Monk's Hood bc-3

by Ellis Peters

  Broken sounds came from Meurig’s buried mouth, muffled and sick with despair “Oh, God, that I could so face my death … for I owe it, I owe it, and dare not pay! If I were clean … if I were only clean again …”And in a great groan he said: “Oh, Mallilie …”

  “Yes,” said Cadfael softly. “A very fair place. Yet there is a world outside it.”

  “Not for me, not for me … I am forfeit. Give me up! Help me … help me to be fit to die …” He raised himself suddenly, and looked up at Cadfael, clutching with one hand at the skirts of his habit. “Brother, those things you said of me … never meant to be a murderer, you said …”

  “Have I not proved it?” said Cadfael. “I live, and it was not fear that stayed your hand.”

  “Mere chance that led me, you said, and that because of an act of simple kindness… . Great pity it is, you said! Pity … Did you mean all those things, brother? Is there pity?”

  “I meant them,” said Cadfael, “every word. Pity, indeed, that ever you went so far aside from your own nature, and poisoned yourself as surely as you poisoned your father. Tell me, Meurig, In these last days you have not been back to your grandfather’s house, or had any word from him?”

  “No,” said Meurig, very low, and shuddered at the thought of the upright old man now utterly bereft.

  “Then you do not know that Edwin was fetched away from there by the sheriff’s men, and is now in prison in Shrewsbury.”

  No, he had not known. He looked up aghast, seeing the implication, and shook with the fervour of his denial: “No, that I swear I did not do. I was tempted… . I could not prevent that they cast the blame on him, but I did not betray him … I sent him here, I would have seen that he got clear… . I know it was not enough, but oh, this at least don’t lay to my charge! God knows I liked the boy well.”

  “I also know it,” said Cadfael, “and know it was not you who sent them to take him. No one wittingly betrayed him. None the less, he was taken. Tomorrow will see him free again. Take that for one thing set right, where many are past righting.”

  Meurig laid his clasped hands, white-knuckled with tension, on Cadfael’s knees, and lifted a tormented face into the soft light of the lantern. “Brother, you have been conscience to other men in your time, for God’s sake do as much by me, for I am sick, I am maimed, I am not my own. You said … great pity! Hear me all my evil!”

  “Child,” said Cadfael, shaken, and laid his own hand over the stony fists that felt chill as ice, “I am not a priest, I cannot give absolution, I cannot appoint penance …”

  “Ah, but you can, you can, none but you, who found out the worst of me! Hear me my confession, and I shall be better prepared, and then deliver me to my penalty, and I will not complain.”

  “Speak, then, if it gives you ease,” said Cadfael heavily, and kept his hand closed over Meurig’s as the story spilled out in broken gouts of words, like blood from a wound: how he had gone to the infirmary with no ill thought, to pleasure an old man, and learned by pure chance of the properties of the oil he was using for its true purpose, and how it could be put to a very different use. Only then had the seed been planted in his mind. He had a few weeks, perhaps, of grace before Mallilie was lost to him forever, and here was a means of preventing the loss.

  “And it grew in me, the thought that it would not be a hard thing to do … and the second time I went there I took the vial with me, and filled it. But it was still only a mad dream … Yet I carried it with me, that last day, and I told myself it would be easy to put in his mead, or mull wine for him… . I might never have done it, only willed it, though that is sin enough. But when I came to the house, they were all in the inner room together, and I heard Aldith saying how the prior had sent a dish from his own table, a dainty to please my father. It was there simmering on the hob, a spoon in it … The thing was done almost before I knew I meant to do it … And then I heard Aelfric and Aldith coming back from the table, and I had no time for more than to step quickly outside the door again, as if I had just opened it, and I was scraping my shoes clean to come in when they came into the kitchen… . What could they think but that I had only just come? A score of times in the next hour, God knows how wildly, I wished it undone, but such things cannot be undone, and I am damned… . What could I do but go forward, when there was no going back?”

