was no harm in mentioning the need. It did not matter that Winifred’s slender Welsh bones were still in the soil of Gwytherin, many miles away in North Wales, where her ministry had been spent. Saints are not corporeal, but presences, they can reach and touch wherever their grace and generosity desire.
It came into Cadfael’s mind, on this particular morning, to say a word also for Generys, the stranger, the dark woman who was also Welsh, and whose beautiful, disturbing shadow haunted the imaginations of many others besides the husband who had abandoned her. Whether she lived out the remnant of her life somewhere far distant from her own country, in lands she had never thought to visit, among people she had never desired to know, or was lying now in that quiet corner of the cemetery here, removed from abbey land to lie in abbey land, the thought of her touched him nearly, and must surely stir the warmth and tenderness of the saint who had escaped a like exile. Cadfael put forward her case with confidence, on his knees on the lowest step of Winifred’s altar, where Brother Rhun, when she had led him by the hand and healed his lameness, had laid his discarded crutches.
When he rose, the first faint pre-dawn softening of the darkness had grown into a pallid, pearly hint of light, drawing in the tall shapes of the nave windows clearly, and conjuring pillar and vault and altar out of the gloom. Cadfael passed down the nave to the west door, which was never fastened but in time of war or danger, and went out to the steps to look along the Foregate towards the bridge and the town.
They were coming. An hour and more yet to Prime, and only the first dim light by which to ride out, but he could already hear the hooves, crisp and rapid and faintly hollow on the bridge. He heard the change in their tread as they emerged upon the solid ground of the Foregate, and saw as it were an agitation of the darkness, movement without form, even before faint glints of lambent light on steel gave shape to their harness and brought them human out of the obscurity. No panoply, only the lance-pennants, two slung trumpets for very practical use, and the workmanlike light arms in which they rode. Thirty lances and five mounted archers. The remainder of the archers had gone ahead with the supplies. Hugh had done well by King Stephen, they made a very presentable company and numbered, probably, more than had been demanded.
Cadfael watched them pass, Hugh at the head on his favourite raw-boned grey. There were faces he knew among them, seasoned soldiers of the garrison, sons of merchant families from the town, expert archers from practice at the butts under the castle wall, young squires from the manors of the shire. In normal times the common service due from a crown manor would have been perhaps one esquire and his harness, and a barded horse, for forty days’ service against the Welsh near Oswestry. Emergencies such as the present anarchy in East Anglia upset all normalities, but some length of service must have been stipulated even now. Cadfael had not asked for how many days these men might be at risk. There went Nigel Apsley among the lances, well-mounted and comely. That lad had made one tentative assay into treason, Cadfael remembered, only three years back, and no doubt was intent upon putting that memory well behind him by diligent service now. Well, if Hugh saw fit to make use of him, he had probably learned his lesson well, and was not likely to stray again. And he was a good man of his hands, athletic and strong, worth his place.
They passed, the drumming of their hooves dull on the packed, dry soil of the roadway, and the sound ebbed into distance along the wall of the enclave. Cadfael watched them until they almost faded from sight in the gloom, and then at the turn of the highway vanished altogether round the high precinct wall. The light came grudgingly, for the sky hung low in heavy cloud. This was going to be a dark and overcast day, possibly later a day of rain. Rain was the last thing King Stephen would want in the Fens, to reduce all land approaches and complicate all marshland paths. It costs much money to keep an army in the field, and though the king summoned numbers of men to give duty service this time, he would still be paying a large company of Flemish mercenaries, feared and hated by the civilian population, and disliked even by the English who fought alongside them. Both rivals in the unending dispute for the crown made use of Flemings. To them the right side was the side that paid them, and could as easily change to the opposing party if they offered more; yet Cadfael in his time had known many mercenaries who held fast faithfully to their bargains, once struck, while barons and earls like de Mandeville changed direction as nimbly as weathercocks for their own advantage.
They were gone, Hugh’s compact and competent little company, even the last fading quiver and reverberation of earth under them stilled. Cadfael turned and went back through the great west door into the church.
There was another figure moving softly round the parish altar, a silent shadow in the dimness still lit only by the constant lamps. Cadfael followed him into the choir, and watched him light a twisted straw taper at the small red glow, and kindle the altar candles ready for Prime. It was a duty that was undertaken in a rota, and Cadfael had no idea at this moment whose turn this day might be, until he had advanced almost within touch of the man standing quietly, with head raised, gazing at the altar. An erect figure, lean but sinewy and strong, with big, shapely hands folded at his waist, and deepset eyes wide and fixed in a rapt dream. Brother Ruald heard the steady steps drawing near to him, but felt no need to turn his head or in any other way acknowledge a second presence. Sometimes he seemed almost unaware that there were others sharing this chosen life and this place of refuge with him. Only when Cadfael stood close beside him, sleeve to sleeve, and the movement made the candles flicker briefly, did Ruald look round with a sharp sigh, disturbed out of his dream.
‘You are early up, Brother,’ he said mildly. ‘Could you not sleep?’
‘I rose to see the sheriff and his company set out,’ said Cadfael.
“They are gone already?’ Ruald drew breath wonderingly, contemplating a life and a discipline utterly alien to his former or his present commitment. Half the life he could expect had been spent as a humble craftsman, for some obscure reason the least regarded among craftsmen, though why honest potters should be accorded such low status was a mystery to Cadfael. Now all the life yet remaining to him would be spent here in the devoted service of God. He had never so much as shot at the butts for sport, as the young bloods of Shrewsbury’s merchant families regularly did, or done combat with singlesticks or blunt swords at the common exercise-ground. ‘Father Abbot will have prayers said daily for their safe and early return,’ he said. ‘And so will Father Boniface at the parish services.’ He said it as one offering reassurance and comfort to a soul gravely concerned, but by something which touched him not at all. A narrow life his had been, Cadfael reflected, and looked back with gratitude at the width and depth of his own. And suddenly it began to seem to him as though all the passion there had been even in this man’s marriage, all the blood that had burned in its veins, must have come from the woman.
‘It is to be hoped,’ he said shortly,’that they come back as many as they have set out today.’
‘So it is,’ agreed Ruald meekly, ‘yet they who take the sword, so it’s written, will perish by the sword.’
‘You will not find a good honest swordsman quarrelling with that,’ said Cadfael. “There are far worse ways.’
‘That may well be true,’ said Ruald very seriously. ‘I do know that I have things to repent, things for which to do penance, fully as dreadful as the shedding of blood. Even in seeking to do what God required of me, did not I kill? Even if she is still living, there in the east, I took as it were the breath of life from her. I did not know it then. I could not even see her face clearly, to understand how I tore her. And here am I, unsure now whether I did well at all in following what I thought was a sacred beckoning, or whether I should not have forgone even this, for her sake. It may be God was putting me to the test. Tell me, Cadfael, you have lived in the world, travelled the world, known the extremes to which men can be driven, for good or ill. Do you think there was ever any man ready to forgo even heaven, to stay with another soul who loved him, in purgatory?’
To Cadfael, standing close beside him, this lean and limited man seemed to have grown taller and more
