Ellis Peters - The Heretic's Apprentice

He had reached the end of the enclave wall, where the ground on his left opened out over the silvery oval of the mill pool, and on the right of the road the houses of the Foregate gave way to a grove of trees that stretched as far as the approaches to the bridge over the Severn. And there she was before him, unmistakable in her bearing and gait, hastening along the dusty highway with an impetuosity that suggested angry resolution rather than consternation and dismay. He broke into a run, and overtook her in the shadow of the trees. At the sound of his racing feet she had swung round to face him, and at sight of him, without a word said beyond his breathless “Mistress!” she caught him hastily by the hand and drew him well aside into the grove, out of sight from the road.

“What is this? Have they freed you? Is it over?” She raised to him a face glowing and intent with unmistakable joy, but still holding it in check for fear of a fall as sudden as her elation.

“No, not yet. No, there’ll be more debate yet before I’m quit of all this. But I had to speak to you, to thank you for what you did for me - ”

“Thank me!” she said in a soft, incredulous cry. “For digging the pit a little deeper under you? I burn with shame that I had not even the courage to lie!”

“No, no, you mustn’t think so! You did me no wrong at all, you did everything you could to help me. Why should you be forced to lie? In any case, you could not do it, it is not in you. Nor will I lie,” said Elave fiercely, “nor give back from what I believe. What I came to say is that you must not fret for me, nor ever for a moment think that I have anything but gratitude and reverence for you. You stood my friend the only way I would have you stand my friend.”

He had not even realized that he was holding both her hands, clasped close against his breast, so that they stood heart-to-heart, the rhythm of matched heartbeats and quickened breathing shaking them both. Her face, raised to his, was intent and fierce, her hazel eyes dazzlingly wide and bright.

“If they have not freed you, how are you here? Do they know you are gone? Will they not be hunting for you if you’re missed?”

“Why should they? I’m free to go and come, as long as I remain a guest in the abbey until there’s a judgment. The abbot took my word I would not run.”

“But you must,” she said urgently. “I thank God that you ran after me like this, while there’s time. You must go, get away from here as far as you can. Into Wales would be best. Come with me now, quickly, I’ll get you to Jevan’s workshop beyond Frankwell, and hide you there until I can get you a horse.”

Elave was shaking his head vigorously before she had ended her plea. “No, I will not run! I gave the abbot my word, but even if he had never asked it or I given it, I would not run. I will not bow to such superstitious foolishness. It would be to encourage the madmen, and put other souls in worse danger than mine. This I don’t believe can come to anything perilous, if I stand my ground. We have not yet come to that extreme of folly, that a man can be hounded for thinking about holy things. You’ll see, the storm will all pass over.”

“No,” she insisted, “not so easily. Things are changing, did you not smell the smoke of it even there in the chapter house? I foresee it, if you do not. I was hurrying back now to talk to Jevan, to see what more can be brought to bear, to deliver you away out of danger. You brought me something of my own, it must have value. I want to use it to have you away and safe. What better use could I make of it?”

“No!” he said in sharp protest. “I will not have it! I am not going to run, I refuse to run. And that, whatever it may be, is for you, for your marriage.”

“My marriage!” she said in a wondering voice, very low, and opened wide at him the greenish fire of her eyes, as though the thought was new to her and very strange.

“Never trouble for me, in the end it will all be well. I am going back now,” said Elave firmly, too dazzled to be observant. “Never fear, I’ll take good care how I speak, how I carry myself, but I will not deny what I believe, or say aye to what I do not believe. And I will not run. From what? I have no guilt from which to run.”

He loosed her hands with a gesture almost rough, because at the end it seemed such a hard thing to do. He was turning away through the trees when he looked back, and she had not moved. Her eyes were on him, fixed thoughtfully, almost severely, and her lower lip was caught between even teeth.

“There is another reason,” he said, “why I will not go. Alone it would be enough to hold me. To run now would be to leave you.”

“And do you think,” said Fortunata, “that I would not follow and find you?”

She heard the several voices before she entered the hall, voices raised not so much in anger or argument as in bewilderment and consternation. Either Conan or Aldwin had thought it wise to acquaint the household with the morning’s sensational turn of events at once on arrival home, no doubt to put the best aspect on what they had done. She had no doubt that they were in collusion in the matter, but whatever their motives, they would not want to appear simply as squalid informers. A gloss of genuine religious revulsion and sense of duty would have to gloze over the malice entailed.

They were all there, Margaret, Jevan, Conan, and Aldwin, gathered in an agitated group, baffled question and oblique answer flying at the same time, Conan standing back to be the innocent bystander caught up in someone else’s quarrel, Aldwin bleating aloud as Fortunata entered: “How could I know? I was worried that such things should be said, I feared for my own soul if I hid them. All I did was tell Brother Jerome what was troubling me - ”

“And he told Prior Robert,” cried Fortunata from the doorway, “and Prior Robert told everyone, especially that great man from Canterbury, as you knew very well he would. How can you pretend you never meant Elave harm? Once you launched it, you knew where it would end.”

They had all swung about to face her, startled by her anger rather than by the suddenness of her entry.

“No!” protested Aldwin, recovering his breath. “No, I swear I only thought the prior might speak to him, warn him, turn him to better counsel“

“And therefore,” she said sharply, “you told him who had been present to hear. Why do that unless you meant it to go further? Why force me into your plans? That I shall never forgive you!”

“Wait, wait, wait!” cried Jevan, throwing up his hands. “Are you telling me, chick, that you were called to witness? In God’s name, man, what possessed you? How dared you bring our girl into such a business?”

“It was not I who wanted that,” protested Aldwin. “Brother Jerome got it out of me who was there. I never meant to bring her into the tangle. But I am a son of the Church. I needed to slough the load from my conscience, but then it got out of hand.”

“1 never knew you all that constant in observance,” said Jevan ruefully. “You could as well have refused to name any names but your own. Well, what’s done is done. Is it over even now? Need we expect her to be called to more enquiries, more interrogations? Is it to drag on to exhaustion, now it’s begun?”

“It isn’t over,” said Fortunata. “They have not pronounced any judgment, but they won’t let go so easily. Elave is pledged not to go away until he’s freed of the charge. I know it because I have just left him, among the trees close by the bridge, and he’s on his way back now to the abbey to stand his ground. I wanted him to run, I begged him to run, but he refuses. See what you’ve done, Aldwin, to a poor young man who never did you any harm, who has no family or patron now, no safe home and secure living, as you have. Here are you provided for life, without a care for your old age, and he has to find work again wherever he can, and now you have put a shadow upon him that will cling round him whatever the judgment, and turn men away from employing him for fear of being thought suspect by contagion. Why did you do it? Why?”