by Ellis Peters
“She’s been feeding well enough, by the look of her,” said Cadfael, stooping over the whimpering child. “How old is she now? Six weeks is it, or seven? She’s big and bonny for that age.”
The small, contorted face, all wailing mouth and tight-shut eyes screwed up with annoyance, was round and clear-skinned, though red now with exertion and anger. She had abundant, fine hair of a bright autumn brown, and inclined to curl.
“Feed well, yes, indeed she did, until this upset. A greedy-gut, even. I was proud of her.”
And kept plying her too long, thought Cadfael, and she without the sense yet to know when she had enough. No great mystery here.
“That’s a part of her trouble, you’ll find. Give her only a little at a time, and often, and put in the milk a few drops of the cordial I’ll leave with you. Three or four drops will be enough. Get me a small spoon, and she shall have a proper dose of it now to soothe her.”
The widow brought him a little horn spoon, and he unstoppered the glass bottle he had brought, moistened the tip of a finger at its lip, and touched it to the lower lip of the baby’s angry mouth. In an instant the howling broke off short, and the contorted countenance resumed a human shape, and even a human expression of wonder and surprise. The mouth closed, small moist lips folding on an unexpected sweetness; and miraculously this became a mouth too shapely and delicate for a baby of seven weeks, with a distant promise of beauty. The angry red faded slowly to leave the round cheeks flushed with rose, and Eluned’s daughter opened great eyes of a blue almost as dark as the night sky, and smiled an aware, responsive smile, too old for her few weeks of life. True, she wrinkled her face and uttered a warning wail the next moment, but the far-off vision of loveliness remained.
“The creature!” said her grandmother, ruefully fond. “She likes it!”
Cadfael half-filled the little spoon, touched it gently to the baby’s lower lip, and instantly her mouth opened, willing to suck in the offering. It went down fairly tidily, leaving only a gloss upon the relaxed lips. She gazed upward in silence for a moment, from those eyes that devoured half her face under the rounded brow and fluff of auburn hair. Then she turned her cheek a little into the flat pillow under her, belched resoundingly, and lay quiescent with lids half-closed, her infinitesimal fingers curled into small, easy fists under her chin.
“Nothing amiss with her that need cause you any worry,” said Cadfael, re-stoppering the bottle. “If she wakes and cries in the night, and is again in pain, you can give her a little of this in the spoon, as I did. But I think she’ll sleep. Give her somewhat less food at a time than you’ve been giving, and put three or four drops of this in the milk, and we’ll see how she fares in a few days more.”
“What is in it?” asked the widow, looking curiously at the bottle in her hand.
“There’s dill, fennel, mint, just a morsel of poppy juice… and honey to make it agreeable to the taste. Put it somewhere safe and use it as I’ve said. If she’s again troubled this way, give her the dose you saw me give. If she does well enough without it, then spare it but for the drop or two in her food. Medicines are of more effect if used only when there’s need.”
He blew out the end of candle he had brought, leaving it to cool and congeal, for it had still an hour or so of burning left in it, and could serve again in the same office. On the instant he was sorry he had diminished the light in the room so soon, for only now had he leisure to look at the woman. This was the widowed mother of the girl who had been shut out of the church as an irredeemable sinner, whose very penitence and confession were not to be trusted, and therefore could justifiably be rejected. Out of this small, dark dwelling that disordered beauty had blossomed, borne fruit, and died.
The mother must herself have been comely, some years ago, she had still fine features, though worn and lined now in shapes of discouragement, and her greying hair, drawn back austerely from her face, was still abundant, and bore the shadowy richness of its former red-brown colouring. There was no saying whether the dark, hollow eyes that studied her grandchild with such a bitter burden of love were dark blue, but they well might have been. She was probably barely forty. Cadfael had seen her about the Foregate now and then, but never before paid close attention to her.
“A fine babe you have there,” said Cadfael. “She may well grow into a beautiful child.”
