by Ellis Peters
That young man, thought Cadfael, aware of the broken encounter of eyes, has a thing to do which no girl must be allowed to hinder or spoil: to get his fellow safely to his journey’s end at Aberdaron.
He was already a celebrated figure in the enclave, this Ciaran. There was nothing secret about him, he spoke freely and humbly of himself. He had been intended for ordination, but had not yet gone beyond the first step as sub-deacon, and had not reached, and now never would reach, the tonsure. Brother Jerome, always a man to insinuate himself as close as might be to any sign of superlative virtue and holiness, had cultivated and questioned him, and freely retailed what he had learned to any of the brothers who would listen. The story of Ciaran’s mortal sickness and penitential pilgrimage home to Aberdaron was known to all. The austerities he practised upon himself made a great impression. Brother Jerome held that the house was honoured in receiving such a man. And indeed that lean, passionate face, burning-eyed beneath the uncropped brown hair, had a vehement force and fervour.
Rhun could not kneel, but stood steady and stoical on his crutches throughout the office, his eyes fixed, wide and bright, upon the altar. In this soft, dim light within, already reflecting from every stone surface the muted brightness of a cloudless day outside, Cadfael saw that the boy was beautiful, the planes of his face as suave and graceful as any girl’s, the curving of his fair hair round ears and cheeks angelically pure and chaste. If the woman with no son of her own doted on him, and was willing to forsake her living for a matter of weeks on the off-chance of a miracle that would heal him, who could wonder at her?
Since both his attention and his eyes were straying, Cadfael gave up the struggle and let them stray at large over all those devout heads, gathered in a close assembly and filling the nave of the church. An important pilgrimage has much of the atmosphere of a public fair about it, and brings along with it all the hangers-on who frequent such occasions, the pickpockets, the plausible salesmen of relics, sweetmeats, remedies, the fortune-tellers, the gamblers, the swindlers and cheats of all kinds. And some of these cultivate the most respectable of appearances, and prefer to work from within the pale rather than set up in the Foregate as at a market. It was always worth running an eye over the ranks within, as Hugh’s sergeants were certainly doing along the ranks without, to mark down probable sources of trouble before ever the trouble began.
This congregation certainly looked precisely what it purported to be. Nevertheless, there were a few there worth a second glance. Three modest, unobtrusive tradesmen who had arrived closely one after another and rapidly and openly made acquaintance, to all appearances until then strangers: Walter Bagot, glover; John Shure, tailor; William Hales, farrier. Small craftsmen making this their summer holiday, and modestly out to enjoy it. And why not? Except that Cadfael had noted the tailor’s hands devoutly folded, and observed that he cultivated the long, well-tended nails of a fairground sharper, hardly suitable for a tailor’s work. He made a mental note of their faces, the glover rounded and glossy, as if oiled with the same dressing he used on his leathers, the tailor lean-jowled and sedate, with lank hair curtaining a lugubrious face, the farrier square, brown and twinkling of eye, the picture of honest good-humour.
They might be what they claimed. They might not. Hugh would be on the watch, so would the careful tavern-keepers of the Foregate and the town, by no means eager to hold their doors open to the fleecers and skinners of their own neighbours and customers.
Cadfael went out from Mass with his brethren, very thoughtful, and found Rhun already waiting for him in the herbarium.
*
The boy sat passive and submitted himself to Cadfael’s handling, saying no word beyond his respectful greeting. The rhythm of the questing fingers, patiently coaxing apart the rigid tissues that lamed him, had a soothing effect, even when they probed deeply enough to cause pain. He let his head lean back against the timbers of the wall, and his eyes gradually closed. The tension of his cheeks and lips showed that he was not sleeping, but Cadfael was able to study the boy’s face closely as he worked on him, and note his pallor, and the dark rings round his eyes.
“Well, did you take the dose I gave you for the night?” asked Cadfael, guessing at the answer.
