by Ellis Peters
“Wait but one moment! You also have a cause here, if Cadfael is right. This is surely the man who murdered your friend. He owes you a death. He is yours if you want him.”
“That is truth,” said Cadfaei. “Ask him! He will tell you.”
Ciaran crouched in the grass, drooping now, bewildered and lost, no longer looking any man in the face, only waiting without hope or understanding for someone to determine whether he was to live or die, and on what abject terms. Olivier cast one wondering glance at him, shook his head in emphatic rejection, and reached for his horse’s bridle. “Who am I,” he said, “to exact what Luc Meverel has remitted? Let this one go on his way with his own burden. My business is with the other.”
He was away at a run, leading the horse briskly through the screen of bushes, and the rustling of their passage gradually stilled again into silence. Cadfael and Hugh were left regarding each other mutely across the lamentable figure crouched upon the ground. Gradually the rest of the world flowed back into Cadfael’s ken. Three of Hugh’s officers stood aloof with the horses and the torches, looking on in silence; and somewhere not far distant sounded a brief scuffle and outcry, as one of the fugitives was overpowered and made prisoner. Simeon Poer had been pulled down barely fifty yards in cover, and stood sullenly under guard now, with his wrists secured to a sergeant’s stirrup-leather. The third would not be a free man long. This night’s ventures were over. This piece of woodland would be safe even for barefoot and unarmed pilgrims to traverse.
“What is to be done with him?” demanded Hugh openly, looking down upon the wreckage of a man with some distaste.
“Since Luc has waived his claim,” said Cadfael, “I would not dare meddle. And there is something at least to be said for him, he did not cheat or break his terms voluntarily, even when there was no one by to accuse him. It is a small virtue to have to advance for the defence of a life, but it is something. Who else has the right to foreclose on what Luc has spared?”
Ciaran raised his head, peering doubtfully from one face to the other, still confounded at being so spared, but beginning to believe that he still lived. He was weeping, whether with pain, or relief, or something more durable than either, there was no telling. The blood was blackening into a dark line about his throat.
“Speak up and tell truth,” said Hugh with chill gentleness. “Was it you who stabbed Bossard?”
Out of the pallid disintegration of Ciaran’s face a wavering voice said: “Yes.”
“Why did you so? Why attack the queen’s clerk, who did nothing but deliver his errand faithfully?”
Ciaran’s eyes burned for an instant, and a fleeting spark of past pride, intolerance and rage showed like the last glow of a dying fire. “He came high-handed, shouting down the lord bishop, defying the council. My master was angry and affronted…”
“Your master,” said Cadfael, “was the prior of Hyde Mead. Or so you claimed.”
“How could I any longer claim service with one who had discarded me? I lied! The lord bishop himself—I served Bishop Henry, had his favour. Lost, lost now! I could not brook the man Christian’s insolence to him… he stood against everything my lord planned and willed. I hated him! I thought then that I hated him,” said Ciaran, drearily wondering at the recollection. “And I thought to please my lord!”
“A calculation that went awry,” said Cadfael, “for whatever he may be, Henry of Blois is no murderer. And Rainard Bossard prevented your mischief, a man of your own party, held in esteem. Did that make him a traitor in your eyes—that he should respect an honest opponent? Or did you strike out at random, and kill without intent?”
“No,” said the level, lame voice, bereft of its brief spark. “He thwarted me, I was enraged. I knew what I did. I was glad… then!” he said, and drew bitter breath.
“And who laid upon you this penitential journey?” asked Cadfael, “and to what end? Your life was granted you, upon terms. What terms? Someone in the highest authority laid that load upon you.”
