The Pilgrim of Hate

Chapter Four

THERE WAS SO SHORT an interval, and so little weeding done, before the second pair appeared, that Cadfael could not choose but reason that the two couples must have met at the corner of his herber, and perhaps exchanged at least a friendly word or two, since they had travelled side by side the last miles of their road here.

The girl walked solicitously beside her brother, giving him the smoothest part of the path, and keeping a hand supportingly under his left elbow, ready to prop him at need, but barely touching. Her face was turned constantly towards him, eager and loving. If he was the tended darling, and she the healthy beast of burden, certainly she had no quarrel with the division. Though just once she did look back over her shoulder, with a different, a more tentative smile. She was neat and plain in her homespun country dress, her hair austerely braided, but her face was vivid and glowing as a rose, and her movements, even at her brother’s pace, had a spring and grace to them that spoke of a high and ardent spirit. She was fair for a Welsh girl, her hair a coppery gold, her brows darker, arched hopefully above wide blue eyes. Mistress Weaver could not be far out in supposing that a young man who had hefted this neat little woman out of harm’s way in his arms might well remember the experience with pleasure, and not be averse to repeating it. If he could take his eyes from his fellow-pilgrim long enough to attempt it!

The boy came leaning heavily on his crutches, his right leg dangling inertly, turned with the toe twisted inward, and barely brushing the ground. If he could have stood erect he would have been a hand’s-breadth taller than his sister, but thus hunched he looked even shorter. Yet the young body was beautifully proportioned, Cadfael judged, watching his approach with a thoughtful eye, wide-shouldered, slim-flanked, the one good leg long, vigorous and shapely. He carried little flesh, indeed he could have done with more, but if he spent his days habitually in pain it was unlikely he had much appetite.

Cadfael’s study of him had begun at the twisted foot, and travelling upward, came last to the boy’s face. He was fairer than the girl, wheat-gold of hair and brows, his thin, smooth face like ivory, and the eyes that met Cadfael’s were a light, brilliant grey-blue, clear as crystal between long, dark lashes. It was a very still and tranquil face, one that had learned patient endurance, and expected to have need of it lifelong. It was clear to Cadfael, in that first exchange of glances, that Rhun did not look for any miraculous deliverance, whatever Mistress Weaver’s hopes might be.

“If you please,” said the girl shyly, “I have brought my brother, as my aunt said I should. And his name is Rhun, and mine is Melangell.”

“She has told me about you,” said Cadfael, beckoning them with him towards his workshop. “A long journey you’ve had of it. Come within, and let’s make you as easy as we may, while I take a look at this leg of yours. Was there ever an injury brought this on? A fall, or a kick from a horse? Or a bout of the bone-fever?” He settled the boy on the long bench, took the crutches from him and laid them aside, and turned him so that he could stretch out his legs at rest.

The boy, with grave eyes steady on Cadfael’s face, slowly shook his head. “No such accident,” he said in a man’s low, clear voice. “It came. I think, slowly, but I don’t remember a time before it. They say I began to falter and fall when I was three or four years old.”

Melangell, hesitant in the doorway-strangely like Ciaran’s attendant shadow, thought Cadfael-had her chin on her shoulder now, and turned almost hastily to say: “Rhun will tell you all his case. He’ll be better private with you. I’ll come back later, and wait on the seat outside there until you need me.”

Rhun’s light, bright eyes, transparent as sunlit ice, smiled at her warmly over Cadfael’s shoulder. “Do go,” he said. “So fine and sunny a day, you should make good use of it, without me dangling about you.”

She gave him a long, anxious glance, but half her mind was already away; and satisfied that he was in good hands, she made her hasty reverence, and fled. They were left looking at each other, strangers still, and yet in tentative touch.

“She goes to find Matthew,” said Rhun simply, confident of being understood. “He was good to her. And to me, also-once he carried me the last piece of the way to our night’s lodging on his back. She likes him, and he would like her, if he could truly see her, but he seldom sees anyone but Ciaran.”

