by Ellis Peters
She looked back at him with great eyes, and was very still for one instant in her flight. She faltered some words of submission, while her eyes flamed unreadably, with a most disquieting brilliance. She made a further deep reverence, to the very ground, but sprang from it like an angel soaring, and flew to the cloister whither he had pointed her.
It seemed vast to her, four-sided in stony corridors about an open garden, where spring flowers burst out in gold and white and purple on a grassy ground. She flitted the length of one walk between terror and delight, turned along the second in awe of the alcove cells furnished with slanted tables and benches, empty but for one absorbed scholar copying wonders, who never lifted his head as she passed by. At the end of this walk, echoing from such another cell, she heard music. She had never before heard an organ played, it was a magical sound to her, until she heard a sweet, lofty voice soar happily with it, and knew it for Liliwin’s.
He was bending over the instrument, and did not hear her come. Neither did Brother Anselm, equally absorbed in fitting together the fragments of the rebec’s back. She stood timidly in the opening of the carrel, and only when the song ended did she venture speech. At this vital moment she did not know what her welcome would be. What proof had she that he had thought of her, since that hour they had spent together, as she had thought ceaselessly of him? It might well be that she was fooling herself, as Susanna had said.
‘If you please
‘ began Rannilt humbly and hesitantly.
Then they both looked up. The old man viewed her with mildly curious eyes, unastonished and benign. The young one stared, gaped and blazed, in incredulous joy, set aside his strange instrument of music blindly on the bench beside him, and came to his feet slowly, warily, all his movements soft almost to stealth, as though any sudden start might cause her to quiver and dissolve into light, vanishing like morning mist.
‘Rannilt
It was you?’
If this was indeed foolery, then she was not the only fool. She looked rather at Brother Anselm, whose devoted fingers were held poised, not to divert by the least degree the touch he had suspended on his delicate operations.
‘If you please, I should like to speak with Liliwin. I have brought him some gifts.’
‘By all means,’ said Brother Anselm amiably. ‘You hear, boy? You have a visitor. There, go along and be glad of her. I shall not need you now for some hours. I’ll hear your lesson later.’
They moved towards each other in a dream, wordless, took hands and stole away.
‘I swear to you, Rannilt, I never struck him, I never stole from him, I never did him wrong.’ He had said it at least a dozen times, here in the shadowy porch where his brychans were folded up, and his thin pallet spread, and the poor tools of his craft hidden away in a corner of the stone bench as though some shame attached to them. And there had never been any need to say it even once, as she a dozen times had answered him.
‘I know, I know! I never believed for a moment. How could you doubt it? I know you are good. They will find it out, they will have to own it.’
They trembled together and kept fast hold of hands in a desperate clasp, and the touch set their unpractised bodies quivering in an excitement neither of them understood.
‘Oh, Rannilt, if you knew! That was the worst of all, that you might shrink from me and believe me so vile
They believe it, all of them. Only you
‘
‘No,’ she said stoutly, ‘I’m not so sure. The brother who comes to physic Dame Juliana, the one who brought back your things
And that kind brother who is teaching you
Oh, no, you are not abandoned. You must not think it!’
‘No!’ he owned thankfully. ‘Now I do believe, I do trust, if you are with me
‘ He was lost in wonder that anyone in that hostile household should send her to him. ‘She was good, your lady! I’m so beholden to her
‘
Not for the gifts of food, orts to her, delicacies to him. No, but for this nearness that clouded his senses in a fevered warmth and delight and disquiet he had never before experienced, and which could only be love, the love he had sung by rote for years, while his body and mind were quite without understanding.
Brother Jerome, true to what he felt to be his duty, had marked the passing of time, and loomed behind them, approaching inexorably along the walk from the great court. His sandals silent on the flagstones, he observed as he came the shoulders pressed close, the two heads, the flaxen and the black, inclined together with temples almost touching. Certainly it was time to part them, this was no place for such embraces.
