Chapter Nine

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B rother Humilis watched the departure of prisoner andguards with a long, unwavering stare, and when they hadvanished he sank back on his bed with a deep sigh, and lay gazingup into the low stone vault over him.

“We’ve tired you out,” said Hugh.“We’ll leave you now to rest.”

“No, wait!” There was a fine dew of sweat breakingon his high forehead. Fidelis leaned and wiped it away, and apreoccupied smile flashed up at him for a moment, and lingered todarken into a frown.

“Son, go out from here, take the sun and the air, youspend too much time caring for me, and you see I am in need ofnothing now. It is not right that you should make me your only workhere. In a little while I shall sleep.” It was not clear,from the serenity of his voice, weak though it was, whether hespoke of a mere restful slumber on a hot afternoon, or the lastsleep of the body at the awakening of the soul. He laid his handfor a moment on the young man’s hand, in the most delicatetouch possible, austerely short of a caress. “Yes, go, I wishit. Finish my work for me, your touch is steadier than mine, andthe detail—too fine for me now.”

Fidelis looked down at him with a composed face, looked upbriefly at the two who watched, and again lowered submissivelythose clear grey eyes that rang so striking a contrast with thecurling bronze ring of his tonsure, He went as he was bidden,perhaps gladly, certainly with a free and rapid step.

“Nicholas never stopped to tell me,” said Humilis,when silence had closed over the last light footstep, “whatthese valuables were, that my affianced wife took with her. Werethey so distinctive as to be recognisable, should they ever betraced?”

“I doubt if there were any two such,” said Hugh.“Gold and silversmiths generally make to their own designs,even when they aim at pairs I wonder if they ever match exactly.These were singular enough. Once known, known for alltime.”

“May I know what they were? She had coined money, Iunderstand—that is at the service of whoever takes it. Butthe rest?”

Hugh, whose memory for words was exact as a mirror, willinglydescribed them: “A pair of candlesticks of silver, made inthe form of tall sconces entwined with the vine, with snuffersattached by silver chains, also ornamented with grapeleaves. Astanding cross a man’s hand-length in height, on a silverpedestal of three steps, and studded with semi-precious stones ofyellow pebble, amethyst and agate, together with a similar cross ofthe same metal and stones, a little finger’s length, on athin silver neck-chain for a priest’s wear. Also some piecesof jewellery, a necklet of polished stones from the hills abovePontesbury, a bracelet of silver engraved with tendrils of vetch,and a curious ring of silver set with enamels all round, in theform of yellow and blue flowers. That’s the tally. They mustsurely all have left this shire. They’ll be found, if everfound at all, somewhere in the south, where they and shevanished.”

Humilis lay quiet, his eyelids closed, his lips movingsoundlessly on the details of these chattels. “A very smallfortune,” he said in a whisper. “But not small to somepoor wretched souls. Do you truly believe she may have died forthese few things?”

“Men, and women too,” said Hugh starkly, “havedied for very much less.”

“Yes, true! A small cross,” said Humilis, lipsmoving again upon the recollected phrases, “the length of alittle finger, set with yellow stones, and green agate andamethyst… Fellow to an altar cross of the same, but made forwearing. Yes, a man would know that again.”

The faint dew of weakness was budding again on his forehead, agreat drop ran down into the folds of a closed eyelid. Cadfaelwiped the corroding drops away, and frowned Hugh before him out atthe door.

“I shall sleep…” said Humilis, and faintlyand fleetingly smiled.

In the large room across the stone passage, wherea dozen beds lay spaced in two rows, either side an open corridor,Brother Edmund and another brother, his back turned and his strong,erect figure unidentifiable from behind, were lifting a cot and thelay brother in it, to move them a short way along the wall, andmake room for a new pallet and a new patient. The helper set downhis end of the bed as Cadfael and Hugh passed by the open doorway.He straightened and turned, brushing his hands together to rub outthe dents left by the weight, and showed them the dark, level browsand burning eyes of Brother Urien. In unaccustomed content withhimself and the walls and persons about him, he wore a slight, tautsmile that curled his lips but never damped the smouldering of hiseyes. He watched them pass as if a shadow had passed, and crossedtheir tracks as soon as they were by, to stack an armful of washedlinen in the press that stood in the passage.