This blunt simplicity might well get him the reputation of an innocent, though that would be the world’s mistake. What he saw, he said-provided, Cadfael hoped, he had already taken the measure of the person to whom he spoke-and he saw more than most, having so much more need to observe and record, to fill up the hours of his day.

“They were here?” asked Rhun, shifting obediently to allow Cadfael to strip down the long hose from his hips and his maimed leg.

“They were here. Yes, I know.”

“I would like her to be happy.”

“She has it in her to be very happy,” said Cadfael, answering in kind, almost without his will. The boy had a quality of dazzle about him that made unstudied answers natural, almost inevitable. There had been, he thought, the slightest of stresses on ‘her’. Rhun had little enough expectation that he could ever be happy, but he wanted happiness for his sister. “Now pay heed,” said Cadfael, bending to his own duties, “for this is important. Close your eyes, and be at ease as far as you can, and tell me where I find a spot that gives pain. First, thus at rest, is there any pain now?”

Docilely Rhun closed his eyes and waited, breathing softly. “No, I am quite easy now.”

Good, for all his sinews lay loose and trustful, and at least in that state he felt no pain. Cadfael began to finger his way, at first very gently and soothingly, all down the thigh and calf of the helpless leg, probing and manipulating. Thus stretched out at rest, the twisted limb partially regained its proper alignment, and showed fairly formed, though much wasted by comparison with the left, and marred by the intumed toe and certain tight, bunched knots of sinew in the calf. He sought out these, and let his fingers dig deep there, wrestling with hard tissue.

“There I feel it,” said Rhun, breathing deep. “It doesn’t feel like pain-yes, it hurts, but not for crying. A good hurt…”

Brother Cadfael oiled his hands, smoothed a palm over the shrunken calf, and went to work with firm fingertips, working tendons unexercised for years, beyond that tensed touch of toe upon ground. He was gentle and slow, feeling for the hard cores of resistance. There were unnatural tensions there, that would not melt to him yet. He let his fingers work softly, and his mind probe elsewhere.

“You were orphaned early. How long have you been with your Aunt Weaver?”

“Seven years now,” said Rhun almost drowsily, soothed by the circling fingers. “I know we are a burden to her, but she never says it, nor she would never let any other say it. She has a good business, but small, it provides her needs and keeps two men at work, but she is not rich. Melangell works hard keeping the house and the kitchen, and earns her keep. I have learned to weave, but I am slow at it. I can neither stand for long nor sit for long, I am no profit to her. But she never speaks of it, for all she has an edge to her tongue when she pleases.”

“She would,” agreed Cadfael peacefully. “A woman with many cares is liable to be short in her speech now and again, and no ill meant. She has brought you here for a miracle. You know that? Why else would you all three have walked all this way, measuring out the stages day by day at your pace? And yet I think you have no expectation of grace. Do you not believe Saint Winifred can do wonders?”

“I?” The boy was startled, he opened great eyes clearer than the clear waters Cadfael had navigated long ago, in the eastern fringes of the Midland Sea, over pale and glittering sand. “Oh, you mistake me, I do believe. But why for me? In case like mine we come by our thousands, in worse case by the hundred. How dare I ask to be among the first? Besides, what I have I can bear. There are some who cannot bear what they have. The saint will know where to choose. There is no reason her choice should fall on me.”

“Then why did you consent to come?” Cadfael asked.

Rhun turned his head aside, and eyelids blue-veined like the petals of anemones veiled his eyes. “They wished it, I did what they wanted. And there was Melangell…”

Yes, Melangell who was altogether comely and bright and a charm to the eye, thought Cadfael. Her brother knew her dowryless, and wished her a little of joy and a decent marriage, and there at home, working hard in house and kitchen, and known for a penniless niece, suitors there were none. A venture so far upon the roads, to mingle with so various a company, might bring forth who could tell what chances?

In moving Rhun had plucked at a nerve that gripped and twisted him, he eased himself back against the timber wall with aching care. Cadfael drew up the homespun hose over the boy’s nakedness, knotted him decent, and gently drew down his feet, the sound and the crippled, to the beaten earth floor.