“No.” Rhun opened his eyes apprehensively, to see if he was to be reproved for it, but Cadfael’s face showed neither surprise nor reproach.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Suddenly I felt there was no need. I was happy,” said Rhun, his eyes again closed, the better to examine his own actions and motives. “I had prayed. It’s not that I doubt the saint’s power. Suddenly it seemed to me that I need not even wish to be healed… that I ought to offer up my lameness and pain freely, not as a price for favour. People bring offerings, and I have nothing else to offer. Do you think it might be acceptable? I meant it humbly.”
There could hardly be, thought Cadfael, among all her devotees, a more costly oblation. He has gone far along a difficult road who has come to the point of seeing that deprivation, pain and disability are of no consequence at all, beside the inward conviction of grace, and the secret peace of the soul. An acceptance which can only be made for a man’s own self, never for any other. Another’s grief is not to be tolerated, if there can be anything done to alleviate it.
“And did you sleep well?”
“No. But it didn’t matter. I lay quiet all night long. I tried to bear it gladly. And I was not the only one there wakeful.” He slept in the common dormitory for the men, and there must be several among his fellows there afflicted in one way or another, besides the sick and possibly contagious whom Brother Edmund had isolated in the infirmary. “Ciaran was restless, too,” said Rhun reflectively, “When it was all silent, after Lauds, he got up very quietly from his cot, trying not to disturb anyone, and started wards the door. I thought then how strange it was that he took his belt and scrip with him…”
Cadfael was listening intently enough by this time. Why, indeed, if a man merely needed relief for his body during the night, should he burden himself with carrying his possessions about with him? Though the habit of being wary of theft, in such shared accommodation, might persist even when half-asleep, and in monastic care into the bargain.
“Did he so, indeed? And what followed?”
“Matthew has his own pallet drawn close beside Ciaran’s, even in the night he lies with a hand stretched out to touch. Besides, you know, he seems to know by instinct whatever ails Ciaran. He rose up in an instant, and reached out and took Ciaran by the arm. And Ciaran started and gasped, and blinked round at him, like a man startled awake suddenly, and whispered that he’d been asleep and dreaming, and had dreamed it was time to start out on the road again. So then Matthew took the scrip from him and laid it aside, and they both lay down in their beds again, and all was quiet as before. But I don’t think Ciaran slept well, even after that, his dream had disturbed his mind too much, I heard him twisting and turning for a long time.”
“Did they know,” asked Cadfael, “that you were also awake, and had heard what passed?”
“I can’t tell. I made no pretence, and the pain was bad, I think they must have heard me shifting… I couldn’t help it. But of course I made no sign, it would have been discourteous.”
So it passed as a dream, perhaps for the benefit of Rhun, or any other who might be wakeful as he was. True enough, a sick man troubled by night might very well rise by stealth to leave his friend in peace, out of consideration. But then, if he needed ease, he would have been forced to explain himself and go, when his friend nevertheless started awake to restrain him. Instead, he had pleaded a deluding dream, and lain down again. And men rousing in dreams do move silently, almost as if by stealth. It could be, it must be, simply what it seemed.
“You travelled some miles of the way with those two, Rhun. How did you all fare together on the road? You must have got to know them as well as any here.”
“It was their being slow, like us, that kept us all together, afte
r my sister was nearly ridden down, and Matthew ran and caught her up and leaped the ditch with her. They were just slowly overtaking us then, after that we went on all together for company. But I wouldn’t say we got to know them—they are so rapt in each other. And then, Ciaran was in pain, and that kept him silent, though he did tell us where he was bound, and why. It’s true Melangell and Matthew took to walking last, behind us, and he carried our few goods for her, having so little of his own to carry. I never wondered at Ciaran being so silent,” said Rhun simply, “seeing what he had to bear. And my Aunt Alice can talk for two,” he ended guilelessly.
So she could, and no doubt did, all the rest of the way into Shrewsbury.
