Brother Cadfael's Penance bc-19 Read online

  “And how does this, however welcome and however dubious, concern me closely?” Cadfael wondered.

  “Wait, there’s more.” He was carrying it carefully, for such news is brittle. He watched Cadfael’s face anxiously as he asked: “You’ll recall what happened in the summer at Robert of Gloucester’s newly built castle of Faringdon? When Gloucester’s younger son turned his coat, and his castellan gave over the castle to the king?”

  “I remember,” said Cadfael. “The men-at-arms had no choice but to change sides with him, their captains having sealed the surrender. And Cricklade went over with Philip, intact to a man.”

  “But many of the knights in Faringdon,” said Hugh with deliberation, “refused the treason, and were overpowered and disarmed. Stephen handed them out to various of his allies, new and old, but I suspect the new did best out of it, and got the fattest prizes, to fix them gratefully in their new loyalty. Well, Leicester has been employing his agents round Oxford and Malmesbury to good effect, to ferret out the list of those made prisoner, and discover to whom they were given. Some have been bought out already, briskly enough. Some are on offer, and for prices high enough to sell very profitably. But there’s one name, known to have been there, listed with no word of who holds him, and has not been seen or heard of since Faringdon fell. I doubt if the name means anything to Robert Bossu, more than the rest. But it does to me, Cadfael.” He had his friend’s full and wary attention; the tone of his voice, carefully moderate, was a warning rather than a reassurance. “And will to you.”

  “Not offered for ransom,” said Cadfael, reckoning the odds with careful moderation in return, “and held very privately. It argues a more than ordinary animosity. That will be a price that comes high. Even if he will take a price.”

  “And in order to pay what may be asked,” said Hugh ruefully, “Laurence d’Angers, so Leicester’s agent says, has been enquiring for him everywhere without result. That name would be known to the earl, though not the names of the young men of his following. I am sorry to bring such news. Olivier de Bretagne was in Faringdon. And now Olivier de Bretagne is prisoner, and God knows where.”

  After the silence, a shared pause for breath and thought, and the mutual rearrangement of the immediate concerns that troubled them both, Cadfael said simply: “He is a young man like other young men. He knows the risks. He takes them with open eyes. What is there to be said for one more than the rest?”

  “But this was a risk, I fancy, that he could not foresee. That Gloucester’s own son should turn against him! And a risk Olivier was least armed to deal with, having so little conception of treachery. I don’t know, Cadfael, how long he had been among the garrison, or what the feeling was among the young knights there. It seems many of them were with Olivier. The castle was barely completed, Philip filled it and wanted it defended well, and when it lay under siege Robert failed to lift a finger to save it. There’s bitterness there. But Leicester will go on trying to find them all, to the last man. And if we’re all to meet soon at Coventry, at least there may be agreement on a release of prisoners on both sides. We shall all be pressing for it, men of goodwill from both factions.”

  “Olivier ploughs his own furrow, and cuts his own swathe,” said Cadfael, staring eastward through the timber wall before him, far eastward into drought and sand and sun, and the glittering sea along the shores of the Frankish kingdom of Jerusalem, now menaced and in arms. The fabled world of Outremer, once familiar to him, where Olivier de Bretagne had grown up to choose, in young manhood, the faith of his unknown father. “I doubt,” said Cadfael slowly, “any prison can hold him long. I am glad you have told me, Hugh. Bring me word if you get any further news.”

  But the voice, Hugh thought when he left his friend, was not that of a man fully confident of a good ending, nor the set of the face indicative of one absolute in faith and prepared to sit back and leave all either to Olivier or to God.

  When Hugh was gone, with his own cares to keep him fully occupied, and his errand in friendship faithfully discharged, Cadfael damped down his brazier with turves, closed his workshop, and went away to the church. There was an hour yet to Vespers. Brother Winfrid was still methodically digging over a bed cleared of beans, to leave it to the frosts of the coming winter to crumble and refine. A thin veil of yellowed leaves still clung to the trees, and the roses were grown tall and leggy, small, cold buds forming at the tips, buds that would never open. In the vast, dim quiet of the church Cadfael made amicable obeisance to the altar of Saint Winifred, as to an intimate but revered friend, but for once hesitated to burden her with a charge for another man, and one even she might find hard to understand. True, Olivier was half Welsh, but that, hand in hand with all that was passionately Syrian in his looks and thoughts and principles, might prove even more confusing to her. So the only prayer he made to her was made without words, in the heart, offering affection in a gush of tenderness like the smoke of incense. She had forgiven him so much, and never shut him out. And this same year she had suffered flood and peril and contention, and come back safely to a deserved rest. Why disturb its sweetness with a trouble which belonged all to himself?