‘It will all be well in the end,’ said Rannilt, whispering. ‘You’ll see! Mistress Susannashe says as they say, and yet she let me come. I think she doesn’t really believe
She said I might stay away all day long
‘
‘Oh, Rannilt
Oh, Rannilt, I do so love you
‘
‘Maiden,’ said Brother Jerome, harshly censorious behind them, ‘you have had time enough to discharge your mistress’s errand. There can be no further stay. You must take your basket and depart.’
A shadow no bigger than Liliwin’s, there behind them black against the slanting sun of mid-afternoon, and yet he cast such a darkness over them as they could hardly bear. They had only just linked hands, barely realised the possibilities that lie within such slender bodies, and they must be torn apart. The monk had authority, he spoke for the abbey, and there was no denying him. Liliwin had been granted shelter, how could he then resist the restrictions laid upon him?
They rose, tremulous. Her hand in his clung convulsively, and her touch ran through him like a stiffening fire, drawn by a great, upward wind that was his own desperation and anger.
‘She is going,’ said Liliwin. ‘Only give us, for pity’s sake, some moments in the church together for prayer.’
Brother Jerome found that becoming, even disarming, and stood back from them as Liliwin drew her with him, the basket in his free hand, in through the porch to the dark interior of the church. Silence and dimness closed on them. Brother Jerome had respected their privacy and remained without, though he would not go far until he saw one of them emerge alone.
And it might be the last time he would ever see her! He could not bear it that she should go so soon, perhaps to be lost for ever, when she had leave to be absent all day long. He closed his hand possessively on her arm, drawing her deep into the shadowy, stony recesses of the transept chapel beyond the parish altar. She should not go like this! They were not followed, there was no one else here within at this moment, and Liliwin was well acquainted now with every corner and cranny of this church, having prowled it restlessly and fearfully on his first night here alone, when his ears were still pricked for sounds of pursuit, and he was afraid to sleep on his pallet in the porch.
‘Don’t go, don’t go!’ His arms were clasped tightly about her as they pressed together into the darkest corner, and his lips were whispering agitatedly against her cheek. ‘Stay with me! You can, you can, I’ll show you a place
No one will know, no one will find us.’
The chapel was narrow, the altar wide, all but filling the space between its containing columns, and stood out somewhat from the niche that tapered behind it. There was a little cavern there, into which only creatures as small and thin as they could creep. Liliwin had marked it down as a place to which he might retreat if the hunters broke in, and he knew his own body could negotiate the passage, so for her it would be no barrier. And within there was darkness, privacy, invisibility.
‘Here, slip in here! No one will see. When he’s satisfied, when he goes away, I’ll come to you. We can be together until Vespers.’
Rannilt went where he urged her; she would have done anything he asked, her hunger was as desperate as his. The empty basket was drawn through the narrow space after her. Her wild whisper breathed back from the darkness: ‘You will come? Soon?’
‘I’ll come! Wait for me
‘
Invisible and still, she made no murmur nor rustle. Liliwin turned, trembling, and went back past the parish altar, and out at the south porch into the east walk of the cloisters. Brother Jerome had had the grace to withdraw into the garth, to keep his jealous watch a little less blatantly, but his sharp eyes were still on the doorway, and the emergence of the solitary figure, head drooping and shoulders despondent, appeared to satisfy him. Liliwin did not have to feign dejection, he was already in tears of excitement, compounded of joy and grief together. He did not turn along the scriptorium to go back to Brother Anselm, but went straight past the bench in the porch, where the gifts of food and clothing lay on his folded brychans, and out into the court and the garden beyond. But not far, only into cover among the first bushes, where he could look back and see Brother Jerome give over his vigil, and depart briskly in the direction of the grange court. The girl was gone, from the west door of the church; the disturbing presence was removed, monastic order restored, and Brother Jerome’s authority had been properly respected.