“Better she should be plain as any drab,” said the widow with abrupt passion, than take after her mother’s beauty, and go the same way. You do know whose child she is? Everyone knows it!”
“No fault of this little one she left behind,” said Cadfael. “I hope the world will treat her better than it treated her mother.”
“It was not the world that cast her off,” said Nest, “but the church. She could have lived under the world’s malice, but not when the priest shut her out of the church.”
“Did her worship truly mean so much to her,” asked Cadfael gravely, that she could not live excommunicate?”
“Truly it did. You never knew her! As wild and rash as she was beautiful, but such a bright, kind, warm creature to have about the house, and for all her wildness she was easily hurt. She who never could bear to wound any other creature was open to wounds herself. But for the thing she could not help, no one could have been a better and sweeter daughter to me. You can’t know how it was! She could not refuse to anyone whatever he asked of her, if it was in her power to give it. And the men found it out, and having no shame—for sin was something she spoke of without understanding—she could not say no to men, either. She would go with a man because he was melancholy, or because he begged her, or because he had been blamed or beaten unjustly and was aggrieved at the world. And then it would come over her that this might indeed be sin, as Father Adam had told her, though she could not see why. And then she went flying to confession, in tears, and promised amendment, and meant it, too. Father Adam was gentle with her, seeing she was not like other young women. He always spoke her kindly and fair, and gave her light penance, and never refused her absolution. Always she promised to amend, but then she forgot for some boy’s light tongue or dark eyes, and sinned again, and again confessed and was shriven. She couldn’t keep from men, but neither could she live without the blessing and comfort of the church. When the door was shut in her face she went solitary away, and solitary she died. And for all she was a torment to me, living, she was a joy, too, and now I have only torment, and no joy—but for this fearful joy here in the cradle. Look, she’s asleep!”
“Do you know,” asked Cadfael, brooding, “who fathered the child?”
Nest shook her head, and a faint, dry smile plucked at her lips. “No. As soon as she understood it might bring blame on him, whoever he was, she kept him a secret even from me. If, indeed, she knew herself which one of them had quickened her! Yet I think she did know. She was neither mad nor dull of understanding. She was brighter than most, but for the part of caution that was left out of her. She might have confronted the man to his face, but she would never betray him to the black priest. Oh, he asked her! He threatened her, he raged at her, but she said that for her sins she would answer and do penance, but another man’s sins were his own, and so must his confession be.”
A good answer! Cadfael acknowledged it with a nod and a sigh.
The candle was cold and set. He restored it to his scrip, and turned to take his leave. “Well, if she’s fretful again and you need me, let me know of it by Cynric, or leave word at the gatehouse, and I’ll come. But I think you’ll find the cordial will serve your turn.” He looked back for a second with his hand on the latch of the door. “What have you named her? Eluned, for her mother?”
“No,” said the widow. “It was Eluned chose her name. Praise God, it was Father Adam who christened her, before he fell ill and died. She’s called Winifred.”
*
Cadfael walked back along the Foregate with that last echo still ringing in his mind. The daughter of the outcast and excommunicate, it seemed, was named for the to
wn’s own saint, witness enough to the truth of Eluned’s undisciplined devotion. And doubtless Saint Winifred would know where to find and watch over both the living child and the dead mother, whom the parish of Saint Chad, more prodigally merciful than Father Ailnoth, had buried decently, observing a benevolent Christian doubt concerning the circumstances of her unwitnessed death. A strong strain, these Welsh women married into Shropshire families. He knew nothing of the English forester who had been husband to the widow Nest, but surely it must be she who had handed on to her self-doomed child the fierce beauty that had been her downfall, and the same face, in prophetic vision, waited for the infant Winifred in her cradle. Perhaps the choice of her venerated name had been a brave gesture to protect a creature otherwise orphaned and unprotected, a waif in an alien world where too prodigal a union of beauty and generosity brought only grief.