“That pair, Ciaran and Matthew,” said Cadfael, still delicately probing, “they never told you how they came together? Whether they were kin, or friends, or had simply met and kept company on the road? For they’re much of an age, even of a kind, young men of some schooling, I fancy, bred to clerking or squiring, and yet not kin, or don’t acknowledge it, and after their fashion very differently made. A man wonders how they ever came to be embarked together on this journey. It was south of Warwick when you met them? I wonder from how far south they came.”
“They never spoke of such things,” owned Rhun, himself considering them for the first time. “It was good to have company on the way, one stout young man at least. The roads can be perilous for two women, with only a cripple like me. But now you speak of it, no, we did not learn much of where they came from, or what bound them together. Unless my sister knows more. There were days,” said Rhun, shifting to assist Brother Cadfael’s probings into the sinews of his thigh, “when she and Matthew grew quite easy and talkative behind us.”
Cadfael doubted whether the subject of their conversation then had been anything but their two selves, brushing sleeves pleasurably along the summer highways, she in constant recall of the moment when she was snatched up bodily and swung across the ditch against Matthew’s heart, he in constant contemplation of the delectable creature dancing at his elbow, and recollection of the feel of her slight, warm, frightened weight on his breast.
“But he’ll hardly look at her now,” said Rhun regretfully. “He’s too intent on Ciaran, and Melangell will come between. But it costs him a dear effort to turn away from her, all the same.”
Cadfael stroked down the misshapen leg, and rose to scrub his oily hands. “There, that’s enough for today. But sit quiet a while and rest before you go. And will you take the draught tonight? At least keep it by you, and do what you feel to be right and best. But remember it’s a kindness sometimes to accept help, a kindness to the giver. Would you wilfully inflict torment on yourself as Ciaran does? No, not you, you are too modest by far to set yourself up for braver and more to be worshipped than other men. So never think you do wrong by sparing yourself discomfort. Yet it’s your choice, make it as you see fit.”
When the boy took up his crutches again and tapped his way out along the path towards the great court, Cadfael followed him at a distance, to watch his progress without embarrassing him. He could mark no change as yet. The stretched toe still barely dared touch ground, and still turned inward. And yet the sinews, cramped as they were, had some small force in them, instead of being withered and atrophied as he would have expected. If I had him here long enough, he thought, I could bring back some ease and use into that leg. But he’ll go as he came. In three days now all will be over, the festival ended for this year, the guest-hall emptying. Ciaran and his guardian shadow will pass on northwards and westwards into Wales, and Dame Weaver will take her chicks back home to Campden. And those two, who might very well have made a fair match if things had been otherwise, will go their separate ways, and never see each other again. It’s in the nature of things that those who gather in great numbers for the feasts of the church should also disperse again to their various duties afterwards. Still, they need not all go away unchanged.
Chapter 5
BROTHER ADAM OF READING, being lodged in the dortoir with the monks of the house, had had leisure to observe his fellow pilgrims of the guest-hall only at the offices of the church, and in their casual comings and goings about the precinct; and it happened that he came from the garden towards midafternoon, with Cadfael beside him, just as Ciaran and Matthew were crossing the court towards the cloister garth, there to sit in the sun for an hour or two before Vespers. There were plenty of others, monks, lay servants and guests, busy on their various occasions, but Ciaran’s striking figure and painfully slow and careful gait marked him out for notice.
“Those two,” said Brother Adam, halting, “I have seen before. At Abington, where I spent the first night after leaving Reading. They were lodged there the same night.”
“At Abingdon!” Cadfael echoed thoughtfully. “So they came from far south. You did not cross them again after Abingdon, on the way here?”
“It was not likely. I was mounted. And then, I had my abbot’s mission to Leominster, which took me out of the direct way. No, I saw no more of them, never until now. But they can hardly be mistaken, once seen.”
“In what sort of case were they at Abingdon?” asked Cadfael, his eyes following the two inseparable figures until they vanished into the cloister. “Would you say they had been long on the road before that night’s halt? The man is pledged to go barefoot to Aberdaron, it would not take many miles to leave the mark on him.”
