The Pilgram of Hate (25 page)

“Yet
if this sentence was never made public,” said Hugh, seizing upon one thing
still unexplained, “how did Luc Meverel ever come to know of it and follow
you?”

“Do
I know?” The voice was flat and drear, worn out with exhaustion. “All I know is
that I set out from Winchester, and where the roads joined, near Newbury, this
man stood and waited for me, and fell in beside me, and every step of my way on
this journey he has gone on my heels like a demon, and waited for me to play
false to my sentence, for there was no point of it he did not know!, to take my
life without guilt, without a qualm, as so he might. He trod after me wherever
I trod, he never let me from his sight, he made no secret of his wants, he
tempted me to go aside, to put on shoes, to lay by the cross, and sirs, it was
deathly heavy! Matthew, he called himself…

Luc,
you say he is? You know him? I never knew… He said I had killed his lord, whom
he loved, and he would follow me to Bangor, to Caergybi, even to Dublin if ever
I got aboard ship without putting off the cross or putting on shoes. But he
would have me in the end. He had what he lusted for, why did he turn away and
spare?” The last words ached with his uncomprehending wonder.

“He
did not find you worth the killing,” said Cadfael, as gently and mercifully as
he could, but honestly. “Now he goes in anguish and shame because he spent so
much time on you that might have been better spent. It is a matter of values.
Study to learn what is worth and what is not, and you may come to understand
him.”

“I
am a dead man while I live,” said Ciaran, writhing, “without master, without
friends, without a cause…”

“All
three you may find, if you seek. Go where you were sent, bear what you were
condemned to bear, and look for the meaning,” said Cadfael. “For so must we
all.”

He
turned away with a sigh. No way of knowing how much good words might do, or the
lessons of life, no telling whether any trace of compunction moved in Ciaran’s
bludgeoned mind, or whether all his feeling was still for himself. Cadfael felt
himself suddenly very tired. He looked at Hugh with a somewhat lopsided smile.
“I wish I were home. What now, Hugh? Can we go?”

Hugh
stood looking down with a frown at the confessed murderer, sunken in the grass
like a broken-backed serpent, submissive, tear-stained, nursing minor injuries.
A piteous spectacle, though pity might be misplaced. Yet he was, after all, no
more than twenty-five or so years old, able-bodied, well-clothed, strong, his
continued journey might be painful and arduous, but it was not beyond his
powers, and he had his bishop’s ring still, effective wherever law held. These
three footpads now tethered fast and under guard would trouble his going no
more. Ciaran would surely reach his journey’s end safely, however long it might
take him. Not the journey’s end of his false story, a blessed death in
Aberdaron and burial among the saints of Ynys Ennli, but a return to his native
place, and a life beginning afresh. He might even be changed. He might well
adhere to his hard terms all the way to Caergybi, where Irish ships plied, even
as far as Dublin, even to his ransomed life’s end. How can you tell?

“Make
your own way from here,” said Hugh, “as well as you may. You need fear nothing
now from footpads here, and the border is not far. What you have to fear from
God, take up with God.”

He
turned his back, with so decisive a movement that his men recognised the sign
that all was over, and stirred willingly about the captives and the horses.

“And
those two?” asked Hugh. “Had I not better leave a man behind on the track
there, with a spare horse for Luc? He followed his quarry afoot, but no need
for him to foot it back. Or ought I to send men after them?”

“No
need for that,” said Cadfael with certainty. “Olivier will manage all. They’ll
come home together.”

He
had no qualms at all, he was beginning to relax into the warmth of content. The
evil he had dreaded had been averted, however narrowly, at whatever cost.
Olivier would find his stray, bear with him, follow if he tried to avoid, wrung
and ravaged as he was, with the sole obsessive purpose of his life for so long
ripped away from him, and within him only the aching emptiness where that
consuming passion had been. Into that barren void Olivier would win his way,
and warm the ravished heart to make it habitable for another love. There was
the most comforting of messages to bring from Juliana Bossard, the promise
regained of a home and a welcome. There was a future. How had Matthew-Luc seen
his future when he emptied his purse of the last coin at the abbey, before
taking up the pursuit of his enemy? Surely he had been contemplating the end of
the person he had hitherto been, a total ending, beyond which he could not see.
Now he was young again, there was a life before him, it needed only a little
time to make him whole again.

