And on the way she did indeed pour out in her relief and eagerness what she could not have said so freely by daylight. It was not yet dark, but a fine neutral twilight in which they saw each other clear but without colours.
“The bushes there are thick. I heard him stir and groan, and I went to look. He looks like a young gentleman of family, someone’s squire. Yes, he talked to me, but — but told me nothing, it was like talking to a wilful child. So weak, and blood on his shoulder and arm, and making little jests … But he trusted me enough to know I wouldn’t betray him.” She skipped beside Cadfael through the tall stubble into which the abbey sheep would soon be turned to graze, and to fertilise the field with their droppings. “I gave him what I had, and told him to lie still, and I would bring help as soon as it grew dusk.”
“Now we’re near, do you lead the way. You he’ll know.” There was already starlight before the sun was gone, a lovely August light that would still last them, their eyes being accustomed, an hour or more, while veiling them from other eyes. Godith withdrew from Cadfael’s clasp the hand that had clung like a child’s through the stubble, and waded forward into the low, loose thicket of bushes. On their left hand, within a few yards of them, the river ran, dark and still, only the thrusting sound of its current like a low throb shaking the silence, and an occasional gleam of silver showing where its eddies swirled.
“Hush! It’s me — Ganymede! And a friend to us both!”
In the sheltered dimness a darker form stirred, and raised into sight a pale oval of face and a tangled head of hair almost as pale. A hand was braced into the grass to thrust the half-seen stranger up from the ground. No broken bones there, thought Cadfael with satisfaction. The hard-drawn breath signalled stiffness and pain, but nothing mortal. A young, muted voice said: “Good lad! Friends I surely need …”
Cadfael kneeled beside him and lent him a shoulder to lean against. “First, before we move you, where’s the damage? Nothing out of joint-by the look of you, nothing broken.” His hands were busy about the young man’s body and limbs, he grunted cautious content.
“Nothing but gashes,” muttered the boy laboriously, and gasped at a shrewd touch. “I lost enough blood to betray me, but into the river … And half-drowned … they must think wholly …” He relaxed with a great sigh, feeling how confidently he was handled.
“Food and wine will put the blood back into you, in time. Can you rise and go?”
“Yes,” said his patient grimly, and all but brought his careful supporters down with him, proving it.
“No, let be, we can do better for you than that. Hold fast by me, and turn behind me. Now, your arms round my neck… .”
He was long, but a light weight. Cadfael stooped forward, hooked his thick arms round slim, muscular thighs, and shrugged the weight securely into balance on his solid back. The dank scent of the river water still hung about the. young man’s clothing. “I’m too great a load,” he fretted feebly. “I could have walked …”
“You’ll do as you’re bid, and no argument. Godric, go before, and see there’s no one in sight.”
It was only a short way to the shadow of the mill. Its bulk loomed dark against the still lambent sky, the great round of the undershot wheel showing gaps here and there like breaks in a set of teeth. Godith heaved open the leaning door, and felt her way before them into gloom. Through narrow cracks in the floorboards on the left side she caught fleeting, spun gleams of the river water hurrying beneath. Even in this hot, dry season, lower than it had been for some years, the Severn flowed fast and still.
“There’ll be dry sacks in plenty piled somewhere by the landward wall,” puffed Cadfael at her back. “Feel your way along and find them.” There was also a dusty, rustling layer of last harvest’s chaff under their feet, sending up fine powder to tickle their noses. Godith groped her way to the corner, and spread sacks there in a thick, comfortable mattress, with two folded close for a pillow. “Now take this long-legged heron of yours under the armpits, and help me ease him down… . There, as good a bed as mine in the dortoir! Now close the door, before I make a light to see him by.”
He had brought a good end of candle with him, and a handful of the dry chaff spread on a millstone made excellent tinder for the spark he struck. When his candle was burning steadily he ground it into place on the flickering chaff, quenching the fire that might have blown and spread, and anchoring his light on a safe candlestick, as the wax first softened and then congealed again. “Now let’s look at you!”
The young man lay back gratefully and heaved a huge sigh, meekly abandoning the responsibility for himself. Out of a soiled and weary face, eyes irrepressibly lively gazed up at them, of some light, bright colour not then identifiable. He had a large, generous mouth, drawn with exhaustion but wryly smiling, and the tangle of hair matted and stained from the river would be as fair as corn-stalks when it was clean. “One of them ripped your shoulder for you, I see,” said Cadfael, hands busy unfastening and drawing off the dark cotte encrusted down one sleeve with dried blood. “Now the shirt — you’ll be needing new clothes, my friend, before you leave this hostelry.”
“I’ll have trouble paying my shot,” said the boy, valiantly grinning, and ended the grin with a sharp indrawn breath as the sleeve was detached painfully from his wound.
“Our charges are low. For a straight story you can buy such hospitality as we’re offering. Godric, lad, I need water, and river water’s better than none. See if you can find anything in this place to carry it in.”
She found the sound half of a large pitcher among the debris under the wheel, left by some customer after its handle and lip had got broken, scrubbed it out industriously with the skirt of her cotte, and went obediently to bring water, he hoped safely. The flow of the river here would be fresher than the leat, and occupy her longer on the journey, while Cadfael undid the boy’s belt, and stripped off his shoes and hose, shaking out the blanket to spread over his nakedness. There was a long but not deep gash, he judged from a sword-cut, down the right thigh, a variety of bruises showing bluish on his fair skin, and most strangely, a thin, broken graze on the left side of his neck, and another curiously like it on the outer side of his right wrist. More healed, dark lines, these, older by a day or two than his wounds. “No question,” mused Cadfael aloud, “but you’ve been living an interesting life lately.”
“Lucky to keep it,” murmured the boy, half-asleep in his new ease.
“Who was hunting you?”
“The king’s men — who else?”
“And still will be?”
“Surely. But in a few days I’ll be fit to relieve you of the burden of me …”
“Never mind that now. Turn a little to me — so! Let’s get this thigh bound up, it’s clean enough, it’s knitting already. This will sting.” It did, the youth stiffened and gasped a little, but made no complaint. Cadfael had the wound bound and under the blanket by the time Godith came with the pitcher of water. For want of a handle she had to use two hands to carry it.
“Now we’ll see to this shoulder. This is where you lost so much blood. An arrow did this!” It was an oblique cut sliced through the outer part of his left arm just below the shoulder, bone-deep, leaving an ugly flap of flesh gaping. Cadfael began to sponge away the encrustations of blood from it, and press it firmly together beneath a pad of linen soaked in one of his herbal salves. “This will need help to knit clean,” he said, busy rolling his bandage tightly round the arm. “There, now you should eat, but not too much, you’re over-weary to make the best use of it. Here’s meat and cheese and bread, and keep some by you for morning, you may well be ravenous when you wake.”