  So he took his problem rather to the high altar, directly to the source of all strength, all power, all faithfulness, and for once he was not content to kneel, but prostrated himself in a cross on the cold flags, like an offender presenting his propitiatory body at the end of penance, though the offence he contemplated was not yet committed, and with great mercy and understanding on his superior’s part might not be necessary. Nevertheless, he professed his intent now, in stark honesty, and besought rather comprehension than forgiveness. With his forehead chill against the stone he discarded words to present his compulsion, and let thoughts express the need that found him lucid but inarticulate. This I must do, whether with a blessing or a ban. For whether I am blessed or banned is of no consequence, provided what I have to do is done well.

  At the end of Vespers he asked audience of Abbot Radulfus, and was admitted. In the private parlour they sat down together.

  “Father, I believe Hugh Beringar has acquainted you with all that he has learned in letters from the Earl of Leicester. Has he also told you of the fate of the knights of Faringdon who refused to desert the empress?”

  “He has,” said Radulfus. “I have seen the list of names, and I know how they were disposed of. I trust that at this proposed meeting in Coventry some agreement may be reached for a general release of prisoners, even if nothing better can be achieved.”

  “Father, I wish I shared your trust, but I fear they are neither of them in any mind to give way. Howbeit, you will have noted the name of Olivier de Bretagne, who has not been located, and of whom nothing is known since Faringdon fell. His lord is willing and anxious to ransom him, but he has not been offered the opportunity. Father, I must tell you certain things concerning this young man, things I know Hugh will not have told you.”

  “I have some knowledge of the man myself,” Radulfus reminded him, smiling, “when he came here four years ago at the time of Saint Winifred’s translation, in search of a certain squire missing from his place after the conference in Winchester. I have not forgotten him.”

  “But this one thing,” said Cadfael, “is still unknown to you, though it may be that I should have told you long since, when first he touched my life. I had not thought that there was any need, for I did not expect that in any way my commitment to this place could be changed. Nor did I suppose that I should ever meet him again, nor he ever have need of me. But now it seems meet and right that all should be made plain. Father,” said Cadfael simply, “Olivier de Bretagne is my son.”

  There was a silence that fell with surprising serenity and gentleness. Men within the pale as without are still men, vulnerable and fallible. Radulfus had the wise man’s distant respect for perfection, but no great expectation of meeting it in the way.

  “When first I came to Palestine,” said Cadfael, looking back without regret, “an eighteen-year-old boy
, I met with a young widow in Antioch, and loved her. Long years afterwards, when I returned to sail from Saint Symeon on my way home, I met with her again, and lingered with her in kindness until the ship was ready to sail. I left her a son, of whom I knew nothing, until he came looking for two lost children, after the sack of Worcester. And I was glad and proud of him, and with good reason. For a short while, when he came the second time, you knew him. Judge if I was glad of him, or no.”

  “You had good reason,” said Radulfus readily. “However he was got, he did honour to his getting. I dare make no reproach. You had taken no vows, you were young and far from home, and humanity is frail. No doubt this was confessed and repented long since.”

  “Confessed,” said Cadfael bluntly, “yes, when I knew I had left her with child and unfriended, but that is not long ago. And repented? No, I doubt if ever I repented of loving her, for she was well worth any man’s love. And bear in mind, Father, that I am Welsh, and in Wales there are no bastards but those whose fathers deny their paternity. Judge if I would ever deny my right to that bright, brave creature. The best thing ever I did was to cause him to be brought forth into a world where very few can match him.”

