“There’s dill, fennel, mint, just a morsel of poppy juice
and honey to make it agreeable to the taste. Put it somewhere safe and use it as I’ve said. If she’s again troubled this way, give her the dose you saw me give. If she does well enough without it, then spare it but for the drop or two in her food. Medicines are of more effect if used only when there’s need.”
He blew out the end of candle he had brought, leaving it to cool and congeal, for it had still an hour or so of burning left in it, and could serve again in the same office. On the instant he was sorry he had diminished the light in the room so soon, for only now had he leisure to look at the woman. This was the widowed mother of the girl who had been shut out of the church as an irredeemable sinner, whose very penitence and confession were not to be trusted, and therefore could justifiably be rejected. Out of this small, dark dwelling that disordered beauty had blossomed, borne fruit, and died.
The mother must herself have been comely, some years ago, she had still fine features, though worn and lined now in shapes of discouragement, and her greying hair, drawn back austerely from her face, was still abundant, and bore the shadowy richness of its former red-brown colouring. There was no saying whether the dark, hollow eyes that studied her grandchild with such a bitter burden of love were dark blue, but they well might have been. She was probably barely forty. Cadfael had seen her about the Foregate now and then, but never before paid close attention to her.
“A fine babe you have there,” said Cadfael. “She may well grow into a beautiful child.”
“Better she should be plain as any drab,” said the widow with abrupt passion, than take after her mother’s beauty, and go the same way. You do know whose child she is? Everyone knows it!”
“No fault of this little one she left behind,” said Cadfael. “I hope the world will treat her better than it treated her mother.”
“It was not the world that cast her off,” said Nest, “but the church. She could have lived under the world’s malice, but not when the priest shut her out of the church.”
“Did her worship truly mean so much to her,” asked Cadfael gravely, that she could not live excommunicate?”
“Truly it did. You never knew her! As wild and rash as she was beautiful, but such a bright, kind, warm creature to have about the house, and for all her wildness she was easily hurt. She who never could bear to wound any other creature was open to wounds herself. But for the thing she could not help, no one could have been a better and sweeter daughter to me. You can’t know how it was! She could not refuse to anyone whatever he asked of her, if it was in her power to give it. And the men found it out, and having no shame?for sin was something she spoke of without understanding?she could not say no to men, either. She would go with a man because he was melancholy, or because he begged her, or because he had been blamed or beaten unjustly and was aggrieved at the world.
And then it would come over her that this might indeed be sin, as Father Adam had told her, though she could not see why. And then she went flying to confession, in tears, and promised amendment, and meant it, too. Father Adam was gentle with her, seeing she was not like other young women. He always spoke her kindly and fair, and gave her light penance, and never refused her absolution. Always she promised to amend, but then she forgot for some boy’s light tongue or dark eyes, and sinned again, and again confessed and was shriven. She couldn’t keep from men, but neither could she live without the blessing and comfort of the church. When the door was shut in her face she went solitary away, and solitary she died. And for all she was a torment to me, living, she was a joy, too, and now I have only torment, and no joy?but for this fearful joy here in the cradle. Look, she’s asleep!”
“Do you know,” asked Cadfael, brooding, “who fathered the child?”
Nest shook her head, and a faint, dry smile plucked at her lips. “No. As soon as she understood it might bring blame on him, whoever he was, she kept him a secret even from me. If, indeed, she knew herself which one of them had quickened her! Yet I think she did know. She was neither mad nor dull of understanding. She was brighter than most, but for the part of caution that was left out of her. She might have confronted the man to his face, but she would never betray him to the black priest. Oh, he asked her! He threatened her, he raged at her, but she said that for her sins she would answer and do penance, but another man’s sins were his own, and so must his confession be.”
A good answer! Cadfael acknowledged it with a nod and a sigh.
The candle was cold and set. He restored it to his scrip, and turned to take his leave. “Well, if she’s fretful again and you need me, let me know of it by Cynric, or leave word at the gatehouse, and I’ll come. But I think you’ll find the cordial will serve your turn.” He looked back for a second with his hand on the latch of the door. “What have you named her? Eluned, for her mother?”
“No,” said the widow. “It was Eluned chose her name. Praise God, it was Father Adam who christened her, before he fell ill and died. She’s called Winifred.”
Cadfael walked back along the Foregate with that last echo still ringing in his mind. The daughter of the outcast and excommunicate, it seemed, was named for the town’s own saint, witness enough to the truth of Eluned’s undisciplined devotion. And doubtless Saint Winifred would know where to find and watch over both the living child and the dead mother, whom the parish of Saint Chad, more prodigally merciful than Father Ailnoth, had buried decently, observing a benevolent Christian doubt concerning the circumstances of her unwitnessed death. A strong strain, these Welsh women married into Shropshire families. He knew nothing of the English forester who had been husband to the widow Nest, but surely it must be she who had handed on to her self-doomed child the fierce beauty that had been her downfall, and the same face, in prophetic vision, waited for the infant Winifred in her cradle. Perhaps the choice of her venerated name had been a brave gesture to protect a creature otherwise orphaned and unprotected, a waif in an alien world where too prodigal a union of beauty and generosity brought only grief.
Now there, in the cottage he had left behind, was one being who had the best of all reasons to hate Ailnoth, and might have killed him if a thought could have done it, but was hardly likely to follow him through the winter night and strike him down from behind, much less roll him, stunned, into the pool. She had too powerful a lodestone to keep her watchful and protective at home. But the vengeful fire in her might drive a man to do it for her sake, if she had so close and resolute a friend. Among all those men who had taken comfort from the world’s spite in Eluned’s arms, might there not be more than one ready and willing? And in particular, if he knew what seed he had sown, the father of the infant Winifred.
At this rate, thought Cadfael, mildly irritated with his own preoccupation, I shall be looking sidewise at every comely man I see, to try if I can find in his face any resemblance to a murderer. I’d best concern myself with my own duties, and leave official retribution to Hugh?not that he’ll be grateful for it!
He was approaching the gatehouse, and had just come to the entrance to the twisting alley that led to the priest’s house. He halted there, suddenly aware that the heavy covering cloud had lifted, and a faint gleam of sun snowed through. Not brilliantly and icily out of a pale, cold sky, but timidly and grudgingly through untidy, wallowing shreds of cloud. The glitter coruscating from icicles and swags of frozen snow along the eaves had acquired a softer, moist brightness. There was even a drip here and there from a gable end where the timorous sun fell. Cynric
