An Excellent Mystery (28 page)

He
rose early on the funeral day, to have a little time for his private and
vehement prayers before Prime. Much depended on this day, he had good reason to
be uneasy, and to turn to Saint Winifred for indulgence, pardon and aid. She
had forgiven him, before this, for very irregular means towards desirable ends,
and shown him humouring kindness when sterner patrons might have frowned.

But
this morning she had another petitioner before him. Someone was crouched almost
prostrate on the three steps leading up to her altar. The rigid lines of body
and limbs, the convulsive knot of the linked hands contorted on the highest
step, spoke of a need at least as extreme as his own. Cadfael drew back
silently into shadow, and waited, and after what seemed a long and anguished
time the petitioner gathered himself stiffly and slowly, like a man crippled,
rose from his knees, and slipped away towards the south door into the cloister.
It came as a surprise and a wonder that Brother Urien should be tearing out his
heart thus alone in the early morning. Cadfael had never paid, perhaps, sufficient
attention to Brother Urien. Who did? Who talked with him, who was familiar with
him? The man elected himself into solitude.

Cadfael
made his prayers. He had done what seemed best, he had had loyal and ingenious
helpers, now he could only plump the whole matter confidingly into Saint
Winifred’s tolerant Welsh arms, remind her he was her distant kin, and leave
the rest to her.

In
the morning of a mild, clear day, with all due ceremony and every honour,
Brother Humilis, Godfrid Marescot, was buried in the transept of the abbey
church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul.

Cadfael
had been looking in vain for one particular mourner, and had not found her, but
having rested his case with the saint he left the church not greatly troubled.
And as the brothers emerged into the great court, Abbot Radulfus leading, there
she was, neat and competent and comely as ever, waiting near the gatehouse to
advance to meet the concourse, like a lone knight venturing undeterred against
an army. She had a gift for timing, she had conjured up for herself a great
cloud of witnesses. Let the revelation be public and wonderful.

Sister
Magdalen, of the Benedictine cell of Godric’s Ford, a few miles distant towards
the Welsh border, had been both beautiful and worldly in her youth, a baron’s
mistress by choice, and honest and loyal to her bargain at that. True to her
word and bond then, so she was now in her new vocation. If she had brought as
escort some of her devoted army of countrymen from the western forests on this
occasion, she had discreetly removed them from sight at this moment. She had
the field to herself.

A
plump, rosy, middle-aged lady, bright-eyed and brisk, the remnant of her beauty
wisely tempered by the austere whiteness of her wimple and blackness of her
habit into something homely and comfortable, at least until her indomitable
dimple plunged dazzlingly in her cheek, like the twinkling dive of a small
golden fish, and again smoothed out as rapidly and demurely as the water of a
stream resuming its sunny level. Cadfael had known her for a few years now, and
had had occasion to rely on her more than once in complex matters. His trust in
her was absolute.

She
advanced decorously upon the abbot, glanced aside and veered slightly towards
Hugh, and succeeded in halting them both, arresting sacred and secular
authority together. All the remaining mourners, monks and laymen, flooded out
from the church and stood waiting respectfully for the nobility to disperse
unimpeded.

“My
lords,” said Sister Magdalen, dividing a reverence between church and state, “I
pray your pardon that I come so late, but the recent rains have flooded some
parts of the way, and I did not allow enough time for the delays. Mea culpa! I
shall make my prayers for our brothers in private, and hope to attend the Mass
for them here, to make amends for today’s failing.”

“Late
or early, sister, you have a welcome assured,” said the abbot. “You should stay
a day or two, until the ways are clear again. And certainly you must be my
guest at dinner now you are here.”

“You
are very gracious, Father,” she said. “Having failed of my time, I would not
have ventured to trouble you now, but that I am the bearer of a letter, to the
lord sheriff.” She turned and looked full at Hugh, very gravely. She had the
rolled and sealed parchment leaf in her hand. “I must tell you how this came to
Godric’s Ford. Mother Mariana regularly receives letters from the prioress of
our mother house at Polesworth. In the most recent, which came only yesterday,
this other letter was enclosed, from a lady just arrived with a company of
other travellers, and now resting after her journey. It is superscribed to the
lord sheriff of Shropshire, and sealed with the seal of Polesworth. I brought
it with me at this opportunity, seeing it may be important. With your leave,
Father, here I deliver it.”