In the infirmary, by custom, all doors stood open, so that acall for help might safely reach attentive ears, and help comehurrying. Voices, the chant of the office, even bird song,circulated freely. Only in times of storm or heavy rain or wintercold were doors closed and shutters secured, never as now, in theheat of summer.

“The man is lying,” said Hugh, pacing beside Cadfaelin the great court, and worrying at the texture of truth anddeceit. “But also half the time he is telling the truth, andwhich half holds the lies? Tell me that!”

“If I could,” said Cadfael mildly, “I shouldbe more than mortal.”

“He had her trust, he knew what she was worth, he rodealone with her the last few miles, and no trace of hersince,” said Hugh, gnawing the evidence savagely. “Andyet, on the road there, he asked me time and again if I knewwhether she lived or was dead, and I would have sworn he was honestin asking. But now see him! Halfway through that business, hestands there unmoved as a rock, and never makes protest againstbeing held, nor shows any further trouble over her fate.What’s to be made of him?”

“Or of any of this,” agreed Cadfael ruefully.“I’m of your mind, he is certainly lying. He knows whathe has not declared. Yet if he has possessed himself of all shehad, what has he done with it? It may not be great riches, but itwould be worth more to a man than the low pay and danger and sweatof a simple soldier, yet here is he manifestly a simple soldierstill, and nothing more.”

“Soldier he may be,” said Hugh wryly, “butsimple he is not. His twists and turns have me baffled. Winchesterhe knows well—yes, maybe, but wherever he has served thegreater part of these three years, since this winter all forceshave closed in on Winchester. How could he not know it? And yetI’d have sworn, at first, that he truly did not know, andlonged to know, what had become of the girl. Either that, orhe’s the cunningest mime that ever twisted his face todeceive.”

“He did not seem to me greatly uneasy,” said Cadfaelthoughtfully, “when you brought him in. Wary, yes, andpicking his words with care—and that gives them all the moremeaning,” he added, brightening. “I’ll bethinking on that. But fearful or anxious, no, I would not sayso.”

They had reached the gatehouse, where the groom waited withHugh’s horse. Hugh gathered the reins and set toe in stirrup,and paused there to look over his shoulder at his friend.

“I tell you what, Cadfael, the only sure way out of thistangle is for that girl to turn up somewhere, alive and well. Thenwe can all be easy. But there, you’ve had more than your fairshare of miracles already this year, not even you dare ask formore.”

“And yet,” said Cadfael, fretting at the disorderlyconfusion of shards that would not fit together,“there’s something winks at me in the corner of mymind’s eye, and is gone when I look towards it. A merewill-o’-wisp—not even a spark…”

“Let it alone,” said Hugh, wheeling his horsetowards the gate. “Never blow on it for fear it may go outaltogether. If you breathe the other way, who knows? It may growinto a candle-flame, and bring the moths in to singe theirwings.”

Brother Urien lingered long over stacking thelaundered linen in its press in the infirmary. He had let Fidelispass without a sign, his mind still intent upon the three who wereleft within the sickroom, and the stone walls brought hollow echoesringing across the passage, through the open doors. BrotherUrien’s senses were all honed into acute sensitivity by hisinward anguish, to the point where his skin crawled and his shorthairs stood on end at the torture of sounds which might seem softand gentle to another ear. He moved with precision and obedience tofulfil whatever Edmund required of him: a bed to be moved, withoutdisturbing its occupant, who was half-paralysed and very old, a newcot to be installed ready for another sufferer.

He turned to watch the departure of sheriff and herbalistbrother without conceal, his mind still revolving words sharplyremembered. All those artifacts of precious metal and semi-preciousstones, vanished with a vanished woman. An altar cross—no,that was of no importance here. But a cross made to match, on asilver neck-chain… Benedictine brothers may not retain thetrappings of the person, the fruit of the world, however slight,without special permission, seldom granted. Yet there are brotherswho wear chains about the neck—one, at least. He had touched,once, to bitter humiliation, and he knew.

The time, too, spoke aloud, the time and the place. Those whohave killed for a desperate venture, for gain, and find themselveshard pressed, may seek refuge wherever it offers. Gains may behidden until flight is again possible and safe. But why, then,follow that broken crusader here into Shrewsbury? Flight would havebeen easy after Hyde burned, in that inferno who could countheads?