  What, indeed, short of what he was doing now, and this had been forced on him. Yet it was not to kill that he had flown like a homing bird to this meeting, whatever he himself had believed.

  “So I went on. I fought for the fruit of my sin, for Mallilie, as best I could. I never truly hated my father, but Mallilie I truly loved, and it was mine, mine … if only I could have come by it cleanly! But there is justice, and I have lost, and I make no complaint. Now deliver me up, and let me pay for his death with mine, as is due. I will go with you willingly, if you will wish me peace.”

  He laid his head on Cadfael’s steadying hand with a great sigh, and fell silent; and after a long moment Cadfael laid his other hand on the thick dark hair, and held him so. Priest he might not be, and absolution he could not give, yet here he was in the awful situation of being both judge and confessor. Poison is the meanest of killings, the steel he could respect. And yet … Was not Meurig also a man gravely wronged? Nature had meant him to be amiable, kindly, unembittered, circumstances had so deformed him that he turned against his nature once, and fatally, and he was all too well aware of his mortal sickness. Surely one death was enough, what profit in a second? God knew other ways of balancing the scale.

  “You asked your penance of me,” said Cadfael at last. “Do you still ask it? And will you bear it and keep faith, no matter how terrible it may be?”

  The heavy head stirred on his knee. “I will,” said Meurig in a whisper, “and be grateful.”

  “You want no easy penalty?”

  “I want all my due. How else can I find peace?”

  “Very well, you have pledged yourself. Meurig, you came for my life, but when it came to the stroke, you could not take it. Now you lay your life in my hands, and I find that I cannot take it, either, that I should be wrong to take it. What benefit to the world would your blood be? But your hands, your strength, your will, that virtue you still have within you, these may yet be of the greatest profit. You want to pay in full. Pay, then! Yours is a lifelong penance, Meurig, I rule that you shall live out your life—and may it be long!—and pay back all your debts by having regard to those who inhabit this world with you. The tale of your good may yet outweigh a thousand times the tale of your evil. This is the penance I lay on you.”

  Meurig stirred slowly, and raised a dazed and wondering face, neither relieved nor glad, only utterly bewildered. “You mean it? This is what I must do?”

  “This is what you must do. Live, amend, in your dealings with sinners remember your own frailty, and in your dealings with the innocent, respect and use your own strength in their service. Do as well as you can, and leave the rest to God, and how much more can saints do?”

  “They will be hunting for me,” said Meurig, still doubting and marvelling. “You will not hold that I’ve failed you if they take and hang me?”

  “They will not take you. By tomorrow you will be well away from here. There is a horse in the stable next to the barn, the horse I rode today. Horses in these parts can very easily be stolen, it’s an old Welsh game, as I know. But this one will not be stolen. I give it, and I will be answerable. There is a whole world to reach on horseback, where a true penitent can make his way step by step through a long life towards grace. Were I you, I should cross the hills as far west as you may before daylight, and then bear north into Gwynedd, where you are not known. But you know these hills better than I.”

  “I know them well,” said Meurig, and now his face had lost its anguish in open and childlike wonder. “And this is all? All you ask of me?”

  “You will find it heavy enough,” said Brother Cadfael. “But yes, there is one thing more. When you are well
clear, make your confession to a priest, ask him to write it down and have it sent to the sheriff at Shrewsbury. What has passed today in Llansilin will release Edwin, but I would not have any doubt or shadow left upon him when you are gone.”

  “Neither would I,” said Meurig. “It shall be done.”

  “Come, then, you have a long pilgrimage to go. Take up your knife again.” And he smiled. “You will need it to cut your bread and hunt your meat.”

  It was ending strangely. Meurig rose like one in a dream, both spent and renewed, as though some rainfall from heaven had washed him out of his agony and out of his wits, to revive, a man half-drowned and wholly transformed. Cadfael had to lead him by the hand, once they had put out the lantern. Outside, the night was very still and starlit, on the edge of frost. In the stable Cadfael himself saddled the horse.

