by Ellis Peters
“Helisende has never considered that refuge?” asked Cadfael.
“Not she, God forbid she ever should! My girl was never of that mind. For those who take to it kindly it may be bliss, but for those who are pressed into it, it must be a hell on earth! If you’ll pardon my tongue, Brothers! You know your own vocation best, and no doubt you took the cowl for the best of reasons, but Helisende
No, I would not want that for her. Better by far this Perronet lad, if there has to be a second-best,” She had begun to gather up the platters and dishes they had emptied, and took up the pitcher to refill their cups. “I did hear say that you’ve been at Elford, and seen Roscelin there. Is that true?”
“Yes,” said Cadfael, “we left Elford only yesterday. We did, by chance, have some brief talk with the young man, but never knew until this morning that he came from this neighboring manor of Vivers.”
“And how did he look?” she asked longingly. “Is he well? Was he down in spirits? I have not seen him for a month or more, and I know how ill he took it that he should be sent away like some offending page from his own home, when he had done no wrong, nor thought none. As good a lad as ever stepped! What had he to say?”
“Why, he was in excellent health at any rate,” said Cadfael cautiously, “and very fair spirits, considering all. It’s true he did complain of being banished, and was very ill-content where he is. Naturally he said little about the circumstances, seeing we were chance comers and unknown to him, and I daresay he would have said no more to anyone else who had as little business in the matter. But he did say he had given his word to abide by his father’s orders, and wait for leave before he’d venture home.”
“But he does not know,” she said, between anger and helplessness, “what’s being planned here. Oh, he’ll get leave to come home fast enough as soon as Helisende is out of the house, and far away south on her way to that young man’s manor. And what a homecoming that will be for the poor lad! Shame to deal so behind his back!”
“They think it for the best,” said Haiuin, pale and moved. “Even for his best interests, they believe. And this matter is hard even for them. If they are mistaken in hiding this marriage from him until it is over, surely they may be forgiven.”
“There are those,” said Edgytha darkly, “who never will be.” She picked up her wooden tray, and the keys at her girdle chimed faintly as she moved towards the door. “I wish this had been honestly done. I wish he had been told. Whether he could ever have her or not, he had a right to know, and to give his blessing or his ban. How was it you were brought in touch with him there, to know the half of his name but not the whole?”
“It was the lady mentioned his name,” said Cadfael, “when de Clary came in from riding, and the young man was with him. Roscelin, she called him. It was later we spoke with him. He saw my friend here stiff from a night on his knees, and came to lend him an arm to lean on.”
“So he would!” she said, warming. “To any one he saw in need. The lady, you say? Audemar’s lady?”
“No, our errand was not to him, we never saw his wife and children. No, this was his mother, Adelais de Clary.”
The dishes jangled momentarily on Edgytha’s tray. With care she balanced it on one hand, and reached to the latch of the door. “She is there? There at Elford?”
“She is. Or she was when we left, yesterday, and with the snow coming so shortly after, she is surely there still.”
“She visits very rarely,” said Edgytha, shrugging. “They say there’s small love lost between her and her son’s wife. That’s no uncommon thing, either, I suppose, so they’re just as well apart.” She nudged the door open expertly with an elbow, and swung the large tray through the doorway edgewise. “Do you hear the horses, outside there? That will be Jean de Perronet’s party riding in.”
There was nothing clandestine or secretive, certainly, about Jean de Perronet’s arrival, though nothing ceremonious or showy, either. He came with one body servant and two grooms, and with two led horses for the bride and her attendant, and packhorses for the baggage. The entire entourage was practical and efficient, and de Perronet himself went very plainly, without flourishes in his dress or his manner, though Cadfael noted with appreciation the quality of his horseflesh and harness. This young man knew where to spend his money, and where to spare.
They had gone out, Haluin and Cadfael together, to watch the guests dismount and unload. The afternoon air was again clearing towards a night frost, but there were scudding clouds in the upper air, and might be further flurries of snow in the dark hours. The travelers would be well content to be under a sound roof and out of the chilly wind.
De Perronet dismounted from his flecked roan horse before the door of the hall, and Cenred came striding down the steps to meet him and embrace him, and lead him by the hand up to the doorway, where the lady Emma waited to welcome him as warmly. Helisende, Cadfael noted, did not appear. At supper at the high table she would have no choice but to attend, but at this stage it was fitting that the honors of the house should rest with her brother and his wife, the guardians of her person and the disposers of her marriage. Host, hostess, and guest vanished within the great hall. Cenred’s servants and de Perronet’s grooms unloaded baggage and stabled horses, and went about the business so practically that within a matter of minutes the courtyard was empty.
So that was the bridegroom! Cadfael stood considering what he had seen, and so far could find no fault in it except that it was, as Edgytha had said, a second-best. And a second-best was all that boy would gain. A young man of perhaps twenty-five or twenty-six, already accustomed to authority and responsibility by his bearing, and well capable of handling them. His men, these favored ones at least, were easy with him. He knew his business as they knew theirs, and there was an air of mutual respect between them. Moreover, he was a good-looking young man, tall and shapely, of open, amiable countenance, and, by the look of him, in the happiest possible humor on the eve of his marriage. Cenred had done his best for his young sister, and his best promised to turn out very well. A pity it could not have been what her heart desired.
