And he was going so, with so few words and so cold and wild a face! He had turned on his heel and taken two long steps before she flung herself after him, caught him by the arms in both hands, and dragged him to a halt.
“No, no, why? What need has he of you, to match with my need? He’s gone? Let him go! Do you think your life belongs to him? He doesn’t want it! He wants you free, he wants you to live your own life, not die his death with him. He knows, he knows you love me! Dare you deny it? He knows I love you. He wants you happy! Why should not a friend want his friend to be happy? Who are you to deny him his last wish?”
She knew by then that she had said too much, but never knew at what point the error had become mortal. He had turned fully to her again, and frozen where he stood, and his face was like chiselled marble. He tugged his sleeve out of her grasp this time with no gentleness at all.
“He wants!” hissed a voice she had never heard before, driven through narrowed lips. “You’ve spoken with him! You speak for him! You knew! You knew he meant to go, and leave me here bewitched, damned, false to my oath. You knew! When? When did you speak with him?”
He had her by the wrists, he shook her mercilessly, and she cried out and fell to her knees.
“You knew he meant to go?” persisted Matthew, stooping over her in a cold frenzy.
“Yes, yes! This morning he told me… he wished it…”
“He wished it! How dared he wish it? How could he dare, robbed of his bishop’s ring as he was? He dared not stir without it, he was terrified to set foot outside the pale…”
“He has the ring,” she cried, abandoning all deceit. “The lord abbot gave it back to him this morning, you need not fret for him, he’s safe enough, he has his protection… He doesn’t need you!”
Matthew had fallen into a deadly stillness, stooping above her. “He has the ring? And you knew it, and never said word! If you know so much, how much more do you know. Speak! Where is he?”
“Gone,” she said in a trembling whisper, “and wished you well, wished us both well… wished us to be happy… Oh, let him go, let him go, he sets you free!”
Something that was certainly a laugh convulsed Matthew, she heard it with her ears and felt it shiver through her flesh, but it was like no other laughter she had ever heard, it chilled her blood. “He sets me free! And you must be his confederate! Oh, God! He never passed the gate. If you know all, then tell all-how did he go?”
She faltered, weeping: “He loved you, he willed you to live and forget him, and be happy…”
“How did he go?” repeated Matthew, in a voice so ill-supplied with breath it seemed he might strangle on the words.
“Across the brook,” she said in a broken whisper, “making the quickest way for Wales. He said… he has kin there…”
He drew in hissing breath and took his hands from her, leaving her drooping forward on her face as he let go of her wrists. He had turned his back and flung away from her, all they had shared forgotten, his obsession plucking him away. She did not understand, there was no way she could come to terms so rapidly with all that had happened, but she knew she had loosed her hold of her love, and he was in merciless flight from her in pursuit of some incomprehensible duty in which she had no part and no right.
She sprang up and ran after him, caught him by the arm, wound her own arms about him, lifted her imploring face to his stony, frantic stare, and prayed him passionately: “Let him go! Oh, let him go! He wants to go alone and leave you to me…”
Almost silently above her the terrible laughter, so opposed to that lovely sound as he followed the reliquary with her, boiled like some thick, choking syrup in his throat. He struggled to shake off her clinging hands, and when she fell to her knees again and hung upon him with all her despairing weight he tore loose his right hand, and struck her heavily in the face, sobbing, and so wrenched himself loose and fled, leaving her face-down on the ground.
In the abbot’s lodging Radulfus and his guests sat long over their meal, for they had much to discuss. The topic which was on everyone’s lips naturally came first.
“It would seem,” said the abbot, “that we have been singularly favoured this morning. Certain motions of grace we have seen before, but never yet one so public and so persuasive, with so many witnesses. How do you say? I grow old in experience of wonders, some of which turn out to fall somewhat short of their promise. I know of human deception, not always deliberate, for sometimes the deceiver is himself deceived. If saints have power, so have demons. Yet this boy seems to me as crystal. I cannot think he either cheats or is cheated.”
“I have heard,” said Hugh, “of cripples who discarded their crutches and walked without them, only to relapse when the fervour of the occasion was over. Time will prove whether this one takes to his crutches again.”
“I shall speak with him later,” said the abbot, “after the excitement has cooled. I hear from Brother Edmund that Brother Cadfael has been treating the boy these three days he has been here. That may have eased his condition, but it can scarcely have brought about so sudden a cure. No, I must say it, I truly believe our house has been the happy scene of divine grace. I will speak also with Cadfael, who must know the boy’s condition.”
Olivier sat quiet and deferential in the presence of so reverend a churchman as the abbot, but Hugh observed that his arched lids lifted and his eyes kindled at Cadfael’s name. So he knew who it was he sought, and something more than a distant salute in action had passed between that strangely assorted pair.
“And now I should be glad,” said the abbot, “to hear what news you bring from the south. Have you been in Westminster with the empress’s court? For I hear she is now installed there.”
Olivier gave his account of affairs in London readily, and answered questions with goodwill. “My lord has remained in Oxford, it was at his wish I undertook this errand. I was not in London, I set out from Winchester. But the empress is in the palace of Westminster, and the plans for her coronation go forward, admittedly very slowly. The city of London is well aware of its power, and means to exact due recognition of it, or so it seems to me.” He would go no nearer than that to voicing whatever qualms he felt about his liege lady’s wisdom or want of it, but he jutted a dubious underlip, and momentarily frowned. “Father, you were there at the council, you know all that happened. My lord lost a good knight there, and I a valued friend, struck down in the street.”
“Rainald Bossard,” said Radulfus sombrely. “I have not forgotten.”
“Father, I have been telling the lord sheriff here what I should like to tell also to you. For I have a second errand to pursue, wherever I go on the business of the empress, an errand for Rainald’s widow. Rainald had a young kinsman in his household, who was with him when he was killed, and after that death this young man left the
