“You do not ask me,” she said, “what Geoffrey FitzClare was to me?”
Cadfael was silent.
“He was my son,” she said. “My one sole child, outside a childless marriage, and lost to me as soon as born. It was long ago, after the old king had conquered and settled Normandy, until King Louis came to the French throne, and started the struggle all over again. King Henry spent two years and more over there defending his conquest, and Warrenne’s forces were with him. My husband was Warrenne’s man. Two years away! Love asks no leave, and I was lonely, and Richard de Clare was kind. When my time came, I was well served and secret, and Richard did well by his own. Aubrey never knew, nor did any other. Richard acknowledged my boy for his, and took him into his own family. But Richard was not living to do right by his son when most he was needed. It was left to me to take his place.”
Her voice was calm, making neither boast nor defence of what she had done. And when she saw Cadfael’s gaze still bent on the salamander in its restoring bath of fire, she smiled.
“That was all he ever had of me. It came from my father’s forebears, but it had fallen almost into disuse. Few people would know it. I asked Richard to give it to him for his own device, and it was done. He did us both credit. His brother Earl Gilbert always thought well of him. Even though they took opposing sides in this sad dispute, they were good friends. The Clares have buried Geoffrey as one of their own, and valued. They do not know what I know of how he died. What you, I think, also know.”
“Yes,” said Cadfael, and looked her in the eyes, “I do know.”
“Then there is no need to explain anything or excuse anything,” she said simply, and turned to set one candle straighter in its sconce, and carry away with her tidily the extinguished sulphur match. “But if ever any man casts up that man’s death against the boy, you may speak out.”
“You said, “Cadfael reminded her, “that no one else ever knew. Not even your son?”
She looked back for one moment on her way out of the chapel, and confronted him with the deep, drowning blue serenity of her eyes, and smiled. “He knows now,” she said.
In the chapel of La Musarderie those two parted, who would surely never meet again.
Cadfael went out to the stable, and found a somewhat disconsolate Yves already saddling the chestnut roan, and insisting on coming out with his departing friend as far as the ford of the river. No need to fret over Yves, the darkest shadow had withdrawn from him, there remained only the mild disappointment of not being able to take Cadfael home with him, and the shock of disillusionment which would make him wary of the empress’s favours for some time, but not divert his fierce loyalty from her cause. Not for this gallant simplicity the bruising complexities that trouble most human creatures. He walked beside the roan down the causeway and into the woodland that screened the ford, and talked of Ermina, and Olivier, and the child that was coming and minute by minute his mood brightened, thinking of the reunion still to come.
“He may be there already, even before I can get leave to go to her. And he really is well? He’s come to no harm?”
“You’ll find no change in him,” Cadfael promised heartily. “He is as he always has been, and he’ll look for no change in you, either. Between the lot of us,” he said, comforting himself rather than the boy, “perhaps we have not done so badly, after all.”
But it was a long, long journey home.
At the ford they parted. Yves reached up, inclining a smooth cheek, and Cadfael stooped to kiss him. “Go back now, and don’t watch me go. There’ll be another time.”
Cadfael crossed the ford, climbed the green track up through the woods on the other side, and rode eastward through the village of Winstone towards the great highroad. But when he reached it he did not turn left towards Tewkesbury and the roads that led homeward, but right, towards Cirencester. He had one more small duty to perform; or perhaps he was simply clinging by the sleeve of hope to the conviction that out of his apostasy something good might emerge, beyond all reasonable expectation, to offer as justification for default.
All along the great road high on the Cotswold plateau he rode through intermittent showers of sleet, under a low, leaden sky, hardly conducive to cheerful thoughts. The colours of winter, bleached and faded and soiled, were setting in like a wash of grey mist over the landscape. There was small joy in travelling, and few fellow-creatures to greet along the way. Men and sheep alike preferred the shelter of cottage and fold.
It was late afternoon when he reached Cirencester, a town he did not know, except by reputation as a very old city, where the Romans had left their fabled traces, and a very sturdy and astute wool trade had continued independent and prosperous ever since. He had to stop and ask his way to the Augustinian abbey, but there was no mistaking it when he found it, and no doubt of its flourishing condition. The old King Henry had refounded it upon the remnant of an older house of secular canons, very poorly endowed and quietly mouldering, but the Augustinians had made a success of it, and the fine gatehouse, spacious court and splendid church spoke for their zeal and efficiency. This revived house was barely thirty years old, but bade fair to be the foremost of its order in the kingdom.
Cadfael dismounted at the gate and led his horse within, to the porter’s lodge. This ordered calm came kindly on his spirit, after the uncontrollable chances of siege and the bleak loneliness of the roads. Here all things were ordained and regulated, here everyone had a purpose and a rule, and was in no doubt of his value, and every hour and every thing had a function, essential to the functioning of the whole. So it was at home, where his heart drew him.
“I am a brother of the Benedictine abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul at Shrewsbury,” said Cadfael humbly, “and have been in these parts by reason of the fighting at Greenhamsted, where I was lodged when the castle fell under siege. May I speak with the infirmarer?”
The porter was a smooth, round elder with a cool, aloof eye, none too ready to welcome a Benedictine on first sight. He asked briskly: “Are you seeking lodging overnight, brother?”
“No,” said Cadfael. “My errand here can be short, I am on my way home to my abbey. You need make no provision for me. But I sent here, in the guardianship of another, Philip FitzRobert, badly wounded at Greenhamsted, and in danger of his life. I should be glad of a word with the infirmarer as to how he does. Or,” he said, suddenly shaken, “whether he still lives. I tended him there, I need to know.”
The name of Philip FitzRobert had opened wide the reserved, chill grey eyes that had not warmed at mention of the Benedictine Order or the abbey of Shrewsbury. Whether he was loved here or hated, or simply suffered as an unavoidable complication, his father’s hand was over him, and could open closed and guarded doors. Small blame to the house that kept a steely watch on its boundaries.
“I will call Brother Infirmarer,” said the porter, and went to set about it within.
The infirmarer came bustling, a brisk, amiable man not much past thirty. He looked Cadfael up and down in one rapid glance, and nodded informed approval. “He said you might come. The young man described you well, brother, I should have known you among many. You are welcome here. He told us of the fate of La Musarderie, and what was threatened against this guest of ours.”
“So they reached here in time,” said Cadfael, and heaved a great sigh.
“In good time. A miller’s cart brought them, but no miller drove it the last miles. A working man must see to his business and his family,” said the infirmarer, “all the more if he has just risked more, perhaps, than was due from him. It seems there were no unseemly alarms. At any rate, the cart was returned, and all was quiet then.”
“I trust it may remain so,” said Cadfael fervently. “He is a good man.”
“Thanks be to God, brother,” said the infirmarer cheerfully, “there are still, as there always have been and always will be, more good men than evil in this world, and their cause will prevail.”