by Ellis Peters
He lay quiet in the darkness, straight and still like a man coffined, but easy, with his arms lax at his sides, and his half-closed eyes dreaming on the vault above him, where the faint light played among the beams.
There was no lightning that night, only a consort of steady rolls of thunder both before and after Matins and Lauds, so unalarming that many among the brothers failed to notice them. Cadfael heard them as he rose, and as he returned to his rest. They seemed to him a reminder and a reassurance that Winchester had indeed moved nearer to Shrewsbury, and consoled him that his grievance was not overlooked, but noted in heaven, and he might look to have his part yet in collecting the debt due to Rainald Bossard. Upon which warranty, he fell asleep.
Chapter Three.
ON THE SEVENTEENTH DAY of June Saint Winifred’s elaborate oak coffin, silver-ornamented and lined with lead behind all its immaculate seals, was removed from its place of honour and carried with grave and subdued ceremony back to its temporary resting-place in the chapel of the hospital of Saint Giles, there to wait, as once before, for the auspicious day, the twenty-second of June. The weather was fair, sunny and still, barely a cloud in the sky, and yet cool enough for travelling, the best of weather for pilgrims. And by the eighteenth day the pilgrims began to arrive, a scattering of fore-runners before the full tide began to flow.
Brother Cadfael had watched the reliquary depart on its memorial journey with a slightly guilty mind, for all his honest declaration that he could hardly have done otherwise than he had done, there in the summer night in Gwytherin. So strongly had he felt, above all, her Welshness, the feeling she must have for the familiar tongue about her, and the tranquil flow of the seasons in her solitude, where she had slept so long and so well in her beatitude, and worked so many small, sweet miracles for her own people. No, he could not believe he had made a wrong choice there. If only she would glance his way, and smile, and say, well done!
The very first of the pilgrims came probing into the walled herb-garden, with Brother Denis’s directions to guide him, in search of a colleague in his own mystery.
Cadfael was busy weeding the close-planted beds of mint and thyme and sage late in the afternoon, a tedious, meticulous labour in the ripeness of a favourable June, after spring sun and shower had been nicely balanced, and growth was a green battlefield. He backed out of a cleansed bed, and backed into a solid form, rising startled from his knees to turn and face a rusty black brother shaped very much like himself, though probably fifteen years younger. They stood at gaze, two solid, squarely built brethren of the Order, eyeing each other in instant recognition and acknowledgement.
“You must be Brother Cadfael,” said the stranger-brother in a broad, melodious bass voice. “Brother Hospitaller told me where to find you. My name is Adam, a brother of Reading. I have the very charge there that you bear here, and I have heard tell of you, even as far south as my house.”
His eye was roving, as he spoke, towards some of Cadfael’s rarer treasures, the eastern poppies he had brought from the Holy Land and reared here with anxious care, the delicate fig that still contrived to thrive against the sheltering north wall, where the sun nursed it. Cadfael warmed to him for the quickening of his eye, and the mild greed that flushed the round, shaven face. A sturdy, stalwart man, who moved as if confident of his body, one who might prove a man of his hands if challenged. Well-weathered, too, a genuine outdoor man.
“You’re more than welcome, brother,” said Cadfael heartily. “You’ll be here for the saint’s feast? And have they found you a place in the dortoir? There are a few cells vacant, for any of our own who come, like you.”
“My abbot sent me from Reading with a mission to our daughter house of Leominster,” said Brother Adam, probing with an experimental toe into the rich, well-fed loam of Brother Cadfael’s bed of mint, and raising an eyebrow respectfully at the quality he found. “I asked if I might prolong the errand to attend on the translation of Saint Winifred, and I was given the needful permission. It’s seldom I could hope to be sent so far north, and it would be pity to miss such an opportunity.”
“And they’ve found you a brother’s bed?” Such a man, Benedictine, gardener and herbalist, could not be wasted on a bed in the guest-hall. Cadfael coveted him, marking the bright eye with which the newcomer singled out his best endeavours.
“Brother Hospitaller was so gracious. I am placed in a cell close to the novices.”
