by Ellis Peters
“So all is well?”
“All is very well, Father.”
“Then the rest may wait for morning. You need rest. But will you not come in with me and take some food and wine, before you sleep?”
“My wife,” said Hugh, gracefully evading, “will be in some anxiety for me. You are kind, Father, but I would not have her fret longer than she need.”
The abbot eyed them both, and did not press them.
“And God bless you for that!” sighed Cadfael, toiling up the slight slope of the court towards the dortoir stair and the gatehouse where Hugh had hitched his horse. “For I’m asleep on my feet, and even a good wine could not revive me.”
*
The moonlight was gone, and there was as yet no sunlight, when Olivier de Bretagne and Luc Meverel rode slowly in at the abbey gatehouse. How far they had wandered in the deep night neither of them knew very clearly, for this was strange country to both. Even when overtaken, and addressed with careful gentleness, Luc had still gone forward blindly, hands hanging slack at his sides or vaguely parting the bushes, saying nothing, hearing nothing, unless some core of feeling within him was aware of this calm, relentless pursuit by a tolerant, incurious kindness, and distantly wondered at it. When he had dropped at last and lain down in the lush grass of a meadow at the edge of the forest, Olivier had tethered his horse a little apart and lain down beside him, not too close, yet so close that the mute man knew he was there, waiting without impatience. Past midnight Luc had fallen asleep. It was his greatest need. He was a man ravished and emptied of every impulse that had held him alive for the past two months, a dead man still walking and unable quite to die. Sleep was his ransom. Then he could truly die to this waste of loss and bitterness, the awful need that had driven him, the corrosive grief that had eaten his heart out for his lord, who had died in his arms, on his shoulder, on his heart. The bloodstain that would not wash out, no matter how he laboured over it, was his witness. He had kept it to keep the fire of his hatred white-hot. Now in sleep he was delivered from all.
And he had awakened in the first mysterious pre-dawn stirring of the earliest summer birds, beginning to call tentatively into the silence, to open his eyes upon a face bending over him, a face he did not know, but remotely desired to know, for it was vivid, friendly and calm, waiting courteously on his will.
“Did I kill him?” Luc had asked, somehow aware that the man who bore this face would know the answer.
“No,” said a voice clear, serene and low. “There was no need. But he’s dead to you. You can forget him.”
He did not understand that, but he accepted it. He sat up in the cool, ripe grass, and his senses began to stir again, and record distantly that the earth smelled sweet, and there were paling stars in the sky over him, caught like stray sparks in the branches of the trees. He stared intently into Olivier’s face, and Olivier looked back at him with a slight, serene smile, and was silent.
“Do I know you?” asked Luc wonderingly.
“No. But you will. My name is Olivier de Bretagne, and I serve Laurence d’Angers, just as your lord did. I knew Rainald Bossard well, he was my friend, we came from the Holy Land together in Laurence’s train. And I am sent with a message to Luc Meverel, and that, I am sure, is your name.”
“A message to me?” Luc shook his head.
“From your cousin and lady, Juliana Bossard. And the message is that she begs you to come home, for she needs you, and there is no one who can take your place.”
He was slow to believe, still numbed and hollow within; but there was no impulsion for him to go anywhere or do anything now of his own will, and he yielded indifferently to Olivier’s promptings. “Now we should be getting back to the abbey,” said Olivier practically, and rose, and Luc responded, and rose with him. “You take the horse, and I’ll walk,” said Olivier, and Luc did as he was bidden. It was like nursing a simpleton gently along the way he must go, and holding him by the hand at every step.
They found their way back at last to the old track, and there were the two horses Hugh had left behind for them, and the groom fast asleep in the grass beside them. Olivier took back his own horse, and Luc mounted the fresh one, with the lightness and ease of custom, his body’s instincts at least reawakening. The yawning groom led the way, knowing the path well. Not until they were halfway back towards the Meole brook and the narrow bridge to the highroad did Luc say a word of his own volition.
