An Excellent Mystery

Chapter Four

IN THE CELL THE LITTLE LAMP FOR READING WAS NOT LIGHTED, since one of the young attendants could not read, and the other could not speak, while the incumbent himself still lay propped up with pillows in his cot, too weak to nurse a heavy book. But if Rhun could not read well, he could learn by heart, and recite what he had learned with feeling and warmth, and he was in the middle of a prayer of Saint Augustine which Brother Paul had taught him, when he felt suddenly that he had an audience larger than he had bargained for, and faltered and fell silent, turning towards the open end of the cell.

Nicholas Harnage stood hesitant within the doorway, until his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light. Brother Humilis had opened his eyes in wonder when Rhun faltered. He beheld the best-loved and most trusted of his former squires standing almost timorously at the foot of his bed.

“Nicholas?” he ventured, doubtful and wondering, heaving himself up to stare more intently.

Brother Fidelis stooped at once to prop and raise him, and brace the pillows at his back, and then as silently withdrew into the dark corner of the cell, to leave the field to the visitor.

“Nicholas! It is you!”

The young man went forward and fell on his knee to clasp and kiss the thin hand stretched out to him.

“Nicholas, what are you doing here? You’re welcome as the morning, but I never looked to see you in this place. It was kind indeed to seek me out in such a distant refuge. Come, sit by me here. Let me see you close!”

Rhun had slipped away silently. From the doorway he made a small reverence before he vanished. Fidelis took a step to follow him, but Humilis laid a hand on his arm to detain him.

“No, stay! Don’t leave us! Nicholas, to this young brother I owe more than I can ever repay. He serves me as truly in this field as you did in arms.”

“All who have been your men, like me, will be grateful to him,” said Nicholas fervently, looking up into a face shadowed by the cowl, and as featureless as voiceless in this half-darkness. If he wondered at getting no answer, but only an inclination of the head by way of acknowledgement, he shrugged it off without another thought, for it was of no importance that he should reach a closer acquaintance with one he might never see again. He drew the stool close to the bedside, and sat studying the emaciated face of his lord with deep concern.

“They tell me you are mending well. But I see you leaner and more fallen than when I left you, that time in Hyde, and went to do your errand. I had a long search in Winchester to find your prior, and enquire of him where you were gone. Need you have chosen to ride so far? The bishop would have taken you into the Old Minster, and been glad of you.”

“I doubt if I should have been so glad of the bishop,” said Brother Humilis with a wry little smile. “No, I had my reasons for coming so far north. This shire and this town I knew as a child. A few years only, but they are the years a man remembers later in life. Never trouble for me, Nick, I’m very well here, as well as any other place, and better than most. Let us speak rather of you. How have you fared in your new service, and what has brought you here to my bedside?”

“I’ve thrived, having your commendation. William of Ypres has mentioned me to the queen, and would have taken me among his officers, but I’d rather stay with FitzRobert’s English than go to the Flemings. I have a command. It was you who taught me all I know,” he said, at once glowing and sad, “you and the mussulmen of Mosul.”

“It was not the Atabeg Zenghi,” said Brother Humilis, smiling, “whose affairs sent you here so far to seek me out. Leave him to the King of Jerusalem, whose noble and perilous business he is. What of Winchester, since I fled from it?”

The queen’s armies have encircled it. Few men get out, and no food gets in. The empress’s men are shut tight in their castle, and their stores must be running very low. We came north to straddle the road by Andover. As yet nothing moves, therefore I got leave to ride north on my own business. But they must attempt to break out soon or starve where they are.”

“They’ll try to reopen one of the roads and bring in supplies, before they abandon Winchester altogether,” said Humilis, frowning thoughtfully over the possibilities. “If and when they do break, they’ll break for Oxford first. Well, if this stalemate has sent you here to me, one good thing has come out of it. And what is this business that brought you to Shrewsbury?”

