Ruald entered this house, abandoning his wife. How much did you know of what went on in Sulien’s mind then? Did you know how deeply he was affected to Generys? A first love, the most desperate always. Did you know that in her desolation she gave him cause for a time to think there might be a cure for his? When in truth there was none?’
She had turned her head and fixed her gaunt dark eyes earnestly on Cadfael’s face. And steadily she said: ‘No, I did not know it. I knew he frequented their croft. So he had from a small child, they were fond of him. But if there was so extreme a change, no, he never said word or gave sign. He was a secret child, Sulien. Whatever ailed Eudo I always knew, he is open as the day. Not Sulien!’
‘He has told us that it was so. And did you know that because of this attachment he still went there, even when she had thought fit to put an end to his illusion? And that he was there in the dark,’ said Cadfael with rueful gentleness, ‘when Generys was buried?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I did not know. Only now had I begun to fear it. That or some other knowledge no less dreadful to him.’
‘Dreadful enough to account for much. For why he made up his mind to take the cowl, and not here in Shrewsbury, but far away in Ramsey. What did you make of that, then?’ asked Hugh.
‘It was not so strange in him,’ she said, looking into distance and faintly and ruefully smiling. ‘That was something that could well happen to Sulien, he ran deep, and thought much. And then, there was a bitterness and a pain in the house, and I know he could not choose but feel it and be troubled. I think I was not sorry that he should escape from it and go free, even if it must be into the cloister. I knew of no worse reason. That he had been there, and seen?no, that I did not know.’
‘And what he saw,’ said Hugh, after a brief and heavy silence, ‘was his father, burying the body of Generys.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It must have been so.’
‘We could find no other possibility,’ said Hugh, ‘and I am sorry to have to set it before you. Though I still cannot see what reason there could be, why or how it came about that he killed her.’
‘Oh, no!’ said Donata. ‘No, not that. He buried her, yes. But he did not kill her. Why should he? I see that Sulien believed it, and would not at any cost have it known to the world. But it was not like that.’
‘Then who did?’ demanded Hugh, confounded. ‘Who was her murderer?’
‘No one,’ said Donata. ‘There was no murder.’
Chapter Fourteen
OF THE unbelieving silence that followed, Hugh’s voice asked: ‘If this was not murder, why the secret burial, why conceal a death for which there could be no blame?’
‘I have not said,’ Donata said patiently,’that there was no blame. I have not said that there was no sin. It is not for me to judge. But murder there was none. I am here to tell you truth. The judgement must be yours.’
She spoke as one, and the only one, who could shed light on all that had happened, and the only one who had been kept in ignorance of the need. Her voice remained considerate, authoritative and kind. Very simply and clearly she set out her case, excusing nothing, regretting nothing.
‘When Ruald turned away from his wife, she was desolated and despairing. You will not have forgotten, Father, for you must have been in grave doubt concerning his decision. She, when she found she could not hold him, came to appeal to my husband, as overlord and friend to them both, to reason with Ruald and try to persuade him he did terrible wrong. And truly I think he did his best for her, and again and again went to argue her case, and tried also, surely, to comfort and reassure her, that she should not suffer loss of house and living by reason of Ruald’s desertion. My lord was good to his people. But Ruald would not be turned back from the way he had chosen. He left her. She had loved him out of all measure,’ said Donata dispassionately, speaking pure truth, ‘and in the same measure she hated him. And all these days and weeks my lord had contended for her right, but could not win it. He had never before been so often and so long in her company.’
A moment she paused, looking from face to face, presenting her own ruin with wide, illusionless eyes.
‘You see me, gentlemen. Since that time I may, perhaps, have moved a few short paces nearer the grave, but the change is not so great. I was already what I am now. I had been so for some few years. Three at least, I think, since Eudo had shared my bed, for pity of me, yes, but himself in abstinence to starvation, and without complaint. Such beauty as I ever had was gone, withered away into this aching shell. He could not touch me without causing me pain. And himself worse pain, whether he touched or abstained. And she, you will remember if ever you saw her, she was most beautiful. What all men said, I say, also. Most beautiful, and enraged, and desperate. And famished, like him. I fear I distress you, gentlemen,’ she said, seeing them all three held in frozen awe at her composure and her merciless candour, delivered without emphasis, even with sympathy. ‘I hope not. I simply wish to make all things plain. It is necessary.’
‘There is no need to labour further,’ said Radulfus. “This is not hard to understand, but very hard to hear as it must be to tell.’
‘No,’ she said reassuringly, ‘I feel no reluctance. Never fret for me. I owe truth to her, as well as to you. But enough, then. He loved her. She loved him. Let us make it brief. They loved, and I knew. No one else. I did not blame them. Neither did I forgive them. He was my lord, I had loved him five-and-twenty years, and there was no remission because I was an empty shell. He was mine, I would not endure to share him.
‘And now,’ she said, ‘I must tell something that had happened more than a year earlier. At that time I was using the medicines you sent me, Brother Cadfael, to ease my pain when it grew too gross. And I grant you the syrup of poppies does help, for a tune, but after a while the charm fails, the body grows accustomed, or the demon grows stronger within.’
‘It is true,’ said Cadfael soberly. ‘I have seen it lose its hold. And beyond a certain strength treatment cannot go.’
“That I understood. Beyond that there is only one cure, and we are forbidden to resort to that. None the less,’ said Donata inexorably, ‘I did consider how to die. Mortal sin, Father, I knew it, yet I did consider. Oh, never look aside at Brother Cadfael, I would not have come to him for the means, I knew he would not give them to me if I did. Nor did I ever intend to give my life away easily. But I foresaw a time when the load would become more than even I could bear, and I wished to have some small thing about me, a little vial of deliverance, a promise of peace, perhaps never to use, only to keep as a talisman, the very touch of it consolation to me that at the worst
at the last extreme, there was left to me a way of escape. To know that was to go on enduring. Is that
