He was at the door when Meriet asked anxiously: ‘Brother Cadfael…?’ And when he turned at once: ‘Do you know what they mean to do with me afterwards?’
‘Not to discard you, at all events,’ said Cadfael, and saw no reason why he should not tell him what was planned for him. It seemed that nothing was changed. The news that he was in no danger of banishment from his chosen field calmed, reassured, placated Meriet; it was all that he wanted to hear. But it did not make him happy.
Cadfael went away discouraged, and was cantankerous with everyone who came in his path for the rest of the day.
* * *
CHAPTER SEVEN
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Hugh came south from the peat-hags empty-handed to his house in Shrewsbury, and sent an invitation to Cadfael to join him at supper on the evening of his return. To such occasional visits Cadfael had the most unexceptionable claim, since Giles Beringar, now some ten months old, was his godson, and a good godfather must keep a close eye on the welfare and progress of his charge. Of young Gile’s physical well being and inexhaustible energy there could be little question, but Hugh did sometimes express doubts about his moral inclinations, and like most fathers, detailed his son’s ingenious villainies with respect and pride.
Aline, having fed and wined her menfolk, and observed with a practised eye the first droop of her son’s eyelids, swept him off out of the room to be put to bed by Constance, who was his devoted slave, as she had been loyal friend and servant to his mother from childhood. Hugh and Cadfael were left alone for a while to exchange such information as they had. But the sum of it was sadly little.
‘The men of the moss,’ said Hugh, ‘are confident that not one of them has seen hide or hair of a stranger, whether victim or malefactor. Yet the plain fact is that the horse reached the moss, and the man surely cannot have been far away. It still seems to me that he lies somewhere in those peat-pools, and we are never likely to see or hear of him again. I have sent to Canon Eluard to try and find out what he carried on him. I gather he went very well-presented and was given to wearing jewels. Enough to tempt footpads. But if that was the way of it, it seems to be a first venture from farther north, and it may well be that our scourings there have warned off the maurauders from coming that way again for a while. There have been no other travellers molested in those parts. And indeed, strangers in the moss would be in some peril themselves. You need to know the safe places to tread. Still, for all I can see, that is what happened to Peter Clemence. I’ve left a sergeant and a couple of men up there, and the natives are on the watch for us, too.’
Cadfael could not but agree that this was the likeliest answer to the loss of a man. ‘And yet… you know and I know that because one event follows another, it is not necessary the one should have caused the other. And yet the mind is so constructed, it cannot break the bond between the two. And here were two events, both unexpected; Clemence visited and departed—for he did depart, not one but four people rode a piece with him and said farewell to him in goodwill—and two days later the younger son of the house declared his intent to take the cowl. There is no sensible connection, and I cannot reeve the two apart.’
‘Does that mean,’ demanded Hugh plainly,’that you think this boy may have had a hand in a man’s death and be taking refuge in the cloister?’
‘No,’ said Cadfael decidedly. ‘Don’t ask what is in my mind, for all I find there is mist and confusion, but whatever lies behind the mist, I feel certain it is not that. What his motive is I dare not guess, but I do not believe it is blood-guilt.’ And even as he said and meant it, he saw again Brother Wolstan prone and bleeding in the orchard grass, and Meriet’s face fallen into a frozen mask of horror.
‘For all that—and I respect what you say—I would like to keep a hand on this strange young man. A hand I can close at any moment if ever I should so wish,’ said Hugh honestly. ‘And you tell me he is to go to Saint Giles? To the very edge of town, close to woods and open heaths!’
‘You need not fret,’ said Cadfael, ‘he will not run. He has nowhere to run to, for whatever else is true, his father is utterly estranged from him and would refuse to take him in. But he will not run because he does not wish to. The only haste he still nurses is to rush into his final vows and be done with it, and beyond deliverance.’
‘It’s perpetual imprisonment he’s seeking, then? Not escape?’ said Hugh, with his dark head on one side, and a rueful and affectionate smile on his lips.
‘Not escape, no. From all I have seen,’ said Cadfael heavily, ‘he knows of no way of escape, anywhere, for him.’
At the end of his penance Meriet came forth from his cell, blinking even at the subdued light of a November morning after the chill dimness within, and was presented at chapter before austere, unrevealing faces to ask pardon for his offences and acknowledge the justice of his penalty, which he did, to Cadfael’s relief and admiration, with a calm and dignified bearing and a quiet voice. He looked thinner for his low diet, and his summer brown, smooth copper when he came, had faded into dark, creamy ivory, for though he tanned richly, he had little colour beneath the skin except when enraged. He was docile enough now, or had discovered how to withdraw into himself so far that curiosity, censure and animosity should not be able to move him.
‘I desire,’ he said, ‘to learn what is due from me and to deliver it faithfully. I am here to be disposed of as may best be fitting.’
Well, at any rate he knew how to keep his mouth shut, for evidently he had never let out, even to Brother Paul, that Cadfael had told him what was intended for him. By Isouda’s account he must have been keeping his own counsel ever since he began to grow up, perhaps even before, as soon as it burned into his child’s heart that he was not loved like his brother, and goaded him to turn mischievous and obdurate to get a little notice from those who under-valued him. Thus setting them ever more against him, and rendering himself ever more outrageously exiled from grace.
And I dared trounce him for succumbing to the first misery of his life, thought Cadfael, remorseful, when half his life has been a very sharp misery.
The abbot was austerely kind, putting behind them past errors atoned for, and explaining to him what was now asked of him. ‘You will attend with us this morning,’ said Radulfus, ‘and take your dinner in refectory among your brothers. This afternoon Brother Cadfael will take you to the hospice at Saint Giles, since he will be going there to refill the medicine cupboard.’ And that, at least three days early, was news also to Cadfael, and a welcome indication of the abbot’s personal concern. The brother who had shown a close interest in this troubled and troublesome young novice was being told plainly that he had leave to continue his surveillance.
They set forth from the gatehouse side by side in the early afternoon, into the common daily traffic of the high road through the Foregate. Not a great bustle at this hour on a soft, moist, melancholy November day, but always some evidence of human activity, a boy jog-trotting home with a bag on his shoulder and a dog at his heels, a carter making for the town with a load of coppice-wood, an old man leaning on his staff, two sturdy housewives of the Foregate bustling back from the town with their purchases, one of Hugh’s officers riding back towards the bridge at a leisurely walk. Meriet opened his eyes wide at everything about him, after ten days of close stone walls and meagre lamplight. His face was solemn and still, but his eyes devoured colour and movement hungrily. From the gatehouse to the hospice of Saint Giles was barely half a mile’s walk, alongside the enclave wall of the abbey, past the open green of the horse-fair, and along the straight road between the houses of the Foregate, until they thinned out with trees and gardens between, and gave place to the open countryside. And there the low roof of the hospital came into view, and the squat tower of its chapel, on a slight rise to the left of the highway, where the road forked.