“My lord,” began Nicholas, leaning forward very earnestly, “you remember how you sent me here to the manor of Lai, three years ago, to take the word to Humphrey Cruce and his daughter that you could not keep your compact to marry her?-that you were entering the cloister at Hyde Mead?”

“It is not a thing to forget,” agreed Humilis drily.

“My lord, neither can I forget the girl! You never saw her but as a child five years old, before you went to the Crusade. But I saw her a grown lady, nearly nineteen. I did your message to her father and to her, and came away glad to have it delivered and done. But now I cannot get her out of my mind. Such grace she had, and bore the severance with such dignity and courtesy. My lord, if she is still not wed or betrothed, I want to speak for her myself. But I could not go without first asking your blessing and consent.”

“Son,” said Humilis, glowing with astonished pleasure,”there’s nothing could delight me more than to see her happy with you, since I had to fail her. The girl is free to marry whom she will, and I could wish her no better man than you. And if you succeed I shall be relieved of all my guilt towards her, for I shall know she has made a better bargain than ever I should have been to her. Only consider, boy, we who enter the cloister abjure all possessions, how then can we dare lay claim to rights of possession in another creature of God? Go, and may you get her, and my blessing on you both. But come back and tell me how you fare.”

“My lord, with all my heart! How can I fail, if you send me to her?”

He stooped to kiss the hand that held him warmly, and rose blithely from the stool to take his leave. The silent figure in the shadows returned to his consciousness belatedly; it was as if he had been alone with his lord all this time, yet here stood the mute witness. Nicholas turned to him with impulsive warmth.

“Brother, I do thank you for your care of my lord. For this time, farewell. I shall surely see you again on my return.”

It was disconcerting to receive by way of reply only silence, and the courteous inclination of the cowled head.

“Brother Fidelis,” said Humilis gently, “is dumb. Only his life and works speak for him. But I dare swear his goodwill goes with you on this quest, like mine.”

There was silence in the cell when the last crisp, light echo had died away on the day stairs. Brother Humilis lay still, thinking, it seemed, tranquil and contented thoughts, for he was smiling.

“There are parts of myself I have never given to you,” he said at last,”things that happened before ever I knew you. There is nothing of myself I would not wish to share with you. Poor girl! What had she to hope for from me, so much her elder, even before I was broken? And I never saw her but once, a little lass with brown hair and a solemn round face. I never felt the want of a wife or children until I was thirty years old, having an elder brother to carry on my father’s line after the old man died. I took the Cross, and was fitting out a company to go with me to the east, free as air, when my brother also died, and I was left to balance my vow to God and my duty to my house. I owed it to God to do as I had sworn, and go for ten years to the Holy Land, but also I owed it to my house to marry and breed sons. So I looked for a sturdy, suitable little girl who could well wait all those years for me, and still have all her child-bearing time in its fullness when I returned. Barely six years old she was - Juliana Cruce, from a family with manors in the north of this shire, and in Stafford, too.”

He stirred and sighed for the follies of men, and the presumptuous solemnity of the arrangements they made for lives they would never live. The presence beside him drew near, put back the cowl, and sat down on the stool Nicholas had vacated. They looked each other in the eyes gravely and without words, longer than most men can look each other in the eyes and not turn aside.

“God knew better, my son!” said Humilis. “His plans for me were not as mine. I am what I am now. She is what she is. Juliana Cruce… I am glad she should escape me and go to a better man. I pray she has not yet given herself to any, for this Nicholas of mine would make her a fitting match, one that would set my soul at rest. Only to her do I feel myself a debtor, and forsworn.”

Brother Fidelis shook his head at him, reproachfully smiling, and leaned and laid a finger for an instant over the mouth that spoke heresy.

Cadfael had left Hugh waiting at the gatehouse, and was crossing the court to return to his duties in the herb-garden, when Nicholas Harnage emerged from the arch of the stairway, and recognising him, hailed him loudly and ran to pluck him urgently by the sleeve.

“Brother, a word!”