“Come again to me tomorrow, after High Mass, for I think I can help you, if only a little. Now sit until I see if that sister of yours is waiting, and if not, you may rest easy until she comes. And I’ll give you a single draught to take this night when you go to your bed. It will ease your pain and help you to sleep.”

The girl was there, still and solitary against the sun-warmed wall, the brightness of her face clouded over, as though some eager expectation had turned into a grey disappointment; but at the sight of Rhun emerging she rose with a resolute smile for him, and her voice was as gay and heartening as ever as they moved slowly away.

He had an opportunity to study all of them next day at High Mass, when doubtless his mind should have been on higher things, but obstinately would not rise above the quivering crest of Mistress Weaver’s head-cloth, and the curly dark crown of Matthew’s thick crop of hair. Almost all the inhabitants of the guest-halls, the gentles who had separate apartments as well as the male and female pilgrims who shared the two common dortoirs, came in their best to this one office of the day, whatever they did with the rest of it. Mistress Weaver paid devout attention to every word of the office, and several times nudged Melangell sharply in the ribs to recall her to duty, for as often as not her head was turned sidewise, and her gaze directed rather at Matthew than at the altar. No question but her fancy, if not her whole heart, was deeply engaged there. As for Matthew, he stood at Ciaran’s shoulder, always within touch. But twice at least he looked round, and his brooding eyes rested, with no change of countenance, upon Melangell. Yet on the one occasion when their glances met, it was Matthew who turned abruptly away.

That young man, thought Cadfael, aware of the broken encounter of eyes, has a thing to do which no girl must be allowed to hinder or spoil: to get his fellow safely to his journey’s end at Aberdaron.

He was already a celebrated figure in the enclave, this Ciaran. There was nothing secret about him, he spoke freely and humbly of himself. He had been intended for ordination, but had not yet gone beyond the first step as sub-deacon, and had not reached, and now never would reach, the tonsure. Brother Jerome, always a man to insinuate himself as close as might be to any sign of superlative virtue and holiness, had cultivated and questioned him, and freely retailed what he had learned to any of the brothers who would listen. The story of Ciaran’s mortal sickness and penitential pilgrimage home to Aberdaron was known to all. The austerities he practised upon himself made a great impression. Brother Jerome held that the house was honoured in receiving such a man. And indeed that lean, passionate face, burning-eyed beneath the uncropped brown hair, had a vehement force and fervour.

Rhun could not kneel, but stood steady and stoical on his crutches throughout the office, his eyes fixed, wide and bright, upon the altar. In this soft, dim light within, already reflecting from every stone surface the muted brightness of a cloudless day outside, Cadfael saw that the boy was beautiful, the planes of his face as suave and graceful as any girl’s, the curving of his fair hair round ears and cheeks angelically pure and chaste. If the woman with no son of her own doted on him, and was willing to forsake her living for a matter of weeks on the off-chance of a miracle that would heal him, who could wonder at her?

Since both his attention and his eyes were straying, Cadfael gave up the struggle and let them stray at large over all those devout heads, gathered in a close assembly and filling the nave of the church. An important pilgrimage has much of the atmosphere of a public fair about it, and brings along with it all the hangers-on who frequent such occasions, the pickpockets, the plausible salesmen of relics, sweetmeats, remedies, the fortune-tellers, the gamblers, the swindlers and cheats of all kinds. And some of these cultivate the most respectable of appearances, and prefer to work from within the pale rather than set up in the Foregate as at a market. It was always worth running an eye over the ranks within, as Hugh’s sergeants were certainly doing along the ranks without, to mark down probable sources of trouble before ever the trouble began.

