kiss from an accepted elder.
She could as well have put her small hand into Judith’s breast and wrung the heart that had starved so many years for just such fruit. Judith stooped to the embrace with tears starting to her eyes. The child’s mouth was soft and cool and sweet. On the way through the town she had carried the rose, and the scent of it was still about her. She had nothing to say, not yet, she was too busy taking in and appraising the room and the woman. She would be voluble enough later, when both became less strange.
“It was Father Adam gave her her name,” said Niall, looking down at her with a grave smile. “An unusual name ?she’s called Rosalba.”
“I envy you!” said Judith, as she had said once before.
A slight constraint had settled upon them again, it was difficult to find anything to say. So few words, and so niggardly, had been spent here throughout. He took his daughter’s hand again, and drew back out of the bar of light towards the door, leaving Judith with the white rose still sunlit on her breast. The other white rose gave a skipping step back, willing to go, but looked back over her shoulder to smile by way of leave-taking.
“Well, chick, we’ll be making for home. We’ve done our errand.”
And they would go, both of them, and there would be no more roses to bring, no more rents to pay on the day of Saint Winifred’s translation. And if they went away thus, there might never again be such a moment, never these three in one room together again.
He had reached the door when she said suddenly: “Niall
“
He turned, abruptly glowing, to see her standing full in the sunlight, her face as white and open as the rose.
“Niall, don’t go!” She had found words at last, the right words, and in time. She said to him what she had said in the dead of night, at the gate of Godric’s Ford:
“Don’t leave me now!”
the end
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