Janyn carried with him, here as elsewhere, his light, comely candour, smiling round him with pleasure on all he saw. Sweeping a bright glance round all the watching faces, he recognised Brother Cadfael, and his face lit up engagingly as he gave him a marked inclination of his fair head.
‘He knows you,’ said Brother Paul, catching the gesture.
‘The bride’s brother—her twin. I encountered him when I went to talk with Meriet’s father. The two families are close neighbours.’
‘A great pity,’ said Paul sympathetically,’that Brother Meriet is not well enough to be here. I am sure he would wish to be present when his brother marries, and to wish them God’s blessing. He cannot walk yet?’
All that was known of Meriet among these who had done their best for him was that he had had a fall, and was laid up with a lingering weakness and a twisted foot.
‘He hobbles with a stick,’ said Cadfael. ‘I would not like him to venture far as he is. In a day or two we shall see how far we may let him try his powers.’
Janyn was down from his saddle with a bound, and attentive at Isouda’s stirrup as she made to descend. She laid a hand heartily on his shoulder and came down like a feather, and they laughed together, and turned to join the company already assembled. After them came the Aspleys, Leoric as Cadfael had imagined and seen him, bolt-upright body and soul, appearing tall as a church column in the saddle; an irate, intolerant, honourable man, exact to his responsibilities, absolute on his privileges. A demi-god to his servants, and one to be trusted provided they in turn were trustworthy; a god to his sons. What he had been to his dead wife could scarcely be guessed, or what she had felt towards her second boy. The admirable firstborn, close at his father’s elbow, vaulted out of his tall saddle like a bird lighting, large, vigorous and beautiful. At every move Nigel did honour to his progenitors and his name. Cloistered young men watching him murmured admiration, and well they might.
‘Difficult,’ said Brother Paul always sensitive to youth and its obscure torments,’to be second to such a one.’
‘Difficult indeed,’ said Cadfael ruefully.
Kinsmen and neighbours followed, small lords and their ladies, self-confident folk, commanding limited realms, perhaps, but absolute within them, and well able to guard their own. They alighted, their grooms led away the horses and ponies, the court gradually emptied of the sudden blaze of colour and animation, and the fixed and revered order continued unbroken, with Vespers drawing near.
Brother Cadfael went to his workshop in the herbarium after supper to fetch certain dried herbs needed by Brother Petrus, the abbot’s cook, for the next day’s dinner, when the Aspleys and the Lindes were to dine with Canon Euard at the abbot’s table. Frost was setting in again for the night, the air was crisp and still and the sky starry, and even the smallest sound rang like a bell in the pure darkness. The footsteps that followed him along the hard earth path between the pleached hedges were very soft, but he heard them; someone small and light of foot, keeping her distance, one sharp ear listening for Cadfael’s guiding steps ahead, the other pricked back to make sure no others followed behind. When he opened the door of his hut and passed within, his pursuer halted, giving him time to strike a spark from his flint and light his little lamp. Then she came into the open doorway, wrapped in a dark cloak, her hair loose on her neck as he had first seen her, the cold stinging her cheeks into rose-red, and the flame of the lamp making stars of her eyes.
‘Come in, Isouda,’ said Cadfael placidly, rustling the bunches of herbs that dangled from the beams above. ‘I’ve been hoping to find a means of talking with you. I should have known you would make your own occasion.’
‘But I mustn’t stay long,’ she said, coming in and closing the door behind her. ‘I am supposed to be lighting a candle and putting up prayers in the church for my father’s soul.’
‘Then should you not be doing that?’ said Cadfael, smiling. ‘Here, sit and be easy for the short time you have, and whatever you want of me, ask.’
‘I have lit my candle,’ she said, seating herself on the bench by the wall, ‘it’s there to be seen, but my father was a fine man, and God will take good care of his soul without any interference from me. And I need to know what is really happening to Meriet.’
‘They’ll have told you that he had a bad fall, and cannot walk as yet?’
‘Brother Paul told us so. He said it would be no lasting harm. Is it so? Will he be well again surely?’
