“And Philip? He is alive?” He asked it with more constriction about his heart than he had expected, and held his breath.
“Alive and in his senses. Even mending, though that may be a slow recovery. But yes, he will live, he will be a whole man again. Come and see!”
Outside the partly drawn curtain that closed off one side cell from the infirmary ward sat a young canon of the order, very grave and dutiful, reading in a large book which lay open on his lap-desk. A hefty young man of mild countenance but impressive physique, whose head reared and whose eyes turned alertly at the sound of footsteps approaching. Beholding the infirmarer, with a second habited brother beside him, he immediately lowered his gaze again to his reading, his face impassive. Cadfael approved. The Augustinians were prepared to protect both their privileges and their patients.
“A mere precaution,” said the infirmarer tranquilly. “Perhaps no longer necessary, but better to be certain.”
“I doubt there’ll be any pursuit now,” said Cadfael.
“Nevertheless…” The infirmarer shrugged, and laid a hand to the curtain to draw it back. “Safe rather than sorry! Go in, brother. He is fully in his wits, he will know you.”
Cadfael entered the cell, and the folds of the curtain swung closed behind him. The single bed in the narrow room had been raised, to make attendance on the patient in his helplessness easier. Philip lay propped with pillows, turned a little sidewise, sparing his broken ribs as they mended. His face, if paler and more drawn than in health, had a total and admirable serenity, eased of all tensions. Above the bandages that swathed his head wound, the black hair coiled and curved on his pillows as he turned his head to see who had entered. His eyes in their bluish hollows showed no surprise.
“Brother Cadfael!” His voice was quite strong and clear. “Yes, almost I expected you. But you had a dearer duty. Why are you not some miles on your way home? Was I worth the delay?”
To that Cadfael made no direct reply. He drew near the bed, and looked down with the glow of gratitude and content warming him. “Now that I see you man alive, I will make for home fast enough. They tell me you will mend as good as new.”
“As good,” agreed Philip with a wry smile. “No better! Father and son alike, you may have wasted your pains. Oh, never fear, I have no objection to being snatched out of a halter, even against my will, I shall not cry out against you, as he did: “He has cheated me!” Sit by me, brother, now you are here. Some moments only. You see I shall do well enough, and your needs are elsewhere.”
Cadfael sat down on the stool beside the bed. It brought their faces close, eye to eye in intent and searching study. “I see,” said Cadfael, “that you know who brought you here.”
“Once, just once and briefly, I opened my eyes on his face. In the cart, on the highroad. I was back in the dark before a word could be said, it may be he never knew. But yes, I know. Like father, like son. Well, you have taken seisin of my life between you. Now tell me what I am to do with it.”
“It is still yours,” said Cadfael. “Spend it as you see fit. I think you have as firm a grasp of it as most men.”
“Ah, but this is not the life I had formerly. I consented to a death, you remember? What I have now is your gift, whether you like it or not, my friend. I have had time, these last days,” said Philip quite gently, “to recall all that happened before I died. It was a hopeless cast,” he said with deliberation, “to believe that turning from one nullity to the other could solve anything. Now that I have fought upon either side to no good end, I acknowledge my error. There is no salvation in either empress or king. So what have you in mind for me now, Brother Cadfael? Or what has Olivier de Bretagne in mind for me?”
“Or God, perhaps,” said Cadfael.
“God, certainly! But he has his messengers among us, no doubt there will be omens for me to read.” His smile was without irony. “I have exhausted my hopes of either side, here among princes. Where is there now for me to go?” He was not looking for an answer, not yet. Rising from this bed would be like birth to him; it would be time then to discover what to do with the gift. “Now, since there are other men in the world besides ourselves, tell me how things went, brother, after you had disposed of me.”
And Cadfael composed himself comfortably on his stool, and told him how his garrison had fared, permitted to march out with their honour and their freedom, if not with their arms, and to take their wounded with them. Philip had bought back the lives of most of his men, even if the price, after all, had never been required of him. It had been offered in good faith.
Neither of them heard the flurry of hooves in the great court, or the ringing of harness, or rapid footsteps on the cobbles; the chamber was too deep within the enfolding walls for any forewarning to reach them. Not until the corridor without echoed hollowly to the tread of boots did Cadfael rear erect and break off in mid-sentence, momentarily alarmed. But no, the guardian outside the curtained doorway had not stirred. His view was clear to the end of the passage, and what he saw bearing down upon them gave him no disquiet. He simply rose to his feet and drew aside to give place to those who were approaching.
The curtain was abruptly swept back before the vigorous hand and glowing face of Olivier, Olivier with a shining, heraldic lustre upon him, that burned in silence and halted him on the threshold, his breath held in half elation and half dread at the bold thing he had undertaken. His eyes met Philip’s, and clung in a hopeful stare, and a tentative smile curved his long mouth. He stepped aside, not entering the room, and drew the curtain fully back, and Philip looked beyond him.
For a moment it hung in the balance between triumph and repudiation, and then, though Philip lay still and silent, giving no sign, Olivier knew that he had not laboured in vain.
Cadfael rose and stepped back into the corner of the room as Robert, earl of Gloucester, came in. A quiet man always, squarely built, schooled to patience, even at this pass his face was composed and inexpressive as he approached the bed and looked down at his younger son. The capuchon hung in folds on his shoulders, and the dusting of grey in his thick brown hair and the twin streaks of silver in his short beard caught the remaining light in the room with a moist sheen of rain. He loosed the clasp of his cloak and shrugged it off, and drawing the stool closer to the bed, sat down as simply as if he had just come home to his own house, with no tensions or grievances to threaten his welcome.
“Sir,” said Philip, with deliberate formality, his voice thin and distant, “your son and servant!”
The earl stooped, and kissed his son’s cheek; nothing to disturb even the most fragile of calms, the simple kiss due between sire and son on greeting. And Cadfael, slipping silently past, walked out into the corridor and into his own son’s exultant arms.
So now everything that had to be done here was completed. No man, nor even the empress, would dare touch what Robert of Gloucester had blessed. They drew each other away, content, into the court, and Cadfael reclaimed his horse from the stable, for in spite of the approaching dusk he felt himself bound to ride back some way before full darkness came, and find a simple lodging somewhere among the sheepfolds for the night hours.
“And I will ride with you,” said Olivier, “for our ways are the same as far as Gloucester. We’ll share the straw together in someone’s loft. Or if we reach Winstone the miller will house us.”
“I had thought,” said Cadfael, marvelling, “that you were already in Gloucester with Ermina, as indeed you should be this moment.”
“Oh, I did go to her, how could I not? I kissed her,” said Olivier, “and she saw for herself I had come to no harm from any man, so she let me go where I was bound. I rode to find Robert at Hereford. And he came with me, as I knew he would come. Blood is blood, and there is no blood closer than theirs. And now it is done, and I can go home.”