little else, and the city men have plundered the palace and driven out even the last hangers-on. She never made move to win them, nothing but threats and reproaches and demands for money ever since she entered. She’s let the crown slip through her fingers for want of a few soft words and a queen’s courtesy. For your part,” said Hugh, with real compunction, “I’m sorry! For mine, I find it a great deliverance.”
“With that I find no fault,” said Olivier simply. “Why should you not be glad? But she… she’s safe? They have not taken her?”
“No, according to the messenger she’s safely away, with Robert of Gloucester and a few others as loyal, but the rest, it seems, scattered and made off for their own lands, where they’d feel safe. That’s the word as he brought it, barely a day old. The city of London was being pressed hard from the south,” said Hugh, somewhat softening the load of folly that lay upon the empress’s own shoulders, “with King Stephen’s queen harrying their borders. To get relief their only way was to drive the empress out and let the queen in, and their hearts were on her side, no question, of the two they’d liefer have her.”
“I knew,” said Olivier,”she was not wise, the Empress Maud. I knew she could not forget grudges, no matter how sorely she needed to close her eyes to them. I have seen her strip a man’s dignity from him when he came submissive, offering support… Better at making enemies than friends. All the more she needs,” he said, “the few she has. Where is she gone? Did your messenger know?”
“Westward for Oxford. And they’ll reach it safely. The Londoners won’t follow so far, their part was only to drive her out.”
“And the bishop? Is he gone with her?” The entire enterprise had rested upon the efforts of Henry of Blois, and he had done his best for her, not entirely creditably but understandably and at considerable cost, and his best she herself had undone. Stephen was a prisoner in Bristol, but Stephen was still crowned and anointed king of England. No wonder Hugh’s eyes shone.
“Of the bishop I know nothing as yet. But he’ll surely join her in Oxford. Unless…”
“Unless he changes sides again,” Olivier ended for him, and laughed. “It seems I shall have to leave you in more haste than I expected,” he said with regret. “One fortune rises, another falls. No sense in quarrelling with the lot.”
“What will you do?” asked Hugh, watching him steadily. “You know, I think, that whatever you may ask of us here, is yours, and the choice is yours. Your horses are fresh. Your men will not yet have heard the news, they’ll be waiting on your word. If you need stores for a journey, take whatever you will. Or if you choose to stay…”
Olivier shook his blue-black head, and the clasping curves of glossy hair danced on his cheeks. “I must go. Not north, where I was sent. What use in that, now? South for Oxford. Whatever she may be else, she is my liege lord’s liege lady, where she is he will be, and where he is, I go.”
They eyed each other silently for a moment, and Hugh said softly, quoting remembered words: “To tell you truth, now I’ve met you I expected nothing less.”
“I’ll go and rouse my men, and we’ll get to horse. You’ll follow to your house, before I go? I must take leave of Lady Beringar.”
“I’ll follow you,” said Hugh.
Olivier turned to Brother Cadfael without a word but with the brief golden flash of a smile breaking through his roused gravity for an instant, and again vanishing. “Brother… remember me in your prayers!” He stooped his smooth cheek yet again in farewell, and as the elder’s kiss was given he embraced Cadfael vehemently, with impulsive grace. “Until a better time!”
“God go with you!” said Cadfael.
And he was gone, striding rapidly along the gravel path, breaking into a light run, in no way disheartened or down, a match for disaster or for triumph. At the corner of the box hedge he turned in flight to look back, and waved a hand before he vanished.
“I wish to God,” said Hugh, gazing after him, “he was of our party! There’s an odd thing, Cadfael! Will you believe, just then, when he looked round, I thought I saw something of you about him. The set of the head, something…”
Cadfael, too, was gazing out from the open doorway to where the last sheen of blue had flashed from the burnished hair, and the last echo of the light foot on the gravel died into silence. “Oh, no,” he said absently, “he is altogether the image of his mother.”
An unguarded utterance. Unguarded from absence of mind, or design?
The following silence did not trouble him, he continued to gaze, shaking his head gently over the lingering vision, which would stay with him through all his remaining years, and might even, by the grace of God and the saints, be made flesh for him yet a third time. Far beyond his deserts, but miracles are neither weighed nor measured, but as uncalculated as the lightnings.
“I recall,” said Hugh with careful deliberation, perceiving that he was permitted to speculate, and had heard only what he was meant to hear, “I do recall that he spoke of one for whose sake he held the Benedictine order in reverence… one who had used him like a son…”
Cadfael stirred, and looked round at him, smiling as he met his friend’s fixed and thoughtful eyes. “I always meant to tell you, some day,” he said tranquilly, “what he does not know, and never will from me. He is my son.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR ELLIS PETERS is a pseudonym for Edith Pargeter, author of many books under her own name. The recipient of the C.W.A. Silver Dagger Award, she is also well known as a translator of poetry and prose from the Czech. Miss Pargeter makes her home in Shropshire, England.
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