“You say she wants me to come back,” he said abruptly, with quickening pain and hope in his voice. “Is it true? I left her without a word, but what else could I do? What can she think of me now?”
“Why, that you had your reasons for leaving her, as she has hers for wanting you back. Half the length of England I have been asking after you, at her entreaty. What more do you need?”
“I never thought to return,” said Luc, staring back down that long, long road in wonder and doubt.
No, not even to Shrewsbury, much less to his home in the south. Yet here he was, in the cool, soft morning twilight well before Prime, riding beside this young stranger over the wooden bridge that crossed the Meole brook, instead of wading through the shrunken stream to the pease fields, the way by which he had left the enclave. Round to the highroad, past the mill and the pond, and in at the gatehouse to the great court. There they lighted down, and the groom took himself and his two horses briskly away again towards the town.
Luc stood gazing about him dully, still clouded by the unfamiliarity of everything he beheld, as if his senses were still dazed and clumsy with the effort of coming back to life. At this hour the court was empty. No, not quite empty. There was someone sitting on the stone steps that climbed to the door of the guest-hall, sitting there alone and quite composedly, with her face turned towards the gate, and as he watched she rose and came down the wide steps, and walked towards him with a swift, light step. Then he knew her for Melangell.
In her at least there was nothing unfamiliar. The sight of her brought back colour and form and reality into the very stones of the wall at her back, and the cobbles under her feet. The elusive grey between-light could not blur the outlines of head and hand, or dim the brightness of her hair. Life came flooding back into Luc with a shock of pain, as feeling returns after a numbing wound. She came towards him with hands a little extended and face raised, and the faintest and most anxious of smiles on her lips and in her eyes. Then, as she hesitated for the first time, a few paces from him, he saw the dark stain of the bruise that marred her cheek.
It was the bruise that shattered him. He shook from head to heels in a great convulsion of shame and grief, and blundered forward blindly into her arms, which reached gladly to receive him. On his knees, with his arms wound about her and his face buried in her breast, he burst into a storm of tears, as spontaneous and as healing as Saint Winifred’s own miraculous spring.
*
He was in perfect command of voice and face when they met after chapter in the abbot’s parlour, abbot, prior, Brother Cadfael, Hugh Beringar, Olivier and Luc, to set right in all its details the account of Rainald Bossard’s death, and all that had followed from it.
“Unwittingly I deceived you, Father,” said Cadfael, harking back to the interview which had sent him forth in such haste. “When you asked if we had entertained a murderer unawares, I answered truly that I did think so, but that we might yet have time to prevent a second death. I never realised until afterwards how you might interpret that, seeing we had just found the blood-stained shirt. But, see, the man who struck the blow might be spattered as to sleeve or collar, but he would not be marked by this great blot that covered breast and shoulder over the heart. No, that was rather the sign of one who had held a wounded man, a man wounded to death, in his arms as he died. Nor would the slayer, if his clothing was blood-stained, have kept and carried it with him, but burned or buried it, or somehow rid himself of it. But this shirt, though washed most carefully, still bore the outline of the stain clear to be seen, and it was carried
as a sacred relic is carried, perhaps as a pledge to exact vengeance. So I knew that this same Luc whom we knew as Matthew, and in whose scrip the talisman was found, was not the murderer. But when I recalled all the words I had heard those two young men speak, and all the evidence of devoted attendance, the one on the other, then suddenly I saw that pairing in the utterly opposed way, as a pursuit. And I feared it must be to the death.”
The abbot looked at Luc, and asked simply: “Is that a true reading?”
“Father, it is.” Luc set forth with deliberation the progress of his own obsession, as though he discovered it and understood it only in speaking. “I was with my lord that night, close to the Old Minster it was, when four or five set on the clerk, and my lord ran, and we with him, to beat them off. And then they fled, but one turned back and struck. I saw it done, and it was done of intent! I had my lord in my arms—he had been good to me, and I loved him,” said Luc with grimly measured moderation and burning eyes as he remembered. “He was dead in a mere moment, in the twinkling of an eye… And I had seen where the murderer fled, into the passage by the chapter house. I went after him, and I heard their voices in the sacristy—Bishop Henry had come from the chapter house after the council ended for the night, and there Ciaran had found him and fell on his knees to him, blurting out all. I lay in hiding, and heard every word. I think he even hoped for praise,” said Luc with bitter deliberation.
