“And is that the end of it?” wondered Haluin, suddenly grieved. “And we shall never know what comes of it all! Poor lad, and his own case beyond hope. All his comfort in this world must be to see her happy, if that will ever be possible without him. I know,” said Brother Haluin, in compassion untainted by any lingering self-pity, “what they suffer.”
But it seemed that it was indeed over for them, and there was no sense in looking back. They set their faces towards the west, and went forward steadily on this untested path, with the rising sun behind them, casting their elongated shadows along the moist grass.
“By this way,” said Cadfael, taking his bearings thoughtfully when they halted to eat their midday bread and cheese and strip of salt bacon in the lee of a bushy bank, “I think we shall miss Lichfield. I judge we’re already passing to the north of it. No matter, we shall find a bed somewhere before nightfall:”
Meantime, the day was clear and dry, and the country through which they made their way was pleasant, but sparsely populated, and afforded them fewer human encounters than they had met with on the direct highway through Lichfield. Having had so little sleep they made no haste, but went steadily, and took whatever rests offered along the way, wherever a solitary assart provided the hospitality of a bench by the hearth, and a few minutes of neighborly gossip in passing.
A light wind sprang up with the approach of evening, warning them it was time to look for a night’s shelter. They were in country still wasted from harsh usage fifty years past. The people of these parts had not taken kindly to the coming of the Normans, and had paid the price for their obduracy. There were the relics of deserted holdings to be seen here and there, collapsing into grass and brambles, and the ruins of a mill rotting gently into its own overgrown stream. Hamlets were few and far between. Cadfael began to scan the landscape round for any sign of an inhabited roof.
An elderly man gathering firewood in a stand of old trees straightened his bent back to answer their greeting, and peered at them curiously from within his sacking hood.
“Not half a mile on, Brothers, you’ll see to your right the pale of a nunnery. They’re still building, it’s mostly timber yet, but the church and the cloister are in stone, you can’t miss it. There’s but two or three holdings in the hamlet, but the sisters take in travelers. You’ll get a bed there.” And he added, eyeing their black habits: “They’re of your own persuasion, it’s a Benedictine house.”
“I knew of none in these parts,” said Cadfael. “What is this house called?”
“It’s like the hamlet, called Farewell. It’s no more than three years old. Bishop de Clinton set it up. You’ll be made welcome there.”
They thanked him, and left him to bind up and hoist his great bundle of wood, and make off for home in the opposite direction, while they went on, encouraged, towards the west.
“I remember,” said Haluin, “hearing something of this place, or at least of the bishop’s plans for a new foundation somewhere here, close to his cathedral. But I never heard the name Farewell until-do you recall?-Cenred spoke of it, that night we first came to Vivers. The only Benedictine house in these parts, he said, when he asked where we were from. We’re fortunate, it’s well we came this way.”
By this time, with the twilight closing in, he was beginning to flag, in spite of the easy pace they had set. They were both glad when the path brought them to a small open green flanked by three or four cottages, and they saw beyond these the long pale fence of the new abbey, and the roof of the church above it. The track led them to a modest timber gatehouse. Both the stout gate and the grille set in it were closed, but a pull at the bell sent a succession of echoes flying away into distance within, and after a few moments brought light, flying footsteps skipping towards them from within the gate.
The grille slid open, and revealed a round, rosy youthful face beaming through at them. Wide blue eyes surveyed their habits and tonsures, and recognized kindred.
“Good even, Brothers,” said a high, girlish voice, joyously self-important. “You’re late on the road tonight. Can we offer you a roof and a rest?”
“We were about to ask it,” said Cadfael heartily. “Can you lodge us overnight?”
“And longer if you need,” she said cheerfully. “Men of the Order will always be welcome here. We’re off the beaten track, and not yet well known, and with the place still building we offer less comfort, I daresay, than some older houses, but we have room for such guests as you. Wait till I unbar the doors.”
She was about it already, they heard the bolt shot back and the latch of the wicket lifted, and then the door opened wide in exuberant welcome, and the portress waved them in.
She could not, Cadfael thought, be more than seventeen, and new in her novitiate, one of those superfluous daughters of poorly endowed small nobility for whom there was little to spare by way of dowry, and little prospect of an advantageous marriage. She was small and softly rounded, plain of face but fresh and wholesome as new bread, and blessedly she glowed with enthusiasm in her new life, with no apparent regret for the world she had left behind. The satisfaction of trusted office became her, and so did the white wimple and black cowl framing her bright and candid face.
“Have you traveled far?” she asked, viewing Haluin’s labored gait with wide-eyed concern.
“From Vivers,” said Haluin, quick in reassurance, “It is not so far, and we have taken it gently.”
“And have you very far still to go?”
“To Shrewsbury,” said Cadfael, “where we belong to the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul.”
“It’s a long way,” she said, shaking her head over them. “You’ll be needing your rest. Will you wait here in the lodge for me, till I tell Sister Ursula she has guests? Sister Ursula is our hospitaler. The lord bishop asked for two experienced elder sisters to come to us from Polesworth for a season, to instruct the novices. We are all so new, and there’s so much to learn, besides all the work we have to do in the building and the garden. And they sent us Sister Ursula and Sister Benedicta. Sit and warm yourselves but a few minutes, and I’ll be back.” And she was off, with her light, dancing step, as blithe in her cloistered calling as any of her secular sisters could have been in approaching a more worldly marriage.
“She is truly happy,” said Brother Haluin, wondering and pleased. “No, it is not a second-best. So I have found it in the end, but she from the beginning. The sisters from Polesworth must be women of wisdom and grace, if this is their work.
Sister Ursula the hospitaler was a tall, thin woman perhaps fifty years old, with a lined, experienced face at once serene, resigned, and even mildly amused, as if she had seen and come to terms with all the vagaries of human behavior, and nothing could now surprise or disconcert her. If the other borrowed instructress measures up to this one, Cadfael thought, these green girls of Farewell have been fortunate.
“You’re warmly welcome,” said Sister Ursula, sailing briskly into the lodge with the young portress beaming at her elbow. “The lady abbess will be happy to receive you in the morning, but you must be most in need now of food and rest and a bed, all the more if you have such a long journey before you. Come with me, there’s a chamber prepared for chance comers always, and our own brothers are all the more welcome.”
She led them out from the lodge into a narrow outer court, where the church lay before them, a modest building of stone, with the traces of the continuing work, ashlar and timber, cords and scaffolding boards, stacked neatly under its walls, in token that nothing here was finished. But in only three years they had raised the church and the entire frame of the cloister, but for the south range, where only the lower floor which housed the refectory was completed.
“The bishop has provided us the labor and a generous endowment,” said Sister Ursula, “but we shall be building for some years yet. Meantime we live simply. We want for nothing that’s needful, and hanker after nothing beyond our needs. I suppose when all these timber housings are replaced in stone my work here will be done, and I should be returning to Polesworth, where I took my vows years ago, but I don’t know but I’d rather stay here, if I’m offered a choice. There’s something about bringing a new foundation to birth, you feel towards it as towards a child of your own body.”