An Excellent Mystery

Chapter Five

IT SO HAPPENED THAT BROTHER CADFAEL WAS PRIVATE with Humilis in his cell in the dortoir when Nicholas again rode in at the gatehouse and asked leave to visit his former lord, as he had promised. Humilis had risen with the rest that morning, attended Prime and Mass, and scrupulously performed all the duties of the horarium, though he was not yet allowed to exert himself by any form of labour. Fidelis attended him everywhere, ready to support his steps if need arose, or fetch him whatever he might want, and had spent the afternoon completing, under his elder’s approving eye, the initial letter which had been smeared and blotted by his fall. And there they had left the boy to finish the careful elaboration in gold, while they repaired to the dortoir, physician and patient together.

“Well closed,” said Cadfael, content with his work, “and firming up nicely, clean as ever. You scarcely need the bandages, but as well keep them a day or two yet, to guard against rubbing while the new skin is still frail.”

They were grown quite easy together, these two, and if both of them realised that the mere healing of a broken and festered wound was no sufficient cure for what ailed Humilis, they were both courteously silent on the subject, and took their moderate pleasure in what good they had achieved.

They heard the footsteps on the stone treads of the day stairs, and knew them for booted feet, not sandalled. But there was no spring in the steps now, and no hasty eagerness, and it was a glum young man who appeared, shadowy, in the doorway of the cell. Nor had he been in any hurry on the way back from Lai, since he had nothing but disappointment to report. But he had promised, and he was here.

“Nick!” Humilis greeted him with evident pleasure and affection. “You’re soon back! Welcome as the day, but I had thought…” There he stopped, even in the dim interior light aware that the brightness was gone from the young man’s face. “So long a visage? I see it did not go as you would have wished.”

“No, my lord.” Nicholas came in slowly, and bent his knee to both his elders. “I have not sped.”

“I am sorry for it, but no man can always succeed. You know Brother Cadfael? I owe the best of care to him.”

“We spoke together the last time,” said Nicholas, and found a half-hearted smile by way of acknowledgement. “I count myself also in his debt.”

“Spoke of me, no doubt,” said Humilis, smiling and sighing. “You trouble too much for me, I am well content here. I have found my way. Now sit down a while, and tell us what went wrong for you.”

Nicholas plumped himself down on the stool beside the bed on which Humilis was sitting, and said what he had to say in commendably few words: “I hesitated three years too long. Barely a month after you took the cowl at Hyde, Juliana Cruce took the veil at Wherwell.”

“Did she so!” said Humilis on a long breath, and sat silent to take in all that this news could mean. “Now I wonder… No, why should she do such a thing unless it was truly her wish? It cannot have been because of me! No, she knew nothing of me, she had only once seen me, and must have forgotten me before my back was turned.

She may even have been glad… It may be this is what she always wished, if she could have her way…” He thought for a moment, frowning, perhaps trying to recall what that little girl looked like. “You told me, Nick, that I do remember, how she took my message. She was not distressed, but altogether calm and courteous, and gave me her grace and pardon freely. You said so!”

“Truth, my lord,” said Nicholas earnestly, “though she cannot have been glad.”

“Ah, but she may-she may very well have been glad. No blame to her! Willing though she may have been to accept the match made for her, yet it would have tied her to a man more than twenty years her elder, and a stranger. Why should she not be glad, when I offered her her liberty-no, urged it upon her? Surely she must have made of it the use she preferred, perhaps had longed for.”

“She was not forced,” Nicholas admitted, with somewhat reluctant certainty. “Her brother says it was the girl’s own choice, indeed her father was against it, and only gave in because she would have it so.”

“That’s well,” agreed Humilis with a relieved sigh. Then we can but hope that she may be happy in her choice.”

“But so great a waste!” blurted Nicholas, grieving. “If you had seen her, my lord, as I did! To shear such hair as she had, and hide such a form under the black habit! They should never have let her go, not so soon. How if she has regretted it long since?”

Humilis smiled, but very gently, eyeing the downcast face and hooded eyes. “As you described her to me, so gracious and sensible, of such measured and considered speech, I don’t think she will have acted without due thought. No, surely she has done what is right for her. But I’m sorry for your loss, Nick. You must bear it as gallantly as she did-if ever I was any loss!”

The Vesper bell had begun to chime. Humilis rose to go down to the church, and Nicholas rose with him, taking the summons as his dismissal.

