Hugh came out of the dark, smiling, and reached a hand to haul him to his feet. Someone else came running light-footed from the other side, and stooped to him a wonderful, torch-lit face, high-boned, lean-cheeked, with eager golden eyes, and blue-black raven wings of hair curving to cup his cheeks.
“Olivier?” said Cadfael, marvelling. “I thought you were astray on the road to Oswestry. How did you ever find us here?”
“By grace of God and a goat-herd,” said the warm, gay, remembered voice, “and your bull’s bellowing. Come, look round! You have won your field. They were gone, Simeon Poer, merchant of Guildford, Walter Bagot, glover, John Shure, tailor, all fled, but with half a dozen of Hugh’s men hard on their heels, all to be brought in captive, to answer for more, this time, than a little cheating in the marketplace. Night stooped to enfold a closed arena of torchlight, very quiet now and almost still. Cadfael rose, his torn sleeve dangling awkwardly.
The three of them stood in a half-circle about the beech-tree.
The torchlight was stark, plucking light and shadow into sharp relief. Matthew stirred out of his colloquy between life and death very slowly as they watched him, heaved his wide shoulders clear of the tree, and stood forth like a sleeper roused before his time, looking about him as if for something by which he might hold, and take his bearings. Between his feet, as he emerged, the coiled, crumpled form of Ciaran came into view, faintly stirring, his head huddled into his close-folded arms.
“Get up!” said Matthew. He drew back a little from the tree, his naked dagger in his hand, a slow drop gathering at its tip, more drops falling steadily from the hand that held it. His knuckles were sliced raw. “Get up!” he said. “You are not harmed.”
Ciaran gathered himself very slowly, and clambered to his knees, lifting to the light a face soiled and leaden, gone beyond exhaustion, beyond fear. He looked neither at Cadfael nor at Hugh, but stared up into Matthew’s face with the helpless intensity of despair. Hugh felt the clash of eyes, and stirred to make some decisive movement and break the tension, but Cadfael laid a hand on his arm and held him still. Hugh gave him a sharp sidelong glance, and accepted the caution. Cadfael had his reasons.
There was blood on the torn collar of Ciaran’s shirt, a stain that grew sluggishly before their eyes. He put up hands that seemed heavy as lead, and fumbled aside the linen from throat and breast. All round the left side of his neck ran a raw, bleeding slash, thin as a knife-cut. Simeon Poer’s last blind clutch for plunder had torn loose the cross to which Ciaran had clung so desperately. He kneeled in the last wretched extreme of submission, baring a throat already symbolically slit.
“Here am I,” he said in a toneless whisper. “I can run no further, I am forfeit. Now take me!”
Matthew stood motionless, staring at that savage cut the cord had left before it broke. The silence grew too heavy to be bearable, and still he had no word to say, and his face was a blank mask in the flickering light of the torches.
“He says right,” said Cadfael, very softly and reasonably. “He is yours fairly. The terms of his penance are broken, and his life is forfeit. Take him!”
There was no sign that Matthew so much as heard him, but for the spasmodic tightening of his lips, as if in pain. He never took his eyes from the wretch kneeling humbly before him.
“You have followed him faithfully, and kept the terms laid down,” Cadfael urged gently. “You are under vow. Now finish the work!”
He was on safe enough ground, and sure of it now. The act of submission had already finished the work, there was no more to be done. With his enemy at his mercy, and every justification for the act of vengeance, the avenger was helpless, the prisoner of his own nature. There was nothing left in him but a drear sadness, a sick revulsion of disgust and self-disgust. How could he kill a wretched, broken man, kneeling here unresisting, waiting for his death? Death was no longer relevant.
“It is over, Luc,” said Cadfael softly. “Do what you must.”
Matthew stood mute a moment longer, and if he had heard his true name spoken, he gave no sign, it was of no importance. After the abandonment of all purpose came the awful sense of loss and emptiness. He opened his bloodstained hand and let the dagger slip from his fingers into the grass. He turned away like a blind man, feeling with a stretched foot for every step, groped his way through the curtain of bushes, and vanished into the darkness.
Olivier drew in breath sharply, and started out of his tranced stillness to catch eagerly at Cadfael’s arm. “Is it true? You have found him out? He is Luc Meverel?” He accepted the truth of it without another word said, and sprang ardently towards the place where the bushes still stirred after Luc’s passing, and he would have been off in pursuit at a run if Hugh had not caught at his arm to detain him.
“Wait but one moment! You also have a cause here, if Cadfael is right. This is surely the man who murdered your friend. He owes you a death. He is yours if you want him.”
“That is truth,” said Cadfaei. “Ask him! He will tell you.”
Ciaran crouched in the grass, drooping now, bewildered and lost, no longer looking any man in the face, only waiting without hope or understanding for someone to determine whether he was to live or die, and on what abject terms. Olivier cast one wondering glance at him, shook his head in emphatic rejection, and reached for his horse’s bridle. “Who am I,” he said, “to exact what Luc Meverel has remitted? Let this one go on his way with his own burden. My business is with the other.”
He was away at a run, leading the horse briskly through the screen of bushes, and the rustling of their passage gradually stilled again into silence. Cadfael and Hugh were left regarding each other mutely across the lamentable figure crouched upon the ground.
Gradually the rest of the world flowed back into Cadfael’s ken. Three of Hugh’s officers stood aloof with the horses and the torches, looking on in silence; and somewhere not far distant sounded a brief scuffle and outcry, as one of the fugitives was overpowered and made prisoner. Simeon Poer had been pulled down barely fifty yards in cover, and stood sullenly under guard now, with his wrists secured to a sergeant’s stirrup-leather. The third would not be a free man long. This night’s ventures were over. This piece of woodland would be safe even for barefoot and unarmed pilgrims to traverse.
“What is to be done with him?” demanded Hugh openly, looking down upon the wreckage of a man with some distaste.
“Since Luc has waived his claim,” said Cadfael, “I would not dare meddle. And there is something at least to be said for him, he did not cheat or break his terms voluntarily, even when there was no one by to accuse him. It is a