How
it was done remained her secret, but she had a way of holding people so that
they felt they might miss some prodigy if they went away from her. No one had
moved, no one had slipped into casual talk, all the movement there was in the
court was of those still making their way out to join the press, and sidling
softly round the periphery to find a place where they might see and hear
better. There was only the softest rustling of garments and shuffling of feet
as Hugh took the scroll. The seal would be immaculate, for it was also the seal
of Polesworth’s daughter cell at Godric’s Ford.

“Have
I your leave, Father? It may well be something of importance.”

“By
all means, read,” said the abbot.

Hugh
broke the seal and unrolled the leaf. He read with brows drawn close in fixed
attention. Round the great court men held their breath, or drew it very softly
and cautiously. There was tension in the air, after all that had passed.

“Father,”
said Hugh, looking up abruptly, “there is matter here that concerns more than
me. Others here have much more to do in this, and deserve and need to know at
once what is set down here. It is a marvel! Of such weight, I should have had
to issue its purport as a public proclamation. With your leave I’ll do so here
and now, before all this company.”

There
was no need to raise his voice, every ear was strained to attend on every word
as he read clearly: ‘My lord Sheriff. It is come to my ears, to my great
dismay, that in my own shire I am rumoured to be dead, robbed and done to death
for gain. Wherefore I send in haste this present witness that I am not so
wronged, but declare myself alive and well, here arrived into the hospitality
of the house sisters at Polesworth. I repent me that lives and honours may have
been put in peril mistakenly on my account, some, perhaps, who have been good
friends and servants to me. And I ask pardon if I have been the means of
disruption and distress to any, unknown to me but through my silence. There
shall be amends made.

‘As
to my living heretofore, I confess with all humility that I came to doubt
whether I had the nun’s true vocation before ever I reached my goal, and
therefore I have been living retired and serviceable, but have taken no vows as
a nun. At Sopwell Priory by Saint Albans a devout woman may live a life of
holiness and service short of the veil, through the charity of Prior Geoffrey.
Now, being advised I am sought as one dead, I desire to show myself to all
those who know me, that no one may go any longer in grief or peril because of
me.

‘I
entreat you, my lord, make this known to my good brother and all my kin, and
send some trustworthy man to bring me safe to Shrewsbury, and I shall rest your
lordship’s grateful debtor.

Julian
Cruce.’

Long
before he had reached the end there had begun a stirring, a murmur, an eddy
that shook its way like a sudden rising wind through the ranks of the
listeners, and then a roused humming like bees in swarm, and suddenly
Reginald’s stunned silence broke in a bellow of wonder, bewilderment and
delight all mingled: “My sister living? She’s alive! By God, we have been
wildly astray…”

“Alive!”
echoed Nicholas in a dazed whisper. “Julian is alive… alive and well…”

The
murmur grew to a throbbing chorus of wonder and excitement, and above it the
voice of Abbot Radulfus soared exultantly: “God’s mercies are infinite. Out of
the shadow of death he demonstrates his miraculous goodness.”

“We
have wronged an honest man!” cried Reginald, as vehement in amends as in
accusation. “He was as truly her man as ever he claimed! Now it comes clear to
me — all that he sold he sold for her, surely for her! Only those woman’s
trinkets that were hers in the world — she had the right to what they would
fetch…”

“I’ll
bring her from Polesworth myself, along with you,” said Hugh, “and Adam Heriet
shall be hauled out of his prison a free man, and go along with us. Who has a
better right?”

The
burial of Brother Humilis had become in a moment the resurrection of Julian
Cruce, from a mourning into a celebration, from Good Friday to Easter. “A life
taken from us and a life restored,” said Abbot Radulfus “is perfect balance,
that we may fear neither living nor dying.”