“It’s late to set out now,” suggested Cadfael, emerging from the silence and withdrawal he had observed while these two talked together. “And it seems there’s no great haste, that you need leave tonight. A bed in the guest-hall, and you could set off fresh in the morning, with the whole day before you. And spend an hour or two more with Brother Humilis this evening, while you have the chance.”

To which sensible notion they both said yes, and Nicholas recovered a little of his spirits, if nothing could restore the ardour with which he had ridden north from Winchester.

What did somewhat surprise Brother Cadfael was the considerate way in which Fidelis, confronted yet again with this visitant from the time before he had known Humilis and established his own intimacy with him, withdrew himself from sight as he was withdrawn from the possibility of conversation, and left them to their shared memories of travel, Crusade and battle, things so far removed from his own experience. An affection which could so self-effacingly make room for a rival and prior affection was generous indeed.

There was a merchant of Shrewsbury who dealt in fleeces all up and down the borders, both from Wales and from such fat sheep-country as the Cotswolds, and had done an interesting side-trade in information, for Hugh’s benefit, in these contrary times. His active usefulness was naturally confined to this period of high summer when the wool clip was up for sale, and many dealers had restricted their movements in these dangerous times, but he was a determined man, intrepid enough to venture well south down the border, towards territory held by the empress. His suppliers had sold to him for some years, and had sufficient confidence in him to hold their clip until he made contact.

He had good trading relations as far afield as Bruges in Flanders, and was not at all averse to a large risk when calculating on a still larger profit. Moreover, he took his own risks, rather than delegating these unchancy journeys to his underlings. Possibly he even relished the challenge, for he was a stubborn and stalwart man.

Now, in early September, he was on his way home with his purchases, a train of three wagons following from Buckingham, which was as near as he could reasonably go to Oxford. For Oxford had become as alert and nervous as a town itself under siege, every day expecting that the empress must be forced by starvation to retreat from Winchester. The merchant had left his men secure on a road relatively peaceful, to bring up his wagons at leisure, and himself rode ahead at good speed with his news to report to Hugh Beringar in Shrewsbury, even before he went home to his wife and family.

“My lord, things move at last. I had it from a man who saw the end of it, and made good haste away to a safer place. You know how they were walled up there in their castles in Winchester, the bishop and the empress, with the queen’s armies closing all round the city and sealing off the roads. No supplies have gone in through that girdle for four weeks now, and they say there’s starvation in the town, though I doubt if either empress or bishop is going short.” He was a man who spoke his mind, and no great respecter of high personages. “A very different tale for the poor townsfolk! But it’s biting even the garrison within there at the royal castle, for the queen has been supplying Wolvesey while she starves out the opposing side. Well, they came to the point where they must try to win a way through.”

“I’ve been expecting it,” said Hugh, intent. “What did they hit on? They could only hope to move north or west, the queen holds all the south-east.”

“They sent out a force, three or four hundred as I heard it, northwards, to seize on the town of Wherwell, and try to secure a base there to open the Andover road. Whether they were seen on the move, or whether some townsman betrayed them-for they’re not loved in Winchester-however it was, William of Ypres and the queen’s men closed in on them when they’d barely reached the edge of the town, and cut them to pieces. A. great killing! The fellow who told me fled when the houses started to burn, but he saw the remnant of the empress’s men put up a desperate fight of it and reach the great nunnery there. And they never scrupled to use it, either, he says. They swarmed into the church itself and turned it into a fortress, although the poor sisters had shut themselves in there for safety. The Flemings threw in firebrands after them. A hellish business it must have been. He could hear from far off as he ran, he said, the women screaming, the flames crackling and the din of fighting within there, until those who remained were forced to come out and surrender, half-scorched as they were. Not a man can have escaped either death or capture.”

“And the women?” demanded Hugh aghast. “Do you tell me the abbey of Wherwell is burned down, like the convent in the city, like Hyde Mead after it?”

“My man never dallied to see how much was left,” said the messenger drily. “But certainly the church burned down to the ground, with both men and women in it-the sisters cannot all have come out alive. And as for those who did, God alone knows where they will have found refuge now. Safe places are hard to find in those parts. And for the empress’s garrison, I’d say there’s no hope for them now but to muster every man they have, and try to burst out by force of numbers through the ring, and run for it. And a poor chance for them, even so.”

