The Pilgram of Hate (21 page)

The
western sky was still limpid and bright, liquid gold, the sun still clear of
the treetops, when he opened the door of his workshop and stepped within, into
the timber-warm, herb-scented dimness. He thought and said afterwards that it
was at that moment he saw the inseparable relationship between Ciaran and
Matthew suddenly overturned, twisted into its opposite, and began, in some enclosed
and detached part of his intelligence, to make sense of the whole matter,
however dubious and flawed the revelation. But he had no time to catch and pin
down the vision, for as his foot crossed the threshold there was a soft gasp
somewhere in the shadowy corner of the hut, and a rustle of movement, as if
some wild creature had been disturbed in its lair, and shrunk into the last
fastness to defend itself.

He
halted, and set the door wide open behind him for reassurance that there was a
possibility of escape. “Be easy!” he said mildly. “May I not come into my own
workshop without leave? And should I be entering here to threaten any soul with
harm?”

His
eyes, growing accustomed rapidly to the dimness, which seemed dark only by
contrast with the radiance outside, scanned the shelves, the bubbling jars of
wine in a fat row, the swinging, rustling swathes of herbs dangling from the
beams of the low roof. Everything took shape and emerged into view. Stretched
along the broad wooden bench against the opposite wall, a huddle of tumbled
skirts stirred slowly and reared itself upright, to show him the spilled
ripe-corn gold of a girl’s hair, and the tear-stained, swollen-lidded
countenance of Melangell.

She
said no word, but she did not drop blindly into her sheltering arms again. She
was long past that, and past being afraid to show herself so to one secret,
quiet creature whom she trusted. She set down her feet in their scuffed leather
shoes to the floor, and sat back against the timbers of the wall, bracing slight
shoulders to the solid contact. She heaved one enormous, draining sigh that was
dragged up from her very heels, and left her weak and docile. When he crossed
the beaten earth floor and sat down beside her, she did not flinch away.

“Now,”
said Cadfael, settling himself with deliberation, to give her time to compose
at least her voice. The soft light would spare her face. “Now, child dear,
there is no one here who can either save you or trouble you, and therefore you
can speak freely, for everything you say is between us two only. But we two
together need to take careful counsel. So what is it you know that I do not
know?”

“Why
should we take counsel?” she said in a small, drear voice from below his solid
shoulder. “He is gone.”

“What
is gone may return. The roads lead always two ways, hither as well as yonder.
What are you doing out here alone, when your brother walks erect on two sound
feet, and has all he wants in this world, but for your absence?”

He
did not look directly at her, but felt the stir of warmth and softness through
her body, which must have been a smile, however flawed. “I came away,” she
said, very low, “not to spoil his joy. I’ve borne most of the day. I think no
one has noticed half my heart was gone out of me. Unless it was you,” she said,
without blame, rather in resignation.

“I
saw you when we came from Saint Giles,” said Cadfael, “you and Matthew. Your
heart was whole then, so was his. If yours is torn in two now, do you suppose
his is preserved without wound? No! So what passed, afterwards? What was this
sword that shore through your heart and his? You know! You may tell it now.
They are gone, there is nothing left to spoil. There may yet be something to
save.”

She
turned her forehead into his shoulder and wept in silence for a little while.
The light within the hut grew rather than dimming, now that his eyes were
accustomed. She forgot to hide her forlorn and bloated face, he saw the bruise
on her cheek darkening into purple. He laid an arm about her and drew her close
for the comfort of the flesh. That of the spirit would need more of time and
thought.

“He
struck you?”

“I
held him,” she said, quick in his defence. “He could not get free.”

“And
he was so frantic? He must go?”

“Yes,
whatever it cost him or me. Oh, Brother Cadfael, why? I thought, I believed he
loved me, as I do him. But see how he used me in his anger!”