Cadfael halted and turned to face him. “How do you find him? The long ride put him to too great a strain, and he did not seek help until his wound was broken and festering, but that’s over now. All’s clean, wholesome and healing. You need not fear we shall let him founder like that a second time.”

“I believe it, Brother,” said the young man earnestly. “But I see him now for the first time after three years, and much fallen even from the man he was after he got his injuries. I knew they were grave, the doctors had him in care between life and death a long time, but when he came back to us at least he looked like the man we knew and followed. He made his plans then to come home, I know, but he had served already more years than he had promised, it was time to attend to his lands and his life here at home. I made that voyage with him, he bore it well. Now he has lost flesh, and there’s a languor about him when he moves a hand. Tell me the truth of it, how bad is it with him?”

“Where did he ever get such crippling wounds?” asked Cadfael, considering scrupulously how much he could tell, and guessing at how much this boy already knew, or at least hazarded.

“In that last battle with Zenghi and the men of Mosul. He had Syrian doctors after the battle.”

That might very well be why he survived so terrible a maiming, thought Cadfael, who had learned much of his own craft from both Saracen and Syrian physicians. Aloud he asked cautiously: “You have not seen his wounds? You don’t know their whole import?”

Surprisingly, the seasoned crusader was struck silent for a moment, and a slow wave of blood crept up under his golden tan, but he did not lower his eyes, very wide and direct eyes of a profound blue. “I never saw his body, no more than when I helped him into his harness. But I could not choose but understand what I can’t claim I know. It could not be otherwise, or he would never have abandoned the girl he was betrothed to. Why should he do so? A man of his word! He had nothing left to give her but a position and a parcel of dower lands. He chose rather to give her her freedom, and the residue of himself to God.”

“There was a girl?” said Cadfael.

“There is a girl. And I am on my way to her now,” said Nicholas, as defiantly as if his right had been challenged. “I carried the word to her and her father that he was gone into the monastery at Hyde Mead. Now I am going to Lai to ask for her hand myself, and he has given me his consent and blessing. She was a small child when she was affianced to him, she has never seen him since. There is no reason she should not listen to my suit, and none that her kin should reject me.”

“None in the world!” agreed Cadfael heartily. “Had I a daughter in such case, I would be glad to see the squire follow in his lord’s steps. And if you must report to her of his well-being, you may say with truth that he is doing what he wishes, and enjoys content of mind. And for his body, it is cared for as well as may be. We shall not let him want for anything that can give him aid or comfort.”

“But that does not answer what I need to know,” insisted the young man. “I have promised to come back and tell him how I’ve fared. Three or four days, no longer, perhaps not so long. But shall I still find him then?”

“Son,” said Cadfael patiently, “which of us can answer that for himself or any other man? You want truth, and you deserve it. Yes, Brother Humilis is dying. He got his death-wound long ago in that last battle. Whatever has been done for him, whatever can be done, is staving off an ending. But death is not in such a hurry with him as you fear, and he is in no fear of it. You go and find your girl, and bring him back good news, and he’ll be here to be glad of it.”

“And so he will,” said Cadfael to Edmund, as they took the air in the garden together before Compline that evening, “if that young fellow is brisk about his courting, and I fancy he’s the kind to go straight for what he wants. But how much longer we can hold our ground with Humilis I dare not guess. This fashion of collapse we can prevent, but the old harm will devour him in the end. As he knows better than any.”

“I marvel how he lived at all,” agreed Edmund, “let alone bore the journey home, and has survived three years or more since.”

They were private together down by the banks of the Meole Brook, or they could not have discussed the matter at all. No doubt by this hour Nicholas Harnage was well on his way to the northeast of the county, if he had not already arrived at his destination. Good weather for riding, he would be in shelter at Lai before dark. And a very well-set-up young fellow like Harnage, in a thriving way in arms by his own efforts, was not an offer to be sneezed at. He had the blessing of his lord, and needed nothing more but the girl’s liking, her family’s approval, and the sanction of the church.

