midnight mission. And his seal was first on the vellum. No, you I never thought of as conniving at murder, whatever else I may have found within your scope. But FitzClare is dead, and de Soulis is dead, and you have not, I think, the reason you believed you had to mourn or avenge him. Nor any remaining cause to lay his death at the charge of a young man openly and honestly his enemy. There were many men in Faringdon who would be glad enough to avenge the murder of FitzClare. Who knows if some of them were also present at Coventry? He was well liked, and well served. And not every man of his following believed what he was told of that death.”
“De Soulis would have been as ready for such as for Hugonin,” said Philip.
“You think they would betray themselves as enemies? No, whoever set out to get close to him would take good care not to give any warning. But Yves had already cried out loud before the world his anger and enmity. No, yourself you know it, he would never have got within a sword’s reach, let alone a slender little knife. Set Yves Hugonin free,” said Cadfael, “and take me in my son’s stead.”
Philip came back slowly to his place at the table, and sat down, and finding his book left open and unregarded, quietly closed it. He leaned his head between long hands, and fixed his unnerving eyes again on Cadfael’s face.
“Yes,” he said, rather to himself than to Cadfael, “yes, there is the matter of your son Olivier. Let us not forget Olivier.” But his voice was not reassuring. “Let us see if the man I have known, I thought well, is the same as the son you have known. Never has he spoken of a father to me.”
“He knows no more than his mother told him, when he was a child. I have told him nothing. Of his father he knows only a too kindly legend, coloured too brightly by affection.”
“If I question too close, refuse me answers. But I feel a need to know. A son of the cloister?”
“No,” said Cadfael, “a son of the Crusade. His mother lived and died in Antioch. I never knew I had left her a son until I met with him here in England, and he named her, mentioned times, left me in no doubt at all. The cloister came later.”
“The Crusade!” Philip echoed. His eyes burned up into gold. He narrowed their brightness curiously upon Cadfael’s grizzled tonsure and lined and weathered face. “The Crusade that made a Christian kingdom in Jerusalem? You were there? Of all battles, surely the worthiest.”
“The easiest to justify, perhaps,” Cadfael agreed ruefully. “I would not say more than that.”
The bright, piercing gaze continued to weigh and measure and wonder, with a sudden personal passion, staring through Cadfael into far distances, beyond the fabled Midland Sea, into the legendary Frankish kingdoms of Outremer. Ever since the fall of Edessa Christendom had been uneasy in its hopes and fears for Jerusalem, and popes and abbots were stirring in their sleep to consider their beleaguered capital, and raise their voices like clarions calling to the defence of the Church. Philip was not yet so old but he could quicken to the sound of the trumpet.
“How did it come that you encountered him here, all unknown? And once only?”
“Twice, and by God’s grace there will be a third time,” said Cadfael stoutly. He told, very briefly, of the circumstances of both those meetings.
“And still he does not know you for his sire? You never told him?”
“There is no need for him to know. No shame there, but no pride, either. His course is nobly set, why cause any tremor to deflect or shake it?”
“You ask nothing, want nothing of him?” The perilous bitterness was back in Philip’s voice, husky with the pain of all he had hoped for from his own father, and failed to receive. Too fierce a love, perverted into too fierce a hate, corroded all his reflections on the anguished relationship between fathers and sons, too close and too separate, and never in balance.
“He owes me nothing,” said Cadfael. “Nothing but such friendship and liking as we have deserved of each other by free will and earned trust, not by blood.”
“And yet it is by blood,” said Philip softly, “that you conceive you owe him so much, even to a life. Brother, I think you are telling me something I have learned to know all too well, though it took me years to master it. We are born of the fathers we deserve, and they engender the sons they deserve. We are our own penance and theirs. The first murderous warfare in the world, we are told, was between two brothers, but the longest and the bitterest is between fathers and sons. Now you offer me the father for the son, and you are offering me nothing that I want or need, in a currency I cannot spend. How could I ease my anger on you? I respect you, I like you, there are even things you might ask of me that I would give you with goodwill. But I will not give you Olivier.”
It was a dismissal. There was no more speech between them that night. From the chapel, hollowly echoing along the corridors of stone, the bell chimed for Compline.
Chapter Nine.
CADFAEL ROSE at midnight, waking by long habit even without the matins bell, and being awake, recalled that he was lodged in a tiny cell close to the chapel. That gave him further matter for thought, though he had not considered earlier that it might have profound implications. He had declared himself honestly enough in his apostasy to Philip, and Philip, none the less, had lodged him here, where a visiting cleric might have expected such a courtesy. And being so close, and having been so considerately housed there, why should he not at least say Matins and Lauds before the altar? He had not surrendered or compromised his faith, however he had forfeited his rights and privileges.
The very act of kneeling in solitude, in the chill and austerity of stone, and saying the familiar words almost silently, brought him more of comfort and reassurance than he had dared to expect. If grace was not close to him, why should he rise from his knees so cleansed of the doubts and anxieties of the day, and clouded by no least shadow of the morrow’s uncertainties?
He was in the act of withdrawing, and a pace or two from the open door, which he had refrained from closing in case it should creak loudly enough to wake others, when one who was awake, and as silent as he, looked in upon him. The faint light showed them to each other clearly enough.
“For an apostate,” said Philip softly, “you keep the hours very strictly, brother.” He wore a heavy furred gown over his nakedness, and walked barefooted on the stone. “Oh, no, you did not disturb me. I sat late tonight. For that you may take the blame if you wish.”
“Even a recusant,” said Cadfael, “may cling by the hems of grace. But I am sorry if I have kept you from sleep.”
“There may be better than sorrow in it for you,” said Philip. “We will speak again tomorrow. I trust you have all
