awake suddenly, and whispered that he’d been asleep and dreaming, and had dreamed it was time to start out on the road again. So then Matthew took the scrip from him and laid it aside, and they both lay down in their beds again, and all was quiet as before. But I don’t think Ciaran slept well, even after that, his dream had disturbed his mind too much, I heard him twisting and turning for a long time.”
“Did they know,” asked Cadfael, “that you were also awake, and had heard what passed?”
“I can’t tell. I made no pretence, and the pain was bad, I think they must have heard me shifting… I couldn’t help it. But of course I made no sign, it would have been discourteous.”
So it passed as a dream, perhaps for the benefit of Rhun, or any other who might be wakeful as he was. True enough, a sick man troubled by night might very well rise by stealth to leave his friend in peace, out of consideration. But then, if he needed ease, he would have been forced to explain himself and go, when his friend nevertheless started awake to restrain him. Instead, he had pleaded a deluding dream, and lain down again. And men rousing in dreams do move silently, almost as if by stealth. It could be, it must be, simply what it seemed.
“You travelled some miles of the way with those two, Rhun. How did you all fare together on the road? You must have got to know them as well as any here.”
“It was their being slow, like us, that kept us all together, after my sister was nearly ridden down, and Matthew ran and caught her up and leaped the ditch with her. They were just slowly overtaking us then, after that we went on all together for company. But I wouldn’t say we got to know them-they are so rapt in each other. And then, Ciaran was in pain, and that kept him silent, though he did tell us where he was bound, and why. It’s true Melangell and Matthew took to walking last, behind us, and he carried our few goods for her, having so little of his own to carry. I never wondered at Ciaran being so silent,” said Rhun simply, “seeing what he had to bear. And my Aunt Alice can talk for two,” he ended guilelessly.
So she could, and no doubt did, all the rest of the way into Shrewsbury.
“That pair, Ciaran and Matthew,” said Cadfael, still delicately probing, “they never told you how they came together? Whether they were kin, or friends, or had simply met and kept company on the road? For they’re much of an age, even of a kind, young men of some schooling, I fancy, bred to clerking or squiring, and yet not kin, or don’t acknowledge it, and after their fashion very differently made. A man wonders how they ever came to be embarked together on this journey. It was south of Warwick when you met them? I wonder from how far south they came.”
“They never spoke of such things,” owned Rhun, himself considering them for the first time. “It was good to have company on the way, one stout young man at least. The roads can be perilous for two women, with only a cripple like me. But now you speak of it, no, we did not learn much of where they came from, or what bound them together. Unless my sister knows more. There were days,” said Rhun, shifting to assist Brother Cadfael’s probings into the sinews of his thigh, “when she and Matthew grew quite easy and talkative behind us.”
Cadfael doubted whether the subject of their conversation then had been anything but their two selves, brushing sleeves pleasurably along the summer highways, she in constant recall of the moment when she was snatched up bodily and swung across the ditch against Matthew’s heart, he in constant contemplation of the delectable creature dancing at his elbow, and recollection of the feel of her slight, warm, frightened weight on his breast.
“But he’ll hardly look at her now,” said Rhun regretfully. “He’s too intent on Ciaran, and Melangell will come between. But it costs him a dear effort to turn away from her, all the same.”
Cadfael stroked down the misshapen leg, and rose to scrub his oily hands. “There, that’s enough for today. But sit quiet a while and rest before you go. And will you take the draught tonight? At least keep it by you, and do what you feel to be right and best. But remember it’s a kindness sometimes to accept help, a kindness to the giver. Would you wilfully inflict torment on yourself as Ciaran does? No, not you, you are too modest by far to set yourself up for braver and more to be worshipped than other men. So never think you do wrong by sparing yourself discomfort. Yet it’s your choice, make it as you see fit.”
When the boy took up his crutches again and tapped his way out along the path towards the great court, Cadfael followed him at a distance, to watch his progress without embarrassing him. He could mark no change as yet. The stretched toe still barely dared touch ground, and still turned inward. And yet the sinews, cramped as they were, had some small force in them, instead of being withered and atrophied as he would have expected. If I had him here long enough, he thought, I could bring back some ease and use into that leg. But he’ll go as he came. In three days now all will be over, the festival ended for this year, the guest-hall emptying. Ciaran and his guardian shadow will pass on northwards and westwards into Wales, and Dame Weaver will take her chicks back home to Campden. And those two, who might very well have made a fair match if things had been otherwise, will go their separate ways, and never see each other again. It’s in the nature of things that those who gather in great numbers for the feasts of the church should also disperse again to their various duties afterwards. Still, they need not all go away unchanged.
Chapter Five.
BROTHER ADAM OF READING, being lodged in the dortoir with the monks of the house, had had leisure to observe his fellow pilgrims of the guest-hall only at the offices of the church, and in their casual comings and goings about the precinct; and it happened that he came from the garden towards midafternoon, with Cadfael beside him, just as Ciaran and Matthew were crossing the court towards the cloister garth, there to sit in the sun for an hour or two before Vespers. There were plenty of others, monks, lay servants and guests, busy on their various occasions, but Ciaran’s striking figure and painfully slow and careful gait marked him out for notice.
“Those two,” said Brother Adam, halting, “I have seen before. At Abington, where I spent the first night after leaving Reading. They were lodged there the same night.”
“At Abingdon!” Cadfael echoed thoughtfully. “So they came from far south. You did not cross them again after Abingdon, on the way here?”
“It was not likely. I was mounted. And then, I had my abbot’s mission to Leominster, which took me out of the direct way. No, I saw no more of them, never until now. But they can hardly be mistaken, once seen.”
“In what sort of case were they at Abingdon?” asked Cadfael, his eyes following the two inseparable figures until they vanished into the cloister. “Would you say they had been long on the road before that night’s halt? The man is pledged to go barefoot to Aberdaron, it would not take many miles to leave the mark on him.”
“He was going somewhat lamely, even then. They had both the dust of the roads on them. It might have been their first day’s walking that ended there, but I doubt it.”
“He came to me to have his feet tended, yesterday,” said Cadfael, “and I must see him again before evening. Two or three days of rest will set him up for the next stage of his walk. From more than a day’s going south of Abingdon to the remotest tip of Wales, a long, long walk. A strange, even a mistaken, piety it seems to me, to take
