The Pilgram of Hate (26 page)

“So
all is well?”

“All
is very well, Father.”

“Then
the rest may wait for morning. You need rest. But will you not come in with me
and take some food and wine, before you sleep?”

“My
wife,” said Hugh, gracefully evading, “will be in some anxiety for me. You are
kind, Father, but I would not have her fret longer than she need.”

The
abbot eyed them both, and did not press them.

“And
God bless you for that!” sighed Cadfael, toiling up the slight slope of the
court towards the dortoir stair and the gatehouse where Hugh had hitched his
horse. “For I’m asleep on my feet, and even a good wine could not revive me.”

The
moonlight was gone, and there was as yet no sunlight, when Olivier de Bretagne
and Luc Meverel rode slowly in at the abbey gatehouse. How far they had
wandered in the deep night neither of them knew very clearly, for this was
strange country to both. Even when overtaken, and addressed with careful
gentleness, Luc had still gone forward blindly, hands hanging slack at his
sides or vaguely parting the bushes, saying nothing, hearing nothing, unless
some core of feeling within him was aware of this calm, relentless pursuit by a
tolerant, incurious kindness, and distantly wondered at it. When he had dropped
at last and lain down in the lush grass of a meadow at the edge of the forest,
Olivier had tethered his horse a little apart and lain down beside him, not too
close, yet so close that the mute man knew he was there, waiting without
impatience. Past midnight Luc had fallen asleep. It was his greatest need. He
was a man ravished and emptied of every impulse that had held him alive for the
past two months, a dead man still walking and unable quite to die. Sleep was
his ransom. Then he could truly die to this waste of loss and bitterness, the
awful need that had driven him, the corrosive grief that had eaten his heart
out for his lord, who had died in his arms, on his shoulder, on his heart. The
bloodstain that would not wash out, no matter how he laboured over it, was his
witness. He had kept it to keep the fire of his hatred white-hot. Now in sleep
he was delivered from all.

And
he had awakened in the first mysterious pre-dawn stirring of the earliest
summer birds, beginning to call tentatively into the silence, to open his eyes
upon a face bending over him, a face he did not know, but remotely desired to
know, for it was vivid, friendly and calm, waiting courteously on his will.

“Did
I kill him?” Luc had asked, somehow aware that the man who bore this face would
know the answer.

“No,”
said a voice clear, serene and low. “There was no need. But he’s dead to you.
You can forget him.”

He
did not understand that, but he accepted it. He sat up in the cool, ripe grass,
and his senses began to stir again, and record distantly that the earth smelled
sweet, and there were paling stars in the sky over him, caught like stray
sparks in the branches of the trees. He stared intently into Olivier’s face,
and Olivier looked back at him with a slight, serene smile, and was silent.

“Do
I know you?” asked Luc wonderingly.

“No.
But you will. My name is Olivier de Bretagne, and I serve Laurence d’Angers,
just as your lord did. I knew Rainald Bossard well, he was my friend, we came
from the Holy Land together in Laurence’s train. And I am sent with a message
to Luc Meverel, and that, I am sure, is your name.”

“A
message to me?” Luc shook his head.

“From
your cousin and lady, Juliana Bossard. And the message is that she begs you to
come home, for she needs you, and there is no one who can take your place.”

He
was slow to believe, still numbed and hollow within; but there was no impulsion
for him to go anywhere or do anything now of his own will, and he yielded
indifferently to Olivier’s promptings. “Now we should be getting back to the
abbey,” said Olivier practically, and rose, and Luc responded, and rose with
him. “You take the horse, and I’ll walk,” said Olivier, and Luc did as he was
bidden. It was like nursing a simpleton gently along the way he must go, and
holding him by the hand at every step.

They
found their way back at last to the old track, and there were the two horses
Hugh had left behind for them, and the groom fast asleep in the grass beside
them. Olivier took back his own horse, and Luc mounted the fresh one, with the
lightness and ease of custom, his body’s instincts at least reawakening. The
yawning groom led the way, knowing the path well. Not until they were halfway
back towards the Meole brook and the narrow bridge to the highroad did Luc say
a word of his own volition.

