“Cadfael, you were half your life in the world?did you ever love a woman?”
“Yes,” said Cadfael, “I have loved.”
“Then you know how it was with us. For we did love, she and I. It hurts most of all,” said Brother Haluin, looking back in resigned and wondering pain, “when you are young. There is nowhere to hide from it, no shield you can raise between. To see her every day
and to know that it was with her as it was with me
“
Even if he had put it from him all these years, and tried to turn hands and mind and spirit to the service he had undertaken, of his own will, in his extremity, he had forgotten nothing; it was there within him ready to quicken at a breath, like a sleeping fire when a door is opened. Now at least it could escape into air, into the world of other men, where it could touch other men’s sufferings and receive and give compassion. From Cadfael there were no words needed, only the simple acknowledgment of companionship, the assurance of a listening ear.
Haluin fell asleep with a last lingering word on his lips, murmured almost inaudibly after lengthening silences. It” might have been her name, Bertrade, or it might have been “buried.” No matter! What mattered was that he had uttered it on the edge of sleep, and now would blessedly sleep again after all his harsh labor along the way, perhaps long past the coming of the light. So much the better! One day more spent on this pilgrimage might grieve his impatient spirit, but it would certainly benefit his harshly driven body.
Cadfael arose very quietly, and left his companion deeply asleep and virtually a prisoner in the loft, since he would need help to get to his feet and descend the ladder. With the trapdoor left open, a listener below would hear when the sleeper stirred, but by the look of his relaxed body and the thin face smoothed of its tensions he would sleep for some time.
Cadfael went out into the clear, sharp morning, to sniff the still air, redolent of the lingering winter scents of forestland still half asleep. From the forester’s small assart among the trees it was possible to see the cleared grey of the track in broken glimpses between the old trunks, for the growth was close enough to keep the ground almost clear of underbrush. A handcart trundled along the road, laden with kindling from the fallen deadwood of the autumn, and the chattering flight of disturbed birds accompanied it in a shimmer of fluttered branches and drifting leaves. The forester was already up and about his morning tasks, his cow lumbering in to be milked, his dog weaving busily about his heels. A dry day, the sky overcast but lofty, the light good. A fine day for the road. By night they could be in Chenet itself, and the manor, in the king’s holding, would take them in. Tomorrow to Lichfield, and there Cadfael was determined they should halt for another long night’s rest, however ardently Haluin might argue for pressing on the remaining few miles to Elford. After a proper sleep in Lichfield Haluin should be in better condition to endure the next night’s vigil pledged in Bertrade’s memory, and face the beginning of the return journey, during which, God be praised, there need be no haste at all, and no cause to drive himself to the limits of endurance.
Sounds came muffled and soft along the beaten earth of the track, but Cadfael caught rather the vibration of hooves than the impact. Horses coming briskly from the west, two horses, for their gaits quivered in counterpoint, coming at a brisk trot, fresh from a night’s rest and ready for the day. Travelers heading, perhaps, for Lichfield, after spending the night at the manor of Stretton, two miles back along the road. Cadfael stood to watch them pass.
Two men in dun-colored gear, leather-coated, easy in the saddle, their seats and the handling of their mounts so strongly alike that either they had learned from childhood together or the one had taught the other. And indeed, the one was double the bulk of the other and clearly a generation the elder, and though they were too distant and too briefly seen to have features, the whole shape of them indicated that they were kin. Two privileged grooms to some noble house, each with a woman pillion behind him. Women warmly cloaked for traveling look all much alike, and yet Cadfael stared after the first of these with roused attention, and kept his eyes on her until the horses and their riders had vanished along the road, and the soft drumming of hooves faded into distance.
She was still within his eyelids as he turned back into the hay hut, pricking uneasily at his memory, urging, against all his dismissal of the possibility as folly, that he had seen her before, and further, that if he would but admit it he knew very well where.
But whether that was true or not, and whatever it augured if it was, there was nothing he could do about it. He shrugged it into the back of his mind, and went in, to listen for the moment when Haluin should awake and have need of him.
They came through groves of trees into an expanse of level meadows, a little bleached and grey as yet in the cold air, but fertile and well cultivated, a rich little island in a shire otherwise somewhat derelict still after the harsh pacification of fifty years back. There before them lay the sleek curves of the River Tame, the steep-pitched roof of a mill, and the close cluster of the houses of Elford, beyond the water.
In the warm and welcoming hospitality of the clerics of Lichfield they had spent a restful night, and received full directions as to the best road to Elford, and with the first light of dawn they had set off on the last four miles or so of this penitential journey. And here before them lay the goal of Haluin’s pilgrimage, almost within reach, only an expanse of peaceful fields and a wooden footbridge between him and his absolution. A fortunate place, prosperous where much was impoverished, with not one mill by the waterside, but two, for they could see the second one upstream, with ample meadowland, and rich soil where the arable fields showed. A place that might well promise blessing and peace of mind after labor and pain.
The pale thread of the path led them forward, and the roofs of Elford rose before them, circled with trees and bushes still naked and dark at this distant view, not yet so far advanced in bud as to show the first faint, elusive smoke of green. They crossed the bridge, the uneven planks causing Haluin to watch carefully how he placed his crutches, and came into the track between the houses. A neat village, with housewives and husbandmen going cheerfully and confidently about their daily business, alert to strangers but civil and welcoming to the Benedictine habit. They exchanged greetings along the way, and Haluin, cheered and vindicated at the successful completion of his journey, began to flush and brighten with pleasure at being offered this spontaneous omen of acceptance and release.
No need to ask how to reach the church, they had seen its low tower before they crossed the bridge. It had been built since the Normans came, sturdy in grey stone, with spacious churchyard very well stockaded for sanctuary at need, and full of old and handsome trees. They entered under the round-arched portico, and came into the familiar cool, echoing gloom of all stone-built churches, smelling faintly of dust, and wax candles, and strongly and reassuringly of home, the chosen abiding-place.
Haluin had halted in the tiled silence of the nave to get his bearings. Here there was no Lady Chapel to accommodate a patron’s tomb between the altars. The lords of Elford must lie aside, built into the stones of the walls they had raised. The red eye of light from the altar lamp showed them where the tomb lay, a great table slab filling a niche in the right-hand wall. Some dead de Clary, perhaps the first who came over with King William, and got his reward later, showed as a sleeping figure in relief on the sealing stone. Haluin had started forward towards it, only to check and draw back after the first echoing step, for there was a woman on her knees beside the
