find
nothing but encouragement and affection, the proper harvest of the seed he had
sown. Oswin might not be such another, but he was a good enough lad, and would
do honestly by the unfortunates who drifted into his care.

Cadfael
went down to the banks of the Meole brook, the westward boundary of the
enclave, where the pease fields declined to the sunken summer water. The rays
from the east were just being launched like lances over the high roofs of the
monastic buildings, and piercing the scattered copses beyond the brook, and the
grassy banks on the further side. This same water, drawn off much higher in its
course, supplied the monastery fish-ponds, the hatchery, and the mill and
millpond beyond, and was fed back into the brook just before it entered the
Severn. It lay low enough now, an archipelago of shoals, half sand, half grass
and weed, spreading smooth islands across its breadth. After this spell,
thought Cadfael, we shall need plenty of rain. But let that wait a day or two.

He
turned back to climb the slope again. The earlier field of pease had already
been gleaned, the second would be about ready for harvesting after the
festival. A couple of days, and all the excitement would be over, and the
horarium of the house and the cycle of the seasons would resume their
imperturbable progress, two enduring rhythms in the desperately variable
fortunes of mankind. He turned along the path to his workshop, and there was
Melangell hesitating before its closed door.

She
heard his step in the gravel behind her, and looked round with a bright,
expectant face. The pearly morning light became her, softened the coarseness of
her linen gown, and smoothed cool lilac shadows round the childlike curves of
her face. She had gone to great pains to prepare herself fittingly for the
day’s solemnities. Her skirts were spotless, crisped out with care, her
dark-gold hair, burning with coppery lustre, braided and coiled on her head in
a bright crown, its tight plaits drawing up the skin of her temples and cheeks
so strongly that her brows were pulled aslant, and the dark-lashed blue eyes
elongated and made mysterious. But the radiance that shone from her came not
from the sun’s caresses, but from within. The blue of those eyes burned as
brilliantly as the blue of the gentians Cadfael had seen long ago in the
mountains of southern France, on his way to the east. The ivory and rose of her
cheeks glowed. Melangell was in the highest state of hope, happiness and
expectation.

She
made him a very pretty reverence, flushing and smiling, and held out to him the
little vial of poppy-syrup he had given to Rhun three days ago. Still unopened!

“If
you please, Brother Cadfael, I have brought this back to you. And Rhun prays
that it may serve some other who needs it more, and with the more force because
he has endured without it.”

He
took it from her gently and held it in his cupped hand, a crude little vial
stopped with a wooden stopper and a membrane of very thin parchment tied with a
waxed thread to seal it. All intact. The boy’s third night here, and he had
submitted to handling and been mild and biddable in all, but when the means of
oblivion was put into his hand and left to his private use, he had preserved
it, and with it some core of his own secret integrity, at his own chosen cost.
God forbid, thought Cadfael, that I should meddle there. Nothing short of a
saint should knock on that door.

“You
are not angry with him?” asked Melangell anxiously, but smiling still, unable
to believe that any shadow should touch the day, now that her love had clasped
and kissed her. “Because he did not drink it? It was not that he ever doubted
you. He said so to me. He said—I never quite understand him!—he said it was a
time for offering, and he had his offering prepared.”

Cadfael
asked: “Did he sleep?” To have deliverance in hand, even unopened, might well
bring peace. “Hush, now, no, how could I be angry! But did he sleep?”

“He
says that he did. I think it must be true, he looks so fresh and young. I
prayed hard for him.” With all the force of her new happiness, loaded with
bliss she felt the need to pour out upon all those near to her. In the
conveyance of blessedness by affection Cadfael firmly believed.

“You
prayed well,” said Cadfael. “Never doubt he has gained by it. I’ll keep this
for some soul in worse need, as Rhun says. It will have the virtue of his faith
to strengthen it. I shall see you both during the day.”

She
went away from him with a light, springing step and a head reared to breathe in
the very space and light of the sky. And Cadfael went in to make sure he had
everything ready to provide for a long and exhausting day.

So
Rhun had arrived at the last frontier of belief, and fallen, or emerged, or
soared into the region where the soul realises that pain is of no account, that
to be within the secret of God is more than well being, and past the power of
the tongue to utter. To embrace the decree of pain is to translate it, to shed
it like a rain of blessing on others who have not yet understood.

Who
am I, thought Cadfael, alone in the solitude of his workshop, that I should
dare to ask for a sign? If he can endure and ask nothing, must not I be ashamed
of doubting?

Melangell
passed with a dancing step along the path from the herbarium. On her right hand
the western sky soared, in such reflected if muted brightness that she could
not forbear from turning to stare into it. A counter-tide of light flowed in
here from the west, surging up the slope from the brook and spilling over the
crest into the garden. Somewhere on the far side of the entire monastic enclave
the two tides would meet, and the light of the west falter, pale and die before
the onslaught from the east; but here the bulk of guest-hall and church cut off
the newly-risen sun, and left the field to this hesitant and soft-treading
antidawn.