A poor chance indeed, after this last loss of three or four hundred fighting men, probably hand-picked for the exploit, which must have been a desperate gamble from the first. The year only at early September, and the fortunes of war had changed and changed again, from the disastrous battle of Lincoln which had made the king prisoner and brought the empress within grasp of the crown itself, to this stranglehold drawn round the same proud lady now. Now only give us the empress herself prisoner, thought Hugh, and we shall have stalemate, recover each our sovereign, and begin this whole struggle all over again, for what sense there is in it! And at the cost of the brothers of Hyde Mead and the nuns of Wherwell. Among many others even more defenceless, like the poor of Winchester.

The name of Wherwell, as yet, meant no more to him than any other convent unlucky enough to fall into the field of battle.

“A good year for me, all the same,” said the wool-merchant, rising to make his way home to his own waiting board and bed. “The clip measures up well, it was worth the journey.”

Hugh took the latest news down to the abbey next morning, immediately after Prime, for whatever of import came to his ears was at once conveyed to Abbot Radulfus, a service the abbot appreciated and reciprocated. The clerical and secular authorities worked well together in Shropshire, and moreover, in this case a Benedictine house had been desecrated and destroyed, and those of the Rule stood together, and helped one another where they could. Even in more peaceful times, nunneries were apt to have much narrower lands and more restricted resources than the houses of the monks, and often had to depend upon brotherly alms, even under good, shrewd government. Now here was total devastation. Bishops and abbots would be called upon to give aid.

He had come from his colloquy with Radulfus in the abbot’s parlour with half an hour still before High Mass and, choosing to stay for the celebration since he was here, he did what he habitually did with time to spare within the precinct of the abbey and went looking for Brother Cadfael in his workshop in the herb-garden.

Cadfael had been up since long before Prime, inspected such wines and distillations as he had working, and done a little watering while the soil was in shade and cooled from the night. At this time of year, with the harvest in, there was little work to be done among the herbs, and he had no need as yet to ask for an assistant in place of Brother Oswin.

When Hugh came to look for Cadfael he found him sitting at ease on the bench under the north wall, which at this time of day was pleasantly warm without being too hot, contemplating between admiration and regret the roses that bloomed with such extravagant splendour and wilted so soon. Hugh sat down beside him, rightly interpreting placid silence as welcome.

“Aline says it’s high time you came to see how your godson has grown.”

“I know well enough how much he will have grown,” said Giles Beringar’s godfather, between complacency and awe of his formidable responsibility. “Not two years old until Christmas, and too heavy already for an old man.”

Hugh made a derisive noise. When Cadfael claimed to be an old man he must either be up to something, or inclined to be idle, and giving fair warning.

“Every time he sees me he climbs me like a tree,” said Cadfael dreamily. “You he daren’t treat so, you are but a sapling. Give him fifteen more years, and he’ll make two of you.”

“So he will,” agreed the fond father, and stretched his lithe, light body pleasurably in the strengthening sun. “A long lad from birth-do you remember? That was a Christmas indeed, what with my son-and yours… I wonder where Olivier is now? Do you know?”

“How should I know? With d’Angers in Gloucester, I hope. She can’t have drawn them all into Winchester with her, she must leave force enough in the west to hold her on to her base there. Why, what made you think of him just now?”

“It did enter my head that he might have been among the empress’s chosen at Wherwell.” He had recoiled into grim recollection, and did not at first notice how Cadfael stiffened and turned to stare. “I pray you’re right, and he’s well out of it.”

“At Wherwell? Why, what of Wherwell?”

“I forgot,” said Hugh, startled, “you don’t yet know the latest news, for I’ve only just brought it within here, and I got it only last night. Did I not say they’d have to try to break out-the empress’s men? They have tried it, Cadfael, disastrously for them. They sent a picked force to try to seize Wherwell, no doubt hoping to straddle the road and the river there, and open a way to bring in supplies. William of Ypres cut them to pieces outside the town, and the remnant fled into the nunnery and shut themselves into the church. The place burned down over them… God forgive them for ever violating it, but they were Maud’s men who first did it, not ours. The nuns, God help them, had taken refuge there when the fight began…”

Cadfael sat frozen even in the sunlight. “Do you tell me Wherwell has gone the way of Hyde?”