“Is it possible?” wondered Prior Robert, shocked to the heart. “Bishop Henry could not for one moment connive at or condone an act so evil.”
“No, he did not condone. But neither would he deliver over one of his own intimate servants as a murderer. To do him justice,” said Luc, but with plain distaste, “his concern was not to cause further anger and quarrelling, but to put away and smooth over everything that threatened the empress’s fortunes and the peace he was trying to make. But condone murder—no, that he would not. Therefore I overheard the sentence he laid upon Ciaran, though then I did not know who he was, nor that Ciaran was his name. He banished him back to his Dublin home, for ever, and condemned him to go every step of the way to Bangor and to the ship at Caergybi barefoot, and carrying that heavy cross. And if ever he put on shoes or laid by the cross from round his neck, then his forfeit life was no longer spared, but might be taken by whoever willed, without sin or penalty. But see,” said Luc, merciless in judgement, “how he cheated! For not only did he give his creature the ring that would ensure him the protection of the church to Bangor, but also, mark, not one word was ever made public of this guilt or this sentence, so how was that forfeit life in danger? No one was to know of it but they two, if God had not prevented and brought there a witness to hear the sentence and take upon himself the vengeance due.”
“As you did,” said the abbot, and his voice was even and calm, avoiding judgement.
“As I did, Father. For as Ciaran swore to keep the terms laid down on pain of death, so did I swear an oath as solemn to follow him the length of the land, and if ever he broke his terms for a moment, to have his life as payment for my lord.”
“And how,” asked Radulfus in the same mild tone, “did you know what man you were thus to hunt to his death? For you say you did not see his face clearly or know his name then.”
“I knew the way he was bound to go, and the day of his setting out. I waited by the roadside for one walking north—barefoot, and one not used to going barefoot, but very well shod,” said Luc with a brief, wry smile. “I saw the cross at his neck. I fell in at his side, and I told him, not who I was, but what. I took another name, so that no failure nor shame of mine should ever cast a shadow on my lady or her house. One Evangelist in exchange for another! Step for step with him I went all this way, here to this place, and never let him from my sight and reach, night or day, and never let him forget that I meant to be his death. He could not ask help to rid himself of me, since I could then as easily strip him of his pilgrim holiness and show what he really was. And I could not denounce him—partly for fear of Bishop Henry, partly because neither did I want more feuding between factions—my feud was between two men!, but chiefly because he was mine, mine, and I would not let any other vengeance or danger reach him. So we kept together, he trying to elude me—but he was court-bred and tender and crippled by the miles—and I holding fast to him, and waiting.”
He looked up suddenly and caught the abbot’s compassionate but calm eyes upon him, and his own eyes were wide, dark and clear. “It is not beautiful, I know. Neither was murder beautiful. And this blotch was only mine—my lord went to his grave immaculate, defending one opposed to him.”
It was Olivier, silent until now, who said softly: “And so did you!”
*
The grave, thought Cadfael at the height of the Mass, had closed firmly to deny Luc entrance, but that arm outstretched between his enemy and the knives of three assailants must never be forgotten. Hell had also shut its mouth and refused to devour him. He was young, clean, alive again after a kind of death. Yes, Olivier had uttered truth. His own life ventured, his enemy’s life defended, what was there between Luc and his lord but the accident, the vain and random accident, of the death itself?
He recalled also, when he was most diligent in prayer, that these few days while Saint Winifred was manifesting her virtue in disentangling the troubled lives of some half-dozen people in Shrewsbury, were also the vital days when the fates of Englishmen in general were being determined, perhaps with less compassion and wisdom. For by this time the date of the empress’s coronation might well be settled, the crown even now placed upon her head. No doubt God and the saints had that consideration in mind, too.
