better prepared, and then deliver me to my penalty, and I will not complain.”
“Speak, then, if it gives you ease,” said Cadfael heavily, and kept his hand closed over Meurig’s as the story spilled out in broken gouts of words, like blood from a wound: how he had gone to the infirmary with no ill thought, to pleasure an old man, and learned by pure chance of the properties of the oil he was using for its true purpose, and how it could be put to a very different use. Only then had the seed been planted in his mind. He had a few weeks, perhaps, of grace before Mallilie was lost to him forever, and here was a means of preventing the loss.
“And it grew in me, the thought that it would not be a hard thing to do … and the second time I went there I took the vial with me, and filled it. But it was still only a mad dream … Yet I carried it with me, that last day, and I told myself it would be easy to put in his mead, or mull wine for him… . I might never have done it, only willed it, though that is sin enough. But when I came to the house, they were all in the inner room together, and I heard Aldith saying how the prior had sent a dish from his own table, a dainty to please my father. It was there simmering on the hob, a spoon in it … The thing was done almost before I knew I meant to do it … And then I heard Aelfric and Aldith coming back from the table, and I had no time for more than to step quickly outside the door again, as if I had just opened it, and I was scraping my shoes clean to come in when they came into the kitchen… . What could they think but that I had only just come? A score of times in the next hour, God knows how wildly, I wished it undone, but such things cannot be undone, and I am damned… . What could I do but go forward, when there was no going back?”
What, indeed, short of what he was doing now, and this had been forced on him. Yet it was not to kill that he had flown like a homing bird to this meeting, whatever he himself had believed.
“So I went on. I fought for the fruit of my sin, for Mallilie, as best I could. I never truly hated my father, but Mallilie I truly loved, and it was mine, mine … if only I could have come by it cleanly! But there is justice, and I have lost, and I make no complaint. Now deliver me up, and let me pay for his death with mine, as is due. I will go with you willingly, if you will wish me peace.”
He laid his head on Cadfael’s steadying hand with a great sigh, and fell silent; and after a long moment Cadfael laid his other hand on the thick dark hair, and held him so. Priest he might not be, and absolution he could not give, yet here he was in the awful situation of being both judge and confessor. Poison is the meanest of killings, the steel he could respect. And yet … Was not Meurig also a man gravely wronged? Nature had meant him to be amiable, kindly, unembittered, circumstances had so deformed him that he turned against his nature once, and fatally, and he was all too well aware of his mortal sickness. Surely one death was enough, what profit in a second? God knew other ways of balancing the scale.
“You asked your penance of me,” said Cadfael at last. “Do you still ask it? And will you bear it and keep faith, no matter how terrible it may be?”
The heavy head stirred on his knee. “I will,” said Meurig in a whisper, “and be grateful.”
“You want no easy penalty?”
“I want all my due. How else can I find peace?”
“Very well, you have pledged yourself. Meurig, you came for my life, but when it came to the stroke, you could not take it. Now you lay your life in my hands, and I find that I cannot take it, either, that I should be wrong to take it. What benefit to the world would your blood be? But your hands, your strength, your will, that virtue you still have within you, these may yet be of the greatest profit. You want to pay in full. Pay, then! Yours is a lifelong penance, Meurig, I rule that you shall live out your life—and may it be long!—and pay back all your debts by having regard to those who inhabit this world with you. The tale of your good may yet outweigh a thousand times the tale of your evil. This is the penance I lay on you.”
Meurig stirred slowly, and raised a dazed and wondering face, neither relieved nor glad, only utterly bewildered. “You mean it? This is what I must do?”
“This is what you must do. Live, amend, in your dealings with sinners remember your own frailty, and in your dealings with the innocent, respect and use your own strength in their service. Do as well as you can, and leave the rest to God, and how much more can saints do?”
“They will be hunting for me,” said Meurig, still doubting and marvelling. “You will not hold that I’ve failed you if they take and hang me?”
“They will not take you. By tomorrow you will be well away from here. There is a horse in the stable next to the barn, the horse I rode today. Horses in these parts can very easily be stolen, it’s an old Welsh game, as I know. But this one will not be stolen. I give it, and I will be answerable. There is a whole world to reach on horseback, where a true penitent can make his way step by step through a long life towards grace. Were I you, I should cross the hills as far west as you may before daylight, and then bear north into Gwynedd, where you are not known. But you know these hills better than I.”
“I know them well,” said Meurig, and now his face had lost its anguish in open and childlike wonder. “And this is all? All you ask of me?”
“You will find it heavy enough,” said Brother Cadfael. “But yes, there is one thing more. When you are well clear, make your confession to a priest, ask him to write it down and have it sent to the sheriff at Shrewsbury. What has passed today in Llansilin will release Edwin, but I would not have any doubt or shadow left upon him when you are gone.”
“Neither would I,” said Meurig. “It shall be done.”
“Come, then, you have a long pilgrimage to go. Take up your knife again.” And he smiled. “You will need it to cut your bread and hunt your meat.”
It was ending strangely. Meurig rose like one in a dream, both spent and renewed, as though some rainfall from heaven had washed him out of his agony and out of his wits, to revive, a man half-drowned and wholly transformed. Cadfael had to lead him by the hand, once they had put out the lantern. Outside, the night was very still and starlit, on the edge of frost. In the stable Cadfael himself saddled the horse.
“Rest him when you safely may. He’s carried me today, but that was no great journey. I’d give you the mule, for he’s fresh, but he’d be slower, and more questionable under a Welshman. There, mount and go. Go with God!”
Meurig shivered at that, but the pale, fixed brightness of his face did not change. With a foot already in the stirrup, he said with sudden inexpressibly grave and burdened humility:
“Give me your blessing! For I am bound by you while I live.”
He was gone, up the slope above the folds, by ways he knew better than did the man who had set him free to ride them, back into the world of the living. Cadfael looked after him for only a moment, before turning down