  “However admirable the fruit may be,” said the abbot drily, “it does not justify priding oneself on a sin, nor calling a sin by any other name. But neither is there any profit in passing today’s judgement upon a sin some thirty years past. Since your avowal I have very seldom found any fault to chasten in you, beyond the small daily failings in patience or diligence, to which we are all prone. Let us deal, therefore, with what confronts us now. For I think you have somewhat to ask of me or to put to me concerning Olivier de Bretagne.”

  “Father,” said Cadfael, choosing his words gravely and with deliberation, “if I presume in supposing that fatherhood imposes a duty upon me, wherever child of mine may be in trouble or misfortune, reprove me. But I do conceive of such a duty, and cannot heave it off my heart. I am bound to go and seek my son, and deliver him when found. I ask your countenance and your leave.”

  “And I,” said Radulfus, frowning, but not wholly in displeasure, rather in profound concentration, “put to you the opposing view of what is now your duty. Your vows bind you here. Of your own will you chose to abandon the world and all your ties within it. That cannot be shed like a coat.”

  “I took my vows in good faith,” said Cadfael, “not then knowing that there was in the world a being for whose very existence I was responsible. From all other ties my vows absolved me. All other personal relationships my vows severed. Not this one! Whether I would have resigned the world if I had known it contained my living seed, that I cannot answer, nor may you hazard at an answer. But he lives, and it was I engendered him. He suffers captivity and I am free. He may be in peril, and I am safe. Father, can the creator forsake the least of his creatures? Can a man turn away from his own imperilled blood? Is not procreation itself the undertaking of a sacred and inviolable vow? Knowing or unknowing, before I was a brother I was a father.”

  This time the silence was chiller and more detached, and lasted longer. Then the abbot said levelly: “Ask what you have come to ask. Let it be plainly said.”

  “I ask your leave and blessing,” said Cadfael, “to go with Hugh Beringar and attend this conference at Coventry, there to ask before king and empress where my son is held, and by God’s help and theirs see him delivered free.”

  “And then?” said Radulfus. “If there is no help there?”

  “Then by whatever means to pursue that same quest, until I do find and set him free.”

  The abbot regarded him steadily, recognizing in the voice some echo from far back and far away, with the steel in it that had been blunted and sheathed as long as he had known this elderly brother. The weathered face, brown-browed and strongly boned, and deeply furrowed now by the wear and tear of sixty-five years, gazing back at him from wide-set and wide open eyes of a dark, autumnal brown, let him in honestly to the mind within. After years of willing submission to the claims of community, Cadfael stood suddenly erect and apart, again solitary. Radulfus recognized finality.

  “And if I forbid,” he said with certainty, “you will still go.”

  “Under God’s eye, and with reverence to you, Father, yes.”

  “Then I do not forbid,” said Radulfus. “It is my office to keep all my flock. If one stray, the ninety and nine left are also bereft. I give you leave to go with Hugh, and see this council meet, and I pray some good may come of it. But once they disperse, whether you have learned what you need or no, there your leave of absence ends. Return with Hugh, as you go with Hugh. If you go further and delay longer, then you go as your own man, none of mine. Without my leave or my blessing.”

  “Without your prayers?” said Cadfael.

  “Have I said so?”

  “Father,” said Cadfael, “it is written in the Rule that the brother who by his own wrong choice has left the monastery may be received again, even to the third time, at a price. Even penance ends when you shall say: It is enough!”

  Chapter Two.

  THE DAY OF THE council at Coventry was fixed as the last day of November. Before that date there had been certain evidences that the prospect of agreement and peace was by no means universally welcome, and there were powerful interests ready and willing to wreck it. Philip FitzRobert had seized and held prisoner Reginald FitzRoy, another of the empress’s half-brothers and Earl of Cornwall, though the earl was his kinsman, on the empress’s business, and bearing the king’s safe conduct. The fact that Stephen ordered the earl’s release on hearing of it, and was promptly and correctly obeyed, did not lessen the omen. “If that’s his mind,” said Cadfael to Hugh, the day they heard of it, “he’ll never come to Coventry.”