“We shall be near neighbours,” said Cadfael contentedly. “Now come, I’ll show you whatever we have here to show, for the main garden is on the far side of the Foregate, along the bank of the river. But here I keep my own herber. And if there should be anything here that can be safely carried to Reading, you may take cuttings most gladly before you leave us.”
They fell into a very pleasant and voluble discussion, perambulating all the walks of the closed garden, and comparing experiences in cultivation and use. Brother Adam of Reading had a sharp eye for rarities, and was likely to go home laden with spoils. He admired the neatness and order of Cadfael’s workshop, the collection of rustling bunches of dried herbs hung from the roof-beams and under the eaves, and the array of bottles, jars and flagons along the shelves. He had hints and tips of his own to propound, too, and the amiable contest kept them happy all the afternoon. When they returned together to the great court before Vespers it was to a scene notably animated, as if the bustle of celebration was already beginning. There were horses being led down into the stableyard, and bundles being carried in at the guest-hall. A stout elderly man, well equipped for riding, paced across towards the church to pay his first respects on arrival, with a servant trotting at his heels.
Brother Paul’s youngest charges, all eyes and curiosity, ringed the gatehouse to watch the early arrivals, and were shooed aside by Brother Jerome, very busy as usual with all the prior’s errands. Though the boys did not go very far, and formed their ring again as soon as Jerome was out of sight. A few of the citizens of the Foregate had gathered in the street to watch, excited dogs running among their legs.
“Tomorrow,” said Cadfael, eyeing the scene, “there will be many more. This is but the beginning. Now if the weather stays fair we shall have a very fine festival for our saint.”
And she will understand that all is in her honour, he thought privately, even if she does lie very far from here. And who knows whether she may not pay us a visit, out of the kindness of her heart? What is distance to a saint, who can be where she wills in the twinkling of an eye?
The guest-hall filled steadily on the morrow. All day long they came, some singly, some in groups as they had met and made comfortable acquaintance on the road, some afoot, some on ponies, some whole and hearty and on holiday, some who had travelled only a few miles, some who came from far away, and among them a number who went on crutches, or were led along by better-sighted friends, or had grievous deformities or skin diseases, or debilitating illnesses; and all these hoping for relief.
Cadfael went about the regular duties of his day, divided between church and herbarium, but with an interested eye open for all there was to see whenever he crossed the great court, boiling now with activity. Every arriving figure, every face, engaged his notice, but as yet distantly, none being provided with a name, to make him individual. Such of them as needed his services for relief would be directed to him, such as came his way by chance would be entitled to his whole attention, freely offered.
It was the woman he noticed first, bustling across the court from the gatehouse to the guest-hall with a basket on her arm, fresh from the Foregate market with new-baked bread and little cakes, soon after Prime. A careful housewife, to be off marketing so early even on holiday, decided about what she wanted, and not content to rely on the abbey bakehouse to provide it. A sturdy, confident figure of a woman, perhaps fifty years of age but in full rosy bloom. Her dress was sober and plain, but of good material and proudly kept, her wimple snow-white beneath her head-cloth of brown linen. She was not tall, but so erect tha
t she could pass for tall, and her face was round, wide-eyed and broad-cheeked, with a determined chin to it.
She vanished briskly into the guest-hall, and he caught but a glimpse of her, but she was positive enough to stay with him through the offices and duties of the morning, and as the worshippers left the church after Mass he caught sight of her again, arms spread like a hen-wife driving her birds, marshalling two chicks, it seemed, before her, both largely concealed beyond her ample width and bountiful skirts. Indeed she had a general largeness about her, her head-dress surely taller and broader than need, her hips bolstered by petticoats, the aura of bustle and command she bore about with her equally generous and ebullient. He felt a wave of warmth go out to her for her energy and vigour, while he spared a morsel of sympathy for the chicks she mothered, stowed thus away beneath such ample, smothering wings.