‘Surely he will. He got a gash on the head in his fall, but that’s already healed, and his wrenched foot needs only a little longer rest, and it will bear him again as well as ever. He’s in good hands, Brother Mark is taking care of him, and Brother Mark is his staunch friend. Tell me, how did his father take the word of his fall?’
‘He kept a severe face,’ she said,’though he said he grieved to hear it, so coldly, who would believe him? But for all that, he does grieve.’
‘He did not ask to visit him?’
She made a disdainful face at the obstinacy of men. ‘Not he! He has given him to God, and God must fend for him. He will not go near him. But I came to ask you if you will take me there to see him.’
Cadfael stood earnestly considering her for a long moment, and then sat down beside her and told her all that had happened, all that he knew or guessed. She was shrewd, gallant and resolute, and she knew what she wanted and was ready to fight for it. She gnawed a calculating lip when she heard that Meriet had confessed to murder, and glowed in proud acknowledgement when Cadfael stressed that she was the sole privileged person, besides himself and Mark and the law, to be apprised of it, and to know, to her comfort, that it was not believed.
‘Sheer folly!’ she said roundly. ‘I thank God you see through him as through gauze. And his fool of a father believes it? But he never has known him, he never has valued or come close to him, from the day Meriet was born. And yet he’s a fair-minded man, I own it, he would not knowingly do any man wrong. He must have urgent cause to believe this. And Meriet cause just as grave to leave him in the mistake—even while he certainly must be holding it against him that he’s so ready to believe evil of his own flesh and blood. Brother Cadfael, I tell you, I never before saw so clearly how like those two are, proud and stubborn and solitary, taking to themselves every burden that falls their way, shutting out kith and kin and liegemen and all. I could knock their two fool crowns together. But what good would that do, without an answer that would shut both their mouths—except on penitence?’
‘There will be such an answer,’ said Cadfael, ‘and if ever you do knock their heads together, I promise you both shall be unshaven. And yes, tomorrow I will take you to practise upon the one of them, but after dinner—for before it, I aim to bring your Uncle Leoric to visit his son, whether he will or no. Tell me, if you know, what are their plans for the morrow? They have yet one day to spare before the marriage.’
‘They mean to attend High Mass,’ she said, sparkling hopefully, ‘and then we women will be fitting gowns and choosing ornaments, and putting a stitch in here and there to the wedding clothes. Nigel will be shut out of all that, until we go to dine with the lord abbot, and I think he and Janyn intend to go into the town for some last trifles. Uncle Leoric may be left to himself after Mass. You might snare him then, if you catch your time.’
‘I shall be watching for it,’ Cadfael assured her. ‘And after the abbot’s dinner, if you can absent yourself, then I will take you to Meriet.’
She rose joyfully when she thought it high time to leave him, and she went forth valiantly, certain of herself and her stars, and her standing with the powers of heaven. And Cadfael went to deliver his selected herbs to Brother Petrus, who was already brooding over the masterpieces he would produce the next day at noon.
After High Mass on the morning of the twentieth of December the womenfolk repaired to their own apartments, to make careful choice of the right array for dining with the abbot. Leoric’s son and his son’s bosom friend went off on foot into the town, his guests dispersed to pay local visits for which this was rare opportunity, and make purchases of stores for their country manors while they were close to the town, or to burnish their own finery for the morrow. Leoric walked briskly in the frosty air the length of the gardens, round fish-ponds and fields, down to the Meole brook, fringed with delicate frost like fine lace, and after that as decisively vanished. Cadfael had waited to give him time to be alone, as plainly he willed to be, and then lost sight of him, to find him again in the mortuary chapel where Peter Clemence’s coffin, closed now and richly draped, waited for Bishop Henry’s word as to its disposal. Two new, fine candles burned on a branched candlestick at the head, and Leoric Aspley was on his knees on the flagstones at the foot. His lips moved upon silent, methodical prayers, his open eyes were fixed unflinchingly upon the bier. Cadfael knew then that he was on firm ground. The candles might have been simply any courtly man’s offering to a dead kinsman, however distant, but the grim and grievous face, silently acknowledging a guilt not yet confessed or atoned for, confirmed the part he had played in denying this dead man burial, and pointed plainly at the reason.