An Excellent Mystery bc-11 Page 21

  “Keep the secret. You must, if you loved him.”

  “Yes-yes,” said Urien brokenly out of his sheltering arms.

  “For his sake…” This time Rhun turned back, smiling, to set right what he had said. “For her sake!”

  “Yes, yes-to the grave. Stay with me!”

  “I’m here. When we go, we’ll go together. Who knows? Even the harm already done may not be incurable.”

  “Can the dead live again?” demanded Urien bitterly.

  “If God pleases!” said Rhun, who had his own good reasons for believing in miracles.

  Julian Cruce arrived at the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul just in time to attend the Mass for the souls of Brother Humilis and Brother Fidelis, drowned together in the great storm. It was the second day after the burial of Humilis, a fresh, cool day of soft blue sky and soft green earth, the gloss of summer briefly restored. By that time every soul in and around Shrewsbury had heard the story of the woman come back from the dead, and everyone was curious to witness her return. There was a great crowd in the court to watch her ride in, her brother at her side and Hugh Beringar and Adam Heriet following. Within the gates they dismounted, and the horses were led away. Reginald took his sister by the hand, and brought her between the eager watchers to the church door.

  Cadfael had had some qualms about this moment, and had taken his stand close beside Nicholas Harnage, where he could pluck at his sleeve in sharp warning should he be startled into some indiscreet utterance. It might have been better to warn him beforehand, and forestall the danger. But on the other hand, it must be gain if the young man never did make the connection, and it seemed worth taking the risk. If he was never forced to consider how formidable a rival was gone before him, and how indelible must be the memory of a devotion unlikely ever to be matched, there would be less of a barrier to his own courtship. If he approached her in innocence he came with strong advantages, having had the trust and affection of Godfrid Marescot, as well as amply proving his concern for the girl herself. There was every ground for kindness there. If he recognised her, and saw in a moment the whole pattern of events, he might be too discouraged ever to approach her at all, for who could follow Humilis and not be diminished? But he might-it was just possible-he might even be large enough to accept all the disadvantages, hold his tongue, and still put his fortune to the test. There was promise in him. Still, Cadfael stood alerted and anxious, his hand hovering at the young man’s elbow.

  She came through the crowd on her brother’s arm, no great beauty, simply a tall girl in a dark cloak and gown, with a grave oval face austerely framed in a white wimple and a dark blue hood. Sister Magdalen and Aline between them had done well by her. The general mourning forbade bright colours, but Aline had carefully avoided providing anything that could recall the rusty monastic black. They were of much the same build, tall and slender, the gown fitted well. The tonsure would take some time to grow out, but hiding the ring of chestnut hair completely and covering half the lofty brow did much to change the shape of the serious face. She had darkened her lashes, which gave a changed value and an iris shade to the clear grey of her eyes. She held up her head and walked slowly past men who had lived side by side with Brother Fidelis for many weeks now, and they saw no one but Julian Cruce, nothing to do with the abbey of Shrewsbury, simply a nine days’ wonder from the outer world, interesting now but soon to be forgotten.

  Nicholas watched her draw near, and was filled with deep, glowing gratitude, simply that she was alive. Her life might have no place for him, but at least it was hers, all the years he had thought stolen from her by a cruel crime, while here, it seemed, was no crime at all. He could, he would, make the assay, but not yet. Let her have time to know him, for she knew nothing of him yet, and he had no claim on her, unless, perhaps, Hugh Beringar had told her of his part in the search for her. Even that gave him no rights. Those he would have to earn.

  But as she drew level with him she turned her head and looked him in the eyes. An instant only, but it was enough.

  Cadfael saw him start and quiver, saw him open his lips, perhaps to cry out in the sheer shock of recognition. But he made no sound, after all. Cadfael had gripped him by the arm, but released him at once, for there had been no need. Nicholas turned on him a face of starry brightness, dazzled and dazzling, and said in a rapid whisper: “Never fret! I am the dumb one now!”