In the afternoon, busy about his small kingdom and putting together the medicaments he must take along the Foregate to Saint Giles in the morning, to be sure they had provision enough over the feast, he was not thinking of her, nor of any of the inhabitants of the guest-hall, since none had as yet had occasion to call for his aid. He was packing lozenges into a small box, soothing tablets for scoured, dry throats, when a bulky shadow blocked the open door of his workshop, and a brisk, light voice said, “Pray your pardon, brother, but Brother Denis advised me to come to you, and sent me here.”
And there she stood, filling the doorway, shoulders squared, hands folded at her waist, head braced and face full forward. Her eyes, wide and wide-set, were bright blue but meagrely supplied with pale lashes, yet very firm and fixed in their regard.
“It’s my young nephew, you see, brother,” she went on confidently, “my sister’s son, that was fool enough to go off and marry a roving Welshman from Builth, and now her man’s gone, and so is she, poor lass, and left her two children orphan, and nobody to care for them but me. And me with my own husband dead, and all his craft fallen to me to manage, and never a chick of my own to be my comfort. Not but what I can do very well with the work and the journeymen, for I’ve learned these twenty years what was what in the weaving trade, but still I could have done with a son of my own. But it was not to be, and a sister’s son is dearly welcome, so he is, whether he has his health or no, for he’s the dearest lad ever you saw. And it’s the pain, you see, brother. I don’t like to see him in pain, though he doesn’t complain. So I’m come to you.”
Cadfael made haste to wedge a toe into this first chink in her volubility, and insert a few words of his own into the gap.
“Come within, mistress, and welcome. Tell me what’s the nature of your lad’s pain, and what I can do for you and him I’ll do. But best I should see him and speak with him, for he best knows where he hurts. Sit down and be easy, and tell me about him.”
She came in confidently enough, and settled herself with a determined spreading of ample skirts on the bench against the wall. Her gaze went round the laden shelves, the stored herbs dangling, the brazier and the pots and flasks, interested and curious, but in no way awed by Cadfael or his mysteries.
“I’m from the cloth country down by Campden, brother, Weaver by name and by trade was my man, and his father and grandfather before him, and Alice Weaver is my name, and I keep up the work just as he did. But this young sister of mine, she went off with a Welshman, and the pair of them are dead now, and the children I sent for to live with me. The girl is eighteen years old now, a good, hard-working maid, and I daresay we shall contrive to find a decent match for her in the end, though I shall miss her help, for she’s grown very handy, and is strong and healthy, not like the lad. Named for some outlandish Welsh saint, she is, Melangell, if ever you heard the like!”
“I’m Welsh myself,” said Cadfael cheerfully. “Our Welsh names do come hard on your English tongues, I know.”
“Ah well, the boy brought a name with him that’s short and simple enough. Rhun, they named him. Sixteen he is now, two years younger than his sister, but wants her heartiness, poor soul. He’s well-grown enough, and very comely, but from a child something went wrong with his right leg, it’s twisted and feebled so he can put but the very toe of it to the ground at all, and even that turned on one side, and can lay no weight on it, but barely touch. He goes on two crutches. And I’ve brought him here in the hope good Saint Winifred will do something for him. But it’s cost him dear to make the walk, even though we started out three weeks ago, and have taken it by easy shifts.”
“He’s walked the whole way?” asked Cadfael, dismayed.
“I’m not so prosperous I can afford a horse, more than the one they need for the business at home. Twice on the way a kind carter did give him a ride as far as he was bound, but the rest he’s hobbled on his crutches. Many another at this feast, brother, will have done as much, in as bad case or worse. But he’s here now, safe in the guest-hall, and if my prayers can do anything for him, he’ll walk home again on two sound legs as ever held up a hale and hearty man. But now for these few days he suffers as bad as before.”
“You should have brought him here with you,” said Cadfael. “What’s the nature of his pain? Is it in moving, or when he lies still? Is it the bones of the leg that ache?”
“It’s worst in his bed at night. At home I’ve often heard him weeping for pain in the night, though he tries to keep it so silent we need not be disturbed. Often he gets little or no sleep. His bones do ache, that’s truth, but also the sinews of his calf knot into such cramps it makes him groan.”
