“And duty well done, my dear soul,” said Mistress Glover, embracing her friend in a massive arm, “duty very well done!”
They were married in the privacy of the Lady Chapel, by Brother Paul, who was not only master of the novices, but the chief of their confessors, too, and already had Rhun under his care and instruction, and felt a fatherly interest in him, which the boy’s affection very readily extended to embrace the sister. No one else was present but the family and their witnesses, and the bridal pair wore no festal garments, for they had none. Luc was in the serviceable brown cotte and hose he had slept in, out in the fields, and the same crumpled shirt, though newly washed and smoothed. Melangell was neat and modest in her homespun, proudly balancing her coronal of braided, deep-gold hair. They were pale as lilies, bright as stars, and solemn as the grave.
After high and moving events, daily life must still go on. Cadfael went to his work that afternoon well content. With the meadow grasses in ripe seed and the harvest imminent he had preparations to make for two seasonal ailments which could be relied upon to recur every year. There were some who suffered with eruptions on their hands when working in the harvest, and others who took to sneezing and wheezing, with running eyes, and needed lotions to help them.
He was busy bruising fresh leaves of dock and mandrake in a mortar for a soothing ointment, when he heard light, long-striding steps approaching along the gravel of the path, and then half of the sunlight from the wide-open door was cut off, as someone hesitated in the doorway. He turned with the mortar hugged to his chest, and the green-stained wooden pestle arrested in his hand, and there stood Olivier, dipping his tall head to evade the hanging bunches of herbs, and asking, in the mellow, confident voice of one assured of the answer, “May I come in?”
He was in already, smiling, staring about him with a boy’s candid curiosity, for he had never been here before. “I’ve been a truant, I know, but with two days to wait before Luc’s marriage I thought best to get on with my errand to the sheriff of Stafford, being so close, and then come back here. I was back, as I said I’d be, in time to see them wedded. I thought you would have been there.”
“So I would, but I was called out to Saint Giles. Some poor soul of a beggar stumbled in there overnight covered with sores, they were afraid of a contagion, but it’s no such matter. If he’d had treatment earlier it would have been an easy matter to cure him, but a week or so resting in the hospital will do him no harm. Our pair of youngsters here had no need of me. I’m a part of what’s over and done with for them, you’re a part of what’s beginning.”
“Melangell told me where I should find you, however, you were missed. And here I am.”
“And as welcome as the day,” said Cadfael, laying his mortar aside. Long, shapely hands gripped both his hands heartily, and Olivier stooped his olive cheek for the greeting kiss, as simply as for the parting kiss when they had separated at Bromfield. “Come, sit, let me offer you wine, my own making. You knew, then, that those two would marry?”
“I saw them meet, when I brought him back here. Small doubt how it would end. Afterwards he told me his intent.
When two are agreed, and know their own minds,” said Olivier blithely, “everything else will give way. I shall see them both properly provided for the journey home, since I must go by a more roundabout way.”
When two are agreed, and know their own minds! Cadfael remembered confidences now a year and a half past. He poured wine carefully, his hand being a shade less steady than usual, and sat down beside his visitor, the young, wide shoulder firm and vital against his elderly and stiff one, the clear, elegant profile close, and a pleasure to his eyes. “Tell me,” he said, “about Ermina,” and was sure of the answer even before Olivier turned on him his sudden blinding smile.
“If I had known my travels would bring me to you, I should have had so many messages to bring you, from both of them. From Yves, and from my wife!”
“Aaaah!” breathed Cadfael, on a deep, delighted sigh. “So, as I thought, as I hoped! You have made good, then, what you told me, that they would acknowledge your worth and give her to you.” Two, there, who had indeed known their own minds, and been invincibly agreed! “When was this match made?”
“This Christmas past, in Gloucester. She is there now, so is the boy. He is Laurence’s heir, just fifteen now. He wanted to come to Winchester with us, but Laurence wouldn’t let him be put in peril. They are safe, I thank God. If ever this chaos is ended,” said Olivier very solemnly, “I will bring her to you, or you to her. She does not forget you.”
“Nor I her, nor I her! Nor the boy. He rode with me twice, asleep in my arms, I still recall the warmth and the shape and the weight of him. A good boy as ever stepped!”
“He’d be a load for you now,” said Olivier, laughing. This year past, he’s shot up like a weed, he’ll be taller than you.”
“Ah, well, I’m beginning to shrink like a spent weed. And you are happy?” asked Cadfael, thirsting for more blessedness even than he already had. “You and she both?”
“Beyond what I know how to express,” said Olivier no less gravely. “How glad I am to have seen you again, and been able to tell you so! Do you remember the last time? When I waited with you in Bromfield to take Ermina and Yves home? And you drew me maps on the floor to show me the ways?”
There is a point at which joy is only just bearable. Cadfael got up to refill the wine-cups, and turn his face away for a moment from a brightness almost too bright. “Ah, now, if this is to be a contest in “do-you-remembers” we shall be at it until Vespers, for not one detail of that time have I forgotten. So let’s have this flask here within reach, and settle down to it in comfort.”
But there was an hour and more left before Vespers when Hugh put an abrupt end to remembering. He came in haste, with a face blazingly alert, and full of news. Even so he was slow to speak, not wishing to exult openly in what must be only shock and dismay to Olivier.
“There’s news. A courier rode in from Warwick just now, they’re passing the word north by stages as fast as horse can go.” They were both on their feet by then, intent upon his face, and waiting for good or evil, for he contained it well. A good face for keeping secrets, and under strong control now out of courteous consideration. “I fear,” he said, “it will not come as gratefully to you, Olivier, as I own it does to me.”
“From the south…” said Olivier, braced and still. “From London? The empress?”
“Yes, from London. All is overturned in a day. There’ll be no coronation. Yesterday as they sat at dinner in Westminster, the Londoners suddenly rang the tocsin, all the city bells. The entire town came out in arms, and marched on Westminster. They’re fled, Olivier, she and all her court, fled in the clothes they wore and with very