This congregation certainly looked precisely what it purported to be. Nevertheless, there were a few there worth a second glance. Three modest, unobtrusive tradesmen who had arrived closely one after another and rapidly and openly made acquaintance, to all appearances until then strangers: Walter Bagot, glover; John Shure, tailor; William Hales, farrier. Small craftsmen making this their summer holiday, and modestly out to enjoy it. And why not? Except that Cadfael had noted the tailor’s hands devoutly folded, and observed that he cultivated the long, well-tended nails of a fairground sharper, hardly suitable for a tailor’s work. He made a mental note of their faces, the glover rounded and glossy, as if oiled with the same dressing he used on his leathers, the tailor lean-jowled and sedate, with lank hair curtaining a lugubrious face, the farrier square, brown and twinkling of eye, the picture of honest good-humour.

They might be what they claimed. They might not. Hugh would be on the watch, so would the careful tavern-keepers of the Foregate and the town, by no means eager to hold their doors open to the fleecers and skinners of their own neighbours and customers.

Cadfael went out from Mass with his brethren, very thoughtful, and found Rhun already waiting for him in the herbarium.

The boy sat passive and submitted himself to Cadfael’s handling, saying no word beyond his respectful greeting. The rhythm of the questing fingers, patiently coaxing apart the rigid tissues that lamed him, had a soothing effect, even when they probed deeply enough to cause pain. He let his head lean back against the timbers of the wall, and his eyes gradually closed. The tension of his cheeks and lips showed that he was not sleeping, but Cadfael was able to study the boy’s face closely as he worked on him, and note his pallor, and the dark rings round his eyes.

“Well, did you take the dose I gave you for the night?” asked Cadfael, guessing at the answer.

“No.” Rhun opened his eyes apprehensively, to see if he was to be reproved for it, but Cadfael’s face showed neither surprise nor reproach.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. Suddenly I felt there was no need. I was happy,” said Rhun, his eyes again closed, the better to examine his own actions and motives. “I had prayed. It’s not that I doubt the saint’s power. Suddenly it seemed to me that I need not even wish to be healed… that I ought to offer up my lameness and pain freely, not as a price for favour. People bring offerings, and I have nothing else to offer. Do you think it might be acceptable? I meant it humbly.”

There could hardly be, thought Cadfael, among all her devotees, a more costly oblation. He has gone far along a difficult road who has come to the point of seeing that deprivation, pain and disability are of no consequence at all, beside the inward conviction of grace, and the secret peace of the soul. An acceptance which can only be made for a man’s own self, never for any other. Another’s grief is not to be tolerated, if there can be anything done to alleviate it.

“And did you sleep well?”

“No. But it didn’t matter. I lay quiet all night long. I tried to bear it gladly. And I was not the only one there wakeful.” He slept in the common dormitory for the men, and there must be several among his fellows there afflicted in one way or another, besides the sick and possibly contagious whom Brother Edmund had isolated in the infirmary. “Ciaran was restless, too,” said Rhun reflectively, “When it was all silent, after Lauds, he got up very quietly from his cot, trying not to disturb anyone, and started wards the door. I thought then how strange it was that he took his belt and scrip with him…”

Cadfael was listening intently enough by this time. Why, indeed, if a man merely needed relief for his body during the night, should he burden himself with carrying his possessions about with him? Though the habit of being wary of theft, in such shared accommodation, might persist even when half-asleep, and in monastic care into the bargain.

“Did he so, indeed? And what followed?”

“Matthew has his own pallet drawn close beside Ciaran’s, even in the night he lies with a hand stretched out to touch. Besides, you know, he seems to know by instinct whatever ails Ciaran. He rose up in an instant, and reached out and took Ciaran by the arm. And Ciaran started and gasped, and blinked round at him, like a man startled awake suddenly, and whispered that he’d been asleep and dreaming, and had dreamed it was time to start out on the road again. So then Matthew took the scrip from him and laid it aside, and they both lay down in their beds again, and all was quiet as before. But I don’t think Ciaran slept well, even after that, his dream had disturbed his mind too much, I heard him twisting and turning for a long time.”

“Did they know,” asked Cadfael, “that you were also awake, and had heard what passed?”

“I can’t tell. I made no pretence, and the pain was bad, I think they must have heard me shifting… I couldn’t help it. But of course I made no sign, it would have been discourteous.”

