Ellis Peters - The Pilgrim of Hate

Cadfael went out from Mass with his brethren, very thoughtful, and found Rhun already waiting for him in the herbarium.

The boy sat passive and submitted himself to Cadfael’s handling, saying no word beyond his respectful greeting. The rhythm of the questing fingers, patiently coaxing apart the rigid tissues that lamed him, had a soothing effect, even when they probed deeply enough to cause pain. He let his head lean back against the timbers of the wall, and his eyes gradually closed. The tension of his cheeks and lips showed that he was not sleeping, but Cadfael was able to study the boy’s face closely as he worked on him, and note his pallor, and the dark rings round his eyes.

“Well, did you take the dose I gave you for the night?” asked Cadfael, guessing at the answer.

“No.” Rhun opened his eyes apprehensively, to see if he was to be reproved for it, but Cadfael’s face showed neither surprise nor reproach.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. Suddenly I felt there was no need. I was happy,” said Rhun, his eyes again closed, the better to examine his own actions and motives. “I had prayed. It’s not that I doubt the saint’s power. Suddenly it seemed to me that I need not even wish to be healed… that I ought to offer up my lameness and pain freely, not as a price for favour. People bring offerings, and I have nothing else to offer. Do you think it might be acceptable? I meant it humbly.”

There could hardly be, thought Cadfael, among all her devotees, a more costly oblation. He has gone far along a difficult road who has come to the point of seeing that deprivation, pain and disability are of no consequence at all, beside the inward conviction of grace, and the secret peace of the soul. An acceptance which can only be made for a man’s own self, never for any other. Another’s grief is not to be tolerated, if there can be anything done to alleviate it.

“And did you sleep well?”

“No. But it didn’t matter. I lay quiet all night long. I tried to bear it gladly. And I was not the only one there wakeful.” He slept in the common dormitory for the men, and there must be several among his fellows there afflicted in one way or another, besides the sick and possibly contagious whom Brother Edmund had isolated in the infirmary. “Ciaran was restless, too,” said Rhun reflectively, “When it was all silent, after Lauds, he got up very quietly from his cot, trying not to disturb anyone, and started wards the door. I thought then how strange it was that he took his belt and scrip with him…”

Cadfael was listening intently enough by this time. Why, indeed, if a man merely needed relief for his body during the night, should he burden himself with carrying his possessions about with him? Though the habit of being wary of theft, in such shared accommodation, might persist even when half-asleep, and in monastic care into the bargain.

“Did he so, indeed? And what followed?”

“Matthew has his own pallet drawn close beside Ciaran’s, even in the night he lies with a hand stretched out to touch. Besides, you know, he seems to know by instinct whatever ails Ciaran. He rose up in an instant, and reached out and took Ciaran by the arm. And Ciaran started and gasped, and blinked round at him, like a man startled awake suddenly, and whispered that he’d been asleep and dreaming, and had dreamed it was time to start out on the road again. So then Matthew took the scrip from him and laid it aside, and they both lay down in their beds again, and all was quiet as before. But I don’t think Ciaran slept well, even after that, his dream had disturbed his mind too much, I heard him twisting and turning for a long time.”

“Did they know,” asked Cadfael, “that you were also awake, and had heard what passed?”

“I can’t tell. I made no pretence, and the pain was bad, I think they must have heard me shifting… I couldn’t help it. But of course I made no sign, it would have been discourteous.”

So it passed as a dream, perhaps for the benefit of Rhun, or any other who might be wakeful as he was. True enough, a sick man troubled by night might very well rise by stealth to leave his friend in peace, out of consideration. But then, if he needed ease, he would have been forced to explain himself and go, when his friend nevertheless started awake to restrain him. Instead, he had pleaded a deluding dream, and lain down again. And men rousing in dreams do move silently, almost as if by stealth. It could be, it must be, simply what it seemed.

“You travelled some miles of the way with those two, Rhun. How did you all fare together on the road? You must have got to know them as well as any here.”

“It was their being slow, like us, that kept us all together, after my sister was nearly ridden down, and Matthew ran and caught her up and leaped the ditch with her. They were just slowly overtaking us then, after that we went on all together for company. But I wouldn’t say we got to know them-they are so rapt in each other. And then, Ciaran was in pain, and that kept him silent, though he did tell us where he was bound, and why. It’s true Melangell and Matthew took to walking last, behind us, and he carried our few goods for her, having so little of his own to carry. I never wondered at Ciaran being so silent,” said Rhun simply, “seeing what he had to bear. And my Aunt Alice can talk for two,” he ended guilelessly.

So she could, and no doubt did, all the rest of the way into Shrewsbury.

“That pair, Ciaran and Matthew,” said Cadfael, still delicately probing, “they never told you how they came together? Whether they were kin, or friends, or had simply met and kept company on the road? For they’re much of an age, even of a kind, young men of some schooling, I fancy, bred to clerking or squiring, and yet not kin, or don’t acknowledge it, and after their fashion very differently made. A man wonders how they ever came to be embarked together on this journey. It was south of Warwick when you met them? I wonder from how far south they came.”

“They never spoke of such things,” owned Rhun, himself considering them for the first time. “It was good to have company on the way, one stout young man at least. The roads can be perilous for two women, with only a cripple like me. But now you speak of it, no, we did not learn much of where they came from, or what bound them together. Unless my sister knows more. There were days,” said Rhun, shifting to assist Brother Cadfael’s probings into the sinews of his thigh, “when she and Matthew grew quite easy and talkative behind us.”

Cadfael doubted whether the subject of their conversation then had been anything but their two selves, brushing sleeves pleasurably along the summer highways, she in constant recall of the moment when she was snatched up bodily and swung across the ditch against Matthew’s heart, he in constant contemplation of the delectable creature dancing at his elbow, and recollection of the feel of her slight, warm, frightened weight on his breast.

“But he’ll hardly look at her now,” said Rhun regretfully. “He’s too intent on Ciaran, and Melangell will come between. But it costs him a dear effort to turn away from her, all the same.”

Cadfael stroked down the misshapen leg, and rose to scrub his oily hands. “There, that’s enough for today. But sit quiet a while and rest before you go. And will you take the draught tonight? At least keep it by you, and do what you feel to be right and best. But remember it’s a kindness sometimes to accept help, a kindness to the giver. Would you wilfully inflict torment on yourself as Ciaran does? No, not you, you are too modest by far to set yourself up for braver and more to be worshipped than other men. So never think you do wrong by sparing yourself discomfort. Yet it’s your choice, make it as you see fit.”