  “Rest him when you safely may. He’s carried me today, but that was no great journey. I’d give you the mule, for he’s fresh, but he’d be slower, and more questionable under a Welshman. There, mount and go. Go with God!”

  Meurig shivered at that, but the pale, fixed brightness of his face did not change. With a foot already in the stirrup, he said with sudden inexpressibly grave and burdened humility:

  “Give me your blessing! For I am bound by you while I live.”

  He was gone, up the slope above the folds, by ways he knew better than did the man who had set him free to ride them, back into the world of the living. Cadfael looked after him for only a moment, before turning down towards the house. He thought as he went: Well, if I have loosed you on the world unchanged and perilous, if this cleansing wears off once you are safe, then on me be the guilt. But he found he could not feel greatly afraid; the more he reviewed the course he had taken, the more profound became his soul’s tranquillity.

  “You were a long time, brother,” said Simon, welcoming him with pleasure into the evening warmth within the house. “We were wondering about you.”

  “I was tempted to stay and meditate among the ewes,” said Brother Cadfael. “They are so calming. And it is a beautiful night.”

  CHAPTER 11

  It was a good Christmas; he had never known one more firelit and serene. The simple outdoor labour was bliss after stress, he would not have exchanged it for the ceremonial and comparative luxury of the abbey. The news that came in from the town, before the first snow discouraged travel, made a kind of shrill overtone to the homely Christmas music they made between them, with three willing but unskilled voices and three contented and fulfilled hearts. Hugh Beringar sent word, not only that he had received the record of the Llansilin court, but also that Edwin’s well-meant conciliatory gift had been cast up in the shallows near Atcham, in considerable disarray, but still recognisable. The boy was restored to his doting mother, and the Bonel household could breathe freely again, now that the culprit was known. The apologetic report that the horse belonging to the Rhydycroesau sheepfolds had gone missing, due to Brother Cadfael’s reprehensible failure to bar the stable door securely, had been noted with appropriate displeasure by the chapter of the abbey, and repayment in some form awaited him on his return.

  As for the fugitive Meurig, cried through Powys for murder, the hunt had never set eyes on him since, and the trail was growing cold. Even the report of his voluntary confession, sent by a priest from a hermitage in Penllyn, did not revive the scent, for the man was long gone, and no one knew where. Nor was Owain Gwynedd likely to welcome incursions on his territory in pursuit of criminals against whom he had no complaint, and who should never have been allowed to slip through authority’s fingers in the first place.

  In fact, all was very well. Cadfael was entirely happy among the sheep, turning a deaf ear to the outer world. He felt he had earned a while of retreat. His only regret was that the first deep snow prevented him from riding to visit Ifor ap Morgan, to whom he owed what consolation there was to be found for him. Frail though it might seem, Cadfael found it worth cherishing, and so would Ifor; and the very old are very durable.

  They had no less than three Christmas morning lambs, a single and twins. They brought them all, with their dams, into the house and made much of them, for these innocents shared their stars with the Christchild. Brother Barnabas, wholly restored, nursed the infants in his great hands and capacious lap, and was as proud as if he had produced them of his own substance. They were very merry together, in a quiet celebration, before Brother Cadfael left them to return to Shrewsbury. His patient was by this time the most vigorous force within twenty miles round, and there was no more need for a physician here at Rhydycroesau.

  The snow had abated in a temporary thaw, when Cadfael mounted his mule, three days after the feast, and set out southwards for Shrewsbury.

  He made a long day of it because he did not take the direct road to Oswestry, but went round to pay his delayed visit on Ifor ap Morgan before cutting due east from Croesau Bach to strike the main road well south of the town. What he had to say to Ifor, and what Ifor replied to him, neither of them ever confided to a third. Certainly when Cadfael mounted again, it was in better heart that he set out, and in better heart that Ifor remained alone.

