by Ellis Peters
Isouda came to find him in his workshop in the herbarium. He took one look at her, forgot his broodings, and smiled. She came in the austere but fine array she had thought suitable for dining with abbots, and catching the smile and the lighting of Cadfael’s eyes, she relaxed into her impish grin and opened her cloak wide, putting off the hood to let him admire her.
‘You think it will do?’ Her hair, too short to braid, was bound about her brow by an embroidered ribbon fillet, just such a one as Meriet had hidden in his bed in the dortoir, and below the confinement it clustered in a thick mane of curls on her neck. Her dress was an over-tunic of deep blue, fitting closely to the hip and there flowing out in gentle folds, over a long-sleeved and high-necked cotte of a pale rose-coloured wool; Exceedingly grown-up, not at all the colours or the cut to which a wild child would fly, allowed for once to dine with the adults. Her bearing, always erect and confident, had acquired a lordly dignity to go with the dress, and her gait as she entered was princely. The close necklace of heavy natural stones, polished but not cut, served beautifully to call the eye to the fine carriage of her head. She wore no other ornaments.
‘It would do for me,’ said Cadfael simply, ‘if I were a green boy expecting a hoyden known from a child. Are you as unprepared for him, I wonder, as he will be for you?’ Isouda shook her head until the brown curls danced, and settled again into new and distracting patterns on her shoulders. ‘No! I’ve thought of all you’ve told me, and I know my Meriet. Neither you nor he need fear. I can deal!’ ‘Then before we go,’ said Cadfael, ‘you had better be armed with everything I have gleaned in the meantime.’ And he sat down with her and told her. She heard him out with a serious but tranquil face, unshaken.
‘Listen, Brother Cadfael, why should he not come to see his brother married, since things are as you say? I know it would not be a kindness, not yet, to tell him he’s known as an innocent and deceives nobody, it would only set him agonising for whoever it is he’s hiding. But you know him now. If he’s given his parole, he’ll not break it, and he’s innocent enough, God knows, to believe that other men are as honest as he, and will take his word as simply as he gives it. He would credit it if Hugh Beringar allowed even a captive felon to come to see his brother married.’ ‘He could not yet walk so far,’ said Cadfael, though he was captivated by the notion.
‘He need not. I would send a groom with a horse for him. Brother Mark could come with him. Why not? He could come early, and cloaked, and take his place privately where he could watch. Whatever follows,’ said Isouda with grave determination, ‘for I am not such a fool as to doubt there’s grief here somehow for their house-whatever follows, I want him brought forth into daylight, where he belongs. Or whatever faces may be fouled! For his is fair enough, and so I want it shown.’ ‘So do I,’ said Cadfael heartily,’so do I!’ ‘Then ask Hugh Beringar if I may send for him to come. I don’t know-I feel there may be need of him, that he has the right to be there, that he should be there.’ ‘I will speak to Hugh,’ said Cadfael. ‘And now, come, let’s be off to Saint Giles before the light fails.’ They walked together along the Foregate, veered right at the bleached grass triangle of the horse-fair, and out between scattered houses and green fields to the hospice. The shadowy, skeleton trees made lace patterns against a greenish, pallid sky thinning to frost.
‘This is where even lepers may go for shelter?’ she said, climbing the gentle grassy slope to the boundary fence.
‘They medicine them here, and do their best to heal? That is noble!’ ‘They even have their successes,’ said Cadfael. ‘There’s never any want of volunteers to serve here, even after a death. Mark may have gone far to heal your Meriet, body and soul.’ ‘When I have finished what he has begun,’ she said with a sudden shining smile, ‘I will thank him properly. Now where must we go?’ Cadfael took her directly to the barn, but at this hour it was empty. The evening meal was not yet due, but the light was too far gone for any activity outdoors. The solitary low pallet stood neatly covered with its dun blanket.
‘This is his bed?’ she asked, gazing down at it with a meditative face.
‘It is. He had it up in the loft above, for fear of disturbing his fellows if he had bad dreams, and it was here he fell. By Mark’s account he was on his way in his sleep to make confession to Hugh Beringar, and get him to free his prisoner. Will you wait for him here? I’ll find him and bring him to you.’ Meriet was seated at Brother Mark’s little desk in the anteroom of the hall, mending the binding of a service-book with a strip of leather. His face was grave in concentration on his task, his fingers patient and adroit. Only when Cadfael informed him that he had a visitor waiting in the barn was he shaken by sudden agitation. Cadfael he was used to, and did not mind, but he shrank from showing himself to others, as though he carried a contagion.