“I have heard it argued,” said Brother Edmund, “that when an affianced man enters a monastic order, the betrothed lady is not necessarily free of the compact. But it seems a selfish and greedy thing to try to have both worlds, choose the life you want, but prevent the lady from doing likewise. But I think the question seldom arises but where the man cannot bear to loose his hold of what once he called his, and himself fights to keep her in chains. And here that is not so, Brother Humilis is glad there should be so happy a solution. Though of course she may be married already.”

“The manor of Lai,” mused Cadfael. “What do you know of it, Edmund? What family would that be?”

“Cruce had it. Humphrey Cruce, if I remember rightly, he might well be the girl’s father. They hold several manors up there, Ightfeld, and Harpecote-and Frees, from the Bishop of Chester. Some lands in Staffordshire, too. They made Lai the head of their honour.”

“That’s where he’s bound. Now if he comes back in triumph,” said Cadfael contentedly, “he’ll have done a good day’s work for Humilis. He’s already given him a great heave upward by showing his honest brown face, but if he settles the girl’s future for her he may have added a year or more to his lord’s life, at the same time.”

They went to Compline at the first sound of the bell. The visitor had indeed given Humilis a heft forward towards health, it seemed, for here he came, habited and erect on Fidelis’s arm, having asked no permission of his doctors, bent on observing the night office with the rest. But I’ll hound him back as soon as the observance is over, thought Cadfael, concerned for his dressing. Let him brandish his banner this once, it speaks well for his spirit, even if his flesh is drawn with effort. And who am I to say what a brother, my equal, may or may not do for his own salvation?

The evenings were already beginning to draw in, the height of the summer was over while its heat continued as if it would never break. In the dimness of the choir what light remained was coloured like irises, and faintly fragrant with the warm, heady scents of harvest and fruit. In his stall the tall, handsome, emaciated man who was old in his middle forties stood proudly, Fidelis on his left hand, and next to Fidelis, Rhun. Their youth and beauty seemed to gather to itself what light there was, so that they shone with a native radiance of their own, like lighted candles.

Across the choir from them Brother Urien stood, kneeled, genuflected and sang, with the full, assured voice of maturity, and never took his eyes from those two young, shining heads, the flaxen and the brown. Day by day those two drew steadily together, the mute one and the eloquent one, matched unfairly, unjustly, to his absolute exclusion, the one as desirable and as inviolable as the other, while his need burned in his bowels day and night, and prayer could not cool it, nor music lull it to sleep, but it ate him from within like the gnawing of wolves.

They had both begun-dreadful sign!-to look to him like the woman. When he gazed at either of these two, the boy’s lineaments would dissolve and change subtly, and there would be her face, not recognising, not despising, simply staring through him to behold someone else. His heart ached beyond bearing, while he sang mellifluously in the Compline psalm.

In the twilight of the softer, more open country in the northeast of the shire, where day lingered longer than among the folded hills of the western border, Nicholas Harnage rode between flat, rich fields, unwontedly dried by the heat, into the wattled enclosure of the manor of Lai. Wrapped round on all sides by the enlarged fields of the plain, sparsely tree’d to make way for wide cultivation, the house rose long and low, a stone-built hall and chambers over a broad undercroft, with stables and barns about the interior of the fence. Fat country, good for grain and for roots, with ample grazing for any amount of cattle. The byres were vocal as Nicholas entered at the gate, the mild, contented lowing of well-fed beasts, milked and drowsy.

A groom heard the entering hooves and came forth from the stables, bared to the waist in the warm night. Seeing one young horseman alone, he was quite easy. They had had comparative peace here while Winchester burned and bled.

“Seeking whom, young sir?”

“Seeking the master, your lord, Humphrey Cruce,” said Nicholas, reining in peaceably and shaking the reins free. “If he still keeps house here?”

