After High Mass on the morning of the twentieth of December the womenfolk repaired to their own apartments, to make careful choice of the right array for dining with the abbot. Leoric’s son and his son’s bosom friend went off on foot into the town, his guests dispersed to pay local visits for which this was rare opportunity, and make purchases of stores for their country manors while they were close to the town, or to burnish their own finery for the morrow. Leoric walked briskly in the frosty air the length of the gardens, round fish-ponds and fields, down to the Meole brook, fringed with delicate frost like fine lace, and after that as decisively vanished. Cadfael had waited to give him time to be alone, as plainly he willed to be, and then lost sight of him, to find him again in the mortuary chapel where Peter Clemence’s coffin, closed now and richly draped, waited for Bishop Henry’s word as to its disposal. Two new, fine candles burned on a branched candlestick at the head, and Leoric Aspley was on his knees on the flagstones at the foot. His lips moved upon silent, methodical prayers, his open eyes were fixed unflinchingly upon the bier. Cadfael knew then that he was on firm ground. The candles might have been simply any courtly man’s offering to a dead kinsman, however distant, but the grim and grievous face, silently acknowledging a guilt not yet confessed or atoned for, confirmed the part he had played in denying this dead man burial, and pointed plainly at the reason.
Cadfael withdrew silently, and waited for him to come forth. Blinking as he emerged into daylight again, Leoric found himself confronted by a short, sturdy, nut-brown brother who stepped into his path and addressed him ominously, like a warning angel blocking the way: ‘My lord, I have an urgent errand to you. I beg you to come with me. You are needed. Your son is mortally ill.’ It came so suddenly and shortly, it struck like a lance. The two young men had been gone half an hour, time for the assassin’s stroke, for the sneak-thief’s knife, for any number of disasters. Leoric heaved up his head and snuffed the air of terror, and gasped aloud: ‘My son…?’ Only then did he recognise the brother who had come to Aspley on the abbot’s errand. Cadfael saw hostile suspicion flare in the deep-set, arrogant eyes, and forestalled whatever his antagonist might have had to say.
‘It’s high time,’ said Cadfael, ‘that you remembered you have two sons. Will you let one of them die uncomforted?’
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
Leoric went with him; striding impatiently, suspiciously, intolerantly, yet continuing to go with him. He questioned, and was not answered. When Cadfael said simply: ‘Turn back, then, if that’s your will, and make your own peace with God and him!’ Leoric set his teeth and his jaw, and went on.
At the rising path up the grass-slope to Saint Giles he checked, but rather to take stock of the place where his son served and suffered than out of any fear of the many contagions that might be met within. Cadfael brought him to the barn, where Meriet’s pallet was still laid, and Meriet at this moment was seated upon it, the stout staff by which he hobbled about the hospice braced upright in his right hand, and his head leaned upon its handle. He would have been about the place as best he might since Prime, and Mark must have banished him to an interval of rest before the midday meal. He was not immediately aware of them, the light within the barn being dim and mellow, and subject to passing shadows. He looked several years older than the silent and submissive youth Leoric had brought to the abbey a postulant, almost three months earlier.
His sire, entering with the light sidelong, stood gazing. His face was closed and angry, but the eyes in it stared in bewilderment and grief, and indignation, too, at being led here in this fashion when the sufferer had no mark of death upon him, but leaned resigned and quiet, like a man at peace with his fate.
‘Go in,’ said Cadfael at Leoric’s shoulder, ‘and speak to him.’ It hung perilously in the balance whether Leoric would not turn, thrust his deceitful guide out of the way, and stalk back by the way he had come. He did cast a black look over his shoulder and make to draw back from the doorway; but either Cadfael’s low voice or the stir of movement had reached and startled Meriet. He raised his head and saw his father. The strangest contortion of astonishment, pain, and reluctant and grudging affection twisted his face. He made to rise respectfully and fumbled it in his haste. The crutch slipped out of his hand and thudded to the floor, and he reached for it, wincing.
Leoric was before him. He crossed the space between in three long, impatient strides, pressed his son back to the pallet with a brusque hand on his shoulder, and restored the staff to his hand, rather as one exasperated by clumsiness than considerate of distress. ‘Sit!’ he said gruffly. ‘No need to stir. They tell me you have had a fall, and cannot yet walk well.’ ‘I have come to no great harm,’ said Meriet, gazing up at him steadily. ‘I shall be fit to walk very soon. I take it kindly that you have come to see me, I did not expect a visit. Will you sit, sir?’ No, Leoric was too disturbed and too restless, he gazed about him at the furnishings of the barn, and only by rapid glimpses at his son. This life-the way you consented to-they tell me you have found it hard to come to terms with it. You put your hand to the plough, you must finish the furrow. Do not expect me to take you back again.’ His voice was harsh but his face was wrung.
‘My furrow bids fair to be a short one, and I daresay I can hold straight to the end of it,’ said Meriet sharply. ‘Or have they not told you, also, that I have confessed the thing I did, and there is no further need for you to shelter me?’ ‘You have confessed…’ Leoric was at a loss. He passed a long hand over his eyes, and stared, and shook. The boy’s dead calm was more confounding than any passion could have been.
‘I am sorry to have caused you so much labour and pain to no useful end,’ said Meriet. ‘But it was necessary to speak. They were making a great error, they had charged another man, some poor wretch living wild, who had taken food here and there. You had not heard that? Him, at least, I could deliver. Hugh Beringar has assured me no harm will come to him. You would not have had me leave him in his peril? Give your blessing to this act, at least.’ Leoric stood speechless some minutes, his tall body palsied and shaken as though he struggled with his own demon, before he sat down abruptly beside his son on the creaking pallet, and clamped a hand over Meriet’s hand; and though his face was still marble-hard, and the very gesture of his hand like a blow, and his voice when he finally found words still severe and harsh, Cadfael nevertheless withdrew from them quietly, and drew the door to after him. He went aside and sat in the porch, not so far away that he could not hear the tones of the two voices within, though not their words, and so placed that he could watch the doorway. He did not think he would be needed any more, though at times the father’s voice rose in helpless rage, and once or twice Meriet’s rang with a clear and obstinate asperity. That did not matter, they would have been lost without the sparks they struck from each other.
After this, thought Cadfael, let him put on indifference as icily as he will, I shall know better.
He went back when he judged it was time, for he had much to say to Leoric for his own part before the hour of the abbot’s dinner. Their rapid and high-toned exchanges ceased as he entered, what few words they still had to say came quietly and lamely.
‘Be my messenger to Nigel and to Roswitha. Say that I pray their happiness always. I should have liked to be there to see them wed,’ said Meriet steadily, ‘but that I cannot expect now.’ Leoric looked down at him and asked awkwardly: ‘You are cared for here? Body and soul?’ Meriet’s exhausted face smiled, a pale smile but warm and sweet. ‘As well as ever in my life. I am very well-friended, here among my peers. Brother Cadfael knows!’ And this time, at parting, it fell out not quite as once before. Cadfael had wondered. Leoric turned to go, turned back, wrestled with his unbending pride a moment, and then stopped almost clumsily and very briefly, and bestowed on Meriet’s lifted cheek a kiss that still resembled a blow. Fierce blood mantled at the smitten cheekbone as Leoric straightened up, turned, and strode from the barn.
He crossed towards the gate mute and stiff, his eyes looking inwards rather than out, so that he struck shoulder and hip against the gatepost, and hardly noticed the shock.