So it passed as a dream, perhaps for the benefit of Rhun, or any other who might be wakeful as he was. True enough, a sick man troubled by night might very well rise by stealth to leave his friend in peace, out of consideration. But then, if he needed ease, he would have been forced to explain himself and go, when his friend nevertheless started awake to restrain him. Instead, he had pleaded a deluding dream, and lain down again. And men rousing in dreams do move silently, almost as if by stealth. It could be, it must be, simply what it seemed.

“You travelled some miles of the way with those two, Rhun. How did you all fare together on the road? You must have got to know them as well as any here.”

“It was their being slow, like us, that kept us all together, after my sister was nearly ridden down, and Matthew ran and caught her up and leaped the ditch with her. They were just slowly overtaking us then, after that we went on all together for company. But I wouldn’t say we got to know them-they are so rapt in each other. And then, Ciaran was in pain, and that kept him silent, though he did tell us where he was bound, and why. It’s true Melangell and Matthew took to walking last, behind us, and he carried our few goods for her, having so little of his own to carry. I never wondered at Ciaran being so silent,” said Rhun simply, “seeing what he had to bear. And my Aunt Alice can talk for two,” he ended guilelessly.

So she could, and no doubt did, all the rest of the way into Shrewsbury.

“That pair, Ciaran and Matthew,” said Cadfael, still delicately probing, “they never told you how they came together? Whether they were kin, or friends, or had simply met and kept company on the road? For they’re much of an age, even of a kind, young men of some schooling, I fancy, bred to clerking or squiring, and yet not kin, or don’t acknowledge it, and after their fashion very differently made. A man wonders how they ever came to be embarked together on this journey. It was south of Warwick when you met them? I wonder from how far south they came.”

“They never spoke of such things,” owned Rhun, himself considering them for the first time. “It was good to have company on the way, one stout young man at least. The roads can be perilous for two women, with only a cripple like me. But now you speak of it, no, we did not learn much of where they came from, or what bound them together. Unless my sister knows more. There were days,” said Rhun, shifting to assist Brother Cadfael’s probings into the sinews of his thigh, “when she and Matthew grew quite easy and talkative behind us.”

Cadfael doubted whether the subject of their conversation then had been anything but their two selves, brushing sleeves pleasurably along the summer highways, she in constant recall of the moment when she was snatched up bodily and swung across the ditch against Matthew’s heart, he in constant contemplation of the delectable creature dancing at his elbow, and recollection of the feel of her slight, warm, frightened weight on his breast.

“But he’ll hardly look at her now,” said Rhun regretfully. “He’s too intent on Ciaran, and Melangell will come between. But it costs him a dear effort to turn away from her, all the same.”

Cadfael stroked down the misshapen leg, and rose to scrub his oily hands. “There, that’s enough for today. But sit quiet a while and rest before you go. And will you take the draught tonight? At least keep it by you, and do what you feel to be right and best. But remember it’s a kindness sometimes to accept help, a kindness to the giver. Would you wilfully inflict torment on yourself as Ciaran does? No, not you, you are too modest by far to set yourself up for braver and more to be worshipped than other men. So never think you do wrong by sparing yourself discomfort. Yet it’s your choice, make it as you see fit.”

When the boy took up his crutches again and tapped his way out along the path towards the great court, Cadfael followed him at a distance, to watch his progress without embarrassing him. He could mark no change as yet. The stretched toe still barely dared touch ground, and still turned inward. And yet the sinews, cramped as they were, had some small force in them, instead of being withered and atrophied as he would have expected. If I had him here long enough, he thought, I could bring back some ease and use into that leg. But he’ll go as he came. In three days now all will be over, the festival ended for this year, the guest-hall emptying. Ciaran and his guardian shadow will pass on northwards and westwards into Wales, and Dame Weaver will take her chicks back home to Campden. And those two, who might very well have made a fair match if things had been otherwise, will go their separate ways, and never see each other again. It’s in the nature of things that those who gather in great numbers for the feasts of the church should also disperse again to their various duties afterwards. Still, they need not all go away unchanged.