“My lord the bishop-legate,” said Ciaran, and wrung wordlessly for a moment at the pain of an old devotion, rejected and banished now for ever. “There was no other soul knew of it, only to him I told it. He would not give me up to law, he wanted this thing put by, for fear it should threaten his plans for the empress’s peace. But he would not condone. I am from the Danish kingdom of Dublin, my other half Welsh. He offered me passage under his protection to Bangor, to the bishop there, who would see me to Caergybi in Anglesey, and have me put aboard a ship for Dublin. But I must go barefoot all that way, and wear the cross round my neck, and if ever I broke those terms, even for a moment, my life was his who cared to take it, without blame or penalty. And I could never return.” Another fire, of banished love, ruined ambition, rejected service, flamed through the broken accents for a moment, and died of despair.
“Yet if this sentence was never made public,” said Hugh, seizing upon one thing still unexplained, “how did Luc Meverel ever come to know of it and follow you?”
“Do I know?” The voice was flat and drear, worn out with exhaustion. “All I know is that I set out from Winchester, and where the roads joined, near Newbury, this man stood and waited for me, and fell in beside me, and every step of my way on this journey he has gone on my heels like a demon, and waited for me to play false to my sentence, for there was no point of it he did not know!—to take my life without guilt, without a qualm, as so he might. He trod after me wherever I trod, he never let me from his sight, he made no secret of his wants, he tempted me to go aside, to put on shoes, to lay by the cross, and sirs, it was deathly heavy! Matthew, he called himself… Luc, you say he is? You know him? I never knew… He said I had killed his lord, whom he loved, and he would follow me to Bangor, to Caergybi, even to Dublin if ever I got aboard ship without putting off the cross or putting on shoes. But he would have me in the end. He had what he lusted for—why did he turn away and spare?” The last words ached with his uncomprehending wonder.
“He did not find you worth the killing,” said Cadfael, as gently and mercifully as he could, but honestly. “Now he goes in anguish and shame because he spent so much time on you that might have been better spent. It is a matter of values. Study to learn what is worth and what is not, and you may come to understand him.”
“I am a dead man while I live,” said Ciaran, writhing, “without master, without friends, without a cause…”
“All three you may find, if you seek. Go where you were sent, bear what you were condemned to bear, and look for the meaning,” said Cadfael. “For so must we all.”
He turned away with a sigh. No way of knowing how much good words might do, or the lessons of life, no telling whether any trace of compunction moved in Ciaran’s bludgeoned mind, or whether all his feeling was still for himself. Cadfael felt himself suddenly very tired. He looked at Hugh with a somewhat lopsided smile. “I wish I were home. What now, Hugh? Can we go?”
Hugh stood looking down with a frown at the confessed murderer, sunken in the grass like a broken-backed serpent, submissive, tear-stained, nursing minor injuries. A piteous spectacle, though pity might be misplaced. Yet he was, after all, no more than twenty-five or so years old, able-bodied, well-clothed, strong, his continued journey might be painful and arduous, but it was not beyond his powers, and he had his bishop’s ring still, effective wherever law held. These three footpads now tethered fast and under guard would trouble his going no more. Ciaran would surely reach his journey’s end safely, however long it might take him. Not the journey’s end of his false story, a blessed death in Aberdaron and burial among the saints of Ynys Ennli, but a return to his native place, and a life beginning afresh. He might even be changed. He might well adhere to his hard terms all the way to Caergybi, where Irish ships plied, even as far as Dublin, even to his ransomed life’s end. How can you tell?
“Make your own way from here,” said Hugh, “as well as you may. You need fear nothing now from footpads here, and the border is not far. What you hav
e to fear from God, take up with God.”
He turned his back, with so decisive a movement that his men recognised the sign that all was over, and stirred willingly about the captives and the horses.
“And those two?” asked Hugh. “Had I not better leave a man behind on the track there, with a spare horse for Luc? He followed his quarry afoot, but no need for him to foot it back. Or ought I to send men after them?”
“No need for that,” said Cadfael with certainty. “Olivier will manage all. They’ll come home together.”
