Peter Tremayne: The Monk Who Vanished

‘Your Archbishop must need you back. You cannot delay your return much longer. What better time for both of us to leave Cashel — you to your homeland and I to seek out those new mountains?’

‘Is it right, at this time?’ Eadulf pressed yet again.

‘Someone once said that there is always a time to depart from a place even if one is unsure where one is going.’

‘But there is a permanence here, Fidelma,’ protested Eadulf. ‘I have come to feel at home. I would find a means to stay in spite of the demands of Canterbury. These are the mountains I wish to continue to see. The river down there is the water I want to rest beside, to daily bathe my feet in.’

Fidelma waited, finding herself hoping to hear him say that which she wanted him to say. When he did not, she smiled sadly.

‘Heraclitus said that you cannot step twice into the same river for other waters are continually flowing into it. The only thing that is permanent, Eadulf, is change.’

She stretched her arms and yawned, her face turned towards the setting sun. It stood poised for a moment or two, an oval glow on the horizon before abruptly vanishing and sending a flood of dark shadows across the land. She shivered slightly at the sudden chill that swept over the great Rock of Cashel.

‘Incidis in Scyllam cupiens vitare Charybdim,’ muttered Eadulf. ‘You fall into the Scylla in trying to avoid Charybdis.’

Fidelma raised an eyebrow. ‘You think that I am trying to escape from something I consider bad and will fall into something that is worse? No. I just need a change, that is all, Eadulf. There is boredom in permanence.’

A bell began to toll solemnly in the background.

‘The evening meal, Eadulf. Let us go in and change this evening chill for the warmth of a good fire.’