Liliwin flew back to his pallet in the porch, rolled up food and clothing in his blankets, and looked round carefully to make sure there was now no one paying any attention to him, either within or without the church. When he was certain, he slipped in with his bundle under his arm, darted into the chapel, and slid as nimbly as an eel between altar and pillar into the dark haven behind. Rannilt’s hands reached out for him, her cheek was pressed against his, they shook together, almost invisible even to each other, and by that very mystery suddenly loosed from all the restraints of the outer world, able to speak without speech, delivered from shyness and shame, avowed lovers. This was something quite different even from sitting together in the porch, before Jerome’s serpent hissed into their Eden. There they had never got beyond clasping hands, and even those clasped hands hidden between them, as if a matter for modesty and shame. Here there was neither, only a vindicated candour that expanded in darkness, giving and receiving passionate, inexpert caresses.
There was room there to make a nest, with the blankets and the basket and Daniel’s outgrown clothes, and if the stone floor was thick with a generation or more of soft, fine dust, that only helped to cushion the couch they laid down for themselves. They sat huddled together with their backs against the stone wall, sharing their warmth, and the morsels Susanna had discarded, and holding fast to each other for reassurance, until they drifted into a dream-like illusion of safety where reassurance was unnecessary.
They talked, but in few and whispered words.
‘Are you cold?’
‘No.’
‘Yes, you’re trembling.’ He shifted and drew her into his arm, close against his breast, and with his free hand plucked up a corner of the blanket over her shoulder, binding her to him. She stretched up her arm within the rough wool, slipped her hand about his neck, and embraced him with lips and cheek and nestling forehead, drawing him down with her until they lay breast to breast, heaving as one to great, deep-drawn sighs.
There was some manner of lightning-stroke, as it seemed, that convulsed them both, and fused them into one without any coherent action on their part. They were equally innocent, equally knowing. Knowing by rote is one thing. What they experienced bore no resemblance to what they had thought they knew. Afterwards, shifting a little only to entwine more closely and warmly, they fell asleep in each other’s arms, to quicken an hour or more later to the same compulsion, and love again without ever fully awaking. Then they slept again, so deeply, in such an exhaustion of wonder and fulfilment, that even the chanting of Vespers in the choir did not disturb them.
‘Shall I fetch in the linen for you?’ Margery offered in the afternoon, making a conciliatory foray into Susanna’s domain, and finding that composed housekeeper busy with preparations for the evening’s supper.
‘Thank you,’ said Susanna, hardly looking up from her work, ‘but I’ll do that myself.’ Not one step is she going to advance towards me, thought Margery, damped. Her linen, her stores, her kitchen! And at that Susanna did look up, even smiled; her usual, wry smile, but not unfriendly. ‘If you wish me well, do take charge of my grandmother. You are new to her, she’ll take more kindly to you, and be more biddable. I have had this some years, she and I wear out each other. We are too like. You come fresh. It would be a kindness.’
Margery was silenced and disarmed. ‘I will,’ she said heartily, and went away to do her best with the old woman, who, true enough, undoubtedly curbed her malevolence with the newcomer.
Only later in the evening, viewing Daniel across the trestle table, mute, inattentive and smugly glowing with some private satisfaction, did she return to brooding on her lack of status here, and reflecting at whose girdle the keys were hung, and whose voice bound or loosed the maidservant who was still absent.
‘I marvel,’ said Brother Anselm, coming out from the refectory after supper, ‘where my pupil can have got to. He’s been so eager, since I showed him the written notes. An angel’s ear, true as a bird, and a voice the same. And he has not even been to the kitchen for his supper.’
‘Nor come to have his arm dressed,’ agreed Brother Cadfael, who had spent the whole afternoon busily planting, brewing and compounding in his herbarium. ‘Though Oswin did look at it earlier, and found it healing very well.’
‘There was a maidservant here bringing him a basket of dainties from her mistress’s table,’ said Jerome, one ear pricked in their direction. ‘No doubt he felt no appetite for our simple fare. I had occasion to admonish them. He may have taken some grief, and be moping solitary.’
