at a purposeful trot. “Go before, Edmund, I’ll join you as fast as I may. I’ll bring what may be needed.”
He ran, and Edmund ran, and behind Brother Edmund the messenger scuttled breathlessly towards the gatehouse, and the agitated girl waiting there. Prickling of the lips, mouth and throat, Cadfael was reckoning as he ran, tingling and then rigidity, and urgent need, but little ability, to rid himself of whatever it was he had consumed. And a quarter of an hour since he got it down, more by now, if it was in the dinner he had eaten. It might be late to give him the mustard that would make him sick, but it must be tried. Though surely this was merely an attack of illness from some normal disagreement between an indisposed man and his perfectly wholesome food, nothing else was possible. But then, that prickling of the flesh of mouth and throat, and the stiffness following… that sounded all too like at least one violent illness he had witnessed, which had almost proved fatal; and the cause of that he knew. Hurriedly he snatched from the shelves the preparations he wanted, and ran for the gatehouse.
For all the chill of the December day, the door of the first house beyond the millpond stood wide, and for all the awed quietness that hung about it, a quivering of agitation and confusion seemed to well out at the doorway to meet him, an almost silent panic of fluttering movements and hushed voices. A good house, with three rooms and the kitchen, and a small garden behind, running down to the pond; he knew it well enough, having visited a previous inmate upon less desperate business. The kitchen door faced away from the pond, towards the prospect of Shrewsbury beyond the river, and the north light at this time of day and year made the interior dim, although the window that looked out southwards stood unshuttered to let in light and air upon the brazier that did duty as all the cooking facilities such pensioners needed. He caught the grey gleam of a reflection from the water, as the wind ruffled it; the strip of garden was narrow here, though the house stood well above the water level.
By the open inner door through which the murmur of frightened voices emerged, stood a woman, obviously watching for him, her hands gripped tightly together under her breast, and quivering with tension. She started eagerly towards him as he came in, and then he saw her more clearly; a woman of his own years and his own height, very neat and quiet in her dress, her dark hair laced with silver and braided high on her head, her oval face almost unlined except for the agreeable grooves of good-nature and humour that wrinkled the corners of her dark- brown eyes, and made her full mouth merry and attractive. The merriment was quenched now, she wrung her hands and fawned on him; but attractive she was, even beautiful. She had held her own against the years, all forty- two of them that had come between.
He knew her at once. He had not seen her since they were both seventeen, and affianced, though nobody knew it but themselves, and probably her family would have made short work of the agreement if they had known of it. But he had taken the Cross and sailed for the Holy Land, and for all his vows to return to claim her, with his honours thick upon him, he had forgotten everything in the fever and glamour and peril of a life divided impartially between soldier and sailor, and delayed his coming far too long; and she, for all her pledges to wait for him, had tired at last and succumbed to her parents’ urgings, and married a more stable character, and small blame to her. And he hoped she had been happy. But never, never had he expected to see her here. It was no Bonel, no lord of a northern manor, she had married, but an honest craftsman of Shrewsbury. There was no accounting for her, and no time to wonder.
Yet he knew her at once. Forty-two years between, and he knew her! He had not, it seemed, forgotten very much. The eager way she leaned to him now, the turn of her head, the very way she coiled her hair; and the eyes, above all, large, direct, clear as light for all their darkness.
At this moment she did not, thank God, know him. Why should she? He must be far more changed than she; half a world, alien to her, had marked, manipulated, adapted him, changed his very shape of body and mind. All she saw was the monk who knew his herbs and remedies, and had run to fetch aids for her stricken man.
“Through here, brother … he is in here. The infirmarer has got him to. bed. Oh, please help him!”
“If I may, and God willing,” said Cadfael, and went by her into the next room. She pressed after him, urging and ushering. The main room was furnished with table and benches, and chaotically spread with the remains of a meal surely interrupted by something more than one man’s sudden illness. In any case, he was said to have eaten his meal and seemed well; yet there were broken dishes lying, shards on both table and floor. But she drew him anxiously on, into the bedchamber.
Brother Edmund rose from beside the bed, wide and dismayed of eye. He had got the invalid as near rest as he could, wrapped up here on top of the covers, but there was little more he could do. Cadfael drew near, and looked down at Gervase Bonel. A big, fleshy man, thickly capped in greying brown hair, with a short beard now beaded with saliva that ran from both corners of a rigid, half-open mouth. His face was leaden blue, the pupils of his eyes dilated and staring. Fine, strong features were congealed now into a livid mask. The pulse for which Cadfael reached was faint, slow and uneven, the man’s breathing shallow, long and laboured. The lines of jaw and throat stood fixed as stone.
“Bring a bowl,” said Cadfael, kneeling, “and beat a couple of egg-whites into some milk. We’ll try to get it out of him, but I doubt it’s late, it may do as much damage coming up as going down.” He did not turn his head to see who ran to do his bidding, though certainly someone did; he was hardly aware, as yet, that there were three other people present in the house, in addition to Brother Edmund and Mistress Bonel and the sick man. Aelfric and the maid, no doubt, but he recognised the third only when someone stopped to slide a wooden bowl close to the patient’s face, and tilt the livid head to lean over it. Cadfael glanced up briefly, the silent and swift movement pleasing him, and looked into the intent and horrified face of the young Welshman, Meurig, Brother Rhys’s great- nephew.
“Good! Lift his head on your hand, Edmund, and hold his brow steady.” It was easy enough to trickle the emetic mixture of mustard into the half-open mouth, but the stiff throat laboured frightfully at swallowing, and much of the liquid ran out again into his beard and the bowl. Brother Edmund’s hands quivered, supporting the tormented head. Meurig held the bowl, himself shivering. The following sickness convulsed the big body, weakened the feeble pulse yet further, and produced only a painfully inadequate result. It was indeed late for Gervase Bonel. Cadfael gave up, and let the paroxysms subside, for fear of killing him out of hand.
“Give me the milk and eggs.” This he fed very slowly into the open mouth, letting it slide of itself down the stiff throat, in such small quantities that it could not threaten the patient with choking. Too late to prevent whatever the poison had done to the flesh of Bonel’s gullet, it might still be possible to lay a soothing film over the damaged parts, and ease their condition. He spooned patient drop after drop, and dead silence hung all round him, the watchers hardly breathing.
The big body seemed to have shrunk and subsided into the bed, the pulse fluttered ever more feebly, the stare of the eyes filmed over. He lay collapsed. The muscles of his throat no longer made any effort at swallowing, but stood corded and rigid. The end came abruptly, with no more turmoil than the cessation of breathing and pulse.
Brother Cadfael laid the spoon in the little bowl of milk, and sat back on his heels, He looked up at the circle of shocked, bewildered faces, and for the first time saw them all clearly: Meurig, the bowl with its horrid contents shaking in his hands, Aelfric grim-eyed and pale, hovering at Brother Edmund’s shoulder and staring at the bed, the girl—Brother Mark had not exaggerated, she was very pretty, with her yellow hair and black eyes—standing frozen, too shocked for tears, both small fists pressed hard against her mouth; and the widow, Mistress Bonel, who had once been Richildis Vaughan, gazing with marble face and slowly gathering tears at what remained of her husband.