Olivier
would bring him back to the abbey, when the worst desolation was over. For
Olivier had promised that he would not leave without spending some time
leisurely with Cadfael, and upon Olivier’s promise the heart could rest secure.

As
for the other… Cadfael looked back from the saddle, after they had mounted, and
saw the last of Ciaran, still on his knees under the tree, where they had left
him. His face was turned to them, but his eyes seemed to be closed, and his
hands were wrung tightly together before his breast. He might have been
praying, he might have been simply experiencing with every particle of his
flesh the life that had been left to him. When we are all gone, thought
Cadfael, he will fall asleep there where he lies, he can do no other, for he is
far gone in something beyond exhaustion. Where he falls asleep, there he will
have died. But when he awakes, I trust he may understand that he has been born
again.

The
slower cortege that would bring the prisoners into the town began to assemble,
making the tethering thongs secure, and the torch-bearers crossed the clearing
to mount, withdrawing their yellow light from the kneeling figure, so that
Ciaran vanished gradually, as though he had been absorbed into the bole of the
beech-tree.

Hugh
led the way out to the track, and turned homeward. “Oh, Hugh, I grow old!” said
Cadfael, hugely yawning. “I want my bed.”

Chapter Fifteen

IT
WAS PAST MIDNIGHT when they rode in at the gatehouse, into a great court awash
with moonlight, and heard the chanting of Matins within the church. They had
made no haste on the way home, and said very little, content to ride
companionably together as sometimes before, through summer night or winter day.
It would be another hour or more yet before Hugh’s officers got their prisoners
back to Shrewsbury Castle, since they must keep a foot-pace, but before morning
Simeon Poer and his henchmen would be safe in hold, under lock and key.

“I’ll
wait with you until Lauds is over,” said Hugh, as they dismounted at the
gatehouse. “Father Abbot will want to know how we’ve sped. Though I hope he
won’t require the whole tale from us tonight.”

“Come
down with me to the stables, then,” said Cadfael, “and I’ll see this fellow
unsaddled and tended, while they’re still within. I was always taught to care
for my beast before seeking my own rest. You never lose the habit.”

In
the stable-yard the moonlight was all the light they needed. The quietness of
midnight and the stillness of the air carried every note of the office to them
softly and clearly. Cadfael unsaddled his horse and saw him settled and
provided in his stall, with a light rug against any possible chill, rites he
seldom had occasion to perform now. They brought back memories of other mounts
and other journeys, and battlefields less happily resolved than the small but
desperate skirmish just lost and won.

Hugh
stood watching with his back turned to the great court, but his head tilted to
follow the chant. Yet it was not any sound of an approaching step that made him
look round sudenly, but the slender shadow that stole along the moonlit cobbles
beside his feet. And there hesitant in the gateway of the yard stood Melangell,
startled and startling, haloed in that pallid sheen.

“Child,”
said Cadfael, concerned, “what are you doing out of your bed at this hour?”

“How
could I rest?” she said, but not as one complaining. “No one misses me, they
are all sleeping.” She stood very still and straight, as if she had spent all
the hours since he had left her in earnest endeavour to put away for ever any
memories he might have of the tear-stained, despairing girl who had sought
solitude in his workshop. The great sheaf of her hair was braided and pinned up
on her head, her gown was trim, and her face resolutely calm as she asked, “Did
you find him?”

A
girl he had left her, a woman he came back to her. “Yes,” said Cadfael, “we
found them both. There has nothing ill happened to either. The two of them have
parted. Ciaran goes on his way alone.”

“And
Matthew?” she asked steadily.

