Ellis Peters - The Pilgrim of Hate

“Wait but one moment! You also have a cause here, if Cadfael is right. This is surely the man who murdered your friend. He owes you a death. He is yours if you want him.”

“That is truth,” said Cadfael. “Ask him! He will tell you.”

Ciaran crouched in the grass, drooping now, bewildered and lost, no longer looking any man in the face, only waiting without hope or understanding for someone to determine whether he was to live or die, and on what abject terms. Olivier cast one wondering glance at him, shook his head in emphatic rejection, and reached for his horse’s bridle. “Who am I,” he said, “to exact what Luc Meverel has remitted? Let this one go on his way with his own burden. My business is with the other.”

He was away at a run, leading the horse briskly through the screen of bushes, and the rustling of their passage gradually stilled again into silence. Cadfael and Hugh were left regarding each other mutely across the lamentable figure crouched upon the ground.

Gradually the rest of the world flowed back into Cadfael’s ken. Three of Hugh’s officers stood aloof with the horses and the torches, looking on in silence; and somewhere not far distant sounded a brief scuffle and outcry, as one of the fugitives was overpowered and made prisoner. Simeon Poer had been pulled down barely fifty yards in cover, and stood sullenly under guard now, with his wrists secured to a sergeant’s stirrup-leather. The third would not be a free man long. This night’s ventures were over. This piece of woodland would be safe even for barefoot and unarmed pilgrims to traverse.

“What is to be done with him?” demanded Hugh openly, looking down upon the wreckage of a man with some distaste.

“Since Luc has waived his claim,” said Cadfael, “I would not dare meddle. And there is something at least to be said for him, he did not cheat or break his terms voluntarily, even when there was no one by to accuse him. It is a small virtue to have to advance for the defence of a life, but it is something. Who else has the right to foreclose on what Luc has spared?”

Ciaran raised his head, peering doubtfully from one face to the other, still confounded at being so spared, but beginning to believe that he still lived. He was weeping, whether with pain, or relief, or something more durable than either, there was no telling. The blood was blackening into a dark line about his throat.

“Speak up and tell truth,” said Hugh with chill gentleness. “Was it you who stabbed Bossard?”

Out of the pallid disintegration of Ciaran’s face a wavering voice said: “Yes.”

“Why did you so? Why attack the queen’s clerk, who did nothing but deliver his errand faithfully?”

Ciaran’s eyes burned for an instant, and a fleeting spark of past pride, intolerance and rage showed like the last glow of a dying fire. “He came highhanded, shouting down the lord bishop, defying the council. My master was angry and affronted…”

“Your master,” said Cadfael, “was the prior of Hyde Mead. Or so you claimed.”

“How could I any longer claim service with one who had discarded me? I lied! The lord bishop himself, I served Bishop Henry, had his favour. Lost, lost now! I could not brook the man Christian’s insolence to him… he stood against everything my lord planned and willed. I hated him! I thought then that I hated him,” said Ciaran, drearily wondering at the recollection. “And I thought to please my lord!”

“A calculation that went awry,” said Cadfael, “for whatever he may be, Henry of Blois is no murderer. And Rainard Bossard prevented your mischief, a man of your own party, held in esteem. Did that make him a traitor in your eyes-that he should respect an honest opponent? Or did you strike out at random, and kill without intent?”

“No,” said the level, lame voice, bereft of its brief spark.

“He thwarted me, I was enraged. I knew what I did. I was glad… then!” he said, and drew bitter breath.

“And who laid upon you this penitential journey?” asked Cadfael, “and to what end? Your life was granted you, upon terms. What terms? Someone in the highest authority laid that load upon you.”

“My lord the bishop-legate,” said Ciaran, and wrung wordlessly for a moment at the pain of an old devotion, rejected and banished now for ever. “There was no other soul knew of it, only to him I told it. He would not give me up to law, he wanted this thing put by, for fear it should threaten his plans for the empress’s peace. But he would not condone. I am from the Danish kingdom of Dublin, my other half Welsh. He offered me passage under his protection to Bangor, to the bishop there, who would see me to Caergybi in Anglesey, and have me put aboard a ship for Dublin. But I must go barefoot all that way, and wear the cross round my neck, and if ever I broke those terms, even for a moment, my life was his who cared to take it, without blame or penalty. And I could never return.” Another fire, of banished love, ruined ambition, rejected service, flamed through the broken accents for a moment, and died of despair.

“Yet if this sentence was never made public,” said Hugh, seizing upon one thing still unexplained, “how did Luc Meverel ever come to know of it and follow you?”

“Do I know?” The voice was flat and drear, worn out with exhaustion. “All I know is that I set out from Winchester, and where the roads joined, near Newbury, this man stood and waited for me, and fell in beside me, and every step of my way on this journey he has gone on my heels like a demon, and waited for me to play false to my sentence, for there was no point of it he did not know!, to take my life without guilt, without a qualm, as so he might. He trod after me wherever I trod, he never let me from his sight, he made no secret of his wants, he tempted me to go aside, to put on shoes, to lay by the cross, and sirs, it was deathly heavy! Matthew, he called himself…

Luc, you say he is? You know him? I never knew… He said I had killed his lord, whom he loved, and he would follow me to Bangor, to Caergybi, even to Dublin if ever I got aboard ship without putting off the cross or putting on shoes. But he would have me in the end. He had what he lusted for, why did he turn away and spare?” The last words ached with his uncomprehending wonder.

“He did not find you worth the killing,” said Cadfael, as gently and mercifully as he could, but honestly. “Now he goes in anguish and shame because he spent so much time on you that might have been better spent. It is a matter of values. Study to learn what is worth and what is not, and you may come to understand him.”

“I am a dead man while I live,” said Ciaran, writhing, “without master, without friends, without a cause…”

“All three you may find, if you seek. Go where you were sent, bear what you were condemned to bear, and look for the meaning,” said Cadfael. “For so must we all.”

He turned away with a sigh. No way of knowing how much good words might do, or the lessons of life, no telling whether any trace of compunction moved in Ciaran’s bludgeoned mind, or whether all his feeling was still for himself. Cadfael felt himself suddenly very tired. He looked at Hugh with a somewhat lopsided smile. “I wish I were home. What now, Hugh? Can we go?”

Hugh stood looking down with a frown at the confessed murderer, sunken in the grass like a broken-backed serpent, submissive, tear-stained, nursing minor injuries. A piteous spectacle, though pity might be misplaced. Yet he was, after all, no more than twenty-five or so years old, able-bodied, well-clothed, strong, his continued journey might be painful and arduous, but it was not beyond his powers, and he had his bishop’s ring still, effective wherever law held. These three footpads now tethered fast and under guard would trouble his going no more. Ciaran would surely reach his journey’s end safely, however long it might take him. Not the journey’s end of his false story, a blessed death in Aberdaron and burial among the saints of Ynys Ennli, but a return to his native place, and a life beginning afresh. He might even be changed. He might well adhere to his hard terms all the way to Caergybi, where Irish ships plied, even as far as Dublin, even to his ransomed life’s end. How can you tell?