stood at gaze, and let the reins be taken from his hands like a man in a dream. Nor was he looking at Engelard, but towards the open doorway of the hall, from which a girl’s figure had issued, and was crossing gaily towards the drinkers under the eaves, a large jug carried in both hands. The lively brown eyes flickered over the visitors, took in Cadfael and the priest with easy friendliness, and opened wide upon Brother John, standing like a very lifelike statue, all thorny russet hair, weather-burned cheeks and wild, admiring eyes. Cadfael looked where Annest’s eyes were looking, and approved a very upstanding, ruggedly-built, ingenuous, comely young fellow, maybe two or three years older than the girl. The Benedictine habit, kilted to the knee for riding and forgotten now, looked as much like a working Welsh tunic as made no matter, and the tonsure, however well a man (or a girl!) knew it was there, was invisible behind the burning bush of curls.
“Thirsty people you are, then!” said Annest, still with one eye upon Brother John, and set down her pitcher on the bench beside Cai, and with a flick of her skirts and a wave of her light-brown mane, sat down beside it, and accepted the horn Bened offered her. Brother John stood mute and enchanted.
“Come on, then, lad,” said Bened, and made a place for him between himself and Cai, only one remove from where the girl sat delicately sipping. And Brother John, like a man walking in his sleep, though perhaps with rather more zestful purpose, strode forward towards the seat reserved for him.
“Well, well!” said Cadfael silently to himself, and left the insoluble to the solver of all problems, and with Father Huw moved on into the hall.
“I will come,” said Rhisiart, shut into a small chamber apart with his visitors. “Of course I will come. No man should refuse another his say. No man can be sure he will not belie himself and do himself less than justice, and God forbid I should refuse anyone his second chance. I’ve often spoken in haste myself, and been sorry after, and said so, as your prior has said so now.” He had not, of course, nor had Huw claimed, in so many words, that he had. Rather he had expressed his own shame and regret, but if Rhisiart attributed these to Prior Robert, Huw was desperate enough to let him continue in the delusion. “But I tell you this, I expect little from this meeting. The gap between us is too wide. To you I can say what I have not said to any who were not there, because I am ashamed. The man offered me money. He says now he offered it to Gwytherin, but how is that possible? Am I Gwytherin? I am a man like other men, I fill my place as best I can, but remain one only. No, he offered the purse to me, to take back my voice against him. To persuade my own people to go along with his wishes. I accept his desire to talk to me again, to bring me to see this matter as he sees it. But I cannot forget that he saw it as something he could buy with money. If he wishes to change me, that must change, and be shown to be changed. As for his threats, for threats they are, and I approve you for reporting them faithfully, they move me not at all. My reverence for our little saint is the equal of his or any man’s. Do you think she does not know it?”
“I am sure she does,” said Father Huw.
“And if all they want is to honour and adore her rightly, why can they not do so here, where she lies? Even dress her grave, if that is what disturbs them, that we’ve let it run wild?”
“A good question,” said Brother Cadfael. “I have asked it myself. The sleep of saints should be more sacred and immune even than the sleep of ordinary men.”
Rhisiart looked him over with those fine, challenging eyes, a shade or two lighter than his daughter’s, and smiled. “Howbeit, I will come, and my thanks for all your trouble. At the hour of noon, or a little after, I will come to your dinner, and I will listen faithfully to whatever may be said to me.’
There was a good laughter echoing from end to end of the bench under the eaves, and it was tempting to join the drinkers, at least for one quick cup, as Cai demanded. Bened had got up to replenish his horn from the pitcher, and Brother John, silent and flushed but glowingly happy, sat with no barrier between him and the girl, their sleeves all but touching when she leaned curiously closer, her hair dropping a stray lock against his shoulder.
“Well, how have you sped?” asked Cai, pouring mead for them. “Will he come and talk terms with your prior?”
“He’ll come,” said Cadfael. “Whether he’ll talk terms I doubt. He was greatly affronted. But he’ll come to dine, and that’s something.”
“The whole parish will know it before ever you get back to the parsonage,” said Cai. “News runs faster than the wind in these parts, and after this morning they’re all building on Rhisiart. I tell you, if he changed his tune and said amen, so would they. Not for want of their own doubts and waverings, but because they trust him. He took a stand, and they know he won’t leave it but for good reason. Sweeten him, and you’ll get your way.”
“Not my way,” said Cadfael. “I never could see why a man can’t reverence his favourite saint without wanting to fondle her bones, but there’s great rivalry for such relics among the abbeys these days. A good mead, this, Cai.”
“Our Annest here brewed it,” said Bened, with tolerant pride in his niece, and clapped a hand fondly on her shoulder. “And only one of her skills! She’ll be a treasure for some man when she weds, but a sad loss to me.”
“I might bring you a good smith to work with you,” said the girl, dimpling. “Where’s the loss then?”
It was deep dusk, and with all the longing they felt to linger, they had to be away. Huw was fidgety, thinking of Prior Robert’s rising impatience, his tall figure pacing the garden and looking out for the first glimpse of his messengers returning. “We should be off. We shall be looked for. Come, brother, make your farewells.”
Brother John rose reluctantly but dutifully. The groom was leading the horses forward, an arm under each arching neck. With composed face but glowing eyes Brother John said his general goodnight and blessing. In careful but resounding Welsh!
The echo swept the riders away towards the gate on a wave of laughter and goodwill, in which the girl’s light voice soared gaily, and Engelard’s hearty English “God go with you!” balanced the tongues.
“And who taught you that between evening and dark?” asked Brother Cadfael with interest, as they entered the deep green twilight under the trees. “Bened or Cai?”
“Neither,” said Brother John, contentedly pondering a deep private satisfaction.
Small use asking how she had managed it, she having no English and he no Welsh, to determine what the phrase was she was drumming into him. There was a kind of language at work here that made short shrift on interpreters.
“Well, you can fairly claim the day hasn’t been wasted,” owned Cadfael generously, “if something’s been learned. And have you made any other discoveries to add to that?”
“Yes,” said Brother John, placidly glowing. “The day after tomorrow is baking-day at Bened’s.”
“You may rest and sleep, Father Prior,” said Huw, fronting the tall, pale forehead gallantly with his low, brown
