“I loved her very much,” she said, “and I have destroyed her. This is my work.”
“It is nothing of the kind,” said Cadfael firmly. “You must not take to yourself more than your due. What you yourself did, that you may rue, and confess, and do penance for, to your soul’s content, but you may not lift another man’s sins from his shoulders, or usurp God’s right to be the only judge. A man did this, ravisher and murderer, and he, and only he, must answer for it. Whatever action of any other creature may have thrown our sister in his way, he had command of the hands that killed and outraged her, he and no other. It’s of him her blood will be required.”
For the first time she shook, and when she would have spoken she had not her voice under control, and was forced to wait and wrestle for clear speech.
“But if I had not set my heart on that foolish marriage, if I had consented to go with Brother Elyas straight here to Bromfield, she would be living now . . .”
“Do we know that? Might not you, too, have fallen into such hands? Child, if men had not done as they did, any time these five centuries, of course things would have gone on differently, but need they have been better? There is no profit in ifs. We go on from where we stand, we answer for our own evil, and leave to God our good.”
Ermina wept, suddenly and irresistibly, but would not be seen to weep. She swept away from him to kneel trembling at the altar, and remained there a long time. He did not follow her, but waited patiently until she chose to rejoin him. When she came back her face was drained but calm. She looked very tired, and very young and vulnerable.
“Come back to the fire,” said Cadfael. “You’ll take cold here.”
She went with him docilely, glad to settle beside the hearth again. The shivering left her, she lay back and half-closed her eyes, but when he made a move as if to leave her she looked up quickly. “Brother Cadfael, when they sent from Worcester to ask for news of us, was there word said of our uncle d’Angers being in England?”
“There was. Not only in England but in Gloucester, with the empress.” That was what she had meant, though she had been feeling her way towards it cautiously. “Openly and fairly he asked leave to come into the king’s territories himself to look for you, and leave was refused. The sheriff promised a search by his own men, but would not admit any of the empress’s party.”
“And should any such be found here and taken—in the search of us—what would happen to him?”
“He would be held prisoner of war. It is the sheriff’s duty to deny to the king’s enemies the service of any fighting man who falls into his hands, you must not wonder at it. A knight lost to the empress is a knight’s gain to the king.” He saw how doubtfully and anxiously she eyed him, and smiled. “It is the sheriff’s duty. It is not mine. Among men of honor and decent Christian life I see no enemies, on either side. Mine is a different discipline. With any man who comes only to rescue and fetch away children to their proper guardian, I have no quarrel.”
She frowned momentarily at the word children, and then laughed, with angry honesty, at the very instinct that showed her still a child. “Then you would not betray such a man even to your friend?”
Cadfael sat down opposite her and settled himself comfortably, for it seemed she had matters on her mind, and wished to unburden herself. “I have told you, I take no side here, and Hugh Beringar would not expect me to go always his way in every particular. He does his work and I mine. But I must tell you that he has already some knowledge of a presence in these parts, a stranger, who came to Cleeton enquiring for all you three who left Worcester together. A countryman by his dress, they said, young, tall and dark, eyed and beaked like a hawk, black-haired and dark-skinned.” She was listening intently, her underlip caught between her teeth, and at every detail the color flamed and faded in her cheeks. “And one that wore a sword under his cloak,” said Cadfael.
She sat very still, making up her mind. The face at her shoulder in the torchlight of the gatehouse hung vividly in Cadfael’s imagination, and surely even more urgently in hers. For a moment he thought she would prevaricate, shrug off the image, declare her guide to be no more than she had said, a forester’s son. But then she leaned forward and began to speak with vehement eagerness.
“I will tell you! I will tell you, and not even exact any promise, for I know I need not. You will not give him up. What I said was true, that I was taken in and helped by the forester and his wife. But the second day that I was there with them, there came a youth asking for news of such a company as I had, before I shattered it. Dressed as I was when you first saw me today, still he knew me for what I was, and so did I him, for nothing could show him less than noble. He spoke French freely, but English a little slowly. He told me that my uncle had returned, and was in Gloucester with the empress, and had sent him secretly to find us and bring us safe to him. His errand is that, and nothing more, but here he goes with danger all about him, knowing he may fall into the sheriff’s hands.”
“He has eluded them so far,” said Cadfael mildly. “He may very well go on slipping through our fingers to the end, and hale you away with him to Gloucester.”
“But not without Yves. I will not go without my brother, he knows that. I did not want to come here, but he so wished it. Let me know, he said, that you at least are in safety, and leave the hunt to me. And I have done and I will do what he bids me. But I could not bear it if through his care for us he fell into the king’s hands, and was left to rot in a prison.”
“Never go looking for disaster,” said Cadfael cheerfully. “Expect the best, and walk so discreetly as to invite it, and then leave all to God. You have not given this paladin a name.” No, but he had a face, and a memorable face, too.
She was buoyantly young. Grief was fiercely felt, but so was hope, so was joy, so was the adulation of heroes. The very thought of her champion had lifted her out of the shadows of guilt and death, she glowed as she spoke of him. “They call him Olivier de Bretagne—it is a name they gave him in his own land, because of his parentage. For he was born in Syria, and his mother was of that country, and his father a Frankish knight of the Crusade, from England. He leaned to his father’s faith, and made his way to Jerusalem to join his father’s people, and there he took service with my uncle, six years ago now. He is his favorite squire. Now he has come home with him, and who else would be trusted with this search?”
“And with his small experience here and halting English,” said Cadfael appreciatively, “he was not afraid to venture into these stormy regions, among his lord’s enemies?”
“He is not afraid of anything! He is bravery itself! Oh, Brother Cadfael, you do not know how fine he is! If you could only once see him, you must become his friend!”
Cadfael did not say that he had seen him, that requisite first time, briefly, like the blazing recollection of a dream. He was thinking, with nostalgic fondness, that some other lonely soul wearing the Cross had found, somewhere in that burning land of sun and sea and sand, a woman to his liking, who must have liked him no less, if she had borne him such a son. The east was full of glorious bastards. That one of them should come home to his father’s land, baptized into his father’s faith, was no marvel. No need to look beyond the admirable fruit.
“You have that promise you did not ask,” said Brother Cadfael. “Olivier is safe with me. I will do nothing to uncover him. In your need or his, I will stand your friend.”
Chapter Nine
Yves started awake out of an involuntary doze, instantly aware of movement and sound, though both seemed so distant and faint that they might have been no more than the fading shreds of a dream. Under his arm Brother Elyas lay in exhausted sleep, sunk far too deep for dreaming, and briefly at peace. His breathing was quiet and steady. The boy felt rather than heard by its rhythm how strongly Elyas had survived the night that might well have killed him, tenacious even of a life that tormented him.