“You
say she wants me to come back,” he said abruptly, with quickening pain and hope
in his voice. “Is it true? I left her without a word, but what else could I do?
What can she think of me now?”

“Why,
that you had your reasons for leaving her, as she has hers for wanting you
back. Half the length of England I have been asking after you, at her entreaty.
What more do you need?”

“I
never thought to return,” said Luc, staring back down that long, long road in
wonder and doubt.

No,
not even to Shrewsbury, much less to his home in the south. Yet here he was, in
the cool, soft morning twilight well before Prime, riding beside this young
stranger over the wooden bridge that crossed the Meole brook, instead of wading
through the shrunken stream to the pease fields, the way by which he had left
the enclave. Round to the highroad, past the mill and the pond, and in at the
gatehouse to the great court. There they lighted down, and the groom took
himself and his two horses briskly away again towards the town.

Luc
stood gazing about him dully, still clouded by the unfamiliarity of everything
he beheld, as if his senses were still dazed and clumsy with the effort of
coming back to life. At this hour the court was empty. No, not quite empty.
There was someone sitting on the stone steps that climbed to the door of the
guest-hall, sitting there alone and quite composedly, with her face turned
towards the gate, and as he watched she rose and came down the wide steps, and
walked towards him with a swift, light step. Then he knew her for Melangell.

In
her at least there was nothing unfamiliar. The sight of her brought back colour
and form and reality into the very stones of the wall at her back, and the
cobbles under her feet. The elusive grey between-light could not blur the
outlines of head and hand, or dim the brightness of her hair. Life came
flooding back into Luc with a shock of pain, as feeling returns after a numbing
wound. She came towards him with hands a little extended and face raised, and
the faintest and most anxious of smiles on her lips and in her eyes. Then, as
she hesitated for the first time, a few paces from him, he saw the dark stain
of the bruise that marred her cheek.

It
was the bruise that shattered him. He shook from head to heels in a great
convulsion of shame and grief, and blundered forward blindly into her arms,
which reached gladly to receive him. On his knees, with his arms wound about
her and his face buried in her breast, he burst into a storm of tears, as
spontaneous and as healing as Saint Winifred’s own miraculous spring.

He
was in perfect command of voice and face when they met after chapter in the
abbot’s parlour, abbot, prior, Brother Cadfael, Hugh Beringar, Olivier and Luc,
to set right in all its details the account of Rainald Bossard’s death, and all
that had followed from it.

“Unwittingly
I deceived you, Father,” said Cadfael, harking back to the interview which had
sent him forth in such haste. “When you asked if we had entertained a murderer
unawares, I answered truly that I did think so, but that we might yet have time
to prevent a second death. I never realised until afterwards how you might
interpret that, seeing we had just found the blood-stained shirt. But, see, the
man who struck the blow might be spattered as to sleeve or collar, but he would
not be marked by this great blot that covered breast and shoulder over the
heart. No, that was rather the sign of one who had held a wounded man, a man
wounded to death, in his arms as he died. Nor would the slayer, if his clothing
was blood-stained, have kept and carried it with him, but burned or buried it, or
somehow rid himself of it. But this shirt, though washed most carefully, still
bore the outline of the stain clear to be seen, and it was carried as a sacred
relic is carried, perhaps as a pledge to exact vengeance. So I knew that this
same Luc whom we knew as Matthew, and in whose scrip the talisman was found,
was not the murderer. But when I recalled all the words I had heard those two
young men speak, and all the evidence of devoted attendance, the one on the
other, then suddenly I saw that pairing in the utterly opposed way, as a
pursuit. And I feared it must be to the death.”

The
abbot looked at Luc, and asked simply: “Is that a true reading?”