Now there, in the cottage he had left behind, was one being who had the best of all reasons to hate Ailnoth, and might have killed him if a thought could have done it, but was hardly likely to follow him through the winter night and strike him down from behind, much less roll him, stunned, into the pool. She had too powerful a lodestone to keep her watchful and protective at home. But the vengeful fire in her might drive a man to do it for her sake, if she had so close and resolute a friend. Among all those men who had taken comfort from the world’s spite in Eluned’s arms, might there not be more than one ready and willing? And in particular, if he knew what seed he had sown, the father of the infant Winifred.
At this rate, thought Cadfael, mildly irritated with his own preoccupation, I shall be looking sidewise at every comely man I see, to try if I can find in his face any resemblance to a murderer. I’d best concern myself with my own duties, and leave official retribution to Hugh—not that he’ll be grateful for it!
He was approaching the gatehouse, and had just come to the entrance to the twisting alley that led to the priest’s house. He halted there, suddenly aware that the heavy covering cloud had lifted, and a faint gleam of sun showed through. Not brilliantly and icily out of a pale, cold sky, but timidly and grudgingly through untidy, wallowing shreds of cloud. The glitter coruscating from icicles and swags of frozen snow along the eaves had acquired a softer, moist brightness. There was even a drip here and there from a gable end where the timorous sun fell. Cynric might be right in his prediction, and a thaw on the way by nightfall. Then they could at least put Ailnoth out of the chapel and under the ground, though his baleful shadow would still be with them.
There was no haste to return to the abbey and his workshop, half an hour more would not do any harm. Cadfael turned into the alley and walked along to the priest’s house. He was none too sure of his own motives in paying this visit. Certainly it was his legitimate business to make sure that Mistress Hammet’s injuries had healed properly, and she had taken no lingering harm from the blow to her head, but pure curiosity had a part in what prompted him, too. Here was another woman whose attitude to Father Ailnoth might be exceedingly ambivalent, torn between gratitude for a patronage which had given her status and security, and desperation at his raging resentment of the deception practised on him, if she knew how he had found it out, and his all too probable intent to see her nurseling unmasked and thrown into prison. Cadfael’s judgement of Diota was that she went in considerable awe and fear of her master, but also that she would dare much for the boy she had nursed. But any suspicion of her was quickly tempered by his recollection of her state on Christmas morning. Almost certainly, whatever her fears after a night of waiting in vain, she had not known that Ailnoth was dead until the searchers returned with his body. As often as Cadfael told himself he could be deceived in believing that, his own memory rejected the doubt.
Just beyond the priest’s house the narrow alley opened out into a small grassy space, now a circle of trampled rime, but with the green of grass peeping through by small, indomitable tufts here and there. To this confined playground the house presented its fine, unbroken wall, the one that attracted the players of ball games and the like, to their peril. There were half a dozen urchins of the Foregate playing there now, rolling snowballs and hurling them from an ambitiously remote mark at a target set up on an abandoned fence-post at the corner of the green. A round black cap, with a fluttering end of torn braid quivering in the light wind. A skull cap, such as a priest would wear, or a monk, to cover his tonsure from cold when the cowl was inconvenient.
One small possession of Ailnoth’s which had not been recovered with him, nor missed. Cadfael stood and gazed, remembering sharply the clear image of the priest’s set and formidable face as he passed the gatehouse torches, unshadowed by any cowl, and capped, yes, certainly capped in black, this meagre circle that cast no shadows, but left his apocalyptic rage plain to view.
One of the marksmen, luckier or more adroit, had knocked the target flying into the grass. The victor, without great interest now, having prevailed, went to pick it up, and stood dangling it in one hand, while the rest of the band, capricious as children can be, burst into a spirited argument as to what they should do next, and like a wisp of snipe rising, suddenly took off across the grass towards the open field beyond.
