Ellis Peters - Brother Cadfael's Penance

He repeated, rehearsing them now with care, all the reasons why Brien de Soulis must have died at the hands of someone he knew and trusted, someone who could approach him closely without being in any way a suspect, as Yves Hugonin certainly could not, after his open hostility. Someone who could not possibly be a threat to him, a man wholly in his confidence.

“Or a woman,” said Jovetta de Montors.

She said it quite gently and reasonably, as one propounding an obvious possibility, but without pressing it.

And he had never even thought of it. In that almost entirely masculine assembly, with only three women present, and all of them under the empress’s canopy of inviolability, it had never entered his mind. True, the young one had certainly been willing to play a risky game with de Soulis, but with no intention of letting it go too far. Cadfael doubted if she would ever have made an assignation; and yet…

“Oh, no,” said Jovetta de Montors, “not Isabeau. She knows nothing. All she did was half promise him, enough to make it worth his while putting it to the test. She never intended meeting him. But there is not so much difference between an old woman and a young one, in twilight and a hooded cloak. I think,” she said with sympathy, and smiled at him, “I am not telling you anything you do not know. But I would not have let the young man come to harm.”

“I am learning this,” said Cadfael, “only now, believe me. Only now, and by this seal of yours. The same seal that was set to the surrender of Faringdon, in the name of Geoffrey FitzClare. Who was already dead. And now de Soulis, who set it there, who killed him to set it there, is also dead, and Geoffrey FitzClare is avenged.” And he thought, why stir the ashes back into life now?

“You do not ask me,” she said, “what Geoffrey FitzClare was to me?”

Cadfael was silent.

“He was my son,” she said. “My one sole child, outside a childless marriage, and lost to me as soon as born. It was long ago, after the old king had conquered and settled Normandy, until King Louis came to the French throne, and started the struggle all over again. King Henry spent two years and more over there defending his conquest, and Warrenne’s forces were with him. My husband was Warrenne’s man. Two years away! Love asks no leave, and I was lonely, and Richard de Clare was kind. When my time came, I was well served and secret, and Richard did well by his own. Aubrey never knew, nor did any other. Richard acknowledged my boy for his, and took him into his own family. But Richard was not living to do right by his son when most he was needed. It was left to me to take his place.”

Her voice was calm, making neither boast nor defence of what she had done. And when she saw Cadfael’s gaze still bent on the salamander in its restoring bath of fire, she smiled.

“That was all he ever had of me. It came from my father’s forebears, but it had fallen almost into disuse. Few people would know it. I asked Richard to give it to him for his own device, and it was done. He did us both credit. His brother Earl Gilbert always thought well of him. Even though they took opposing sides in this sad dispute, they were good friends. The Clares have buried Geoffrey as one of their own, and valued. They do not know what I know of how he died. What you, I think, also know.”

“Yes,” said Cadfael, and looked her in the eyes, “I do know.”

“Then there is no need to explain anything or excuse anything,” she said simply, and turned to set one candle straighter in its sconce, and carry away with her tidily the extinguished sulphur match. “But if ever any man casts up that man’s death against the boy, you may speak out.”

“You said, “Cadfael reminded her, “that no one else ever knew. Not even your son?”

She looked back for one moment on her way out of the chapel, and confronted him with the deep, drowning blue serenity of her eyes, and smiled. “He knows now,” she said.

In the chapel of La Musarderie those two parted, who would surely never meet again.

Cadfael went out to the stable, and found a somewhat disconsolate Yves already saddling the chestnut roan, and insisting on coming out with his departing friend as far as the ford of the river. No need to fret over Yves, the darkest shadow had withdrawn from him, there remained only the mild disappointment of not being able to take Cadfael home with him, and the shock of disillusionment which would make him wary of the empress’s favours for some time, but not divert his fierce loyalty from her cause. Not for this gallant simplicity the bruising complexities that trouble most human creatures. He walked beside the roan down the causeway and into the woodland that screened the ford, and talked of Ermina, and Olivier, and the child that was coming and minute by minute his mood brightened, thinking of the reunion still to come.

“He may be there already, even before I can get leave to go to her. And he really is well? He’s come to no harm?”

“You’ll find no change in him,” Cadfael promised heartily. “He is as he always has been, and he’ll look for no change in you, either. Between the lot of us,” he said, comforting himself rather than the boy, “perhaps we have not done so badly, after all.”

But it was a long, long journey home.

At the ford they parted. Yves reached up, inclining a smooth cheek, and Cadfael stooped to kiss him. “Go back now, and don’t watch me go. There’ll be another time.”

Cadfael crossed the ford, climbed the green track up through the woods on the other side, and rode eastward through the village of Winstone towards the great highroad. But when he reached it he did not turn left towards Tewkesbury and the roads that led homeward, but right, towards Cirencester. He had one more small duty to perform; or perhaps he was simply clinging by the sleeve of hope to the conviction that out of his apostasy something good might emerge, beyond all reasonable expectation, to offer as justification for default.

All along the great road high on the Cotswold plateau he rode through intermittent showers of sleet, under a low, leaden sky, hardly conducive to cheerful thoughts. The colours of winter, bleached and faded and soiled, were setting in like a wash of grey mist over the landscape. There was small joy in travelling, and few fellow-creatures to greet along the way. Men and sheep alike preferred the shelter of cottage and fold.

It was late afternoon when he reached Cirencester, a town he did not know, except by reputation as a very old city, where the Romans had left their fabled traces, and a very sturdy and astute wool trade had continued independent and prosperous ever since. He had to stop and ask his way to the Augustinian abbey, but there was no mistaking it when he found it, and no doubt of its flourishing condition. The old King Henry had refounded it upon the remnant of an older house of secular canons, very poorly endowed and quietly mouldering, but the Augustinians had made a success of it, and the fine gatehouse, spacious court and splendid church spoke for their zeal and efficiency. This revived house was barely thirty years old, but bade fair to be the foremost of its order in the kingdom.

Cadfael dismounted at the gate and led his horse within, to the porter’s lodge. This ordered calm came kindly on his spirit, after the uncontrollable chances of siege and the bleak loneliness of the roads. Here all things were ordained and regulated, here everyone had a purpose and a rule, and was in no doubt of his value, and every hour and every thing had a function, essential to the functioning of the whole. So it was at home, where his heart drew him.

“I am a brother of the Benedictine abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul at Shrewsbury,” said Cadfael humbly, “and have been in these parts by reason of the fighting at Greenhamsted, where I was lodged when the castle fell under siege. May I speak with the infirmarer?”