  By reason of this detour it was already almost dusk when Cadfael’s mule padded over the Welsh bridge into Shrewsbury, and through the hilly streets alive with people and business again after the holiday. No time now to turn aside from the Wyle for the pleasure of being let in by the shrewd little housewife Alys, and viewing the jubilation of the Bellecote family; that would have to keep for another day. No doubt Edwy was long since released from his pledge to keep to home, and off with his inseparable uncle on whatever work, play or mischief offered. The future of Mallilie still lay in the balance; it was to be hoped that the lawmen would not manage to take the heart out of it in their fees, before anyone got acknowledged possession.

  And here round the curve of the Wyle the arc of the river showed before him, the waning day regaining half its light as he stepped on to the open span and passed through the gates on to the drawbridge. Here Edwin checked in his indignant flight to hurl away his despised offering. And here beyond was the level road opening before him, and on his right the house where Richildis must still be living, and the millpond, a dull silver plane in the twilight; then the wall of the abbey enclosure, the west front and the parish door of the great church looming before him, and on his right hand the gatehouse.

  He turned in and checked in astonishment at the bustle and noise that met him. The porter was out at his door, brushed and flushed and important as though for a bishop’s visitation, and the great court was full of brothers and lay brothers and officials running to and fro busily, or gathered in excited groups, conversing in raised voices, and looking round eagerly at every creature who entered at the gate. Cadfael’s coming caused one such stir, which subsided with unflattering promptness when he was recognised. Even the schoolboys were out whispering and chirruping together under the wall of the gatehouse, and travellers crowded into the doorway of the guest-hall. Brother Jerome stood perched on the mounting-block by the hail, his attention divided between giving orders left and right, and watching every moment at the gate. In Cadfael’s absence he seemed, if anything, to have grown more self-important and officious than ever.

  Cadfael lighted down, prepared to stable his own beast, but unsure whether the mules might still be housed in the barn on the horse-fair; and out of the weaving excitement around him Brother Mark came darting with a whoop of pleasure.

  “Oh, Cadfael, what joy to see you! Such happenings! And I thought you would be missing everything, and all the while you were in the thick of it. We’ve heard about the court at Llansilin … Oh, you’re so welcome home again!”

  “So I see,” said Cadfael, “if this reception is for me.”

  “Mine is!” said Brother Mark fervently. “But this … Of course, you won’t have heard yet. We’re all waiting for Abbot Heribert. One of the carters was out to St Giles a while ago, and he saw them, they’ve made a stop at the ho
spital there. He came to give the word. Brother Jerome is waiting to run and tell Prior Robert as soon as they come in at the gate. They’ll be here any moment.”

  “And no news until they come? Will it still be Abbot Heribert, I wonder?” said Cadfael ruefully.

  “We don’t know. But everybody’s afraid … Brother Petrus is muttering awful things into his ovens, and vowing he’ll quit the order. And Jerome is unbearable!”

  He turned to glare, so far as his mild, plain face was capable of glaring, at the incubus of whom he spoke, and behold, Brother Jerome had vanished from his mounting-block, and was scurrying head-down for the abbot’s lodging.

  “Oh, they must be coming! Look—the prior!”

  Robert sailed forth from his appropriated lodging, immaculately robed, majestically tall, visible above all the peering heads. His face was composed into otherworldly serenity, benevolence and piety, ready to welcome his old superior with hypocritical reverence, and assume his office with hypocritical humility; all of which he would do very beautifully, and with noble dignity.

  And in at the gate ambled Heribert, a small, rotund, gentle elderly man of unimpressive appearance, who rode like a sack on his white mule, and had the grime and mud and weariness of the journey upon him. He wore, at sight, the print of demotion and retirement in his face and bearing, yet he looked pleasantly content, like a man who has just laid by a heavy burden, and straightened up to draw breath. Humble by nature, Heribert was uncrushable. His own clerk and grooms followed a respectful few yards behind; but at his elbow rode a tall, spare, sinewy Benedictine with weathered features and shrewd blue eyes, who kept pace with him in close attendance, and eyed him, Cadfael thought, with something of restrained affection. A new brother for the house, perhaps.