  “Ah, but he will,” said Hugh. “He’ll come to drop all manner of caltrops under the feet of all those who talk peace. Better and more effective within than without. And he’ll come, from all that I can make of him, to confront his father brow to brow, since he’s taken so bitter a rage against him. Oh, Philip will be there.” He regarded his friend with searching eyes; a face he could usually read clearly, but its grey gravity made him a little uneasy now. “And you? Do you really intend to go with me? At the risk of trespassing too far for return? You know I would do your errand for you gladly. If there’s word to be had there of Olivier, I will uncover it. No need for you to stake what I know you value as your life itself.”

  “Olivier’s life,” said Cadfael, “has more than half its race to run, by God’s grace, and is of higher value than my spent years. And you have a duty of your own, as I have mine. Yes, I will go. He knows it. He promises nothing and threatens nothing. He has said I go as my own man if I go beyond Coventry, but he has not said what he would do, were he in my shoes. And since I go without his bidding, I will go without any providing of his, if you will find me a mount, Hugh, and a cloak, and food in my scrip.”

  “And a sword and a pallet in the guardroom afterwards,” said Hugh, shaking off his solemnity, “if the cloister discards you. After we have recovered Olivier, of course.”

  The very mention of the name always brought before Cadfael’s eyes the first glimpse he had ever had of his unknown son, seen over a girl’s shoulder through the open wicket of the gate of Bromfield Priory in the snow of a cruel winter. A long, thin but suave face, wide browed, with a scimitar of a nose and a supple bow of a mouth, proud and vivid, with the black and golden eyes of a hawk, and a close, burnished cap of blue-black hair. Olive-gold, cast in fine bronze, very beautiful. Mariam’s son wore Mariam’s face, and did honour to her memory. Fourteen years old when he left Antioch after her funeral rites, and went to Jerusalem to join the faith of his father, whom he had never seen but through Mariam’s eyes. Thirty years old now, or close. Perhaps himself a father, by the girl Ermina Hugonin, whom he had guided through the snow to Bromfield. Her noble kin had seen his worth, and given her to him in marriage. Now she lacked him, she and that possible grandchild. And that wa
s unthinkable, and could not be left to any other to set right.

  “Well,” said Hugh, “it will not be the first time you and I have ridden together. Make ready, then, you have three days yet to settle your differences with God and Radulfus. And at least I’ll find you the best of the castle’s stables instead of an abbey mule.”

  Within the enclave there were mixed feelings among the brothers concerning Cadfael’s venture, undertaken thus with only partial and limited sanction, and with no promise of submission to the terms set. Prior Robert had made known in chapter the precise provisions laid down for Cadfael’s absence, limited to the duration of the conference at Coventry, and had emphasized that strict injunction as if he had gathered that it was already threatened. Small blame to him, the implication had certainly been there in the abbot’s incomplete instruction to him. As for the reason for this journey to be permitted at all, even grudgingly, there had been no explanation. Cadfael’s confidence was between Cadfael and Radulfus.

  Curiosity unsatisfied put the worst interpretation upon such facts as had been made public. There was a sense of shock, grieved eyes turning silently upon a brother already almost renegade. There was dread in the reactions of some who had been monastic from infancy, and jealousy among some come later, and uneasy at times in their confinement. Though Brother Edmund the infirmarer, himself an oblate at four years old, accepted loyally what puzzled him in his brother, and was anxious only at losing his apothecary for a time. And Brother Anselm the precentor, who acknowledged few disruptions other than a note offkey, or a sore throat among his best voices, accepted all other events with utter serenity, assumed the best, wished all men well, and gave over worrying.

  Prior Robert disapproved of any departure from the strict Rule, and had for years disapproved of what he considered privileges granted to Brother Cadfael, in his freedom to move among the people of the Foregate and the town when there was illness to be confronted. And time had been when his chaplain, Brother Jerome, would have been assiduous in adding fuel to the prior’s resentment; but Brother Jerome, earlier in the year, had suffered a shattering shock to his satisfaction with his own image, and emerged from a long penance deprived of his office as one of the confessors to the novices, and crushed into surprising humility. For the present, at least, he was much easier to live with, and less vociferous in denouncing the faults of others. In time, no doubt, he would recover his normal sanctimony, but Cadfael was spared any censure from him on this occasion.