“I missed you,” said Bened, briefly visited between Mass and dinner. “Padrig came down for a while, we were talking over the old days, when Rhisiart was younger. Padrig’s been coming here a good many years now. He knows us all. He asked after you.”
“Tell him we’ll share a cup one of these days, here or there. And say I’m about Rhisiart’s business, if that’s any comfort.”
“We’re getting used to you,” said Bened, stooping to his fire, where a sinewy boy was bending into the bellows. “You should stay, there’d be a place for you.”
“I’ve got my place,” said Cadfael. “Never fret about me. I chose the cowl with both eyes open. I knew what I did.”
“There are some I can’t reconcile with you,” said Bened, with the iron in hand for the shoe that waited.
“Ah, priors and brothers come and go, as mixed as the rest of men, but the cloister remains. Now, there are some who did lose their way, I grant you,” said Cadfael, “mostly young things who mistook a girl’s ‘no’ for the end of the world. Some of them might make very useful craftsmen, if ever they broke free. Always supposing they were free men, and could get entry to, say, the smith’s mystery…”
“He has a good arm and wrist on him, that one,” said Bened reflectively, “and knows how to jump and do as he’s bid when the man bidding knows his business. That’s half the craft. If he hasn’t let Rhisiart’s killer loose on the world, then there isn’t an outlander would be more welcome here. But that I don’t yet know, though the poor girl up yonder may think she does. How if she’s wrong? Do you know?” “Not yet,” owned Cadfael. “But give us time, and we shall know.”
On this third day of Brother John’s nominal captivity he found himself more closely confined. The word had gone round that the bailiff was in the parish and asking questions everywhere concerning the circumstances of Rhisiart’s death, and it was known that he had had a lengthy session with the prior at Father Huw’s parsonage, and must certainly have been urged and admonished as to his duty to take action also in the matter of Brother John’s crime. Not that John had any complaints as to his lodging, his food or his company; he had seldom been so completely content. But for two days, with brief intervals when caution had seemed advisable, he had been out from dawn to dusk about the holding, lending a hand with the cattle, replenishing the wood-pile, fetching and carrying, planting out in the vegetable garden, and had had neither time nor inclination to worry about his situation. Now that he was hustled out of sight, and sat idle in the stable, the realities fretted even John, and the want of Welsh, or of Brother Cadfael to supply the want, was a frustration no longer so easy to bear. He did not know what Cadfael and Sioned were up to, he did not know what was happening to Saint Winifred, or to Prior Robert and his fellows, and above all he did not know where Engelard was, or how he was to be extricated from the tangle of suspicion roused against him. Since his instinctive gesture of solidarity, John took a proprietorial interest in Engelard, and wanted him safe, vindicated, and happy with his Sioned.
But Sioned, true to her word, did not come near him, and there was no one else in the holding who could talk to him freely. Simple things could be conveyed, but there was no way of communicating to him everything he wanted and needed to know. There was he, willing but useless, wondering and fretting how his friends were faring, and quite unable to do anything to aid them.
Annest brought his dinner, and sat by him while he ate, and the same want of words troubled her. It was all very well teaching him simple words and phrases in Welsh by touching the thing she meant, but how to set about pouring out to him, as she would have liked, all that was happening at the chapel, and what the village was saying and thinking? The helplessness of talking at all made their meetings almost silent, but sometimes they did speak aloud, he in English, she in Welsh, saying things because they could not be contained, things that would be understood by the other only in some future day, though the tone might convey at least the sense of friendship, like a kind of restrained caress. Thus they conducted two little monologues which yet were an exchange and a comfort.
Sometimes, though they did not know it, they were even answering each other’s questions.
“I wonder who she was,” said Annest, soft and hesitant, “that one who drove you to take the cowl? Sioned and I, we can’t help wondering how a lad like you ever came to do it.” Now if he had known Welsh, she could never have said that to him.
“How did I ever come to think that Margery such a beauty!” marvelled John. “And take it so hard when she turned me down? But I’d never really seen beauty then—I’d never seen you!”
“She did us all a bad turn,” said Annest, sighing, “whoever she was, driving you into that habit for life!”
“Dear God,” said John, “to think I might have married her! At least she did me that much of a favour, with her ‘no.’ There’s only the matter of a cowl between you and me, not a wife.” And that was the first moment when he had entertained the dazzling idea that escape from his vows might be possible at all. The thought caused him to turn his head and look with even closer and more ardent attention at the fair face so close to his. She had smooth, rounded, apple-blossom cheeks, and delicate, sun-glossed bones, and eyes like brook-water in the sun over bright pebbles, glittering, polished, crystal-clear.
“Do you still fret after her?” wondered Annest in a whisper. “A conceited ninny who hadn’t the wit to know a good man when she saw one?” For he was indeed a very well-grown, handy, handsome, good-humoured young fellow, with his long, sturdy legs and his big, deft hands, and his bush of russet curls, and the girl who thought herself too good for him must have been the world’s fool. “I hate her!” said Annest, leaning unwarily towards him.
The lips that tantalised him with soft utterances he could not understand were only a little way from his own. He resorted in desperation to a kind of sign-language that needed no interpreter. He hadn’t kissed a girl since Margery, the draper’s daughter, threw him over when her father became bailiff of Shrewsbury, but it seemed he hadn’t forgotten how. And Annest melted into his arms, where she fitted a great deal better than his too-hasty vows had ever fitted him.
“Oh, Annest!” gasped Brother John, who had never in his life felt less like a brother, “I think I love you!”
Brother Cadfael and Brother Columbanus walked up through the woodland together, to keep the third night of prayer. The evening was mild and still but overcast, and under the trees the light grew dusky green. Until the last moment it had remained a possibility that Prior Robert, having missed his chosen night of duty, might elect to be present on this last occasion, but he had said no word, and to tell the truth, Cadfael was beginning to wonder if that long session with the bailiff had really been necessary at all, or whether the prior had welcomed it as an alternative to keeping the night-watch and facing Sioned with her request in the morning. Not necessarily a proof of any guilt on his part, beyond the guilt of still wishing to refuse grace to Rhisiart, without actually having to do so face to face with his daughter. For whatever virtues might be found in Prior Robert, humility was not one, nor magnanimity. He was invariably sure of his own rightness, and where it was challenged he was not a forgiving man.
“In this quest and this vigil, brother,” said Columbanus, his long young steps keeping easy pace with Cadfael’s seaman’s roll, “we are greatly privileged. The history of our abbey will record our names, and brothers in the generations to come will envy us.”
“I have already heard,” said Cadfael drily, “that Prior Robert is proposing to write a life of Saint Winifred, and complete it with the story of this translation to Shrewsbury. You think he’ll record the names of all his companions?” Yours, however, he thought, he well might mention, as the afflicted brother who first fell sick and was sent to Holywell to be cured. And Jerome’s, who had the dream that took you there. But mine, I feel sure, will remain a silence, and so much the better!