“Then at least,” said Girard quickly, accepting what he saw to be unalterable, but alert to make the most of what ground was left to him, “can I be assured that the bishop will give me as fair a hearing, when it comes to a trial, as you have given me now?”
“I shall see to it that he is informed of your wish and right to be heard,” said the abbot.
“And may we see and speak with Elave, now that we are here? It may help to settle his mind to know that there is a roof and employment ready for him, when he is free to accept them.”
“I see no objection,” said Radulfus.
“In company,” added Gerbert quickly and loudly. “There must be some brother present to witness all that may be said.”
“That can quite well be provided,” said the abbot.
“Brother Cadfael will be paying his daily visit to the young man after chapter, to see how his injuries are healing. He can conduct Master Girard, and remain throughout the visit.” And with that he rose authoritatively to cut off further objections that might be forming in Canon Gerbert’s undoubtedly less agile mind. He had not so much as glanced in Cadfael’s direction. “This chapter is concluded,” he said, and followed his secular visitors out of the chapter house.
Elave was sitting on his pallet under the narrow window of the cell. There was a book open on the reading desk beside him, but he was no longer reading, only frowning over some deep inward consideration drawn from what he had read, and by the set of his face he had not found much that was comprehensible in whichever of the early fathers Anselm had brought him. It seemed to him that most of them spent far more time in denouncing one another than in extolling God, and more venom on the one occupation than fervor on the other. Perhaps there were others who were less ready to declare war at the drop of a word, and actually thought and spoke well of their fellow-theologians, even when they differed, but if so all their books must have been burned, and possibly they themselves into the bargain.
“The longer I study here,” he had said to Brother Anselm bluntly, “the more I begin to think well of heretics. Perhaps I am one, after all. When they all professed to believe in God, and tried to live in a way pleasing to him, how could they hate one another so much?”
In a few curiously companionable days they had arrived at terms on which such questions could be asked and answered freely. And Anselm had turned a page of Origen and replied tranquilly: “It all comes of trying to formulate what is too vast and mysterious to be formulated. Once the bit was between their teeth there was nothing for it but to take exception to anything that differed from their own conception. And every rival conception lured its conceiver deeper and deeper into a quagmire. The simple souls who found no difficulty and knew nothing about formulae walked dry-shod across the same marsh, not knowing it was there.”
“I fancy that was what I was doing,” said Elave ruefully, “until I came here. Now I’m bogged to the knees, and doubt if I shall ever get out.”
“Oh, you may have lost your saving innocence,” said Anselm comfortably, “but if you are sinking it’s in a morass of other men’s words, not your own. They never hold so fast. You have only to close the book.”
“Too late! There are things I want to know now. How did Father and Son first become three? Who first wrote of them as three, to confuse us all? How can there be three, all equal, who are yet not three but one?”
“As the three lobes of the clover leaf are three and equal but united in one leaf,” suggested Anselm.
“And the four-leaved clover, that brings luck? What is the fourth, humankind? Or are we the stem of the threesome, that binds all together?”
Anselm shook his head over him, but with unperturbed serenity and a tolerant grin. “Never write a book, son! You would certainly be made to burn it!”
Now Elave sat in his solitude, which did not seem to him particularly lonely, and thought about this and other conversations which had passed between precentor and prisoner during the past few days, and seriously considered whether a man was really the better for reading anything at all, let alone these labyrinthine works of theology that served only to make the clear and bright seem muddied and dim, by clothing everything they touched in words obscure and shapeless as mist, far out of the comprehension of ordinary men, of whom the greater part of the human creation is composed. When he looked out from the cell window, at a narrow lancet of pale blue sky fretted with the tremor of leaves and feathered with a few wisps of bright white cloud, everything appeared to him radiant and simple again, within the grasp of even the meanest, and conferring benevolence impartially and joyously upon all.
He started when he heard the key grate in the lock, not having associated the murmur of voices outside with his own person. The sounds of the outer world came in to him throughout the day by the window, and the chime of the office bell marked off the hours for him. He was even becoming used to the horarium, and celebrated the regular observances with small inward genuflections of his own. For God was no part of the morass or the labyrinth, and could not be blamed for what men had made of a shining simplicity and certainty.
But the turning of the key in the lock belonged to his own practical workaday world, from which this banishment could only be temporary, possibly for a purpose, a halting place for thought after the journey half across the world. He sat watching the door open upon the summer day outside, and it was not opened inch by cautious inch, but wide and generously, back to touch the wall, as Brother Cadfael came in.
“Son, you have visitors!” He waved them past him into the small, stony room, watching the sudden brightness flood over Elave’s dazzled face and set him blinking. “How is your head this morning?”
The head in question had shed its bandages the previous day, only a dry scar left in the thick hair. Elave said in a daze: “Well, very well!”
“No aches and pains? Then that’s my business done. And now,” said Cadfael, withdrawing to perch on the foot of the bed with his back to the room, “I am one of the stones of the wall. I am ordered to stay with you, but you may regard me as deaf and mute.”
It seemed that he had made mutes of two of the three thus unceremoniously brought together, for Elave had come to his feet in a great start, and stood staring at Fortunata as she was staring at him, flushed and great-eyed, and stricken silent. Only their eyes were still eloquent, and Cadfael had not turned his back so completely that he could not observe them from the corner of his own eye, and read what was not being said. It had not taken those two long to make up their minds. Yet he must remember that this was not so sudden, except in its discovery. They had known each other and lived in the same household from her infancy until her eleventh year, and in another fashion there had surely been a strong fondness, indulgent and condescending, no doubt, on his part, probably worshipping and wistful on hers, for girls tend to achieve grown-up and painful affections far earlier than boys. She had had to wait for her fulfillment until he came home, to find the bud had blossomed, and to stand astonished at its beauty.
“Well, lad!” Girard said heartily, eyeing the young man from head to foot and shaking him warmly by both hands. “You’re home at last after all your ventures, and I not here to greet you! But greet you I do now, and gladly. I never looked to see you in this trouble, but God helping, it will all pass off safely in the end. From all accounts you did well by Uncle William. So far as is in us, we’ll do well by you.”