There
was someone labouring along the far border of the flower-garden, going
delicately on still tender feet, watching where he trod. He was alone. No
attendant shadow appeared at his back, yesterday’s magic still held. She was
staring at Ciaran, Ciaran without Matthew. That in itself was a minor miracle,
to bring in this day made for miracles.

Melangell
watched him begin to descend the slope towards the brook, and when he was no
more than a head and shoulders black against the brightness, she suddenly
turned and went after him. The path down to the water skirted the growing
pease, keeping close to a hedge of thick bushes above the mill-pool. Halfway
down the slope she halted, uncertain whether to intrude on his solitude. Ciaran
had reached the waterside, and stood surveying what looked like a safe green
floor, dappled here and there with the bleached islands of sand, and studded
with a few embedded rocks that stood dry from three weeks of fine weather. He
looked upstream and down, even stepped into the shallow water that barely
covered his naked feet, and surely soothed and refreshed them. Yet how strange,
that he should be here alone! Never, until yesterday, had she seen either of
these two without the other, yet now they went apart.

She
was on the point of stealing away to leave him undisturbed when she saw what he
was doing. He had some tiny thing in his hand, into which he was threading a
thin cord, and knotting the cord to hold it fast. When he raised both hands to
make fast the end of his cord to the tether that held the cross about his neck,
the small talisman swung free into the light and glimmered for an instant in silver,
before he tucked it away within the neck of his shirt, out of sight against his
breast. Then she knew what it was, and stirred in pure pleasure for him, and
uttered a small, breathless sound. For Ciaran had his ring again, the
safe-conduct that was to ensure him passage to his journey’s end.

He
had heard her, and swung about, startled and wary. She stood shaken and
disconcerted, and then, knowing herself discovered, ran down the last slope of
grass to his side. “They’ve found it for you!” she said breathlessly, in haste
to fill the silence between them and dispel her own uneasiness at having seemed
to spy upon him. “Oh, I am glad! Is the thief taken, then?”

“Melangell!”
he said. “You’re early abroad, too? Yes, you see I am blessed, after all, I
have it again. The lord abbot restored it to me only some minutes ago. But no,
the thief is not caught, he and some fellow-rogues are fled into the woods, it
seems. But I can go forth again without fear now.”

His
dark eyes, deep-set under thick brows, opened wide upon her, smiling, holding
her charmed in the abrupt discovery that he was, despite his disease, a young
and comely man, who should have been in the fulness of his powers. Either she
was imagining it, or he stood a little straighter, a little taller, than she
had ever yet seen him, and the burning intensity of his face had mellowed into
a brighter, more human ardour, as if some foreglow of the day’s spiritual
radiance had given him new hope.

“Melangell,”
he said in a soft, vehement rush of words, “you can’t guess how glad I am of
this meeting, it was God sent you here to me. I’ve long wanted to speak to you
alone. Never think that because I myself am doomed, I can’t see what’s before
my eyes concerning others who are dear to me. I have something to ask of you,
to beg of you, most earnestly. Don’t tell Matthew that I have my ring again!”

“Does
he not know?” she asked, astray.

“No,
he was not by when the abbot sent for me. He must not know! Keep my secret, if
you love him—if you have some pity, at least for me. I have told no one, and
you must not. The lord abbot is not likely to speak of it to any other, why
should he? That he would leave to me. If you and I keep silent, there’s no need
for anyone else to find out.”

Melangell
was lost. She saw him through a rainbow of starting tears, for very pity of his
long face hollowed in shade, his eyes glowing like the quiet, living heart of a
banked fire.

“But
why? Why do you want to keep it from him?”

“For
his sake and yours—yes, and mine! Do you think I have not understood long ago
that he loves you?—that you feel as much also for him? Only I stand in the way!
It’s bitter to know it, and I would have it changed. My one wish now is that
you and he should be happy together. If he loves me so faithfully, may not I
also love him? You know him! He will sacrifice himself, and you, and all things
beside, to finish what he has undertaken, and see me safe into Aberdaron. I
don’t accept his sacrifice, I won’t endure it! Why should you both be wretched,
when my one wish is to go to my rest in peace of mind and leave my friend
happy? Now, while he feels secure that I dare not set out without the ring, for
God’s sake, girl, leave him in innocence. And I will go, and leave you both my
blessing.”

Melangell
stood quivering, like a leaf shaken by the soft, vehement wind of his words,
uncertain even of her own heart. “Then what must I do? What is it you want of
me?”

“Keep
my secret,” said Ciaran, “and go with Matthew in this holy procession. Oh,
he’ll go with you, and be glad. He won’t wonder that I should stay behind and
wait the saint’s coming here within the pale. And while you’re gone, I’ll go on
my way. My feet are almost healed, I have my ring again, I shall reach my
haven. You need not be afraid for me. Only keep him happy as long as you may,
and even when my going is known, then use your arts, keep him, hold him fast.
That’s all I shall ever ask of you.”