Her hand lay firm and cool in his. Her smile was still faint and remote, acknowledging nothing of any other identity but that of Juliana Cruce. He might have thought she was denying her other self, but for the clear, straight gaze of her grey eyes, opened wide to admit him into a shared knowledge where words were unnecessary. Nothing need ever be said where everything was known and understood.
“Madam,” said Nicholas, “to see you here alive and well is all the recompense I need or want.”
“But I hope you will come soon to visit us at Lai,” she said. “It would be a kindness. I should like to make better amends.”
And that was all. He kissed the hand he held, and she turned and went away from him. And surely this was nothing more than paying a due of gratitude, as she paid all her dues, to the last scruple of pain, devotion and love. But she had asked, and she was not one of those women who ask without meaning. And he would go to Lai, soon, yes, very soon. To make do with the touch of her hand and her pale smile and the undoubted trust she had just placed in him, until it was fair and honourable to hope for more.
They sat in Cadfael’s workshop in the herb-garden, in the after-dinner hush, Sister Magdalen, Hugh Beringar and Cadfael together. It was all over, the curious all gone home, the brothers innocent of all ill except the loss of two of their number, and two who had been with them only a short time, and somewhat withdrawn from the common view, at that. They would soon become but very dim figures, to be remembered by name in prayer while their faces faded from memory.
“There could still be some awkward questions asked,” admitted Cadfael, “if anyone went to the trouble to probe deeper, but now no one ever will. The Order can breathe again. There’ll be no scandal, no aspersions cast on either Hyde or Shrewsbury, no legatine muck-raking, no ballad-makers running off dirty rhymes about monks and their women, and hawking them round the markets, no bishops bearing down on us with damning visitations, no carping white monks fulminating about the laxity and lechery of the Benedictines… And no foul blight clinging round that poor girl’s name and blackening her for life. Thank God!” he concluded fervently.
He had broached one of his best flasks of wine. He felt they deserved it as much as they needed it.
“Adam was in her confidence throughout,” said Hugh. “It was he who got her the clothes to turn her into a young man, he who cut her hair, and sold for her the few things she considered her own, to pay her lodging until she presented herself at Hyde. When he said she was dead, he spoke in the bitterness of his heart, for she was indeed dead to the world, by her own choice. And when I brought him from Brigge, he was frantic to get news of her, for he’d given her up for lost after Hyde burned, but when I told him there was a second brother come from Hyde with Godfrid, then he was easy, for he knew who the second must be. He would have died rather than betray her. He knew the ugliness of which men are capable, as well as we.”
“And she, I hope and think,” said Cadfael, “must know the loyalty and devotion of which one man, at least, was capable. She should, seeing it is the mirror of her own. No, there was no other solution possible but for Fidelis to die and vanish without trace, before Juliana could come back to life. But I never thought the chance would come as it did…”
“You took it nimbly enough,” said Hugh.
“It was then or never. It would have come out else. Madog would never have said anything, but she had stopped caring when Humilis died.” He had had her in his arms, herself half-dead, on that ride to Godric’s Ford to commit her to Sister Magdalen’s care, the russet tonsure wet and draggled on his shoulder, the pale, soiled face stricken into ice, the grey eyes wide open, seeing nothing. “It was as much as we could do to get him out of her arms. Without Aline we should have been lost. I almost feared we might lose the girl as well as the man. But Sister Magdalen is a powerful physician.”
“That letter I composed for her,” said Sister Magdalen, looking back on it with a critical but satisfied eye, “was the hardest ever I had to write. And not a lie from start to finish! Not one in the whole of it. A little mild deception, but no lies. That was important, you understand. Do you know why she chose to be mute? Well, there is the matter of her voice, of course, a woman’s if ever there was. The face-it’s a good face, clear and strong and delicate, one that could as well belong to a boy as to a girl, but not the voice. But beyond that,” said Sister Magdalen, “she had two good reasons for being dumb. First, she was resolute she would never ask anything of him, never make any woman’s appeal, for she held he owed her nothing, no privilege, no consideration. What she got of him she had to earn. And second, she was absolute she would never lie to him. Who cannot speak cannot plead or cajole, and cannot lie.”
“So he owed her nothing, and she owed him all,” said Hugh, shaking his head over the unfathomable strangeness of women.
“Ah, but she also had her due,” said Cadfael. “What she wanted and held to be hers she took, the whole of it, to the end, to the last moment. His company, the care of him, the secrets of his body, as intimate as ever was marriage-his love, far beyond the common claims of marriage. No use any man telling her she was free, when she knew she was a wife. I wonder is she free even now.”
“Not yet, but she will be,” Sister Magdalen assured them. “She has too much courage to give over living. And if that young man who fancies her has courage enough not to give over loving, he may do very well in the end. He starts with a strong advantage, having loved the same idol. Besides,” she added, viewing a future that held a certain promise even for some who felt just now that they had only a past, “I doubt if that household of her brother’s, with a wife in possession, and three children, not to speak of another on the way-no, I doubt if an unwed sister’s part in Lai will have much lasting attraction for a woman like Juliana Cruce.”
The half-hour of rest after dinner had passed, the brothers stirred again to their work, and so did Cadfael, parting from his friends at the turn of the box hedge. Sister Magdalen and her two stout woodsmen would be off back to Godric’s Ford by the westward track, and Hugh was heading thankfully for home. Cadfael passed through the herb-garden into the small plot where he had a couple of apple trees and a pear tree of his own growing, just old enough to crop. He surveyed the scene with deep content. Everything was greening afresh where it had been pale as straw. The Meole Brook had still a few visible shoals, but was no longer a mere sad, sluggish network of rivulets struggling through pebble and sand. September was again September, mellowed and fruitful after the summer heat and drought. Much of the abundant weight of fruit had fallen unplumped by reason of the dryness, but even so there would still be harvest enough for thanksgiving. After every extreme the seasons righted themselves, and won back the half at least of what was lost. So might the seasons of men right themselves, with a little help by way of rain from heaven.
O God, who hast consecrated the state of Matrimony to such an excellent mystery… Look mercifully, upon these thy servants. from ‘The form of Solemnization of Matrimony’ in The Book of Common Prayer