Ellis Peters - The Pilgrim of Hate

He halted, and set the door wide open behind him for reassurance that there was a possibility of escape. “Be easy!” he said mildly. “May I not come into my own workshop without leave? And should I be entering here to threaten any soul with harm?”

His eyes, growing accustomed rapidly to the dimness, which seemed dark only by contrast with the radiance outside, scanned the shelves, the bubbling jars of wine in a fat row, the swinging, rustling swathes of herbs dangling from the beams of the low roof. Everything took shape and emerged into view. Stretched along the broad wooden bench against the opposite wall, a huddle of tumbled skirts stirred slowly and reared itself upright, to show him the spilled ripe-corn gold of a girl’s hair, and the tear-stained, swollen-lidded countenance of Melangell.

She said no word, but she did not drop blindly into her sheltering arms again. She was long past that, and past being afraid to show herself so to one secret, quiet creature whom she trusted. She set down her feet in their scuffed leather shoes to the floor, and sat back against the timbers of the wall, bracing slight shoulders to the solid contact. She heaved one enormous, draining sigh that was dragged up from her very heels, and left her weak and docile. When he crossed the beaten earth floor and sat down beside her, she did not flinch away.

“Now,” said Cadfael, settling himself with deliberation, to give her time to compose at least her voice. The soft light would spare her face. “Now, child dear, there is no one here who can either save you or trouble you, and therefore you can speak freely, for everything you say is between us two only. But we two together need to take careful counsel. So what is it you know that I do not know?”

“Why should we take counsel?” she said in a small, drear voice from below his solid shoulder. “He is gone.”

“What is gone may return. The roads lead always two ways, hither as well as yonder. What are you doing out here alone, when your brother walks erect on two sound feet, and has all he wants in this world, but for your absence?”

He did not look directly at her, but felt the stir of warmth and softness through her body, which must have been a smile, however flawed. “I came away,” she said, very low, “not to spoil his joy. I’ve borne most of the day. I think no one has noticed half my heart was gone out of me. Unless it was you,” she said, without blame, rather in resignation.

“I saw you when we came from Saint Giles,” said Cadfael, “you and Matthew. Your heart was whole then, so was his. If yours is torn in two now, do you suppose his is preserved without wound? No! So what passed, afterwards? What was this sword that shore through your heart and his? You know! You may tell it now. They are gone, there is nothing left to spoil. There may yet be something to save.”

She turned her forehead into his shoulder and wept in silence for a little while. The light within the hut grew rather than dimming, now that his eyes were accustomed. She forgot to hide her forlorn and bloated face, he saw the bruise on her cheek darkening into purple. He laid an arm about her and drew her close for the comfort of the flesh. That of the spirit would need more of time and thought.

“He struck you?”

“I held him,” she said, quick in his defence. “He could not get free.”

“And he was so frantic? He must go?”

“Yes, whatever it cost him or me. Oh, Brother Cadfael, why? I thought, I believed he loved me, as I do him. But see how he used me in his anger!”

“Anger?” said Cadfael sharply, and turned her by the shoulders to study her more intently. “Whatever the compulsion on him to go with his friend, why should he be angry with you? The loss was yours, but surely no blame.”

“He blamed me for not telling him,” she said drearily. “But I did only what Ciaran asked of me. For his sake and yours, he said, yes, and for mine, too, let me go, but hold him fast. Don’t tell him I have the ring again, he said, and I will go. Forget me, he said, and help him to forget me. He wanted us to remain together and be happy…”

“Are you telling me,” demanded Cadfael sharply, “that they did not go together! That Ciaran made off without him?”

“It was not like that,” sighed Melangell. “He meant well by us, that’s why he stole away alone…”

“When was this? When? When did you have speech with him? When did he go?”

“I was here at dawn, you’ll remember. I met Ciaran by the brook…” She drew a deep, desolate breath and loosed the whole flood of it, every word she could recall of that meeting in the early morning, while Cadfael gazed appalled, and the vague glimpse he had had of enlightenment awoke and stirred again in his mind, far clearer now.

“Go on! Tell me what followed between you and Matthew. You did as you were bidden, I know, you drew him with you, I doubt he ever gave a thought to Ciaran all those morning hours, believing him still penned withindoors, afraid to stir. When was it he found out?”

“After dinner it came into his mind that he had not seen him. He was very uneasy. He went to look for him everywhere… He came to me here in the garden. “God keep you, Melangell,” he said, “you must fend for yourself now, sorry as I am…” Almost every word of that encounter she had by heart, she repeated them like a tired child repeating a lesson. “I said too much, he knew I had spoken with Ciaran, he knew that I knew he’d meant to go secretly…”

“And then, after you had owned as much?”

“He laughed,” she said, and her very voice froze into a despairing whisper. “I never heard him laugh until this morning, and then it was such a sweet sound. But this laughter was not so! Bitter and raging.” She stumbled through the rest of it, every word another fine line added to the reversed image that grew in Cadfael’s mind, mocking his memory. “He sets me free!” And “You must be his confederate!” The words were so burned on her mind that she even reproduced the savagery of their utterance. And how few words it took, in the end, to transform everything, to turn devoted attendance into remorseless pursuit, selfless love into dedicated hatred, noble self-sacrifice into calculated flight, and the voluntary mortification of the flesh into body armour which must never be doffed.

He heard again, abruptly and piercingly, Ciaran’s wild cry of alarm as he clutched his cross to him, and Matthew’s voice saying softly: “Yet he should doff it. How else can he truly be rid of his pains?”

How else, indeed! Cadfael recalled, too, how he had reminded them both that they were here to attend the feast of a saint who might have life itself within her gift, “even for a man already condemned to death!” Oh, Saint Winifred, stand by me now, stand by us all, with a third miracle to better the other two!

He took Melangell brusquely by the chin, and lifted her face to him. “Girl, look to yourself now for a while, for I must leave you. Do up your hair and keep a brave face, and go back to your kin as soon as you can bear their eyes on you. Go into the church for a time, it will be quiet there now, and who will wonder if you give a longer time to your prayers? They will not even wonder at past tears, if you can smile now. Do as well as you can, for I have a thing I must do.”

There was nothing he could promise her, no sure hope he could leave with her. He turned from her without another word, leaving her staring after him between dread and reassurance, and went striding in haste through the gardens and out across the court, to the abbot’s lodging.

If Radulfus was surprised to have Cadfael ask audience again so soon, he gave no sign of it, but had him admitted at once, and put aside his book to give his full attention to whatever this fresh business might be. Plainly it was something very much to the current purpose and urgent.