“But what else could he have done?” said Haluin, betraying in few words the depth of his own dismay and doubt.
Chapter Eight
In the late afternoon Cenred sent his steward to ask the two Benedictine brothers if they felt able to join his household at supper in hall, or if Father Haluin preferred to continue his rest in retirement, and be waited on in his own chamber. Haluin, who had withdrawn into a dark, inward meditation, would certainly rather have remained apart, but felt it discourteous to absent himself any longer, and made the effort to emerge from his anxious silence, and do honor to the company at the high table. They had given him a place close to the bridal pair, by virtue of his office as the priest who was to marry them. Cadfael, seated a little apart, had them all in view. And below, in the body of the hall, the whole household assembled in its due ranks, under the glow of the torches.
It occurred to Cadfael, watching Haluin’s grave face, that this would be the first time his friend had ever been called upon to be go-between for God. It was true that the young brothers were being encouraged to aim at orders, more now than ever in the past, but many of them would be, as Haluin was, priests without pastoral cares, who in a long life would probably never christen, never marry, never bury, never ordain others to follow them in the same sheltered paths. It is a terrible responsibility, thought Cadfael, who had never aspired to ordination, to have the grace of God committed to a man’s hands, to be privileged and burdened to play a part in other people’s lives, to promise them salvation in baptism, to lock their lives together in matrimony, to hold the key to purgatory at their departing. If I have meddled, he thought devoutly, and God knows I have, when need was and there was no better man to attempt it, at least I have meddled only as a fellow sinner, tramping the same road, not as a viscount of heaven, stooping to raise up. Now Haiuin faces this same terrible demand, and no wonder if he is afraid.
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He looked along the array of faces which Haiuin, being so close beside them, could see only as overlapping profiles, each briefly seen as the ripple of movement flowed along the high table, and lit deceptively by the falling glow of the torches. Cenred’s broad, open, blunt-featured countenance a little drawn and taut with strain, but resolutely jovial, his wife presiding over the table with determined amiability and a somewhat anxious smile, de Perronet in happy innocence, shining with evident pleasure at having Helisende seated beside him and all but his already. And the girl, pale and quiet and resolutely gracious at his side, doing her gallant best to respond to his brightness, since this grief was no fault of his, and she had acknowledged that he deserved better. Seeing them thus together, there was no question of the man’s attachment, and if he missed the like radiance in her, perhaps he accepted that as the common ground on which marriages begin, and was ready and willing to be patient until the bud came to flower.
This was the first time Haiuin had seen the girl since she had startled him to his feet here in the hall, and brought him down in that crashing fall, half dazed as he already was by the stinging wind and the blinding snow. And this stiff young figure in her best, gilded by the torchlight, might have been a stranger, never before seen. He looked at her, when chance brought her profile into clear view, with doubt and bewilderment, burdened by a responsibility new to him, and heavy to bear.
It was late when the women withdrew from the high table, leaving the men to their wine, though they would not sit here in the hall much longer. Haluin looked round to catch Cadfael’s eye, agreeing in a glance that it was time for them to leave host and guest together, and Haluin was already reaching for his crutches and bracing himself for the effort of rising when Emma came in again from the solar with a flustered step and an anxious face, a young maidservant at her heels.
“Cenred, here’s something strange happened! Edgytha is gone out and has not returned, and now it’s beginning to snow again, and where should she be going, thus in the night? I sent for her to attend me to bed, as always, and she’s nowhere to be found, and now Madlyn here says that she went out hours ago, as soon as it was dusk.”
Cenred was slow to turn his mind from his hospitable duty towards his guest to an apparently small domestic problem, surely the women’s business rather than his.
“Why, Edgytha may surely go out if she so chooses,” he said good-humoredly,” and will come back when she chooses no less. She’s a free woman, knows her own mind, and can be trusted to mind her duties. If she’s once missing when she’s called for, that’s no great matter. Why should you worry over it?”
“But when does she ever do so without saying? Never! And now it’s snowing again, and she’s been gone four hours or more, if Madlyn says true. How if she’s come to harm? She would not stay away so long of her own will. And you know how I value her. I would not for the world that any harm should come to her.”
“No more would I,” said Cenred warmly, “nor to any of my people. If she’s gone astray we’ll look for her. But no need to fret before we know of any mishap. Here, girl, speak up, what is it you know of the matter? You say she went out some hours ago?”
“Sir, so she did!” Madlyn came forward willingly, wide-eyed with half-pleasurable excitement. “It was after we’d made all ready. I was coming in from the dairy, and I saw her come forth from the kitchen with her cloak about her, and I said to her that this was like to be a busy night, and she’d be missed, and she said she would be back before she was called for. It was just beginning to get dark then. I never thought she’d be gone so long.”
“And did you not ask her where she was going?” demanded Cenred.