It had not occurred to him, until then, that he had not seen the unwanted guest since the boy had come out of the church alone; now it seemed, moreover, that Brother Anselm, who had had more reason to expect to spend time with his pupil, had not seen hide or hair of him, either. The abbey enclave was extensive, but not so great that a man virtually a prisoner should disappear in it. If, that is, he was still within it?
Jerome said no word more to his fellows, but spent the final half-hour before Compline making a rapid search of every part of the enclave, and ended at the south porch. The pallet on the stone bench was bare and unpressed, the brychans unaccountably missing. He did not notice the small cloth bundle tucked under a corner of the straw. As far as he could see, there was no sign left of Liliwin’s presence.
He reported as much to Prior Robert, returning breathless just before Compline was due to begin. Robert did not exactly smile, his ascetic face remained benign and bland as ever, but he did somehow radiate an air of relief and cautious pleasure.
‘Well, well!’ said Robert. ‘If the misguided youth has been so foolish as to quit his place of safety on account of a woman, it is his own choice. A sad business, but no blame lights upon any within here. No man can be wise for another.’ And he led the procession into the choir with his usual impressive gait and saintly visage, and breathed the more easily now that the alien burr had been dislodged from his skin. He did not warn Jerome to say no word yet to anyone else within here; there was no need, they understood each other very well.
Chapter Six
Monday night to Tuesday afternoon
Liliwin awoke with a jolting shock to darkness, the unmistakable sound of Brother Anselm’s voice leading the chanting in the choir, a wild sense of fear, and the total remembrance of the wonderful and terrible thing he and Rannilt had done together, that revelation of bliss that was at the same time so appalling and unforgivable a blasphemy. Here, behind the altar, in the presence of relics so holy, the sin of the flesh, natural and human as it might be out in some meadow or coppice, became mortal and damning. But the immediate terror was worse than the distant smell of hellfire. He remembered where he was, and everything that had passed, and his senses, sharpened by terror and dismay, recognised the office. Not Vespers! Compline! They had slept for hours. Even the evening was spent, the night closing in.
He g
roped with frantic gentleness along the brychan, to lay a hand over Rannilt’s lips, and kissed her cheek to awaken her. She started instantly and fully out of the depths of sleep. He felt her lips move, smiling, against his palm. She remembered, but not as he did; she felt no guilt and she was not afraid. Not yet! That was still to come.
With his lips close to her ear, in the tangle of her black hair, he breathed: ‘We’ve slept too long
it’s night, they’re singing Compline.’
She sat up abruptly, braced and listening with him. She whispered: ‘Oh mercy! What have we done? I must go
I shall be so late
“
‘No, not alone
you can’t. All that way in the dark!’
I’m not afraid.’
‘But I won’t let you! there are thieves and villains in the night. You shan’t go alone, I’m coming with you.’
She put him off from her with a hand flattened against his breast, her fluttering whisper agitated but still soft on his cheek: ‘You can’t! You can’t, you mustn’t leave here, they’re watching outside, they’d take you.’
‘Wait
wait here a moment, let me look.’ The faint light from the choir, shut off by stone walls from their cranny, but feebly reflected into the chapel, had begun to show in a pallid outline the shape of the altar behind which they crouched. Liliwin slipped round it, and padded across to peer round a sheltering column into the nave. There were a number of elderly women of the Foregate who attended even non-parochial services regularly, having their souls in mind, their homes only a few paces distant, and nothing more interesting to do with their evenings in these declining years. Five of them were present on this fine, mild night, kneeling in the dimness just within Liliwin’s view, and one of them must have brought a young grandson with her, while another, fragile enough to need or demand a prop, had a young man in his twenties attendant on her. Enough of them to provide a measure of cover, if God, or fate, or whatever held the dice, added the requisite measure of luck.
