Ellis Peters - Sanctuary Sparrow

‘We carried her up to bed,’ said Daniel, restless and wretched in this upheaval that disrupted his new content. ‘The women are there with her. Go up, they’re anxious for you.’ And he followed, drawn to a trouble that must be resolved before he could take any comfort, and hovered in the doorway of the sick-chamber, but did not step within, Iestyn remained at the foot of the stairs. In all the years of service here, most likely, he had never climbed them.

A brazier burned in an iron basket set upon a wide stone, and a small lamp on a shelf jutting out from the wall. Here in the upper rooms there were no ceilings, the rooms went up into the vault of the roof, dark wood on all sides and above. On one side of the narrow bed Margery, mute and pale, drew hastily back into the shadows to let Brother Cadfael come close. On the other, Susanna stood erect and still, and her head turned only momentarily to ascertain who it was who came.

Cadfael sank to his knees beside the bed. Juliana was alive, and if one sense had been snatched from her, the others she still had, at least for a brief while. In the contorted face the ancient eyes were alive, alert and resigned. They met Cadfael’s and knew him. The grimace could almost have been her old, sour smile. ‘Send Daniel for her priest,’ said Cadfael after one look at her, and without conceal. ‘His errand here is more now than mine.’ She would appreciate that. She knew she was dying.

He looked up at Susanna. No question now who held the mastery here; no matter how they tore each other, she of all these was Juliana’s blood, kin and match. ‘Has she spoken?’

‘No. Not a word.’ Yes, she even looked as this woman must have looked fifty years ago as a comely, resolute, able matron, married to a man of lesser fibre than her own. Her voice was low, steady and cool. She had done what could be done for the dying woman, and stood waiting for whatever broken words might fall from that broken mouth. She even leaned to wipe away the spittle that ran from its deformed lips at the downward corner.

‘Have the priest come, for I am none. She is already promised our prayers, that she knows.’ And that was for her, to ensure that she was alive within this dead body, and need not regret all her gifts to the abbey, doled out so watchfully. Her faded eyes had still a flash within them; she understood. Wherever she was gone, she knew what was said and done about her. But she had said no word, nor even attempted speech.

Margery had stolen thankfully out of the room, to send her husband for the priest. She did not come back. Walter was below, pinching out candles and fretting over the few that must remain. Only Cadfael on one side of the bed and Susanna on the other kept watch still by Dame Juliana’s death.

The old woman’s live eyes in her dead carcase clung to Cadfael’s face, yet not, he thought, trying to convey to him anything but her defiant reliance on her own resources. When had she not been mistress of her own household? And these were still her family, no business of any other judge. Those outside must stay outside. This monk whom she had grown to respect and value, for all their differences, she admitted halfway, close enough to know and acknowledge her rights of possession. Her twisted mouth suddenly worked, emitted an audible sound, looked for a moment like a mouth that might speak memorable things. Cadfael stooped his ear close to her lips.

A laborious murmur, indistinguishable, and then: ‘It was I bred them... ‘ she said thickly, and again struggled with incommunicable thoughts, and rested with a rattling sigh. A tremor passed through her rigid body. A thread of utterance emerged almost clearly: ‘But for all that... I should have liked to hold... my great-grandchild...‘

Cadfael had barely raised his head when she closed her eyes. No question but it was by her will they closed, no crippling weakness. But for the priest, she had done.

Even with the priest she did not speak again. She bore with his urgings, and made the effort to respond with her eyelids when he made his required probings into her sense of sin and need and hope for absolution. She died as soon as he had pronounced it, or only moments later.

Susanna stood by her to the end and never uttered a word. When all was done, she stooped and kissed the leather cheek and chilling brow somewhat better than dutifully, and still with that face of marble calm. Then she went down to see Brother Cadfael courteously out of the house, and thank him for all his attentions to the dead.

‘She gave you, I know, more work than ever she repaid you for,’ said Susanna, with the slight, bitter curl to her lips and the wry serenity in her voice.

‘And is it you who tell me so?’ he said, and watched the hollows at the corners of her lips deepen. ‘I came to have a certain reverence for her, short of affection. Not that she ever required that of me. And you?’

Susanna stepped from the bottom stair, close to where Rannilt huddled against the wall, afraid to trespass, unwilling to abandon her devoted watch. Since Susanna had emerged from her room with the light, her cloak shed within now there was work to do, Rannilt had hovered attentive, waiting to be used.

‘I doubt,’ said Brother Cadfael, considering, ‘whether there was any here who loved her half so well as you.’

‘Or hated her half so well,’ said Susanna, lifting her head with one measured flash of grey eyes.

‘The two are often bed-fellows,’ he said, unperturbed. ‘You need not question either.’

‘I will not. Now I must go back to her. She is my charge, I’ll pay her what’s due.’ She looked round and said quite gently: ‘Rannilt, take Master Walter’s lantern, and light Brother Cadfael out. Then go to your bed, there is no more for you to do here.’

‘I’d rather stay and watch with you,’ said Rannilt timidly. ‘You’ll need hot water and cloths, and a hand to lift her, and to run errands for you.’ As if there were not enough of them, up there now about the bed, son, grandson, and grandson’s woman, and how much grief among the lot of them? For Dame Juliana had outstayed her time by a number of years and was one mouth less to feed once her burial was accomplished; not to speak of the whiplash tongue and the too-sharp eye removed from vexing.

‘So you may, then,’ said Susanna, gazing long upon the small, childlike figure regarding her with great eyes from the shadows, where Walter had quenched all but one candle, but inadvertently left his lantern burning. ‘You shall sleep tomorrow in the day, you’ll be ready then for your bed and your mind quiet. Come up, when you’ve shown Brother Cadfael out to the lane. You and I will care for her together.’

‘You were there?’ asked Cadfael mildly, walking on the girl’s heels along the pitch-dark passage. ‘You saw what happened?’

‘Yes, sir. I couldn’t sleep. You were there this morning when they all turned against her, and even the old woman said she must yield her place... You know...‘

‘I know, yes. And you were aggrieved for her.’

‘She - was never unkind to me... ‘ How was it possible to say that Susanna had been kind, where the chill forbade any such word? ‘It was not fair that they should turn and elbow her out, like that.’

‘And you were watching and listening, and grieving. And you went in. When was that?’

She told him, as plainly as if she lived it again. She told him, as far as she could recall it, and that was almost word for word, what she had heard pass between grandmother and grandchild, and how she had heard the shriek that heralded the old woman’s seizure, and burst in to see her panting and swaying and clutching her bosom, the lamp tilting out of her hand, before she rolled headlong down the stairs.

‘And there was no other soul stirring then? No one within hand’s-touch of her, there above?’