“Why, the lord Humphrey’s dead, sir, three years ago. His son Reginald is lord here now. Would your errand do as well to him?”

“If he’ll admit me, yes, surely to him, then,” said Nicholas, and dismounted. “Let him know, I was here some three years ago, to speak for Godfrid Marescot. It was his father I saw then, but the son will know of it.”

“Come within,” said the groom placidly, accepting the credentials without question. “I’ll have your beast seen to.”

In the smoky, wood-scented hall they were at meat, or still sitting at ease after the meal was done, but they had heard his step on the stone stairs that led to the open hall door, and Reginald Cruce rose, alert and curious, as the visitor entered. A big, black-haired man of austere features and imperious manner, but well-disposed, it seemed, towards chance travellers. His lady sat aloof and quiet, a pale-haired woman in green, with a boy of about fifteen at her side, and a younger boy and girl about nine or ten, who by their likeness might well be twins. Evidently Reginald Cruce had secured his succession with a well-filled quiver, for by the lady’s swelling waist when she rose to muster the hospitality of the house, there was another sibling on the way.

Nicholas made his reverence and offered his name, a little confounded at finding Juliana Cruce’s brother a man surely turned forty, with a wife and growing children, where he had assumed a young fellow in his twenties, perhaps newly-married since inheriting. But he recalled that Humphrey Cruce had been an old man to have a daughter still so young. Two marriages, surely, the first blessed with an heir, the second undertaken late, when Reginald was a grown man, ready for marriage himself, or even married already to his pale, prolific wife.

“Ah, that!” said Reginald of his guest’s former errand to this same house. “I remember it, though I was not here then. My wife brought me a manor in Staffordshire, we were living there. But I know how it fell out, of course. A strange business altogether. But it happens! Men change their minds. And you were the messenger? Well, but leave it now and take some refreshment. Come to table! There’ll be time to talk of all such business afterwards.”

He sat down and kept his visitor company while a servant brought meat and ale, and the lady, having made her grave good night, drove her younger children away to their beds, and the heir sat solemn and silent studying his elders. At last, in the deepening evening, the two men were left alone to their talk.

“So you are the squire who brought that word from Marescot. You’ll have noticed there’s a generation, as near as need be, between my sister and me-seventeen years. My mother died when I was nine years old, and it was another eight before my father married again. An old man’s folly, she brought him nothing, and died when the girl was born, so he had little joy of her.”

At least, thought Nicholas, studying his host dispassionately, there was no second son, to threaten a division of the lands. That would be a source of satisfaction to this man, he was authentically of his class and kind, and land was his lifeblood.

“He may well have had great joy of his daughter, however,” he said firmly, “for she is a very gracious and beautiful girl, as I well recall.”

“You’ll be better informed of that than I,” said Reginald drily, “if you saw her only three years ago. It must be eighteen or more since I set eyes on her. She was a stumbling infant then, two years old, or three, it might be. I married about that time, and settled on the lands Cecilia brought me. We exchanged couriers now and then, but I never came back here until my father was on his deathbed, and they sent for me to come to him.”

“I didn’t know of his death when I set out to come here on this errand of my own,” said Nicholas. “I heard it only from your groom at the gate. But I may speak as freely with you as I should have done with him. I was so much taken with your sister’s grace and dignity that I’ve thought of her ever since, and I’ve spoken with my lord Godfrid, and have his full consent to what I’m asking. As for myself,” he thrust on, leaning eagerly across the board, “I am heir to two good manors from my father, and shall have some lands also after my mother, I stand well in the queen’s armies and my lord will speak for me, that I’m in earnest in this matter, and will provide for Juliana as truly as any man could, if you will…”

His host was gazing, astonished, smiling at his fervour, and had raised a warning hand to still the flood.

“Did you come all this way to ask me to give you my sister?”

“I did! Is that so strange? I admired her, and I’m come to speak for her. And she might have worse offers,” he added, flushing and stiffening at such a reception.

