Ellis Peters - The Pilgrim of Hate

“Your common stock,” said Hugh heartily, “gave growth to a most uncommon shoot! And I wouldn’t say but that young thing would grace a hall better than many a highbred dame I’ve seen. But listen, they’re ending. We’d best present ourselves.”

Abbot Radulfus came from Matins and Lauds with his usual imperturbable stride, and found them waiting for him as he left the cloister. This day of miracles had produced a fittingly glorious night, incredibly lofty and deep, coruscating with stars, washed white with moonlight. Coming from the dimness within, this exuberance of light showed him clearly both the serenity and the weariness on the two faces that confronted him.

“You are back!” he said, and looked beyond them. “But not all! Messire de Bretagne, you said he had gone by a wrong way. He has not returned here. You have not encountered him?”

“Yes, Father, we have,” said Hugh. “All is well with him, and he has found the young man he was seeking. They will return here, all in good time.”

“And the evil you feared, Brother Cadfael? You spoke of another death…”

“Father,” said Cadfael, “no harm has come tonight to any but the masterless men who escaped into the forest there. They are now safe in hold, and on their way under guard to the castle. The death I dreaded has been averted, no threat remains in that quarter to any man. I said, if the two young men could be overtaken, the better surely for one, and perhaps for both. Father, they were overtaken in time, and better for both it surely must be.”

“Yet there remains,” said Radulfus, pondering, “the print of blood, which both you and I have seen. You said, you will recall, that, yes, we have entertained a murderer among us. Do you still say so?”

“Yes, Father. Yet not as you suppose. When Olivier de Bretagne and Luc Meverel return, then all can be made plain, for as yet,” said Cadfael, “there are still certain things we do not know. But we do know,” he said firmly, “that what has passed this night is the best for which we could have prayed, and we have good need to give thanks for it.”

“So all is well?”

“All is very well, Father.”

“Then the rest may wait for morning. You need rest. But will you not come in with me and take some food and wine, before you sleep?”

“My wife,” said Hugh, gracefully evading, “will be in some anxiety for me. You are kind, Father, but I would not have her fret longer than she need.”

The abbot eyed them both, and did not press them.

“And God bless you for that!” sighed Cadfael, toiling up the slight slope of the court towards the dortoir stair and the gatehouse where Hugh had hitched his horse. “For I’m asleep on my feet, and even a good wine could not revive me.”

The moonlight was gone, and there was as yet no sunlight, when Olivier de Bretagne and Luc Meverel rode slowly in at the abbey gatehouse. How far they had wandered in the deep night neither of them knew very clearly, for this was strange country to both. Even when overtaken, and addressed with careful gentleness, Luc had still gone forward blindly, hands hanging slack at his sides or vaguely parting the bushes, saying nothing, hearing nothing, unless some core of feeling within him was aware of this calm, relentless pursuit by a tolerant, incurious kindness, and distantly wondered at it. When he had dropped at last and lain down in the lush grass of a meadow at the edge of the forest, Olivier had tethered his horse a little apart and lain down beside him, not too close, yet so close that the mute man knew he was there, waiting without impatience. Past midnight Luc had fallen asleep. It was his greatest need. He was a man ravished and emptied of every impulse that had held him alive for the past two months, a dead man still walking and unable quite to die. Sleep was his ransom. Then he could truly die to this waste of loss and bitterness, the awful need that had driven him, the corrosive grief that had eaten his heart out for his lord, who had died in his arms, on his shoulder, on his heart. The bloodstain that would not wash out, no matter how he laboured over it, was his witness. He had kept it to keep the fire of his hatred white-hot. Now in sleep he was delivered from all.

And he had awakened in the first mysterious pre-dawn stirring of the earliest summer birds, beginning to call tentatively into the silence, to open his eyes upon a face bending over him, a face he did not know, but remotely desired to know, for it was vivid, friendly and calm, waiting courteously on his will.

“Did I kill him?” Luc had asked, somehow aware that the man who bore this face would know the answer.

“No,” said a voice clear, serene and low. “There was no need. But he’s dead to you. You can forget him.”

He did not understand that, but he accepted it. He sat up in the cool, ripe grass, and his senses began to stir again, and record distantly that the earth smelled sweet, and there were paling stars in the sky over him, caught like stray sparks in the branches of the trees. He stared intently into Olivier’s face, and Olivier looked back at him with a slight, serene smile, and was silent.

“Do I know you?” asked Luc wonderingly.

“No. But you will. My name is Olivier de Bretagne, and I serve Laurence d’Angers, just as your lord did. I knew Rainald Bossard well, he was my friend, we came from the Holy Land together in Laurence’s train. And I am sent with a message to Luc Meverel, and that, I am sure, is your name.”

“A message to me?” Luc shook his head.

“From your cousin and lady, Juliana Bossard. And the message is that she begs you to come home, for she needs you, and there is no one who can take your place.”

He was slow to believe, still numbed and hollow within; but there was no impulsion for him to go anywhere or do anything now of his own will, and he yielded indifferently to Olivier’s promptings. “Now we should be getting back to the abbey,” said Olivier practically, and rose, and Luc responded, and rose with him. “You take the horse, and I’ll walk,” said Olivier, and Luc did as he was bidden. It was like nursing a simpleton gently along the way he must go, and holding him by the hand at every step.

They found their way back at last to the old track, and there were the two horses Hugh had left behind for them, and the groom fast asleep in the grass beside them. Olivier took back his own horse, and Luc mounted the fresh one, with the lightness and ease of custom, his body’s instincts at least reawakening. The yawning groom led the way, knowing the path well. Not until they were halfway back towards the Meole brook and the narrow bridge to the highroad did Luc say a word of his own volition.

“You say she wants me to come back,” he said abruptly, with quickening pain and hope in his voice. “Is it true? I left her without a word, but what else could I do? What can she think of me now?”

“Why, that you had your reasons for leaving her, as she has hers for wanting you back. Half the length of England I have been asking after you, at her entreaty. What more do you need?”

“I never thought to return,” said Luc, staring back down that long, long road in wonder and doubt.

No, not even to Shrewsbury, much less to his home in the south. Yet here he was, in the cool, soft morning twilight well before Prime, riding beside this young stranger over the wooden bridge that crossed the Meole brook, instead of wading through the shrunken stream to the pease fields, the way by which he had left the enclave. Round to the highroad, past the mill and the pond, and in at the gatehouse to the great court. There they lighted down, and the groom took himself and his two horses briskly away again towards the town.

Luc stood gazing about him dully, still clouded by the unfamiliarity of everything he beheld, as if his senses were still dazed and clumsy with the effort of coming back to life. At this hour the court was empty. No, not quite empty. There was someone sitting on the stone steps that climbed to the door of the guest-hall, sitting there alone and quite composedly, with her face turned towards the gate, and as he watched she rose and came down the wide steps, and walked towards him with a swift, light step. Then he knew her for Melangell.