The Pilgram of Hate (20 page)

“Then
it was well deserved,” said Radulfus, pleased and moved. “I must indeed talk
with this boy. Will you find him for me, Cadfael, and bring him here to me
now?”

“Very
gladly, Father,” said Cadfael, and departed on his errand.

Dame
Alice was sitting in the sunshine of the cloister garth, the centre of a
voluble circle of other matrons, her face so bright with the joy of the day
that it warmed the very air; but Rhun was not with them. Melangell had
withdrawn into the shadow of the arcade, as though the light was too bright for
her eyes, and kept her face averted over the mending of a frayed seam in a
linen shirt which must belong to her brother. Even when Cadfael addressed her
she looked up only very swiftly and timidly, and again stooped into shadow, but
even in that glimpse he saw that the joy which had made her shine like a new
rose in the morning was dimmed and pale now in the lengthening afternoon. And
was he merely imagining that her left cheek showed the faint bluish tint of a
bruise? But at the mention of Rhun’s name she smiled, as though at the
recollection of happiness rather than its presence.

“He
said he was tired, and went away into the dortoir to rest. Aunt Weaver thinks
he is lying down on his bed, but I think he wanted only to be left alone, to be
quiet and not have to talk. He is tired by having to answer things he seems not
to understand himself.”

“He
speaks another tongue today from the rest of mankind,” said Cadfael. “It may
well be we who don’t understand, and ask things that have no meaning for him.”
He took her gently by the chin and turned her face up to the light, but she
twisted nervously out of his hold. “You have hurt yourself?” Certainly it was a
bruise beginning there.

“It’s
nothing,” she said. “My own fault. I was in the garden, I ran too fast and I
fell. I know it’s unsightly, but it doesn’t hurt now.”

Her
eyes were very calm, not reddened, only a little swollen as to the lids. Well,
Matthew had gone, abandoned her to go with his friend, letting her fall only
too disastrously after the heady running together of the morning hours. That
could account for tears now past. But should it account for a bruised cheek? He
hesitated whether to question further, but clearly she did not wish it. She had
gone back doggedly to her work, and would not look up again.

Cadfael
sighed, and went out across the great court to the guest-hall. Even a glorious
day like this one must have its vein of bitter sadness.

In
the men’s dortoir Rhun sat alone on his bed, very still and content in his
blissfully restored body. He was deep in his own rapt thoughts, but readily
aware when Cadfael entered. He looked round and smiled.

“Brother,
I was wishing to see you. You were there, you know. Perhaps you even heard…
See, how I’m changed!” The leg once maimed stretched out perfect before him, he
bent and stamped the boards of the floor. He flexed ankle and toes, drew up his
knee to his chin, and everything moved as smoothly and painlessly as his ready
tongue. “I am whole! I never asked it, how dared I? Even then, I was praying
not for this, and yet this was given…” He went away again for a moment into his
tranced dream.

Cadfael
sat down beside him, noting the exquisite fluency of those joints hitherto
flawed and intransigent. The boy’s beauty was perfected now.

“You
were praying,” said Cadfael gently, “for Melangell.”

“Yes.
And Matthew too. I truly thought… But you see he is gone. They are both gone,
gone together. Why could I not bring my sister into bliss? I would have gone on
crutches all my life for that, but I couldn’t prevail.”

“That
is not yet determined,” said Cadfael firmly. “Who goes may also return. And I
think your prayers should have strong virtue, if you do not fall into doubt now,
because heaven has need of a little time. Even miracles have their times. Half
our lives in this world are spent in waiting. It is needful to wait with
faith.”

Rhun
sat listening with an absent smile, and at the end of it he said: “Yes, surely,
and I will wait. For see, one of them left this behind in his haste when he
went away.”

He
reached down between the close-set cots, and lifted to the bed between them a
bulky but lightweight scrip of unbleached linen, with stout leather straps for
the owner’s belt. “I found it dropped between the two beds they had, drawn
close together. I don’t know which of them owned this one, the two they carried
were much alike. But one of them doesn’t expect or want ever to come back, does
he? Perhaps Matthew does, and has forgotten this, whether he meant it or no, as
a pledge.”