The marksman made to follow them, but with no haste, knowing they would settle as abruptly as they had taken flight, and he could be up with them whenever he willed. Cadfael went a few paces to intercept his passage, and the boy halted readily enough, knowing him. A bright boy, ten years old, the reeve’s sister’s son. He had a charming, inscrutable smile.
“What’s that you have there, Eddi?” asked Cadfael, nodding at the dangling cap. “May I see it?”
It was handed over willingly, indifferently. No doubt they had played various games with it for several days now, and were weary of it. Some other brief foundling toy would take its place, and it would never be missed. Cadfael turned it in his hands, and marked how the braid that bound its rim was ripped clear on one side, and dangled the loose end. When he drew it into place there was still a strand missing, perhaps the length of his little finger, and the stitching of two of the segments that made up the circle had been frayed apart with the lost shred. Good black cloth, carefully made, the braid hand-plaited wool.
“Where did you find this, Eddi?”
“In the mill-pond,” said the boy readily. “Someone threw it away because it was torn. We went down early in the morning to see if the pond was frozen, but it wasn’t. But we found this.”
“Which morning was that?” asked Cadfael.
“Christmas Day. It was only just getting light.” The boy was grave, demure of countenance, impenetrable as clever children can be.
“Where in the mill-pond? On the mill side?”
“No, we went along the other path, where it’s shallow. That’s where it freezes first. The tail-race keeps it open the other side.”
So it did, the movement enough to preserve an open channel until all froze over, and the same stream of moving water would carry a light thing like this cap, over to lodge in the shallows.
“This was caught among the reeds there?”
The boy said yes, serenely.
“You know whose this is, do you, Eddi?
“No, sir,” said Eddi, and smiled a brief, guileless smile. He was, Cadfael recalled, one of those unfortunate children who had been learning their letters with Father Adam, and had fallen into less tolerant hands after his death. And wronged and injured children are not themselves merciful to their tyrants.
“No matter, son. Are you done with it? Will you leave it with me? I’ll bring you a few apples to your father’s, a fair exchange. And you may forget it.”
“Yes, sir,” said the boy, and turned and skipped away without another glance, rid of his prize and his burden.
Cadfael stood looking down at the small, drab thing in his hands, damp now and darkening from the comparative warmth of being handled, but fringed with rime and still stiff. How unlike Father Ailnoth to be seen wearing a cap with a tattered braid and a seam beginnin
g to lose its stitches! If, indeed, it had been in this condition when he put it on. It had been tossed around at random since Christmas Day, and might have come by its dilapidations at any time since it was plucked out of the frosty reeds, where the drift of the tail-race had carried it, while the heavier body from which it had been flung was gradually edged aside under the leaning bank.
And was there not something else that had been forgotten, as this cap had been forgotten? Something else they should have looked for, and had never thought of? Something nagging at the back of Cadfael’s mind but refusing to show itself?
He thrust the cap into his scrip, and turned back to rap at the door of the priest’s house. It was opened to him by Diota, prim and composed in her customary black. She stepped back readily, unsmiling but hospitable, and beckoned him at once into a small, warm room dimly lit by a brownish light from two small windows, into the shutters of which thin sheets of horn had been set. A bright wood fire burned on the clay hearth in the centre of the room, and on the cushioned bench beside it a young woman was sitting, alert and silent, and to one entering from broad daylight not immediately recognisable.
“I came only to ask how you are,” said Cadfael as the door was closed behind him, “and to see if you need anything more for your grazes.”
Diota came round to face him and let herself be seen, the palest of smiles visiting a face habitually grave and anxious. “That was kind of you, Brother Cadfael. I am well, I thank you, quite well. You see the wound is healed.”
She turned her injured temple docilely to the best of the light at the urging of his hand, and let him study what had faded now to a yellow bruise and a small dry scar.
“Yes, that’s well, there’ll be no mark left to show for it. But I should go on using the ointment for a few days yet, in this frost the skin dries and abrades easily. And you’ve had no headaches?”