Brother
Rhun came from the refectory with his mind full of a strange blend of pleasure
and sorrow, and took them with him into the quietness and solitude of the abbey
orchards along the Gaye. There would be no one there at this hour of this
season if he left the kitchen garden and the fields behind, and went on to the
very edge of abbey ground. Beyond, trees came right down to the waterside,
overhanging the river. There he halted, and stood gazing downstream, where
Fidelis was gone.

The
water was still turgid and dark, but the level had subsided slightly, though it
still lay in silvery shallows over hollows in the water-meadows on the far
shore. Rhun thought of his friend’s body being swept down beneath that opaque
surface, lost beyond recovery. The morning had seen a woman supposed dead
restored to life, and there was gladness in that, but it did not balance the
grief he felt over the loss of Fidelis. He missed him with an aching intensity,
though he had said no word of his pain to anyone, nor responded when others
found the words he could not find to give expression to sorrow.

He
crossed the boundary of abbey land, and threaded a way through the belt of
trees, to have a view down the next long reach. And there suddenly he stopped
and drew back a pace, for someone else was there before him, some creature even
more unhappy than himself. Brother Urien sat huddled in the muddy grass among
the bushes at the edge of the water, and stared at the rapid eddies as they
coiled and sped by. Downstream from here the dull mirrors of water dappling the
far meadows had been fed, since the storm, by two nights of gentler rain, and
once filled could not drain away, they could only dry up slowly. Their
stillness and tranquillity, reflecting back the pale blue of sky and fleeting
white of clouds, made the demonic speed of the main stream seem more than a mere
aspect of nature, rather a live, malignant force that gulped down men.

Rhun
had made no noise in his approach, yet Urien grew aware that he was not alone,
and turned a defensive face, hollow-eyed and hostile.

“You
too?” he said dully. “Why you? It was I destroyed Fidelis.”

“No,
you did no such thing!” protested Rhun, and came out of the bushes to stand
beside him. “You must not say or think it.”

“Fool,
you know what I did, why deny it? You know it, you did what you could to undo
it,” said Urien bleakly. “I drove, I threatened — I destroyed Fidelis. If I had
the courage I would go after him by the same way, but I have not the courage.”

Rhun
sat down beside him in the grass, close but not touching him, and earnestly
studied the drawn and embittered face. “You have not slept,” he said gently.

“How
should I sleep, knowing what I know? Not slept, no, nor eaten, either, but it
takes a long time to die of not eating. A man can go on water alone for many
weeks. And I am neither patient nor brave. There’s only one way for me, and
that is full confession. Oh, not for absolution, no — for retribution. I have
been sitting here preparing for it. Soon I will go and get it over.”

“No!”
said Rhun, with sudden, fierce authority. “That you must not do.” He was not
entirely clear himself why this was so urgent a matter, but there was something
pricking at his mind, some truth deep within him that he could glimpse only by
sidelong flashes, out of the corner of his mind’s eye. When he turned to pursue
it directly, it vanished. Life and death were both mysteries. A life taken from
us and a life restored, Abbot Radulfus had said, is perfect balance. A life
taken, and a life restored, almost in the same moment…

He
had it, then. Light opened brilliantly before him, the load on his heart was
lifted away. A perfect balance, yes! He sat entranced, so filled and overfilled
with enlightenment that all his senses were turned inward to the glow, like
cold hands spread blissfully at a bright fire, and he scarcely heard Urien
saying savagely: “That I must and will do. How can I bear this longer alone?”

Rhun
stirred and awakened from his trance of bliss. “You need not be alone,” he
said. “You are not alone now. I am here. Say what you choose to me, but never
to any other. Even the confessional might not be secret enough. Then you would
indeed have destroyed all that Fidelis was, all that Fidelis did, fouled and
muddied it into a byword, a scandal that would cast a shadow on us all, on the
Order, most of all on his memory…” He caught himself up there, smiling. “See
how strong is habit! But I do know — I know now what you could tell, and for
the sake of Fidelis it must never be told. Surely you see that, as clearly as I
now see it. Do no more harm! Bear what you have to bear, and be as silent as
Fidelis was.”