“There can be something done about that,” said Cadfael, considering. “At least we may try. And there are draughts can dull the pain and help him to a night’s sleep, at any rate.”
“It isn’t that I don’t trust to the saint,” explained Mistress Weaver anxiously. “But while he waits for her, let him be at rest if he can, that’s what I say. Why should not a suffering lad seek help from ordinary decent mortals, too, good men like you who have faith and knowledge both?”
“Why not, indeed!” agreed Cadfael. “The least of us may be an instrument of grace, though not by his own deserving. Better let the boy come to me here, where we can be private together. The guest-hall will be busy and noisy, here we shall have quiet.”
She rose, satisfied, to take her leave, but she had plenty yet to say even in departing of the long, slow journey, the small kindnesses they had met with on the way, and the fellow pilgrims, some of whom had passed them and arrived here before them.
“There’s more than one in there,” said she, wagging her head towards the lofty rear wall of the guest-hall, “will be needing your help, besides my Rhun. There were two young fellows we came along with the last days, we could keep pace with them, for they were slowed much as we were. Oh, the one of them was hale and lusty enough, but would not stir a step ahead of his friend, and that poor soul had come barefoot more miles even than Rhun had come crippled, and his feet a sight for pity, but would he so much as bind them with rags? Not he! He said he was under vow to go unshod to his journey’s end. And a great heavy cross on a string round his neck, too, and he rubbed raw with the chafing of it, but that was part of his vow, too. I see no reason why a fine young fellow should choose such a torment of his own will, but there, folk do strange things, I daresay he hopes to win some great mercy for himself with his austerities. Still, I should think he might at least get some balm for his feet, while he’s here at rest? Shall I bid him come to you? I’d gladly do a small service for that pair. The other one, Matthew, the sturdy one, he hefted my girl safe out of the way of harm when some mad horsemen in a hurry all but rode us down into the ditch, and he carried our bundles for her after, for she was well loaded, I being busy helping Rhun along. Truth to tell, I think the young man was taken with our Melangell, for he was very attentive to her once we joined company. More than to his friend, though indeed he never stirred a step away from him. A vow is a vow, I suppose, and if a man’s taken all that suffering on himself of his own will, what can another do to prevent it? No m
ore than bear him company, and that the lad is doing, faithfully, for he never leaves him.”
She was out of the door and spreading appreciative nostrils for the scent of the sunlit herbs, when she looked back to add: “There’s others among them may call themselves pilgrims as loud and often as they will, but I wouldn’t trust one or two of them as far as I could throw them. I suppose rogues will make their way everywhere, even among the saints.”
“As long as the saints have money in their purses, or anything about them worth stealing,” agreed Cadfael wryly, “rogues will never be far away.”
Whether Mistress Weaver did speak to her strange travelling companion or not, it was he who arrived at Cadfael’s workshop within half an hour, before ever the boy Rhun showed his face. Cadfael was back at his weeding when he heard them come, or heard, rather, the slow, patient footsteps of the sturdy one stirring the gravel of his pathways. The other made no sound in walking, for he stepped tenderly and carefully in the grass border, which was cool and kind to his misused feet. If there was any sound to betray his coming it was the long, effortful sighing of his breath, the faint, indrawn hiss of pain. As soon as Cadfael straightened his back and turned his head, he knew who came.
They were much of an age, and even somewhat alike in build and colouring, above middle height but that the one stooped in his laboured progress, brown-haired and dark of eye, and perhaps twenty-five or twenty-six years old. Yet not so like that they could have been brothers or close kin. The hale one had the darker complexion, as though he had been more in the air and the sun, and broader bones of cheek and jaw, a stubborn, proud, secret face, disconcertingly still, confiding nothing. The sufferer’s face was long, mobile and passionate, with high cheekbones and hollow cheeks beneath them, and a mouth tight-drawn, either with present pain or constant passion. Anger might be one of his customary companions, burning ardour another. The young man Matthew stalked at his heels mute and jealously watchful in attendance on him.