Cadfael stared and wondered, but this was a heavy matter, and not for him. He said seriously: “I think you should bring this with you, and give it into the keeping of Father Abbot. For he sent me to bring you to him. He wants to speak with you.”
“With me?” wavered Rhun, stricken into a wild and rustic child again. “The lord abbot himself?”
“Surely, and why not? You are Christian soul as he is, and may speak with him as equal.”
The boy faltered: “I should be afraid…”
“No, you would not. You are not afraid of anything, nor need you ever be.”
Rhun sat for a moment with fists doubled into the blanket of his bed; then he lifted his clear, ice-blue gaze and blanched, angelic face and smiled blindingly into Cadfael’s eyes. “No, I need not. I’ll come.” And he hoisted the linen scrip and stood up stately on his two long, youthful legs, and led the way to the door.
“Stay with us,” said Abbot Radulfus, when Cadfael would have presented his charge and left the two of them together. “I think he might be glad of you.” Also, said his eloquent, austere glance, your presence may be of value to me as witness. “Rhun knows you. Me he does not yet know, but I trust he shall, hereafter.” He had the drab, brownish scrip on the desk before him, offered on entry with a word to account for it, until the time came to explore its possibilities further.
“Willingly, Father,” said Cadfael heartily, and took his seat apart on a stool withdrawn into a corner, out of the way of those two pairs of formidable eyes that met, and wondered, and probed with equal intensity across the small space of the parlour. Outside the windows the garden blossomed with drunken exuberance, in the burning colours of summer, and the blanched blue sky, at its loftiest in the late afternoon, showed the colour of Rhun’s eyes, but without their crystal blaze. The day of wonders was drawing very slowly and radiantly towards its evening.
“Son,” said Radulfus at his gentlest, “you have been the vessel for a great mercy poured out here. I know, as all know who were there, what we saw, what we felt. But I would know also what you passed through. I know you have lived long with pain, and have not complained. I dare guess in what mind you approached the saint’s altar. Tell me, what was it happened to you then?”
Rhun sat with his empty hands clasped quietly in his lap, and his face at once remote and easy, looking beyond the walls of the room. All his timidity was lost.
“I was troubled,” he said carefully, “because my sister and my Aunt Alice wanted so much for me, and I knew I needed nothing. I would have come, and prayed, and passed, and been content. But then I heard her call.”
“Saint Winifred spoke to you?” asked Radulfus softly.
“She called me to her,” said Rhun positively.
“In what words?”
“No words. What need had she of words? She called me to go to her, and I went. She told me, here is a step, and here, and here, come, you know you can. And I knew I could, so I went. When she told me, kneel, for so you can, then I kneeled, and I could. Whatever she told me, that I did. And so I will still,” said Rhun, smiling into the opposing wall with eyes that paled the sun.
“Child,” said the abbot, watching him in solemn wonder and respect, “I do believe it. What skills you have, what gifts to stead you in your future life, I scarcely know. I rejoice that you have to the full the blessing of your body, and the purity of your mind and spirit. I wish you whatever calling you may choose, and the virtue of your resolve to guide you in it. If there is anything you can ask of this house, to aid you after you go forth from here, it is yours.”
“Father,” said Rhun earnestly, withdrawing his blinding gaze into shadow and mortality, and becoming the child he was, “need I go forth? She called me to her, how tenderly I have no words to tell. I desire to remain with her to my life’s end. She called me to her, and I will never willingly leave her.”
Chapter Twelve.
AND WILL YOU KEEP HIM?” asked Cadfael, when the boy had been dismissed, made his deep reverence, and departed in his rapt, unwitting perfection.
“If his intent holds, yes, surely. He is the living proof of grace. But I will not let him take vows in haste, to regret them later. Now he is transported with joy and wonder, and would embrace celibacy and seclusion with delight. If his will is still the same in a month, then I will believe in it, and welcome him gladly. But he shall serve his full notiviate, even so. I will not let him close the door upon himself until he is sure. And now,” said the abbot, frowning down thoughtfully at the linen scrip that lay upon his desk, “what is to be done with this? You say it was fallen between the two beds, and might have belonged to either?”
“So the boy said. But, Father, if you remember, when the bishop’s ring was stolen, both those young men gave up their scrips to be examined. What each of them carried, apart from the dagger that was duly delivered over at the gatehouse, I cannot say with certainty, but Father Prior, who handled them, will know.”
“True, so he will. But for the present,” said Radulfus, “I cannot think we have any right to probe into either man’s possessions, nor is it of any great importance to discover to which of them this belongs. If Messire de Bretagne overtakes them, as he surely must, we shall learn more, he may even persuade them to return. We’ll wait for his word first.
In the meantime, leave it here with me. When we know more we’ll take whatever steps we can to restore it.”
The day of wonders drew in to its evening as graciously as it had dawned, with a clear sky and soft, sweet air. Every soul within the enclave came dutifully to Vespers, and supper in the guest-hall as in the refectory was a devout and tranquil feast. The voices hasty and shrill with excitement at dinner had softened and eased into the grateful languor of fulfilment.
Brother Cadfael absented himself from Collations in the chapter house, and went out into the garden. On the gentle ridge where the gradual slope of the pease fields began he stood for a long while watching the sky. The declining sun had still an hour or more of its course to run before its rim dipped into the feathery tops of the copses across the brook. The west which had reflected the dawn as this day began triumphed now in pale gold, with no wisp of cloud to dye it deeper or mark its purity. The scent of the herbs within the walled garden rose in a heady cloud of sweetness and spice. A good place, a resplendent day, why should any man slip away and run from it?
A useless question. Why should any man do the things he does? Why should Ciaran submit himself to such