Yet no one knew better than he how love, or whatever the namefor this torment truly is, may be generated, nursed, taketyrannical possession of a man’s soul, with far greater furyand intensity here in the cloister than out in the world. If hecould be made to suffer it thus, driven blind and mad, why shouldnot another? And how could two such victims not have something tobind them together, if nothing else, their inescapable guilt andpain? And Humilis was a sick man, and could not live long. Therewould be room for another when he vacated his place, when the voidleft after him began to ache intolerably. Urien’s heartmelted in him like wax, thinking on what Fidelis might be enduringin his impenetrable silence.

He finished the work to which he had been called in theinfirmary, closed the press, glanced once round the open ward, andwent out to the court. He had been a body-servant and groom in theworld, and was without craft skills, and barely literate untilentering the Order. He lent his sinews and strength where they wereneeded, indoors or out, to any labour. He did not grudge the effortsuch labour cost him, nor feel his unskilled aid to be menial, forthe fuel that fired him within demanded a means of expending itselfwithout, or there could be no sleep for him in his bed, nor easewhen he awoke. But whatever he did he could not rid himself of thetoo well remembered face of the woman who had spurned and left himin his insatiable hunger and thirst. He had seen again her smoothyoung face, the image of innocence, and her great, lucid grey eyesin the boy Rhun, until those eyes turned on him full and seared himto the bone by their sweetness and pity. But her rich, burningrusset hair, not red but brown in its brightness, he had found onlyin Brother Fidelis, crowning and corroborating those same wide greyeyes, the pure crystals of memory. The woman’s voice had beenclear, high and bold. This mirror image was voiceless, andtherefore could never be harsh or malicious, never condemn, neverscarify. And it was male, blessedly not of the woman’s crueland treacherous clan. Once Fidelis might have recoiled from him,startled and affrighted. But he had said and believed then that itwould not always be so.

He had achieved the measured monastic pace, but not thetranquillity of mind that should have gone with it. By lowering hiseyes and folding his hands before him in his sheltering sleeves hecould go anywhere within these walls, and pass for one among many.He went where he knew Fidelis had been sent, and where he wouldsurely go, valuing the bench where he sat by the true tenant whoshould have been sitting there, and the vellum leaf on the deskbefore him, and the little pots of colour deployed there, by thework Humilis had begun, and bade him finish.

At the far end of the scriptorium range in the cloister, underthe south wall of the church, Brother Anselm the precentor wastrying out a chant on his small hand-organ, a sequence of ahalf-dozen notes repeated over and over, like an inspiredbird-call, sweet and sad. One of the boy pupils was there with him,lifting his childish voice unconcernedly, as gifted children will,wondering why the elders make so much fuss about what comes bynature and costs no pain. Urien knew little of music, but felt itacutely, as he felt everything, like arrows piercing his flesh. Theboy rang purer and truer than any instrument, and did not know hecould wring the heart. He would rather have been playing with hisfellow-pupils, out in the Gaye.

The carrels of the scriptorium were deep, and the stonepartitions cut off sound. Fidelis had moved his desk so that hecould sit half in shade, while the full sunlight lit his leaf. Hisleft side was turned to the sun, so that his hand cast no shadow ashe worked, though the coiled tendril which was his model for thedecoration of the capital letter M was wilting in the heat. Heworked with a steady hand and a very fine brush, twining thedelicate curls of the stem and starring them with pale, brightflowers frail as gossamer. When the singing boy, released from hisschooling, passed by at a skipping run, Fidelis never raised hishead. When Urien cast a long shadow and did not pass by, the handthat held the brush halted for a moment, then resumed its smooth,long strokes, but still Fidelis did not look up. By which tokenBrother Urien was aware that he was known. For any other this mutepainter would have looked up briefly, for many among the brothershe would have smiled. And without looking, how could he know? By asilence as heavy as his own, or by some quickening that flushed hisflesh and caused the hairs of his neck to rise when this one man ofall men came near?

Urien stepped within the carrel, and stood close atFidelis’s shoulder, looking down at the intricate M thatstill lacked its touches of gold. Looking down also, with moreintense awareness, at the inch or two of thin silver chain thatshowed within the dropped folds of collar and cowl, threading theshort russet hairs on the bent neck. A cross a little finger long,on a neck-chain, and studded with yellow, green and purplestones… He could have inserted a finger under the chain andplucked it forth, but he did not touch. He had learned that a touchis witchcraft, instant separation, putting cold distancebetween.