“He was going somewhat lamely, even then. They had both the dust of the roads on them. It might have been their first day’s walking that ended there, but I doubt it.”
“He came to me to have his feet tended, yesterday,” said Cadfael, “and I must see him again before evening. Two or three days of rest will set him up for the next stage of his walk. From more than a day’s going south of Abingdon to the remotest tip of Wales, a long, long walk. A strange, even a mistaken, piety it seems to me, to take upon oneself ostentatious pains, when there are poor fellows enough in the world who are born to pain they have not chosen, and carry it with humility.”
“The simple believe it brings merit,” said Brother Adam tolerantly. “It may be he has no other claim upon outstanding virtue, and clutches at this.”
“But he’s no simple soul,” said Cadfael with conviction, “whatever he may be. He has, he tells me, a mortal disease, and is going to end his days in blessedness and peace at Aberdaron, and have his bones laid in Ynys Enlli, which is a noble ambition in a man of Welsh blood. The voluntary assumption of pain beyond his doom may even be a pennon of defiance, a wag of the hand against death. That I could understand. But I would not approve it.”
“It’s very natural you should frown on it,” agreed Adam, smiling indulgence upon his companion and himself alike, “seeing you are schooled to the alleviation of pain, and feel it to be a violator and an enemy. By the very virtue of these plants we have learned to use.” He patted the leather scrip at his girdle, and the soft rustle of seeds within answered him. They had been sorting over Cadfael’s clay saucers of new seed from this freshly ripening year, and he had helped himself to two or three not native in his own herbarium. “It is as good a dragon to fight as any in this world, pain.”
They had gone some yards more towards the stone steps that led up to the main door of the guest-hall, in no hurry, and taking pleasure in the contemplation of so much bustle and motion, when Brother Adam checked abruptly and stood at gaze.
“Well, well, I think you may have got some of our southern sinners, as well as our would-be saints!”
Cadfael, surprised, followed where Adam was gazing, and stood to hear what further he would have to say, for the individual in question was the least remarkable of men at first glance. He stood close to the gatehouse, one of a small group constantly on hand there to watch the new arrivals and the general commerce of the day. A big man, but so neatly and squarely built that his size was not wholly apparent, he stood with his thumbs in the belt of his plain but ample gown, which was nicely cut and fashioned to show him no noblema
n, and no commoner, either, but a solid, respectable, comfortably provided fellow of the middle kind, merchant or tradesman. One of those who form the backbone of many a township in England, and can afford the occasional pilgrimage by way of a well-earned holiday. He gazed benignly upon the activity around him from a plump, shrewd, well-shaven face, favouring the whole creation with a broad, contented smile.
“That,” said Cadfael, eyeing his companion with bright enquiry, “is, or so I am informed, one Simeon Poer, a merchant of Guildford, come on pilgrimage for his soul’s sake, and because the summer chances to be very fine and inviting. And why not? Do you know of a reason?”
“Simeon Poer may well be his name,” said Brother Adam, “or he may have half a dozen more ready to trot forward at need. I never knew a name for him, but his face and form I do know. Father Abbot uses me a good deal on his business outside the cloister and I have occasion to know most of the fairs and markets in our shire and beyond. I’ve seen that fellow—not gowned like a provost, as he is now, I grant you, but by the look of him he’s been doing well lately—round every fairground, cultivating the company of those young, green roisterers who frequent every such gathering. For the contents of their pockets, surely. Most likely, dice. Even more likely, loaded dice. Though I wouldn’t say he might not pick a pocket here and there, if business was bad. A quicker means to the same end, if a riskier.”
So knowing and practical a brother Cadfael had not encountered for some years among the innocents. Plainly Brother Adam’s frequent sallies out of the cloister on the abbot’s business had broadened his horizons. Cadfael regarded him with respect and warmth, and turned to study the smiling, benevolent merchant more closely.