“I did,” said the girl, “though it was little enough she was ever likely to tell about her own business, and I should have known she’d make a sour answer if she made any at all. But there’s no sense to be made of it. She said she was going to find a cat,” said Madlyn in baffled innocence, “to put among the pigeons.”
If it meant nothing to her, it had meaning for Cenred and for his wife, who plainly heard it now for the first time. Emma’s startled gaze flew to her husband’s face as he came abruptly to.his feet. The look they exchanged Cadfael could read as if he had the words ringing in his ears. He had been given clues enough to make the reading easy. Edgytha was nurse to them both, indulged them, loved them like her own, resents even their separation, whatever the church and the ties of blood may say, and much more this marriage that makes the separation final. She is gone to enlist help to prevent what she deplores, even at this last moment. She is gone to tell Roscelin what is being done behind his back. She is gone to Elford.
None of which could be said aloud, here in front of Jean de Perronet, who stood now at Cenred’s side, looking from face to face round the circle, puzzled and sympathetic in a domestic trouble which was none of his business. An old servant gone missing in the evening, with night coming on and snow falling, called for at least a token search. He made the suggestion ingenuously, filling a silence which at any moment might have caused him to look more narrowly at what was happening here.
“Should we not look for her, if she’s been gone so long? The ways are not always safe at night, and for a woman venturing alone
“
The diversion came as a blessing, and Cenred seized on it gratefully. “So we will. I’ll send out a party by the most likely way. It may be she’s only been delayed by the snow, if she intended a visit in the village. But this need not give you any concern, Jean. I would not wish your stay to be marred. Leave this matter to my men, we have enough in the household. And rest assured she cannot be far, we shall soon find her and see her safe home.”
“I will gladly come out with you,” de Perronet offered.
“No, no, I will not have it. Let all things here go as we have planned them, and nothing spoil the occasion. Use my house as your own, and take your night’s rest with a quiet mind, for tomorrow this small flurry will be over and done.”
It was not difficult to persuade the helpful guest to abandon his generous intention. Perhaps it had been made only as a courteous gesture. A man’s household affairs are his, and best left to him. It is civil to offer help, but wise to give way gracefully. Cenred knew very well now where Edgytha had set out to go, there would be no question of which road to take in hunting for her. Moreover, there was some genuine call for concern, for in four hours she could have been there and back even in snow. Cenred quit his supper table purposefully, driving the men of his following before him to muster within the hall door. He bade de Perronet an emphatic good-night, which was accepted plainly as dismissal even from this domestic conference, and issued brisk orders to those of his servants whom he chose to go with the search party, six of the young and vigorous and his steward with them.
“What must we do?” Brother Haluin wondered half aloud, standing with Cadfael a little apart.
“You,” said Cadfael, “must go to your bed, like a sensible man, and sleep if you can. And a prayer or two will not come amiss. I am going with them.”
“Along the nearest road to Elford,” said Haluin heavily.
“To find a cat to put among the pigeons. Yes, where else? But you stay here. There is nothing you could do or say, if there has to be speech, that I cannot.”
The hall door was opened, the party tramped down the steps into the courtyard, two of them carrying torches. Cadfael, following last, looked out upon a glittering, frosty night. The ground was covered but meagerly, small, needle-sharp flakes out of an almost clear sky, brittle with stars and too cold for a heavy fall. He looked back from the doorway, and saw the women of the house, gentlefolk and servants alike, drawn together in mutual uneasiness in the far corner of the hall, all eyes following their departing menfolk, the maids huddling close, Emma with her smooth, gentle face wrung in distress, and pulling nervously at her plump fingers.
And Helisende standing a pace apart, the only one not clinging to her kind for comfort. She was far enough bac
k from one of the sconces for the torchlight to show her face fully, without exaggerated shadows. All that Emma had reported to her husband, all that Madlyn had told, Helisende surely knew now. She knew where Edgytha was gone, she knew for what purpose. She was staring wide-eyed into a future she could no longer foretell, where the results of this night’s work hid themselves in bewilderment and dismay and possible catastrophe. She had prepared herself for a willing sacrifice, but she found herself utterly unprepared for whatever threatened now. Her face seemed as still and composed as ever, yet it had lost all its calm and certainty, her resolution had become helplessness, and her resignation changed to desperation. She had arrived at an embattled ground she believed she could hold, at whatever cost to herself, and now that ground shook and parted under her feet, and she was no longer in control of her own fate. The image of her shattered gallantry, disarmed and vulnerable, was the last glimpse Cadfael carried out with him into the darkness and the frost.
Cenred drew his cloak close about his face against the wind, and set out from the gate of the manor on a path that was strange to Cadfael. With Haluin he had turned in from the distant highway, straight towards the gleam of light from the manor torches, but this way slanted back to strike the road much nearer to Elford, and would probably cut off at least half a mile of the distance. The night had its own lambent light, partly from the stars, partly from the thin covering of snow, so that they were able to go quickly, spread out in a line centered upon the path. The country here was open, at first bare of trees, then threading a belt of woods and scrubland. They heard nothing but their own footsteps and breath, and the soft whining of the wind among the bushes. Twice Cenred halted them to have silence, and called aloud to the night, but got no answer.