Cadfael
stared and wondered, but this was a heavy matter, and not for him. He said
seriously: “I think you should bring this with you, and give it into the
keeping of Father Abbot. For he sent me to bring you to him. He wants to speak
with you.”

“With
me?” wavered Rhun, stricken into a wild and rustic child again. “The lord abbot
himself?”

“Surely,
and why not? You are Christian soul as he is, and may speak with him as equal.”

The
boy faltered: “I should be afraid…”

“No,
you would not. You are not afraid of anything, nor need you ever be.”

Rhun
sat for a moment with fists doubled into the blanket of his bed; then he lifted
his clear, ice-blue gaze and blanched, angelic face and smiled blindingly into
Cadfael’s eyes. “No, I need not. I’ll come.” And he hoisted the linen scrip and
stood up stately on his two long, youthful legs, and led the way to the door.

“Stay
with us,” said Abbot Radulfus, when Cadfael would have presented his charge and
left the two of them together. “I think he might be glad of you.” Also, said
his eloquent, austere glance, your presence may be of value to me as witness.
“Rhun knows you. Me he does not yet know, but I trust he shall, hereafter.” He
had the drab, brownish scrip on the desk before him, offered on entry with a
word to account for it, until the time came to explore its possibilities
further.

“Willingly,
Father,” said Cadfael heartily, and took his seat apart on a stool withdrawn
into a corner, out of the way of those two pairs of formidable eyes that met,
and wondered, and probed with equal intensity across the small space of the
parlour. Outside the windows the garden blossomed with drunken exuberance, in
the burning colours of summer, and the blanched blue sky, at its loftiest in
the late afternoon, showed the colour of Rhun’s eyes, but without their crystal
blaze. The day of wonders was drawing very slowly and radiantly towards its
evening.

“Son,”
said Radulfus at his gentlest, “you have been the vessel for a great mercy
poured out here. I know, as all know who were there, what we saw, what we felt.
But I would know also what you passed through. I know you have lived long with
pain, and have not complained. I dare guess in what mind you approached the
saint’s altar. Tell me, what was it happened to you then?”

Rhun
sat with his empty hands clasped quietly in his lap, and his face at once
remote and easy, looking beyond the walls of the room. All his timidity was
lost.

“I
was troubled,” he said carefully, “because my sister and my Aunt Alice wanted
so much for me, and I knew I needed nothing. I would have come, and prayed, and
passed, and been content. But then I heard her call.”

“Saint
Winifred spoke to you?” asked Radulfus softly.

“She
called me to her,” said Rhun positively.

“In
what words?”

“No
words. What need had she of words? She called me to go to her, and I went. She
told me, here is a step, and here, and here, come, you know you can. And I knew
I could, so I went. When she told me, kneel, for so you can, then I kneeled,
and I could. Whatever she told me, that I did. And so I will still,” said Rhun,
smiling into the opposing wall with eyes that paled the sun.

“Child,”
said the abbot, watching him in solemn wonder and respect, “I do believe it.
What skills you have, what gifts to stead you in your future life, I scarcely
know. I rejoice that you have to the full the blessing of your body, and the
purity of your mind and spirit. I wish you whatever calling you may choose, and
the virtue of your resolve to guide you in it. If there is anything you can ask
of this house, to aid you after you go forth from here, it is yours.”

“Father,”
said Rhun earnestly, withdrawing his blinding gaze into shadow and mortality,
and becoming the child he was, “need I go forth? She called me to her, how
tenderly I have no words to tell. I desire to remain with her to my life’s end.
She called me to her, and I will never willingly leave her.”

Chapter Twelve

“AND
WILL YOU KEEP HIM?” asked Cadfael, when the boy had been dismissed, made his
deep reverence, and departed in his rapt, unwitting perfection.