“Matthew
is with a good friend, and will come to no harm. We two have outridden them,
but they will come.” She would have to learn to call him by another name now,
but let the man himself tell her that. Nor would the future be altogether easy,
for her or for Luc Meverel, two human creatures who might never have been
brought within hail of each other but for freakish circumstance. Unless Saint
Winifred had had a hand in that, too? On this night Cadfael could believe it,
and trust her to bring all to a good end. “He will come back,” said Cadfael,
meeting her candid eyes, that bore no trace of tears now. “You need not fear.
But he has suffered a great turmoil of the mind, and he’ll need all your
patience and wisdom. Ask him nothing. When the time is right he will tell you
everything. Reproach him with nothing.”

“God
forbid,” she said,”that I should ever reproach him. It was I who failed him.”

“No,
how could you know? But when he comes, wonder at nothing. Be like one who is
thirsty and drinks. And so will he.”

She
had turned a little towards him, and the moonlight blanched wonderfully over
her face, as if a lamp within her had been newly lighted. “I will wait,” she
said.

“Better
go to your bed and sleep, the waiting may be longer than you think, he has been
wrung. But he will come.”

But
at that she shook her head. “I’ll watch till he comes,” she said, and suddenly
smiled at them, pale and lustrous as pearl, and turned and went away swiftly
and silently towards the cloister.

“That
is the girl you spoke of?” asked Hugh, looking after her with somewhat frowning
interest. “The lame boy’s sister? The girl that young man fancies?”

“That
is she,” said Cadfael, and closed the half-door of the stall.

“The
weaver-woman’s niece?”

“That,
too. Dowerless and from common stock,” said Cadfael, understanding but
untroubled. “Yes, true! I’m from common stock myself. I doubt if a young fellow
who has been torn apart and remade as Luc has tonight will care much about such
little things. Though I grant you others may! I hope the lady Juliana has no
plans yet for marrying him off to some heiress from a neighbour manor, for I
fancy things have gone so far now with these two that she’ll be forced to
abandon her plans. A manor or a craft, if you take pride in them, and run them
well, where’s the difference?”

“Your
common stock,” said Hugh heartily, “gave growth to a most uncommon shoot! And I
wouldn’t say but that young thing would grace a hall better than many a
highbred dame I’ve seen. But listen, they’re ending. We’d best present
ourselves.”

Abbot
Radulfus came from Matins and Lauds with his usual imperturbable stride, and
found them waiting for him as he left the cloister. This day of miracles had
produced a fittingly glorious night, incredibly lofty and deep, coruscating
with stars, washed white with moonlight. Coming from the dimness within, this
exuberance of light showed him clearly both the serenity and the weariness on
the two faces that confronted him.

“You
are back!” he said, and looked beyond them. “But not all! Messire de Bretagne,
you said he had gone by a wrong way. He has not returned here. You have not
encountered him?”

“Yes,
Father, we have,” said Hugh. “All is well with him, and he has found the young
man he was seeking. They will return here, all in good time.”

“And
the evil you feared, Brother Cadfael? You spoke of another death…”

“Father,”
said Cadfael, “no harm has come tonight to any but the masterless men who
escaped into the forest there. They are now safe in hold, and on their way
under guard to the castle. The death I dreaded has been averted, no threat
remains in that quarter to any man. I said, if the two young men could be
overtaken, the better surely for one, and perhaps for both. Father, they were
overtaken in time, and better for both it surely must be.”

“Yet
there remains,” said Radulfus, pondering, “the print of blood, which both you
and I have seen. You said, you will recall, that, yes, we have entertained a
murderer among us. Do you still say so?”

“Yes,
Father. Yet not as you suppose. When Olivier de Bretagne and Luc Meverel
return, then all can be made plain, for as yet,” said Cadfael, “there are still
certain things we do not know. But we do know,” he said firmly, “that what has
passed this night is the best for which we could have prayed, and we have good
need to give thanks for it.”