Matthew-Luc came once again to ask audience of the abbot, a little before Vespers. Radulfus had him admitted without question, and sat with him alone, divining his present need.
“Father, will you hear me my confession? For I need absolution from the vow I could not keep. And I do earnestly desire to be clean of the past before I undertake the future.”
“It is a right and a wise desire,” said Radulfus. “One thing tell me—are you asking absolution for failing to fulfil the oath you swore?”
Luc, already on his knees, raised his head for a moment from the abbot’s knee, and showed a face open and clear. “No, Father, but for ever swearing such an oath. Even grief has its arrogance.”
“Then you have learned, my son, that vengeance belongs only to God?”
“More than that, Father,” said Luc. “I have learned that in God’s hands vengeance is safe. However long delayed, however strangely manifested, the reckoning is sure.”
When it was done, when he had raked out of his heart, with measured voice and long pauses for thought, every drifted grain of rancour and bitterness and impatience that fretted him, and received absolution, he rose with a great sigh, and raised a bright and resolute face.
“Now, Father, if I may pray of you one more grace, let me have one of your priests to join me to a wife before I go from here. Here, where I am made clean and new, I would have love and life begin together.”
Chapter 16
ON THE NEXT MORNING, which was the twenty-fourth day of June, the general bustle of departure began. There was packing of belongings, buying and parcelling of food and drink for the journey, and much leave-taking from friends newly made, and arranging of company for the road. No doubt the saint would have due regard for her own reputation, and keep the June sun shining until all her devotees were safely home, and with a wonderful tale to tell. Most of them knew only half the wonder, but even that was wonder enough.
Among the early departures went Brother Adam of Reading, in no great hurry along the way, for today he would go no farther than Reading’s daughter-house of Leominster, where there would be letters waiting for him to carry home to his abbot. He set out with a pouch well filled with seeds of species his garden did not yet possess, and a scholarly mind still pondering the miraculous healing he had witnessed from every theological angle, in order to be able to e
xpound its full significance when he reached his own monastery. It had been a most instructive and enlightening festival.
“I’d meant to start for home today, too,” said Mistress Weaver to her cronies Mistress Glover and the apothecary’s widow, with whom she had formed a strong matronly alliance during these memorable days, “but now there’s such work doing, I hardly know whether I’m waking or sleeping, and I must stay over yet a night or two. Who’d ever have thought what would come of it, when I told my lad we ought to come and make our prayers here to the good saint, and have faith that she’d be listening? Now it seems I’m to lose the both of them, my poor sister’s chicks; for Rhun, God bless him, is set on staying here and taking the cowl, for he says he won’t ever leave the blessed girl who healed him. And truly I don’t wonder at it, and won’t stand in his way, for he’s too good for this wicked world outside, so he is! And now comes young Matthew—no, but it seems we must call him Luc, now, and he’s well-born, if from a poor landless branch, and will come in for a manor or two in time, by his good kinswoman’s taking him in…”
“Well, and so did you take the boy and girl in,” pointed out the apothecary’s widow warmly, “and gave them a roof and a living. There’s good sound justice there.”
“Well, so Matthew, I mean Luc, he comes to me and asks for my girl for his wife, last night it was, and when I answered honestly, for honest I am and always will be, that my Melangell has but a meagre dowry, though the best I can give her I will, what says he? That as at this moment he himself has not one penny to his name in this world, but must go debtor to the young lord’s charity that came to find him, and as for the future, if fortune favours him he’ll be thankful, and if not, he has hands and a will, and can make a way for two to live. Provided the other is my girl, he says, for there’s none other for him. So what can I say but God bless them both, and stay to see them wedded?”
“It’s a woman’s duty,” said Mistress Glover heartily, “to make sure all’s done properly, when she hands over a young girl to a husband. But sure, you’ll miss the two of them.”