“I don’t doubt it, but, man, man, you should have put in a word to give her due warning then. You come three years too late!”

“Too late?” Nicholas sat back and drew in his hands slowly, stricken. Then she’s already married?”

“You might call it so!” Reginald hoisted wide shoulders in a helpless gesture. “But not to any man. And you might have sped well enough if you’d made more haste, for all I know. No, this is quite a different story. There was some discussion, even, about whether she was still bound like a wife to Marescot-a great foolery, but the churchmen have to assert their authority, and my father’s chaplain was prim as a virgin-though I suspect, for all that, in private he was none!-and clutched at every point of canon law that gave him power, and he took the extreme line, and would have it she was legally a wife, while the parish priest argued the opposing way, and my father, being a sensible man, took his side and insisted she was free. All this I learned by stages since. I never took part or put my head into the hornets’ nest.”

Nicholas was frowning into his cupped hands, feeling the cold heaviness of disappointment drag his heart down. But still this was not a complete answer. He looked up ruefully. “So how did this end? Why is she not here to use her freedom, if she has not yet given herself to a husband?”

“Ah, but she has! She took her own way. She said that if she was free, then she would make her own choice. And she chose to do as Marescot had done, and took a husband not of this world. She has taken the veil as a Benedictine nun.”

“And they let her?” demanded Nicholas, wrung between rage and pain. “Then, when she was moved by this broken match, they let her go so easily, throw away her youth so unwisely?”

“They let her, yes. How do I know whether she was wise or no? If it was what she wished, why should she not have it? Since she went I’ve never had word from her, never has she complained or asked for anything. She must be happy in her choice. You must look elsewhere for a wife, my friend!”

Nicholas sat silent for a time, swallowing a bitterness that burned in his belly like fire. Then he asked, with careful quietness: “How was it? When did she leave her home? How attended?”

“Very soon after your visit, I judge. It might be a month while they fought out the issue, and she said never a word. But all was done properly. Our father gave her an escort of three men-at-arms and a huntsman who had always been a favourite and made a pet of her, and a good dowry in money, and also some ornaments for her convent, silver candlesticks and a crucifix and such. He was sad to see her go, I know by what he said later, but she wanted it so, and her wants were his commands always.” A very slight chill in his brisk, decisive voice spoke of an old jealousy. The child of Humphrey’s age had plainly usurped his whole heart, even though his son would inherit all when that heart no longer beat. “He lived barely a month longer,” said Reginald. “Only long enough to see the return of her escort, and know she was safely delivered where she wished to be. He was old and feeble, we knew it. But he should not have dwindled so soon.”

“He might well miss her,” said Nicholas, very low and hesitantly, “about the place. She had a brightness… And you did not send for her, when her father died?”

“To what end? What could she do for him, or he for her? No, we let her be. If she was happy there, why trouble her?”

Nicholas gripped his hands together under the board, and wrung them hard, and asked his last question: “Where was it she chose to go?” His own voice sounded to him hollow and distant.

“She’s in the Benedictine abbey of Wherwell, close by Andover.”

So that was the end of it! All this time she had been within hail of him, the house of her refuge encircled now by armies and factions and contention. If only he had spoken out what he felt in his heart at the first sight of her, even hampered as he had been by the knowledge of the blow he was about to deal her, and gagged by that knowledge when for once he might have been eloquent. She might have listened, and at least delayed, even if she could feel nothing for him then. She might have thought again, and waited, and even remembered him. Now it was far too late, she was a bride for the second time, and even more indissolubly.

This time there was no question of argument. The betrothal vows made by or for a small girl might justifiably be dissolved, but the vocational vows of a grown woman, taken in the full knowledge of their meaning, and of her own choice, never could be undone. He had lost her.

Nicholas lay all night in the small guest-chamber prepared for him, fretting at the knot and knowing he could not untie it. He slept shallowly and uneasily, and in the morning he took his leave, and set out on the road back to Shrewsbury.