True, yet not quite the whole truth, or she could not have learned so much of the boy in one or two brief meetings. She was quite sure of her own judgement.
“Is it ready?” she asked, returning abruptly to her errand. “He’ll be fretting.”
Cadfael surrendered the bottle, and counted out pastilles into a small wooden box. “A spoonful, smaller than your kitchen kind, night and morning, sipped down slowly, and during the day if he feels the need, but always at least three hours between. And these pastilles he can suck when he will, they’ll ease his throat.” And he asked, as she took them from him: “Does any other know that you have been meeting with Tutilo? For you have observed no caution with me.”
Her shoulders lifted in an untroubled shrug; she was smiling. “I take as I find. But Tutilo has talked of you. We do no wrong, and you will charge us with none. Where it’s needful we take good care.” And she thanked him cheerfully, and was turning to the door when he asked: “May I know your name?”
She turned back to him in the doorway. “My name is Daalny. That is how my mother said it, I never saw it written. I cannot read or write. My mother told me that the first hero of her people came into Ireland out of the western seas, from the land of the happy dead, which they call the land of the living. His name was Partholan,” she said, and her voice had taken on for a moment the rhythmic, singing tone of the storyteller. “And Daalny was his queen. There was a race of monsters then in the land, but Partholan drove them northward into the seas and beyond. But in the end there was a great pestilence, and all the race of Partholan gathered together on the great plain, and died, and the land was left empty for the next people to come out of the western sea. Always from the west. They come from there, and when they die they go back there.”
She was away into the gathering twilight, lissome and straight, leaving the door open behind her. Cadfael watched her until she rounded the box hedge and vanished from his sight. Queen Daalny in slavery, almost a myth like her namesake, and every bit as perilous.
At the end of the hour she had allowed herself, Donata turned the hourglass on the bench beside her bed, and opened her eyes. They had been closed while Tutilo played, to absent herself in some degree from him, to relieve him of the burden of a withered old woman’s regard, and leave him free to enjoy his own talent without the need to defer to his audience. Though she might well take pleasure in contemplating his youth and freshness, there could hardly be much joy for him in confronting her emaciation and ruin. She had had the harp moved from the hall into her bedchamber to give him the pleasure of tuning and playing it, and been glad to see that while he stroked and tightened and adjusted, bending his curly head over the work, he had forgotten her very presence. That was as it should be. For her the exquisite anguish of his music was none the less, and his happiness was all the more.
But an hour was all she could ask. She had promised he should return by the hour of Compline. She turned the hourglass, and on the instant he broke off, the strings vibrating at the slight start he made.
“Did I play falsely?” he asked, dismayed.
“No, but you ask falsely,” she said drily. “You know there was no fault there. But time passes, and you must go back to your duty. You have been kind, and I am grateful, but your sub-prior will want you back as I promised, in time for Compline. If I hope to be able to ask again, I must keep to terms.”
“I could play you to sleep,” he said, “before I go.”
“I shall sleep. Never fret for me. No, you must go, and there is something I want you to take with you. Open the chest there, beside the psaltery you will find a small leather bag. Bring it to me.”
He set the harp aside, and went to do her bidding. She loosened the cord that drew the neck of the little, worn satchel together, and emptied out upon her coverlet a handful of trinkets, a gold neckchain, twin bracelets, a heavy torque of gold set with roughly cut gemstones, and two rings, one a man’s massive seal, the other a broad gold band, deeply engraved. Her own finger showed the shrunken, pallid mark below the swollen knuckle, from which she had removed it. Last came a large and intricate ring brooch, the fastening of a cloak, reddish gold, Saxon work.
“Take these, and add them to whatever you have amassed for Ramsey. My son promises a good load of wood, part coppice wood, part seasoned timber, indeed Eudo will be sending the carts down tomorrow by the evening. But these are my offering. They are my younger son’s ransom.” She swept the gold back into the bag, and drew the neck closed.
“Take them!”
Tutilo stood hesitant, eyeing her doubtfully. “Lady, there needs no ransom. He had not taken final vows. He had the right to choose his own way. He owes nothing.”
“Not Sulien, but I,” she said, and smiled. “You need not scruple to take them. They are mine to give, not from my husband’s family, but my father’s.”
“But your son’s wife,” he urged, “and the lady who is to marry your Sulien, have not they some claim? These are of great value, and women like such things.”
“My daughters are in my councils. We are all of one mind. Ramsey may pray for my soul,” she said serenely, “and that will settle all accounts.”
He gave in then, still in some wonder and doubt, accepted the bag from her, and kissed the hand that bestowed it.
“Go now,” said Donata, stretching back into her pillows with a sigh. “Edred will ride with you to see you over the ferry, and bring back the pony. You should not go on foot tonight.”
He made his farewells to her, still a little anxious, unsure whether he did right to accept what seemed to him so rich a gift. He turned again in the doorway to look back, and she shook her head at him, and motioned him away with an authority that drove him out in haste, as though he had been scolded.
In the courtyard the groom was waiting with the ponies. It was already night, but clear and moonlit, with scudding clouds high overhead. At the ferry the river was running higher than when they had come, though there had been no rain. Somewhere upstream there was flood water on its way.
He delivered his treasures proudly to Sub-Prior Herluin at the end of Compline. The entire household, and most of the guests, were there to witness the arrival of the worn leather bag, and glimpsed its contents as Tutilo joyfully displayed them. Donata’s gifts were bestowed with the alms of the burgesses of Shrewsbury in the wooden coffer that was to carry them back to Ramsey, with the cartload of timber from Longner, while Herluin and Tutilo went on to visit Worcester, and possibly Evesham and Pershore as well, to appeal for further aid.
Herluin turned the key on the treasury, and bestowed the coffer on the altar of Saint Mary until the time should come to commit it to the care of Nicol, his most trusted servant, for the journey home. Two days more, and they would be setting out. The abbey had loaned a large wagon for transport, and the town provided the loan of a team to draw it. Horses from the abbey stable would carry Herluin and Tutilo on their further journey. Shrewsbury had done very well by its sister-house, and Donata’s gold was the crown of the effort. Many eyes followed the turning of the key, and the installation of the coffer on the altar, where awe of heaven would keep it from violation. God has a powerful attraction.