He had no qualms at all, he was beginning to relax into the warmth of content. The evil he had dreaded had been averted, however narrowly, at whatever cost. Olivier would find his stray, bear with him, follow if he tried to avoid, wrung and ravaged as he was, with the sole obsessive purpose of his life for so long ripped away from him, and within him only the aching emptiness where that consuming passion had been. Into that barren void Olivier would win his way, and warm the ravished heart to make it habitable for another love. There was the most comforting of messages to bring from Juliana Bossard, the promise regained of a home and a welcome. There was a future. How had Matthew-Luc seen his future when he emptied his purse of the last coin at the abbey, before taking up the pursuit of his enemy? Surely he had been contemplating the end of the person he had hitherto been, a total ending, beyond which he could not see. Now he was young again, there was a life before him, it needed only a little time to make him whole again.
Olivier would bring him back to the abbey, when the worst desolation was over. For Olivier had promised that he would not leave without spending some time leisurely with Cadfael, and upon Olivier’s promise the heart could rest secure.
As for the other… Cadfael looked back from the saddle, after they had mounted, and saw the last of Ciaran, still on his knees under the tree, where they had left him. His face was turned to them, but his eyes seemed to be closed, and his hands were wrung tightly together before his breast. He might have been praying, he might have been simply experiencing with every particle of his flesh the life that had been left to him. When we are all gone, thought Cadfael, he will fall asleep there where he lies, he can do no other, for he is far gone in something beyond exhaustion. Where he falls asleep, there he will have died. But when he awakes, I trust he may understand that he has been born again.
The slower cortège that would bring the prisoners into the town began to assemble, making the tethering thongs secure, and the torch-bearers crossed the clearing to mount, withdrawing their yellow light from the kneeling figure, so that Ciaran vanished gradually, as though he had been absorbed into the bole of the beech-tree.
Hugh led the way out to the track, and turned homeward. “Oh, Hugh, I grow old!” said Cadfael, hugely yawning. “I want my bed.”
Chapter 15
IT WAS PAST MIDNIGHT when they rode in at the gatehouse, into a great court awash with moonlight, and heard the chanting of Matins within the church. They had made no haste on the way home, and said very little, content to ride companionably together as sometimes before, through summer night or winter day. It would be another hour or more yet before Hugh’s officers got their prisoners back to Shrewsbury Castle, since they must keep a foot-pace, but before morning Simeon Poer and his henchmen would be safe in hold, under lock and key.
“I’ll wait with you until Lauds is over,” said Hugh, as they dismounted at the gatehouse. “Father Abbot will want to know how we’ve sped. Though I hope he won’t require the whole tale from us tonight.”
“Come down with me to the stables, then,” said Cadfael, “and I’ll see this fellow unsaddled and tended, while they’re still within. I was always taught to care for my beast before seeking my own rest. You never lose the habit.”
In the stable-yard the moonlight was all the light they needed. The quietness of midnight and the stillness of the air carried every note of the office to them softly and clearly. Cadfael unsaddled his horse and saw him settled and provided in his stall, with a light rug against any possible chill, rites he seldom had occasion to perform now. They brought back memories of other mounts and other journeys, and battlefields less happily resolved than the small but desperate skirmish just lost and won.
Hugh stood watching with his back turned to the great court, but his head tilted to follow the chant. Yet it was not any sound of an approaching step that made him look round sudenly, but the slender shadow that stole along the moonlit cobbles beside his feet. And there hesitant in the gateway of the yard stood Melangell, startled and startling, haloed in that pallid sheen.
“Child,” said Cadfael, concerned, “what are you doing out of your bed at this hour?”
“How could I rest?” she said, but not as one complaining. “No one misses me, they are all sleeping.” She stood very still and straight, as if she had spent all the hours since he had left her in earnest endeavour to put away for ever any memories he might have of the tear-stained, despairing girl who had sought solitude in his workshop. The great sheaf of her hair was braided and pinned up on her head, her gown was trim, and her face resolutely calm as she asked, “Did you find him?”
