Brother Edmund went himself to look at the sleeping man. Breath came shallowly and rapidly. The single light cover lay very flat and lean over the long body.
“It might be well so,” said Edmund. “There is an empty cot in the anteroom of the chapel, and it would go in here, though the space is a little tight for it. Come and help me to carry it, and then you may tell Brother Fidelis he can come and sleep here this night, if that’s his wish.”
“He will be glad,” said Rhun with certainty.
The message was delivered to Fidelis simply as a decision by Brother Edmund, taken for the peace of mind and better care of his patient, which seemed sensible enough. And certainly Fidelis was glad. If he suspected that Rhun had had a hand in procuring the dispensation, that was acknowledged only with a fleeting smile that flashed and faded in his grave face too rapidly to be noticed. He took his breviary and went gratefully across the court, and into the room where Humilis still slept his shallow, old man’s sleep, he who was barely forty-seven years old, and had lived at a gallop the foreshortened life that now crept so softly and resignedly towards death. Fidelis kneeled by the bedside to shape the night prayers with his mute lips.
It was the most sultry night of the hot, oppressive summer, a low cloud cover had veiled the stars. Even within stone walls the heat hung too heavy to bear. And here at last there was true privacy, apart from the necessities and duties of brotherhood, not low panelled partitions separating them from their chosen kin, but walls of stone, and the width of the great court, and the suffocating weight of the night. Fidelis stripped off his habit and lay down to sleep in his linen. Between the two narrow cots, on the stand beside the breviary, the little oil lamp burned all night long with a dwindling golden flame.
Chapter Ten
IN HIS SHALLOW HALF-SLEEP, HALF-SWOON BROTHER HUMILIS dreamed that he heard someone weeping, very softly, almost without sound but for the break in the breath, the controlled but extreme weeping of a strong being brought to a desperation from which there was no escape. It so stirred and troubled him that he was lifted gradually out of his dream and into a wakeful reality, but by then there was only silence. He knew that he was not alone in the room, though he had not heard the second cot carried in, nor the coming of the one who was to lie beside him. But even before he turned his head, and saw by the faint glimmer of lamplight the white shape stretched on the pallet, he knew who it was. The presence or absence of this one creature was the pulse of his life now. If Fidelis was by, the beat of his blood was strong and comforting, without him it flagged and weakened.
And therefore it must be Fidelis who had grieved alone in the night, enduring what he could not change, whatever burden of sin or sorrow it was that swelled in him speechless and found no remedy.
Humilis put back the single cover from over him, and sat up, swinging his feet to the stone floor between the two beds. He had no need to stand, only to lift the little lamp carefully and lean towards the sleeper, shielding the light so that it should not fall too sharply upon the young man’s face.
Seen thus, aloof and impenetrable, it was a daunting face. Under the ring of curling hair, the colour of ripe chestnuts, the forehead was both lofty and broad, ivory-smooth above level, strong brows darker than the hair. Large, arched eyelids, faintly veined like the petals of a flower, hid the clear grey eyes. An austere face, the jaw sharply outlined and resolute, the mouth fastidious, the cheekbones high and proud. If he had indeed shed tears, they were gone. There was only a fine dew of sweat on his upper lip. Humilis sat studying him steadily for a long time.
The boy had shed his habit in order to sleep in better comfort. He lay on his side, cheek pressed into the pillow, the loose linen shirt open at his throat, and the chain that he wore had slid its links down in a silver coil into the hollow of his neck, and laid bare to view on the pillow the token that hung upon it.
Not a cross studded with semi-precious stones, but a ring, a thin gold finger-ring made in the spiral form of a coiled snake, with two splinters of red for eyes. An old ring, very old, for the finer chasing of head and scales was worn smooth with time, and the coils were wafer-thin.
Humilis sat gazing at this small, significant thing, and could not turn his eyes away. The lamp shook in his hand, and he laid it back on its stand in careful haste, for fear he should spill a drop of hot oil on the naked throat or outflung arm, and startle Fidelis out of what was at least oblivion, if not genuine rest. Now he knew everything, the best and the worst, all there was to know, except how to find a way out of this web. Not for himself-his own way out opened clear before him, and was no long journey. But for this sleeper…
Humilis lay back on his bed, trembling with the knowledge of a great wonder and a great danger, and waited for morning.
Brother Cadfael rose at dawn, long before Prime, and went out into the garden, but even there there was little air to breathe. A leaden stillness hung over the world, under a thin ceiling of cloud, through which the rising sun seemed to burn unimpeded. He went down to the Meole Brook, down the bleached slopes of the pease-fields, from which the haulms had long since been sickled and taken in for stable-bedding, leaving the white stubble to be ploughed into the ground for the next year’s crop. Cadfael shed his sandals and waded into the slack, shallow water that was left, and found it warm where he had hoped for a little coolness. This weather, he thought, cannot continue much longer, it must break. Someone will get the brunt of the storm, and if it’s thunder, as by the smell in the air and the prickling of my skin it surely will be, Shrewsbury will get its share. Thunder, like commerce, followed the river valleys.
Once out of his bed, he had lost the fine art of being idle. He filled in the time until Prime with some work among the herbs, and some early watering while the sun was still climbing, round and dull gold behind its veil of haze. These functions his hands and eyes could take care of, while his mind was free to fret and speculate over the complicated fortunes of people for whom he had formed a strong affection. No question but Godfrid Marescot-to think of him as an affianced man was to give him his old name-was busy leaving this world at a steady, unflinching walk, and every day he quickened his pace like a man anxious to be gone, and yet every day looked back over his shoulder in case that lost bride of his might be following on his heels rather than waiting for him patiently along the road ahead. And what could any man tell him for his reassurance? And what could afford any comfort to Nicholas Harnage, who had been too slow in prizing her fitly and making his bid for her favour?
A mile from Wherwell, and never seen again. And gone with her, temptation enough for harm, the valuables and the money she carried. And one man only as visible and obvious suspect, Adam Heriet, with everything against him except for Hugh’s scrupulous conviction that he had been in genuine desperation to get news of her. He had asked and asked, and never desisted until he reached Shrewsbury. Or had he simply been fishing, not for news of her so much as for a glimpse, any glimpse, into Hugh’s mind, any unwary word that would tell him how much the law already knew, and what chance he still had, by silence or lies or any other means, of brazening his way safely through his present peril?
Other inconsequent questions jutted from the obscurity like the untrimmed overgrowths from the hedges of a neglected maze. Why did the girl choose Wherwell, in the first place? Certainly she might have preferred it as being far from her home, no bad principle when beginning a new life. Or because it was one of the chief houses of Benedictine nuns in all the south country, with scope for a gifted sister to rise to office and power. And why did she give orders to three of her escort to remain in Andover instead of accompanying her all the way. True, the one she retained was her confidant and willing slave from infancy. If that was indeed true of him? It was reputed of him, yes, but truth and reputation sometimes part company. And if true, why did she dismiss even him short of her goal? Perhaps better phrase that more carefully: Did she dismiss him short of her goal? Then where did he spend the lost hours before he returned to Andover? Gaping at the wonders of Winchester, as he claimed? Or attending to more sinister business? What became of the treasures she carried? No great fortune, except to a man who lacked any fortune, but to him wealth enough. And always: What became of her?