“Burned to the ground. The church at least. As for the rest… But in so hot and dry a season…”

Cadfael, who had gripped him hard and suddenly by the arm, as abruptly loosed him, leaped from the bench, and began to run, veritably to run, as he had not done since hurtling to get out of range from the rogue castle on Titterstone Clee, two years earlier. He had still a very respectable turn of speed when roused, but his gait was wonderful, legless under the habit, like a black ball rolling, with a slight oscillation from side to side, a seaman’s walk become a headlong run. And Hugh, who loved him, and rose to pursue him with a very sharp sense of the urgency behind this flight, nevertheless could not help laughing as he ran. Viewed from behind, a Benedictine in a hurry, and a Benedictine of more than sixty years and built like a barrel, at that, may be formidably impressive to one who knows him, but must be comic.

Cadfael’s purposeful flight checked in relief as he emerged into the great court; for they were there still, in no haste with their farewells, though the horse stood by with a groom at his bridle, and Brother Fidelis tightening the straps that held Nicholas Harnage’s bundle and rolled cloak behind the saddle. They knew nothing yet of any need for haste. There was a whole sunlit day before the rider.

Fidelis wore the cowl always outdoors, as though to cover a personal shyness that stemmed, surely, from his mute tongue. He who could not open his mind to others shrank from claiming any privileged advance from them. Only Humilis had some manner of silent and eloquent speech with him that needed no voice. Having secured the saddle-roll the young man stepped back modestly to a little distance, and waited.

Cadfael arrived more circumspectly than he had set out from the garden. Hugh had not followed him so closely, but halted in shadow by the wall of the guest-hall.

“There’s news,” said Cadfael bluntly. “You should hear it before you leave us. The empress has made an attack on the town of Wherwell, a disastrous attack. Her force is wiped out by the queen’s army. But in the fighting the abbey of Wherwell was fired, the church burned to the ground. I know no more detail, but so much is certain. The sheriff here got the word last night.”

“By a reliable man,” said Hugh, drawing close. “It’s certain.”

Nicholas stood staring, eyes and mouth wide, his golden sunburn dulling to an earthen grey as the blood drained from beneath it. He got out in a creaking whisper: “Wherwell? They’ve dared…?”

“No daring,” said Hugh ruefully, “but plain terror. They were men penned in, the raiding party, they sought any place of hiding they could find, surely, and slammed to the door. But the end was the same, whoever tossed in the firebrands. The abbey’s laid waste. Sorry I am to say it.”

“And the women…? Oh, God… Juliana’s there… Is there any word of the women?”

“They’d taken to the church for sanctuary,” said Hugh. In such civil warfare there were no sanctuaries, not even for women and children. “The remnant of the raiders surrendered-most may have come out alive. All, I doubt.”

Nicholas turned blindly to grope for his bridle, plucking his sleeve out of the quivering hand Humilis had laid on his arm. “Let me away! I must go… I must go there and find her.” He swung back to catch again briefly at the older man’s hand and wring it hard. “I will find her! If she lives I’ll find her, and see her safe.” He found his stirrup and heaved himself into the saddle.

“If God’s with you, send me word,” said Humilis. “Let me know that she lives and is safe.”

“I will, my lord, surely I will.”

“Don’t trouble her, don’t speak to her of me. No questions! All I need, all you must ask, is to know that God has preserved her, and that she has the life she wanted. There’ll be a place elsewhere for her, with other sisters. If only she still lives!”

Nicholas nodded mutely, shook himself out of his daze with a great heave, wheeled his horse, and was gone, out through the gatehouse without another word or a look behind. They were left gazing after him, as the light dust of his passing shimmered and settled under the arch of the gate, where the cobbles ended, and the beaten earth of the Foregate began.

All that day Humilis seemed to Cadfael to press his own powers to the limit, as though the stress that drove Nicholas headlong south took its toll here in enforced stillness and inaction, where the heart would rather have been riding with the boy, at whatever cost. And all that day Fidelis, turning his back even on Rhun, shadowed Humilis with a special and grievous solicitude, tenderness and anxiety, as though he had just realised that death stood no great distance away, and advanced one gentle step with every hour that passed.