“If
his intent holds, yes, surely. He is the living proof of grace. But I will not
let him take vows in haste, to regret them later. Now he is transported with
joy and wonder, and would embrace celibacy and seclusion with delight. If his
will is still the same in a month, then I will believe in it, and welcome him
gladly. But he shall serve his full notiviate, even so. I will not let him
close the door upon himself until he is sure. And now,” said the abbot,
frowning down thoughtfully at the linen scrip that lay upon his desk, “what is
to be done with this? You say it was fallen between the two beds, and might
have belonged to either?”

“So
the boy said. But, Father, if you remember, when the bishop’s ring was stolen,
both those young men gave up their scrips to be examined. What each of them
carried, apart from the dagger that was duly delivered over at the gatehouse, I
cannot say with certainty, but Father Prior, who handled them, will know.”

“True,
so he will. But for the present,” said Radulfus, “I cannot think we have any
right to probe into either man’s possessions, nor is it of any great importance
to discover to which of them this belongs. If Messire de Bretagne overtakes
them, as he surely must, we shall learn more, he may even persuade them to
return. We’ll wait for his word first.

In
the meantime, leave it here with me. When we know more we’ll take whatever
steps we can to restore it.”

The
day of wonders drew in to its evening as graciously as it had dawned, with a
clear sky and soft, sweet air. Every soul within the enclave came dutifully to
Vespers, and supper in the guest-hall as in the refectory was a devout and
tranquil feast. The voices hasty and shrill with excitement at dinner had
softened and eased into the grateful languor of fulfilment.

Brother
Cadfael absented himself from Collations in the chapter house, and went out
into the garden. On the gentle ridge where the gradual slope of the pease fields
began he stood for a long while watching the sky. The declining sun had still
an hour or more of its course to run before its rim dipped into the feathery
tops of the copses across the brook. The west which had reflected the dawn as
this day began triumphed now in pale gold, with no wisp of cloud to dye it
deeper or mark its purity. The scent of the herbs within the walled garden rose
in a heady cloud of sweetness and spice. A good place, a resplendent day, why
should any man slip away and run from it?

A
useless question. Why should any man do the things he does? Why should Ciaran
submit himself to such hardship? Why should he profess such piety and devotion,
and yet depart without leave-taking and without thanks in the middle of so
auspicious a day? It was Matthew who had left a gift of money on departure. Why
could not Matthew persuade his friend to stay and see out the day? And why
should he, who had glowed with excited joy in the morning, and run hand in hand
with Melangell, abandon her without remorse in the afternoon, and resume his
harsh pilgrimage with Ciaran as if nothing had happened?

Were
they two men or three? Ciaran, Matthew and Luc Meverel? What did he know of
them, all three, if three they were? Luc Meverel had been seen for the last
time south of Newbury, walking north towards that town, and alone. Ciaran and
Matthew were first reported, by Brother Adam of Reading, coming from the south
into Abingdon for their night’s lodging, two together. If one of them was Luc
Meverel, then where and why had he picked up his companion, and above all, who
was his companion?

By
this time, surely Olivier should have overhauled his quarry and found the
answers to some of these questions. And he had said he would return, that he
would not leave Shrewsbury without having some converse with a man remembered
as a good friend. Cadfael took that assurance to his heart, and was warmed.

It
was not the need to tend any of his herbal potions or bubbling wines that drew
him to walk on to his workshop, for Brother Oswin, now in the chapter house
with his fellows, had tidied everything for the night, and seen the brazier
safely out. There was flint and tinder there in a box, in case it should be
necessary to light it again in the night or early in the morning. It was rather
that Cadfael had grown accustomed to withdrawing to his own special solitude to
do his best thinking, and this day had given him more than enough cause for
thought, as for gratitude. For where were his qualms now? Miracles may be spent
as frequently on the undeserving as on the deserving. What marvel that a saint
should take the boy Rhun to her heart, and reach out her sustaining hand to
him? But the second miracle was doubly miraculous, far beyond her sorry
servant’s asking, stunning in its generosity. To bring him back Olivier, whom
he had resigned to God and the great world, and made himself content never to
see again! And then Hugh’s voice, unwitting herald of wonders, said out of the
dim choir, “And are you demanding yet a second miracle?” He had rather been
humbling himself in wonder and thanks for one, demanding nothing more; but he
had turned his head, and beheld Olivier.