A girl he had left her, a woman he came back to her. “Yes,” said Cadfael, “we found them both. There has nothing ill happened to either. The two of them have parted. Ciaran goes on his way alone.”
“And Matthew?” she asked steadily.
“Matthew is with a good friend, and will come to no harm. We two have outridden them, but they will come.” She would have to learn to call him by another name now, but let the man himself tell her that. Nor would the future be altogether easy, for her or for Luc Meverel, two human creatures who might never have been brought within hail of each other but for freakish circumstance. Unless Saint Winifred had had a hand in that, too? On this night Cadfael could believe it, and trust her to bring all to a good end. “He will come back,” said Cadfael, meeting her candid eyes, that bore no trace of tears now. “You need not fear. But he has suffered a great turmoil of the mind, and he’ll need all your patience and wisdom. Ask him nothing. When the time is right he will tell you everything. Reproach him with nothing—”
“God forbid,” she said,”that I should ever reproach him. It was I who failed him.”
“No, how could you know? But when he comes, wonder at nothing. Be like one who is thirsty and drinks. And so will he.”
She had turned a little towards him, and the moonlight blanched wonderfully over her face, as if a lamp within her had been newly lighted. “I will wait,” she said.
“Better go to your bed and sleep, the waiting may be longer than you think, he has been wrung. But he will come.”
But at that she shook her head. “I’ll watch till he comes,” she said, and suddenly smiled at them, pale and lustrous as pearl, and turned and went away swiftly and silently towards the cloister.
“That is the girl you spoke of?” asked Hugh, looking after her with somewhat frowning interest. “The lame boy’s sister? The girl that young man fancies?”
“That is she,” said Cadfael, and closed the half-door of the stall.
“The weaver-woman’s niece?”
“That, too. Dowerless and from common stock,” said Cadfael, understanding but untroubled. “Yes, true! I’m from common stock myself. I doubt if a young fellow who has been torn apart and remade as Luc has tonight will care much about such little things. Though I grant you others may! I hope the lady Juliana has no plans yet for marrying him off to some heiress from a neighbour manor, for I fancy things have gone so far now with these two that she’ll be forced to abandon her plans. A manor or a craft—if you take pride in them, and run them well, where’s the difference?”
“Your common stock,” said Hugh heartily, “gave growth to a most uncommon shoot! And I wouldn’t say but that young thing would grace a hall better than many a highbred dame I’ve seen. But listen, they’re ending. We’d best present ourselves.”
Abbot Radulfus came from Matins and Lauds with his usual imperturba
ble stride, and found them waiting for him as he left the cloister. This day of miracles had produced a fittingly glorious night, incredibly lofty and deep, coruscating with stars, washed white with moonlight. Coming from the dimness within, this exuberance of light showed him clearly both the serenity and the weariness on the two faces that confronted him.
“You are back!” he said, and looked beyond them. “But not all! Messire de Bretagne—you said he had gone by a wrong way. He has not returned here. You have not encountered him?”
“Yes, Father, we have,” said Hugh. “All is well with him, and he has found the young man he was seeking. They will return here, all in good time.”
“And the evil you feared, Brother Cadfael? You spoke of another death…”
“Father,” said Cadfael, “no harm has come tonight to any but the masterless men who escaped into the forest there. They are now safe in hold, and on their way under guard to the castle. The death I dreaded has been averted, no threat remains in that quarter to any man. I said, if the two young men could be overtaken, the better surely for one, and perhaps for both. Father, they were overtaken in time, and better for both it surely must be.”
“Yet there remains,” said Radulfus, pondering, “the print of blood, which both you and I have seen. You said—you will recall—that, yes, we have entertained a murderer among us. Do you still say so?”
“Yes, Father. Yet not as you suppose. When Olivier de Bretagne and Luc Meverel return, then all can be made plain, for as yet,” said Cadfael, “there are still certain things we do not know. But we do know,” he said firmly, “that what has passed this night is the best for which we could have prayed, and we have good need to give thanks for it.”