Olivier took his leave hastily but gracefully, made a dutiful reverence to the abbot, and turned upon Brother Cadfael a brief, radiant smile that shattered his preoccupation for an instant like a sunburst through clouds. “I will not leave here,” he said in simple reassurance, “without having quiet conference with you. But this I must see finished, if I can.”
They were gone away briskly to the stables, where they had left their horses before Mass. Abbot Radulfus looked after them with a very thoughtful face.
“Do you find it surprising, Cadfael, that these two young pilgrims should leave so soon, and so abruptly? Is it possible the coming of Messire de Bretagne can have driven them away?”
Cadfael considered, and shook his head. “No, I think not. In the great press this morning, and the excitement, why should one man among the many be noticed, and one not looked for at all in these parts? But, yes, their going does greatly surprise me. For the one, he should surely be only too glad of an extra day or two of rest before taking barefoot to the roads again. And for the other, Father, there is a girl he certainly admires and covets, whether he yet knows it to the full or no, and with her he spent this morning, following Saint Winifred home, and I am certain there was then no other thought in his mind but of her and her kin, and the greatness of this day. For she is sister to the boy Rhun, who came by so great a mercy and blessing before our eyes. It would take some very strong compulsion to drag him away suddenly like this.”
“The boy’s sister, you say?” Abbot Radulfus recalled an intent which had been shelved in favour of Olivier’s quest. There is still an hour or more before Vespers. I should like to talk with this youth. You have been treating his condition, Cadfael. Do you think your handling has had anything to do with what we witnessed today? Or could he, though I would not willingly attribute falsity to one so young, could he have made more of his distress than it was, in order to produce a prodigy?”
“No,” said Cadfael very decidedly. “There is no deceit at all in him. And as for my poor skills, they might in a long time of perseverance have softened the tight cords that hampered the use of his limb, and made it possible to set a little weight on it, but straighten that foot and fill out the sinews of the leg, never! The greatest doctor in the world could not have done it. Father, on the day he came I gave him a draught that should have eased his pain and brought him sleep. After three nights he sent it back to me untouched. He saw no reason why he should expect to be singled out for healing, but he said that he offered his pain freely, who had nothing else to give. Not to buy grace, but of his goodwill to give and want nothing in return. And further, it seems that thus having accepted his pain out of love, his pain left him. After Mass we saw that deliverance completed.”
“Then it was well deserved,” said Radulfus, pleased and moved. “I must indeed talk with this boy. Will you find him for me, Cadfael, and bring him here to me now?”
“Very gladly, Father,” said Cadfael, and departed on his errand. Dame Alice was sitting in the sunshine of the cloister garth, the centre of a voluble circle of other matrons, her face so bright with the joy of the day that it warmed the very air; but Rhun was not with them. Melangell had withdrawn into the shadow of the arcade, as though the light was too bright for her eyes, and kept her face averted over the mending of a frayed seam in a linen shirt which must belong to her brother. Even when Cadfael addressed her she looked up only very swiftly and timidly, and again stooped into shadow, but even in that glimpse he saw that the joy which had made her shine like a new rose in the morning was dimmed and pale now in the lengthening afternoon. And was he merely imagining that her left cheek showed the faint bluish tint of a bruise? But at the mention of Rhun’s name she smiled, as though at the recollection of happiness rather than its presence.
“He said he was tired, and went away into the dortoir to rest. Aunt Weaver thinks he is lying down on his bed, but I think he wanted only to be left alone, to be quiet and not have to talk. He is tired by having to answer things he seems not to understand himself.”
“He speaks another tongue today from the rest of mankind,” said Cadfael. “It may well be we who don’t understand, and ask things that have no meaning for him.” He took her gently by the chin and turned her face up to the light, but she twisted nervously out of his hold. “You have hurt yourself?” Certainly it was a bruise beginning there.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “My own fault. I was in the garden, I ran too fast and I fell. I know it’s unsightly, but it doesn’t hurt now.”
Her eyes were very calm, not reddened, only a little swollen as to the lids. Well, Matthew had gone, abandoned her to go with his friend, letting her fall only too disastrously after the heady running together of the morning hours. That could account for tears now past. But should it account for a bruised cheek? He hesitated whether to question further, but clearly she did not wish it. She had gone back doggedly to her work, and would not look up again.
Cadfael sighed, and went out across the great court to the guest-hall. Even a glorious day like this one must have its vein of bitter sadness.
In the men’s dortoir Rhun sat alone on his bed, very still and content in his blissfully restored body. He was deep in his own rapt thoughts, but readily aware when Cadfael entered. He looked round and smiled.
“Brother, I was wishing to see you. You were there, you know. Perhaps you even heard… See, how I’m changed! ” The leg once maimed stretched out perfect before him, he bent and stamped the boards of the floor. He flexed ankle and toes, drew up his knee to his chin, and everything moved as smoothly and painlessly as his ready tongue. “I am whole! I never asked it, how dared I? Even then, I was praying not for this, and yet this was given…” He went away again for a moment into his tranced dream.
Cadfael sat down beside him, noting the exquisite fluency of those joints hitherto flawed and intransigent. The boy’s beauty was perfected now.
“You were praying,” said Cadfael gently, “for Melangell.”
“Yes. And Matthew too. I truly thought… But you see he is gone. They are both gone, gone together. Why could I not bring my sister into bliss? I would have gone on crutches all my life for that, but I couldn’t prevail.”
“That is not yet determined,” said Cadfael firmly. “Who goes may also return. And I think your prayers should have strong virtue, if you do not fall into doubt now, because heaven has need of a little time. Even miracles have their times. Half our lives in this world are spent in waiting. It is needful to wait with faith.”
Rhun sat listening with an absent smile, and at the end of it he said: “Yes, surely, and I will wait. For see, one of them left this behind in his haste when he went away.”
He reached down between the close-set cots, and lifted to the bed between them a bulky but lightweight scrip of unbleached linen, with stout leather straps for the owner’s belt. “I found it dropped between the two beds they had, drawn close together. I don’t know which of them owned this one, the two they carried were much alike. But one of them doesn’t expect or want ever to come back, does he? Perhaps Matthew does, and has forgotten this, whether he meant it or no, as a pledge.”