‘I had rather no one came,’ he said, torn between gratitude for an intended kindness and reluctance to have to make the effort of bearing the consequent pain. ‘What good can it do, now? What is there to be said? I’ve been glad of my quietness here.’ He gnawed a doubtful lip and asked resignedly: ‘Who is it?’ ‘No one you need fear,’ said Cadfael, thinking of Nigel, whose brotherly attentions might have proved too much to bear, had they been offered. But they had not. Bridegrooms have some excuse for putting all other business aside, certainly, but at least he could have asked after his brother. ‘It is only Isouda.’ Only Isouda! Meriet drew relieved breath. ‘Isouda has thought of me? That was kind. But-does she know? That I am a confessed felon? I would not have her in a mistake…’ ‘She does know. No need to say word of that, and neither will she. She would have me bring her because she has a loyal affection for you. It won’t cost you much to spend a few minutes with her, and I doubt if you’ll have to do much talking, for she will do the most of it.’ Meriet went with him, still a little reluctantly, but not greatly disturbed by the thought of having to bear the regard, the sympathy, the obstinate championship, perhaps, of a child playmate. The children among his beggars had been good for him, simple, undemanding, accepting him without question. Isouda’s sisterly fondness he could meet in the same way, or so he supposed.
She had helped herself to the flint and tinder in the box beside the cot, struck sparks, and kindled the wick of the small lamp, setting it carefully on the broad stone placed for it, where it would be safe from contact with any drifting straw, and shed its mellow, mild light upon the foot of the bed, where she had seated herself. She had put back her cloak to rest only upon her shoulders and frame the sober grandeur of her gown, her embroidered girdle, and the hands folded in her lap. She lifted upon Meriet as he entered the discreet, age-old smile of the Virgin in one of the more worldly paintings of the Annunciation, where the angel’s embassage is patently superfluous, for the lady has known it long before.
Meriet caught his breath and halted at gaze, seeing this grown lady seated calmly and expectantly upon his bed. How could a few months so change anyone? He had meant to say gently but bluntly: ‘You should not have come here,’ but the words were never uttered. There she sat in possession of herself and of place and time, and he was almost afraid of her, and of the sorry changes she might find in him, thin, limping, outcast, no way resembling the boy who had run wild with her no long time ago. But Isouda rose, advanced upon him with hands raised to draw his head down to her, and kissed him soundly.
‘Do you know you’ve grown almost handsome? I’m sorry about your broken head,’ she said, lifting a hand to touch the healed wound, ‘but this will go, you’ll bear no mark. Someone did good work closing that cut. You may surely kiss me, you are not a monk yet.’ Meriet’s lips, still and chill against her cheek, suddenly stirred and quivered, closing in helpless passion. Not for her as a woman, not yet, simply as a warmth, a kindness, someone coming with open arms and no questions or reproaches. He embraced her inexpertly, wavering between impetuosity and shyness of this transformed being, and quaked at the contact.
‘You’re still lame,’ she said solicitously. �
�Come and sit down with me. I won’t stay too long, to tire you, but I couldn’t be so near without coming to see you again. Tell me about this place,’ she ordered, drawing him down to the bed beside her. ‘There are children here, too, I heard their voices. Quite young children.’ Spellbound, he began to tell her in stumbling, broken phrases about Brother Mark, small and fragile and indestructible, who had the signature of God upon him and longed to become a priest. It was not hard to talk about his friend, and the unfortunates who were yet fortunate in falling into such hands. Never a word about himself or her, while they sat shoulder to shoulder, turned inwards towards each other, and their eyes ceaselessly measured and noted the changes wrought by this season of trial. He forgot that he was a man self-condemned, with only a brief but strangely tranquil life before him, and she a young heiress with a manor double the value of Aspley, and grown suddenly beautiful. They sat immured from time and unthreatened by the world; and Cadfael slipped away satisfied, and went to snatch a word with Brother Mark, while there was time. She had her finger on the pulse of the hours, she would not stay too long. The art was to astonish, to warm, to quicken an absurd but utterly credible hope, and then to depart.
When she thought fit to go, Meriet brought her from the barn by the hand. They had both a high colour and bright eyes, and by the way they moved together they had broken free from the first awe, and had been arguing as of old; and that was good. He stooped his cheek to be kissed when they separated, and she kissed him briskly, gave him a cheek in exchange, said he was a stubborn wretch as he always had been, and yet left him exalted almost into content, and herself went away cautiously encouraged.