“Fidelis,” said the softest of yearning voices atFidelis’s shoulder, “you keep from me. Why do you so? Ican be the truest friend ever you had, if you will let me. What isthere I will not do for you? And you have need of a friend. One whowill keep secrets and be as silent as you are. Let me in to you,Fidelis…” He did not say ‘brother’.‘Brother’ is a title beyond desire, an easy title, noshaker of the mind or spirit. “Let me in, and I can be to youall you need of love and loyalty. To the death!”

Fidelis laid aside his brush very slowly, and set both hands tothe edge of the desk as though bracing himself to rise, and allthis with rigid body and held breath. Urien pressed on in hushedhaste.

“You need not fear me, I mean you only good. Don’tstir, don’t draw away! I know what you have done, I know whatyou have to hide… No one else will ever hear it from me, ifonly you’ll do your part. Silence deserves a reward…love deserves love!”

Fidelis slid along the polished wood of the bench and stoodclear, putting the desk between them. His face was pale and fixed,the dilated grey eyes enormous. He shook his head vehemently, andmoved round to push past Urien and quit the carrel, but Urienspread his arms and blocked the way.

“Oh, no, not this time! Not now! That’s over.I’ve asked, I’ve begged, now I give you to know evenasking is over.” His tight control had burned into abrupt andsavage anger, his eyes flared redly. “I have ears, I could beyour ruin if I were so minded. You had best be kind to me.”His voice was still very low, no one would hear, and no one passedalong the cloister flagstones to see and wonder. He moved closer,driving Fidelis deeper into shadow within the carrel. “Whatis it you wear round your neck, under your habit, Fidelis? Will youshow it to me? Or shall I tell you what it is? And what it means!There are those who would give a good deal to know. To your cost,Fidelis, unless you grow kind to me.”

He had backed his quarry into the deepest comer, and pinned himthere with arms outspread, and a palm flattened against the wall oneither side, preventing escape. Still the pale, oval faceconfronted him icily, even scornfully, and the grey eyes had burnedinto a slow blaze of anger, utterly rejecting him.

Urien struck like a snake, flashing a hand into the bosom ofFidelis’s habit, down within the ample folds, to drag out ofhiding the length of the silver chain, and the trophy that hunghidden upon it, warmed by the flesh and the heart beneath. Fidelisuttered a strange, breathy sound, and leaned back hard against thewall, and Urien started back from him one unsteady step, himselfappalled, and echoed the gasp. For an instant there was a silenceso deep that both seemed to drown in it, then Fidelis gathered upthe slack of the chain in his hand, and stowed his treasure awayagain in its hiding place. For that one moment he had closed hiseyes, but instantly he opened them again and kept them fixed with ableak, unbending stare upon his persecutor.

“Now, more than ever,” said Urien in a whisper,“now you shall lower those proud eyes of yours, and stoopthat stiff neck, and come to me pliantly, or go to whatever fatesuch an offence as yours brings down on the offender. But no needto threaten, if you will but listen to me. I pledge you my help,oh, yes, faithfully, with my whole heart—you have only to letme in to yours. Why not? And what choice have you, now? You needme, Fidelis, as cruelly as I need you. But we twotogether—and there need be no cruelty, only tenderness, onlylove…”

Fidelis burned up abruptly like a candle-flame, and with thehand that was not clutching his profaned treasure to his breast hestruck Urien in the mouth and silenced him.

For a moment they hung staring, eye to eye, with never a soundor a breath between them. Then Urien said thickly, in a gratingwhisper that was barely audible: “Enough! Now you shall cometo me! Now you shall be the beggar. Of your own need and your ownwill you shall come, and beg me for what you now refuse. Or I willtell all that I know, and what I know is enough to damn you. Youshall come to me and plead, and follow me like a little dog at myheels, or else I will destroy you, as now you know I can.Three days I give you, Fidelis! If you do not seek me out and giveyourself to me by Vespers of the third day from now,Brother , I will let loose hell to swallow you, and smileto watch you burn!”