“Father,
it is.” Luc set forth with deliberation the progress of his own obsession, as
though he discovered it and understood it only in speaking. “I was with my lord
that night, close to the Old Minster it was, when four or five set on the
clerk, and my lord ran, and we with him, to beat them off. And then they fled,
but one turned back and struck. I saw it done, and it was done of intent! I had
my lord in my arms, he had been good to me, and I loved him,” said Luc with
grimly measured moderation and burning eyes as he remembered. “He was dead in a
mere moment, in the twinkling of an eye… And I had seen where the murderer
fled, into the passage by the chapter house. I went after him, and I heard
their voices in the sacristy, Bishop Henry had come from the chapter house
after the council ended for the night, and there Ciaran had found him and fell
on his knees to him, blurting out all. I lay in hiding, and heard every word. I
think he even hoped for praise,” said Luc with bitter deliberation.

“Is
it possible?” wondered Prior Robert, shocked to the heart. “Bishop Henry could
not for one moment connive at or condone an act so evil.”

“No,
he did not condone. But neither would he deliver over one of his own intimate
servants as a murderer. To do him justice,” said Luc, but with plain distaste,
“his concern was not to cause further anger and quarrelling, but to put away and
smooth over everything that threatened the empress’s fortunes and the peace he
was trying to make. But condone murder, no, that he would not. Therefore I
overheard the sentence he laid upon Ciaran, though then I did not know who he
was, nor that Ciaran was his name. He banished him back to his Dublin home, for
ever, and condemned him to go every step of the way to Bangor and to the ship
at Caergybi barefoot, and carrying that heavy cross. And if ever he put on
shoes or laid by the cross from round his neck, then his forfeit life was no
longer spared, but might be taken by whoever willed, without sin or penalty.
But see,” said Luc, merciless in judgement, “how he cheated! For not only did
he give his creature the ring that would ensure him the protection of the
church to Bangor, but also, mark, not one word was ever made public of this
guilt or this sentence, so how was that forfeit life in danger? No one was to
know of it but they two, if God had not prevented and brought there a witness
to hear the sentence and take upon himself the vengeance due.”

“As
you did,” said the abbot, and his voice was even and calm, avoiding judgement.

“As
I did, Father. For as Ciaran swore to keep the terms laid down on pain of
death, so did I swear an oath as solemn to follow him the length of the land,
and if ever he broke his terms for a moment, to have his life as payment for my
lord.”

“And
how,” asked Radulfus in the same mild tone, “did you know what man you were
thus to hunt to his death? For you say you did not see his face clearly or know
his name then.”

“I
knew the way he was bound to go, and the day of his setting out. I waited by
the roadside for one walking north, barefoot, and one not used to going
barefoot, but very well shod,” said Luc with a brief, wry smile. “I saw the
cross at his neck. I fell in at his side, and I told him, not who I was, but
what. I took another name, so that no failure nor shame of mine should ever
cast a shadow on my lady or her house. One Evangelist in exchange for another!
Step for step with him I went all this way, here to this place, and never let
him from my sight and reach, night or day, and never let him forget that I
meant to be his death. He could not ask help to rid himself of me, since I
could then as easily strip him of his pilgrim holiness and show what he really
was. And I could not denounce him, partly for fear of Bishop Henry, partly
because neither did I want more feuding between factions, my feud was between
two men!, but chiefly because he was mine, mine, and I would not let any other
vengeance or danger reach him. So we kept together, he trying to elude me, but
he was court-bred and tender and crippled by the miles, and I holding fast to
him, and waiting.”

He
looked up suddenly and caught the abbot’s compassionate but calm eyes upon him,
and his own eyes were wide, dark and clear. “It is not beautiful, I know.
Neither was murder beautiful. And this blotch was only mine, my lord went to
his grave immaculate, defending one opposed to him.”

It
was Olivier, silent until now, who said softly: “And so did you!” The grave,
thought Cadfael at the height of the Mass, had closed firmly to deny Luc
entrance, but that arm outstretched between his enemy and the knives of three
assailants must never be forgotten. Hell had also shut its mouth and refused to
devour him. He was young, clean, alive again after a kind of death. Yes,
Olivier had uttered truth. His own life ventured, his enemy’s life defended,
what was there between Luc and his lord but the accident, the vain and random
accident, of the death itself?