  So quick and agile a mind, thought Cadfael approvingly, would not be put off by difficulties. And the girl was still barely twenty-three. They had time. Why should a girl who had had the devoted company of one fine man therefore fail to appreciate the value of a second? I wonder, he thought, what Humilis said to her at Salton that last day? Did he know, in the end, what and who she was? I hope he did. Certainly he knew the candlesticks and the cross, once Hugh described them to him, for of course she took them with her into Hyde, and with Hyde they must have gone to dust. But then, I think, he was in two minds, half afraid his Fidelis had been mixed up in Julian’s death, half wondering… By the end, however the light came, surely he knew the truth.

  In his chosen stall next to Brother Urien, Rhun leaned close to whisper: “Look! Look at the lady! This is she who should have been wife to Brother Humilis.”

  Urien looked, but with listless eyes that saw only what they expected to see. He shook his head. “You know her,” said Rhun. “Look again!” He looked again, and he knew her. The load of guilt and grief and penitence lifted from him like a lark rising. He ceased to sing, for his throat was constricted and his tongue mute. He stood lost between knowledge and wonder, the inheritor of her silence.

  Julian emerged from the church into the temperate sunlight with the blankness of wonder, endurance and loss still in her face. Watching her from the shadow of the cloister, Nicholas abandoned all thought of approaching her just yet. Now that he understood at last the magnitude of what she had done, it became impossible to offer her an ordinary marriage and a customary love. Not yet, not for a long while yet. But he could bide his time, keep touch with her brother, make his way to her by delicate degrees, open his heart to her only when hers was reconciled and at peace.

  She had halted, looking about her, withdrawing her hand from her brother’s as if she sought someone to whom recognition was due. The palest of smiles touched her face. She came towards Nicholas with hand extended. About the middle finger the little golden serpent twined in a coil, he caught the tiny glitter of its ruby eyes.

  “Sir,” said Julian, in a voice pitched almost childishly high, but very soft and sweet, “the lord sheriff has told me of all the pains you have been spending for me. I am sorry I have caused you and others so much needless trouble and care. Thanks are poor recompense for so much kindness.”

  Her hand lay firm and cool in his. Her smile was still faint and remote, acknowledging nothing of any other identity but that of Julian Cruce. He might have thought she was denying her other self, but for the clear, straight gaze of her grey eyes, opened wide to admit him into a shared knowledge where words were unnecessary. Nothing need ever be said where everything was known and understood.

  “Madam,” said Nicholas, “to see you here alive and well is all the recompense I need or want.”

  “But I hope you will come soon to visit us at Lai,” she said. “It would be a kindness. I should like to make better amends.”

  And that was all. He kissed the hand he held, and she turned and went away from him. And surely this was nothing more than paying a due of gratitude, as she paid all her dues, to the last scruple of pain, devotion and love. But she had asked, and she was not one of those women who ask without meaning. And he would go to Lai, soon, yes, very soon. To make do with the touch of her hand and her pale smile and the undoubted trust she had just placed in him, until it was fair and honourable to hope for more.

  They sat in Cadfael’s workshop in the herb-garden, in the after-dinner hush, Sister Magdalen, Hugh Beringar and Cadfael together. It was all over, the curious all gone home, the brother
s innocent of all ill except the loss of two of their number, and two who had been with them only a short time, and somewhat withdrawn from the common view, at that. They would soon become but very dim figures, to be remembered by name in prayer while their faces faded from memory.

  “There could still be some awkward questions asked,” admitted Cadfael, “if anyone went to the trouble to probe deeper, but now no one ever will. The Order can breathe again. There’ll be no scandal, no aspersions cast on either Hyde or Shrewsbury, no legatine muck-raking, no ballad-makers running off dirty rhymes about monks and their women, and hawking them round the markets, no bishops bearing down on us with damning visitations, no carping white monks fulminating about the laxity and lechery of the Benedictines… And no foul blight clinging round that poor girl’s name and blackening her for life. Thank God!” he concluded fervently.

  He had broached one of his best flasks of wine. He felt they deserved it as much as they needed it.

  “Adam was in her confidence throughout,” said Hugh. “It was he who got her the clothes to turn her into a young man, he who cut her hair, and sold for her the few things she considered her own, to pay her lodging until she presented herself at Hyde. When he said she was dead, he spoke in the bitterness of his heart, for she was indeed dead to the world, by her own choice. And when I brought him from Brigge, he was frantic to get news of her, for he’d given her up for lost after Hyde burned, but when I told him there was a second brother come from Hyde with Godfrid, then he was easy, for he knew who the second must be. He would have died rather than betray her. He knew the ugliness of which men are capable, as well as we.”