He swung on his heel then, and flew out of the carrel. The longblack shadow vanished, the afternoon light came in again placidly.Fidelis leaned in the darkness of his corner a long moment witheyes closed and breast heaving in deep, exhausted rise and fall.Then he groped his way heavily back to his bench and sat down, andtook up his brush in a hand too unsteady to be able to use it.Holding it gave him a hold on normality, and presented a fittingpicture of an illuminator at work, if anyone should come to witnessit. Within, there was a numbed desperation past which he could notsee any light or any deliverance.

It was Rhun who came to be a witness. He had met Brother Urienin the garth, and seen the set face and smouldering, wounded eyes.He had not seen from which carrel Urien had issued, but here hesensed, smelled, felt in the prickling of his own flesh where Urienin his rank rage and pain had been.

He said no word of it to Fidelis, nor remarked on the pallor ofhis friend’s face or the strange stiffness of his movementsas he greeted him. He sat down beside him on the bench, and talkedof the simple matters of the day and the pattern of the capitalletter still unfinished, and took up the fine brush for the gildingand laid in carefully the gold edges of two or three leaves, thetip of his tongue arching at the corner of his mouth, like a childat his letters.

When the bell rang for Vespers they went in together, both withcalm faces, neither with a quiet heart.

Rhun absented himself from supper, and wentinstead to the infirmary, and into the small room where BrotherHumilis lay sleeping. He sat beside the bed patiently for a longtime, but the sick man slept on. And now, in this silence andsolitude, Rhun could scan every line of the worn, ageing face, andsee how the eyes were sunk deep into the skull, the cheeks falleninto gaunt hollows, and the flesh slack and grey. He was so full oflife himself that he recognised with exquisite clarity the approachof another man’s death. He abandoned his first purpose. Foreven if Humilis should awaken, and however ardently he would exertwhat life was left to him for the sake of Fidelis, Rhun could notnow cast any part of this load upon a man already burdened with thespiritual baggage of his own departure. But he sat there still, andwaited, and after supper Brother Edmund came to make the rounds ofhis patients before nightfall.

Rhun approached him in the stone-flagged passage.

“Brother Edmund, I’m anxious about Humilis.I’ve been sitting with him, and surely he grows weaker beforeour eyes. I know you keep good care of him always, but Ithought—could not a cot be put in with him for Fidelis? Itwould be much to the comfort of them both. In the dortoir with therest of us Fidelis will fret, and not sleep. And if Humilis shouldwake in the night, it would be a grace to see Fidelis close by him,ready to serve as he always is. They went through the fire at Hydetogether…” He drew breath, watching BrotherEdmund’s face. “They are closer,” he saidgravely, “than ever were father and son.”

Brother Edmund went himself to look at the sleeping man. Breathcame shallowly and rapidly. The single light cover lay very flatand lean over the long body.

“It might be well so,” said Edmund. “There isan empty cot in the anteroom of the chapel, and it would go inhere, though the space is a little tight for it. Come and help meto carry it, and then you may tell Brother Fidelis he can come andsleep here this night, if that’s his wish.”

“He will be glad,” said Rhun with certainty.

The message was delivered to Fidelis simply as adecision by Brother Edmund, taken for the peace of mind and bettercare of his patient, which seemed sensible enough. And certainlyFidelis was glad. If he suspected that Rhun had had a hand inprocuring the dispensation, that was acknowledged only with afleeting smile that flashed and faded in his grave face too rapidlyto be noticed. He took his breviary and went gratefully across thecourt, and into the room where Humilis still slept his shallow, oldman’s sleep, he who was barely forty-seven years old, and hadlived at a gallop the foreshortened life that now crept so softlyand resignedly towards death. Fidelis kneeled by the bedside toshape the night prayers with his mute lips.

It was the most sultry night of the hot, oppressive summer, alow cloud cover had veiled the stars. Even within stone walls theheat hung too heavy to bear. And here at last there was trueprivacy, apart from the necessities and duties of brotherhood, notlow panelled partitions separating them from their chosen kin, butwalls of stone, and the width of the great court, and thesuffocating weight of the night. Fidelis stripped off his habit andlay down to sleep in his linen. Between the two narrow cots, on thestand beside the breviary, the little oil lamp burned all nightlong with a dwindling golden flame.