Humilis went to his bed immediately after Compline, and Cadfael, looking in on him ten minutes later, found him already asleep, and left him undisturbed accordingly. It was not a festering wound and a maimed body that troubled Humilis now, but an obscure feeling of guilt towards the girl who might, had he married her, have been safe in some manor far remote from Winchester and Wherwell and the clash of arms, instead of driven by fire and slaughter even out of her chosen cloister. Sleep could do more for his grieving mind than the changing of a dressing could do now for his body. Sleeping, he had the hieratic calm of a figure already carved on a tomb. He was at peace. Cadfael went quietly away and left him, as Fidelis must have left him, to rest the better alone.

In the sweet-scented twilight Cadfael went to pay his usual nightly visit to his workshop, to make sure all was well there, and stir a brew he had standing to cool overnight. Sometimes, when the nights were so fresh after the heat of the day, the skies so full of stars and so infinitely lofty, and every flower and leaf suddenly so imbued with its own lambent colour and light in despite of the light’s departure, he felt it to be a great waste of the gifts of God to be going to bed and shutting his eyes to them. There had been illicit nights of venturing abroad in the past-he trusted for good enough reasons, but did not probe too deeply. Hugh had had his part in them, too. Ah, well!

Making his way back with some reluctance, he went in by the church to the night stairs. All the shapes within the vast stone ship showed dimly by the small altar lamps. Cadfael never passed through without stepping for a moment into the choir, to cast a glance and a thought towards Saint Winifred’s altar, in affectionate remembrance of their first encounter, and gratitude for her forbearance. He did so now, and checked abruptly before venturing nearer. For there was one of the brothers kneeling at the foot of the altar, and the tiny red glow of the lamp showed him the uplifted face, fast-closed eyes and prayerfully folded hands of Fidelis. Showed him no less clearly, as he drew softly nearer, the tears glittering on the young man’s cheeks. A perfectly still face, but for the mute lips moving soundlessly on his prayers, and the tears welling slowly from beneath his closed eyelids and spilling on to his breast. The shocks of the day might well send him here, now his charge was sleeping, to put up fervent prayers for a better ending to the story. But why should his face seem rather that of a penitent than an innocent appellant? And a penitent unsure of absolution!

Cadfael slipped away very quietly to the night stairs and left the boy the entire sheltering space of the church for his inexplicable pain.

The other figure, motionless in the darkest corner of the choir, did not stir until Cadfael had departed, and even then waited long moments before stealing forward by inches, with held breath, over the chilly paving.

A naked foot touched the hem of Fidelis’s habit, and as hastily and delicately drew back again from the contact. A hand was outstretched to hover over the oblivious head, longing to touch and yet not daring until the continued silence and stillness gave it courage. Tensed fingers sank into the curling russet that ringed the tonsure, the light touch set the hand quivering, like the pricking of imminent lightning in the air before a storm. If Fidelis also sensed it, he gave no sign. Even when the fingers stirred lovingly in his hair, and stroked down into the nape of his neck within the cowl he did not move, but rather froze where he kneeled, and held his breath.

“Fidelis,” whispered a hushed and aching voice close at his shoulder. “Brother, never grieve alone! Turn to me… I could comfort you, for everything, everything… whatever your need…”

The stroking palm circled his neck, but before it reached his cheek Fidelis had started to his feet in one smooth movement, resolute and unalarmed, and swung out of reach. Without haste, or perhaps unwilling to show his face, even by this dim light, until he had mastered it, he turned to look upon the intruder into his solitude, for whispers have no identity, and he had never before taken any particular notice of Brother Urien. He did so now, with wide and wary grey eyes. A dark, passionate, handsome man, one who should never have shut himself in within these walls, one who burned, and might burn others before ever he grew cool at last. He stared back at Fidelis, and his face was wrung and his outstretched hand quaked, yearning towards Fidelis’s sleeve, which was withdrawn from him austerely before he could grasp it.

“I’ve watched you,” breathed the husky, whispering voice, “I know every motion and grace. Waste, waste of youth, waste of beauty… Don’t go! No one sees us now…”

Fidelis turned his back steadily, and walked out from the choir towards the night stairs. Silent on the tiled floor, Urien’s naked feet followed him, the tormented whisper followed him.

“Why turn your back on loving kindness? You will not always do so. Think of me! I will wait…”

Fidelis began to climb the stairs. The pursuer halted at the foot, too sick with anguish to go where other men might still be wakeful. “Unkind, unkind…” wailed the faintest thread of a voice, receding, and then, with barely audible but extreme bitterness: “If not here, in another place… If not now, at another time!”