“Anger?”
said Cadfael sharply, and turned her by the shoulders to study her more
intently. “Whatever the compulsion on him to go with his friend, why should he
be angry with you? The loss was yours, but surely no blame.”

“He
blamed me for not telling him,” she said drearily. “But I did only what Ciaran
asked of me. For his sake and yours, he said, yes, and for mine, too, let me
go, but hold him fast. Don’t tell him I have the ring again, he said, and I
will go. Forget me, he said, and help him to forget me. He wanted us to remain
together and be happy…”

“Are
you telling me,” demanded Cadfael sharply, “that they did not go together! That
Ciaran made off without him?”

“It
was not like that,” sighed Melangell. “He meant well by us, that’s why he stole
away alone…”

“When
was this? When? When did you have speech with him? When did he go?”

“I
was here at dawn, you’ll remember. I met Ciaran by the brook…” She drew a deep,
desolate breath and loosed the whole flood of it, every word she could recall
of that meeting in the early morning, while Cadfael gazed appalled, and the
vague glimpse he had had of enlightenment awoke and stirred again in his mind, far
clearer now.

“Go
on! Tell me what followed between you and Matthew. You did as you were bidden,
I know, you drew him with you, I doubt he ever gave a thought to Ciaran all
those morning hours, believing him still penned withindoors, afraid to stir.
When was it he found out?”

“After
dinner it came into his mind that he had not seen him. He was very uneasy. He
went to look for him everywhere… He came to me here in the garden. “God keep
you, Melangell,” he said, “you must fend for yourself now, sorry as I am…”
Almost every word of that encounter she had by heart, she repeated them like a
tired child repeating a lesson. “I said too much, he knew I had spoken with
Ciaran, he knew that I knew he’d meant to go secretly…”

“And
then, after you had owned as much?”

“He
laughed,” she said, and her very voice froze into a despairing whisper. “I
never heard him laugh until this morning, and then it was such a sweet sound.
But this laughter was not so! Bitter and raging.” She stumbled through the rest
of it, every word another fine line added to the reversed image that grew in
Cadfael’s mind, mocking his memory. “He sets me free!” And “You must be his
confederate!” The words were so burned on her mind that she even reproduced the
savagery of their utterance. And how few words it took, in the end, to
transform everything, to turn devoted attendance into remorseless pursuit,
selfless love into dedicated hatred, noble self-sacrifice into calculated
flight, and the voluntary mortification of the flesh into body armour which must
never be doffed.

He
heard again, abruptly and piercingly, Ciaran’s wild cry of alarm as he clutched
his cross to him, and Matthew’s voice saying softly: “Yet he should doff it.
How else can he truly be rid of his pains?”

How
else, indeed! Cadfael recalled, too, how he had reminded them both that they
were here to attend the feast of a saint who might have life itself within her
gift, “even for a man already condemned to death!” Oh, Saint Winifred, stand by
me now, stand by us all, with a third miracle to better the other two!

He
took Melangell brusquely by the chin, and lifted her face to him. “Girl, look
to yourself now for a while, for I must leave you. Do up your hair and keep a
brave face, and go back to your kin as soon as you can bear their eyes on you.
Go into the church for a time, it will be quiet there now, and who will wonder
if you give a longer time to your prayers? They will not even wonder at past
tears, if you can smile now. Do as well as you can, for I have a thing I must
do.”

There
was nothing he could promise her, no sure hope he could leave with her. He
turned from her without another word, leaving her staring after him between
dread and reassurance, and went striding in haste through the gardens and out
across the court, to the abbot’s lodging.

If
Radulfus was surprised to have Cadfael ask audience again so soon, he gave no
sign of it, but had him admitted at once, and put aside his book to give his
full attention to whatever this fresh business might be. Plainly it was
something very much to the current purpose and urgent.

