Ellis Peters: An Excellent Mystery

By all the symbols of his innocence he should not have understood, not yet, not until much more had passed. But he did understand. His very candour and purity made him wise. He did not snatch his hand away, but withdrew it very gently and kindly, and turned his fair head to look Urien full in the face with wide, wide-set eyes of the clearest blue-grey, with such comprehension and pity that the wound burned unbearably deep, corrosive with rage and shame. Urien took his hand away and turned aside from him.

Revulsion and shock might have left a morsel of hope that one emotion could yet, with care, be changed gradually into another, since at least he would have known he had made a sharp impression. But this open-eyed understanding and pity repelled him beyond hope. How dared a green, simple virgin, who had never become aware of his body but through his lameness and physical pain, recognise the fire when it scorched him, and respond only with compassion? No fear, no blame, and no uncertainty. Nor would he complain to confessor or superior. Brother Urien went away with grief and desire burning in his bowels, and the remembered face of the woman clear and cruel before his mind’s eyes. Prayer was no cure for the memory of her.

Rhun brought away from that encounter, only a moment long and accomplished in silence, his first awareness of the tyranny of the body. Troubles from which he was secure could torture another man. His heart ached a little for Brother Urien, he would mention him in his prayers at Vespers. And so he did, and as Urien beheld still his lost wife’s hostile visage, so did Rhun continue to see the dark, tense, handsome face that had winced away from his gaze with burning brow and hooded eyes, bitterly shamed where he, Rhun, had felt no blame, and no bitterness. This was indeed a dark and secret matter.

He said no word to anyone about what had happened. What had happened? Nothing! But he looked at his fellow men with changed eyes, by one dimension enlarged to take in their distresses and open his own being to their needs.

This happened to Rhun two days before he was finally acknowledged as firm in his vocation, and received the tonsure, to become the novice, Brother Rhun.

“So our little saint has made good his resolve,” said Hugh, encountering Cadfael as he came from the ceremony. “And his cure shows no faltering! I tell you honestly, I go in awe of him. Do you think Winifred had an eye to his comeliness, when she chose to take him for her own? Welshwomen don’t baulk their fancy when they see a beautiful youth.”

“You are an unregenerate heathen,” said Cadfael comfortably, “but the lady should be used to you by now. Never think you’ll shock her, there’s nothing she has not seen in her time. And had I been in her reliquary I would have drawn that child to me, just as she did. She knew worth when she saw it. Why, he has almost sweetened even Brother Jerome!”

“That will never last!” said Hugh, and laughed. “He’s kept his own name-the boy?”

“It never entered his mind to change it.”

“They do not all so,” said Hugh, growing serious. “This pair that came from Hyde-Humilis and Fidelis. They made large claims, did they not? Brother Humble we know by his former name, and he needs no other. What do we know of Brother Faithful? And I wonder which name came first?”

“The boy is a younger son,” said Cadfael. “His elder has the lands, this one chose the cowl. With his burden, who could blame him? Humilis says his own novitiate was not yet completed when the young one came, and they drew together and became fast friends. They may well have been admitted together, and the names… Who knows which of them chose first?”

They had halted before the gatehouse to look back at the church. Rhun and Fidelis had come forth together, two notably comely creatures with matched steps, not touching, but close and content. Rhun was talking with animation. Fidelis bore the traces of much watching and anxiety, but shone with a responsive glow. Rhun’s new tonsure was bared to the sun, the fair hair round it roused like an aureole.

“He frequents them,” said Cadfael, watching. “No marvel, he reaches out to every soul who has lost a piece of his being, such as a voice.” He said nothing of what the elder of that pair had lost. “He talks for both. A pity he has small learning yet. There’s neither of those two can read to Humilis, the one for want of a voice, the other for want of letters. But he studies, and he’ll learn. Brother Paul thinks well of him.”

The two young men had vanished at the archway of the day stairs, plainly bound for the dortoir cell where Brother Humilis was still confined to his bed. Who would not be heartened by the vision of Brother Rhun just radiant from his admission to his heart’s desire? And it was fitting, that reticent kinship between two barren bodies, the one virgin unawakened, the other hollowed out and despoiled in its prime. Two whose seed was not of this world.

It was that same afternoon that a young man in a soldier’s serviceable riding gear, with rolled cloak at his saddlebow, came in towards the town by the main London road to Saint Giles, and there asked directions to the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. He went bare-headed in the sun, and in his shirtsleeves, with breast bared, and face and breast and naked forearms were brown as from a hotter sun even than here, where the summer did but paint a further copper shade on a hide already gilded. A neatly-made young man, on a good horse, with an easy seat in the saddle and a light hand on the rein, and a bush of wiry dark hair above a bold, blunt-featured face.

Brother Oswin directed him, and with pricking curiosity watched him ride on, wondering for whom he would enquire there. Evidently a fighting man, but from which army, and from whose household troops, to be heading for Shrewsbury abbey so particularly? He had not asked for town or sheriff. His business was not concerned with the warfare in the south. Oswin went back to his work with mild regret at knowing no more, but dutifully.

The rider, assured that he was near his goal, eased to a walk along the Foregate, looking with interest at all he saw, the blanched grass of the horse-fair ground, still thirsty for rain, the leisurely traffic of porter and cart and pony in the street, the gossiping neighbours out at their gates in the sun, the high, long wall of the abbey enclave on his left hand, and the lofty roof and tower of the church looming over it. Now he knew that he was arriving. He rounded the west end of the church, with its great door ajar outside the enclosure for parish use, and turned in under the arch of the gatehouse.

The porter came amiably to greet him and ask his business. Brother Cadfael and Hugh Beringar, still at their leisurely leave-taking close by, turned to examine the newcomer, noted his business-like and well-used harness and leathern coat slung behind, and the sword he wore, and had him accurately docketed in a moment. Hugh stiffened, attentive, for a man in soldier’s gear heading in from the south might well have news. Moreover, one who came alone and at ease here through these shires loyal to King Stephen was likely to be of the same complexion. Hugh went forward to join the colloquy, eyeing the horseman up and down with restrained approval of his appearance.

“You’re not, by chance, seeking me, friend? Hugh Beringar, at your service.”

“This is the lord sheriff,” said Brother Porter by way of introduction; and to Hugh: “The traveller is asking for Brother Humilis-though by his former name.”

“I was some years in the service of Godfrid Marescot,” said the horseman, and slid his reins loose and lighted down to stand beside them. He was taller than Hugh by half a head, and strongly made, and his brown countenance was open and cheerful, lit by strikingly blue eyes. “I’ve been hunting for him among the brothers dispersed in Winchester after Hyde burned to the ground. They told me he’d chosen to come here. I have some business in the north of the shire, and need his approval for what I intend. To tell the truth,” he said with a wry smile, “I had clean forgotten the name he took when he entered Hyde. To me he’s still my lord Godfrid.”