‘I have as good as promised him I will send my horse to fetch him in good time tomorrow morning,’ she said, when they were reaching the first scattered houses of the Foregate.
‘I have as good as promised Mark the same,’ said Cadfael. ‘But he had best come cloaked and quietly. God, he knows if I have any good reason for it, but my thumbs prick and I want him there, but unknown to those closest to him in blood.’ ‘We are troubling too much,’ said the girl buoyantly, exalted by her own success. ‘I told you long ago, he is mine, and no one else will have him. If it is needful that Peter Clemence’s slayer must be taken, to give Meriet to me, then why fret, for he will be taken.’ ‘Girl,’ said Cadfael, breathing in deeply, ‘you terrify me like an act of God. And I do believe you will pull down the thunderbolt.’ In the warmth and soft light in their small chamber in the guesthall after supper, the two girls who shared a bed sat brooding over their plans for the morrow. They were not sleepy, they had far too much on their minds to wish for sleep. Roswitha’s maidservant, who attended them both, had gone to her bed an hour ago; she was a raw country girl, not entrusted with the choice of jewels, ornaments and perfumes for a marriage. It would be Isouda who would dress her friend’s hair, help her into her gown, and escort her from guesthall to church and back again, withdrawing the cloak from her shoulders at the church door, in this December cold, restoring it when she left on her lord’s arm, a new-made wife.
Roswitha had spread out her wedding gown on the bed, to brood over its every fold, consider the set of the sleeves and the fit of the bodice, and wonder whether it would not be the better still for a closer clasp to the gilded girdle.
Isouda roamed the room restlessly, replying carelessly to Roswitha’s dreaming comments and questions. They had the wooden chests of their possessions, leather-covered, stacked against one wall, and the small things they had taken out were spread at large on every surface; bed, shelf and chest. The little box that held Roswitha’s jewels stood upon the press beside the guttering lamp. Isouda delved a hand idly into it, plucking out one piece after another. She had no great interest in such adornments.
‘Would you wear the yellow mountain stones?’ asked Roswitha, ‘to match with this gold thread in the girdle?’ Isouda held the amber pebbles to the light and let them run smoothly through her fingers. ‘They would suit well. But let me see what else you have here. You’ve never shown me the half of these.’ She was fingering them curiously when she caught the buried gleam of coloured enamels, and unearthed from the very bottom of the box a large brooch of the ancient ring-and-pin kind, the ring with its broad, flattened terminals intricately ornamented with filigree shapes of gold framing the enamels, sinuous animals that became twining leaves if viewed a second time, and twisted back into serpents as she gazed. The pin was of silver, with a diamond-shaped head engraved with a formal flower in enamels, and the point projected the length of her little finger beyond the ring, which filled her palm. A princely thing, made to fasten the thick folds of a man’s cloak. She had begun to say: ‘I’ve never seen this…’ before she had it out and saw it clearly. She broke off then, and the sudden silence caused Roswitha to look up. She rose quickly, and came to plunge her own hand into the box and thrust the brooch to the bottom again, out of sight.
‘Oh, not that!’ she said with a grimace. ‘It’s too heavy, and so old-fashioned. Put them all back, I shall need only the yellow necklace, and the silver hair-combs.’ She closed the lid firmly, and drew Isouda back to the bed, where the gown lay carefully outspread. ‘See here, there are a few frayed stitches in the embroidery, could you catch them up for me? You are a better needlewoman than I.’ With a placid face and steady hand Isouda sat down and did as she was asked, and refrained from casting another glance at the box that held the brooch. But when the hour of Compline came, she snapped off her thread at the final stitch, laid her work aside, and announced that she was going to attend the office. Roswitha, already languidly undressing for bed, made no move to dissuade, and certainly none to join her.
Brother Cadfael left the church after Compline by the south porch, intending only to pay a brief visit to his workshop to see that the brazier, which Brother Oswin had been using earlier, was safely out, everything securely stoppered, and the door properly closed to conserve what warmth remained. The night was starry and sharp with frost, and he needed no other light to see his way by such familiar paths. But he had got no further than the archway into the court when he was plucked urgently by the sleeve, and a breathless voice whispered in his ear: ‘Brother Cadfael, I must talk to you!’ ‘Isouda! What is it? Something has happened?’ He drew her back into one of the carrels of the scriptorium; no one else would be stirring there now, and in the darkness the two of them were invisible, drawn back into the most sheltered corner. Her face at his shoulder was intent, a pale oval afloat above the darkness of her cloak.