“Father,”
said Cadfael, making short work of explanations, “there’s a new twist here.
Messire de Bretagne has gone off on a false trail. Those two young men did not
leave by the Oswestry road, but crossed the Meole brook and set off due west to
reach Wales the nearest way. Nor did they leave together. Ciaran slipped away
during the morning, while his fellow was with us in the procession, and Matthew
has followed him by the same way as soon as he learned of his going. And,
Father, there’s good cause to think that the sooner they’re overtaken and
halted, the better surely for one, and I believe for both. I beg you, let me
take a horse and follow. And send word of this to Hugh Beringar in the town, to
come after us on the same trail.”

Radulfus
received all this with a grave but calm face, and asked no less shortly: “How
did you come by this word?”

“From
the girl who spoke with Ciaran before he departed. No need to doubt it is all
true. And, Father, one more thing before you bid me go. Open, I beg you, that
scrip they left behind, let me see if it has anything more to tell us of this
pair, at the least, of one of them.”

Without
a word or an instant of hesitation, Radulfus dragged the linen scrip into the
light of his candles, and unbuckled the fastening. The contents he drew out
fully upon the desk, sparse enough, what the poor pilgrim would carry, having
few possessions and desiring to travel light.

“You
know, I think,” said the abbot, looking up sharply, “to which of the two this
belonged?”

“I
do not know, but I guess. In my mind I am sure, but I am also fallible. Give me
leave!”

With
a sweep of his hand he spread the meagre belongings over the desk. The purse,
thin enough when Prior Robert had handled it before, lay flat and empty now.
The leather-bound breviary, well-used, worn but treasured, had been rolled into
the folds of the shirt, and when Cadfael reached for it the shirt slid from the
desk and fell to the floor. He let it lie as he opened the book. Within the
cover was written, in a clerk’s careful hand, the name of its owner: Juliana
Bossard. And below, in newer ink and a less practised hand: Given to me, Luc
Meverel, this Christmastide, 1140. God be with us all!

“So
I pray, too,” said Cadfael, and stooped to pick up the fallen shirt. He held it
up to the light, and his eye caught the thread-like outline of a stain that
rimmed the left shoulder. His eye followed the line over the shoulder, and
found it continued down and round the left side of the breast. The linen, otherwise,
was clean enough, bleached by several launderings from its original brownish
natural colouring. He spread it open, breast up, on the desk. The thin brown
line, sharp on its outer edge, slightly blurred within, hemmed a great space
spanning the whole left part of the chest and the upper part of the left
sleeve. The space within the outline had been washed clear of any stain, even
the rim was pale, but it stood clear to be seen, and the scattered shadowings
of colour within it preserved a faint hint of what had been there.

Radulfus,
if he had not ventured as far afield in the world as Cadfael, had nevertheless
stored up some experience of it. He viewed the extended evidence and said
composedly, “This was blood.”

“So
it was,” said Cadfael, and rolled up the shirt.

“And
whoever owned this scrip came from where a certain Juliana Bossard was
chatelaine.” His deep eyes were steady and sombre on Cadfael’s face. “Have we
entertained a murderer in our house?”

“I
think we have,” said Cadfael, restoring the scattered fragments of a life to
their modest lodging. A man’s life, shorn of all expectation of continuance,
even the last coin gone from the purse. “But I think we may have time yet to
prevent another killing, if you give me leave to go.”

“Take
the best of what may be in the stable,” said the abbot simply, “and I will send
word to Hugh Beringar, and have him follow you, and not alone.”

Chapter Thirteen

SEVERAL
MILES NORTH on the Oswestry road, Olivier drew rein by the roadside where a
wiry, bright-eyed boy was grazing goats on the broad verge, lush in summer
growth and coming into seed. The child twitched one of his long leads on his
charges, to bring him along gently where the early evening light lay warm on
the tall grass. He looked up at the rider without awe, half-Welsh and immune
from servility. He smiled and gave an easy good evening.

The
boy was handsome, bold, unafraid; so was the man. They looked at each other and
liked what they saw.