  “And she, I hope and think,” said Cadfael, “must know the loyalty and devotion of which one man, at least, was capable. She should, seeing it is the mirror of her own. No, there was no other solution possible but for Fidelis to die and vanish without trace, before Julian could come back to life. But I never thought the chance would come as it did…”

  “You took it nimbly enough,” said Hugh.

  “It was then or never. It would have come out else. Madog would never have said anything, but she had stopped caring when Humilis died.” He had had her in his arms, herself half-dead, on that ride to Godric’s Ford to commit her to Sister Magdalen’s care, the russet tonsure wet and draggled on his shoulder, the pale, soiled face stricken into ice, the grey eyes wide open, seeing nothing. “It was as much as we could do to get him out of her arms. Without Aline we should have been lost. I almost feared we might lose the girl as well as the man. But Sister Magdalen is a powerful physician.”

  “That letter I composed for her,” said Sister Magdalen, looking back on it with a critical but satisfied eye, “was the hardest ever I had to write. And not a lie from start to finish! Not one in the whole of it. A little mild deception, but no lies. That was important, you understand. Do you know why she chose to be mute? Well, there is the matter of her voice, of course, a woman’s if ever there was. The face-it’s a good face, clear and strong and delicate, one that could as well belong to a boy as to a girl, but not the voice. But beyond that,” said Sister Magdalen, “she had two good reasons for being dumb. First, she was resolute she would never ask anything of him, never make any woman’s appeal, for she held he owed her nothing, no privilege, no consideration. What she got of him she had to earn. And second, she was absolute she would never lie to him. Who cannot speak cannot plead or cajole, and cannot lie.”

  “So he owed her nothing, and she owed him all,” said Hugh, shaking his head over the unfathomable strangeness of women.

  “Ah, but she also had her due,” said Cadfael. “What she wanted and held to be hers she took, the whole of it, to the end, to the last moment. His company, the care of him, the secrets of his body, as intimate as ever was marriage-his love, far beyond the common claims of marriage. No use any man telling her she was free, when she knew she was a wife. I wonder is she free even now.”

  “Not yet, but she will be,” Sister Magdalen assured them. “She has too much courage to give over living. And if that young man who fancies her has courage enough not to give over loving, he may do very well in the end. He starts with a strong advantage, having loved the same idol. Besides,” she added, viewing a future that held a certain promise even for some who felt just now that they had only a past, “I doubt if that household of her brother’s, with a wife in possession, and three children, not to speak of another on the way-no, I doubt if an unwed sister’s part in Lai will have much lasting attraction for a woman like Julian Cruce.”

  The half-hour of rest after dinner had passed, the brothers stirred again to their work, and so did Cadfael, parting from his friends at the turn of the box hedge. Sister Magdalen and her two stout woodsmen would be off back to Godric’s Ford by the westward track, and Hugh was heading thankfully for home. Cadfael passed through the herb-garden into the small plot where he had a couple of apple trees and a pear tree of his own growing, just old enough to crop. He surveyed the scene with deep content. Everything was greening afresh where it had been pale as straw. The Meole Brook had still a few visible shoals, but was no longer a mere sad, sluggish network of rivulets struggling through pebble and sand. September was again September, mellowed and fruitful after the summer heat and drought. Much of the abundant weight of fruit had fallen unplumped by reason of the dryness, but even so there would still be harvest enough for thanksgiving. After every extreme the seasons righted themselves, and won back the half at least of what was lost. So might the seasons of men right themselves, with a little help by way of rain from heaven.

  O God, who hast consecrated the state of Matrimony to such an excellent mystery… Look mercifully, upon these thy servants.

  from ‘The form of Solemnization of Matrimony’ in The Book of Common Prayer

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ELLIS PETERS is the nom-de-crime of English novelist Edith Pargeter, author of many books under her own name. She is also well known as a translator of poetry and prose from the Czech and has been awarded the Gold Medal and Ribbon of the Czechoslovak Society for Foreign Relations for her services to Czech literature. A recipient of the Crime Writers Silver Dagger Award, Miss Pargeter’s Brother Cadfael mysteries have won mounting recognition and success in the United States. The author lives in Shropshire, England.

 

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