The Sanctuary Sparrow

Chapter Ten

Rannilt sprang to smother the little serpent of fire that had caught something burnable and sent up a spurt of flame. Blindly, fumbling, her hands found the hard corner of a cloth-wrapped bundle, there on the floor near the wall, and beat out the fire that had caught at the fraying end of the cord that bound it. A few sparks floated and found splinters of wood, and she followed on her knees and quenched them with the hem of her skirt, and then it was quite dark. Not for long, for everyone in the house must be awake now; but for this moment, utterly dark. Rannilt groped about her blindly on the floor, trying to find where the old woman lay.

‘Stay still,’ said Susanna, in the gloom behind her. ‘I’ll make light.’

She was gone, quick and competent again as ever, back into her own room, where she could lay her hands instantly on flint and tinder, always ready by her bed. She came with a candle, and lit the oil-lamp in its bracket on the wall. Rannilt got up from her knees and darted to where Juliana lay on her face at the foot of the stairs. But Susanna was before her, kneeling beside her grandmother and running rapid hands over her in search of broken bones from her fall, before venturing to lift her over on to her back. Old bones are brittle, but it had not been a sheer fall, rather a rolling tumble from stair to stair.

Then they were all coming, clutching candles, gaping, crying questions, Daniel and Margery with one gown thrown hastily round the two of them, Walter bleared and querulous with sleep, Iestyn scurrying up the outdoor stairs from the undercroft and in by the rear door of Susanna’s chamber, which Rannilt had left standing open. Light on light sprang up, the usual frugal rule forgotten.

They came crowding, demanding, incoherent with sleep, and alarm and bewilderment. The smoky flames and flickering shadows filled the hall with changing shapes that danced about the two figures quiet on the floorboards. What had happened? What was all the noise? What was the old woman doing out of her bed? Why the smell of burning? Who had done this?

Susanna slid an arm under her grandmother’s body, cradled the grey head with her other palm, and turned her face-upward. She cast up at the clamouring circle of her kin one cold, glittering glance in which Rannilt saw, as none of them did, the scorn in which she held all members of her family but this spent and broken one on her arm.

‘Hold your noise, and make yourselves useful. Can you not see? She came out with her light to see how I was fairing, and she took another seizure like the last, and fell, and the last it may very well be. Rannilt can tell you. Rannilt saw her fall.’

‘I did,’ said Rannilt, quivering. ‘She dropped the lamp and caught at her breast, and then she fell. The oil spilled and took fire, I put it out... ‘ She looked towards the wall for the bundle, whatever it had been, that had offered an end of tow to the spark, but there was nothing there now. ‘She’s not dead... look, she’s breathing... Listen!’

Certainly she was, for as soon as they hushed their clamour the air shook to her shallow-drawn, rattling breath. All one side of her face was dragged askew, the mouth grossly twisted, the eyes half-open and glaring whitely; and all her body on that side lay stiff as a board, the fingers of her hand contorted and rigid.

Susanna looked round them all, and made her dispositions, and no one now challenged her right. ‘Father, and Daniel, carry her to her bed. She has no broken bones, she feels nothing. We cannot give her any of her draught, she could not swallow it. Margery, feed the little brazier in her room. I will get wine to mull for when she revives - if she does revive.’

She looked over Rannilt’s shoulder to Iestyn, standing dumb and at a loss in the shadows. Her face was set as marble and as cold, but her eyes shone clear. ‘Run to the abbey,’ she said. ‘Ask for Brother Cadfael to come to her. Sometimes he works late, if he has medicines making. But even if he has gone to his cell, the porter will call him. He said he would come if he was needed. He is needed now.’

Iestyn looked back at her without a word, and then turned as silently as he had come and ran as she had bade him.

It was not so late as all that. At the abbey the dortoir was still half awake, an uneasy stirring in certain cells, where the brothers found sleep difficult or remembrance all too strong. Brother Cadfael, having stayed late in his workshop to pound herbs for a decoction to be made next day, was just at his private prayers before sleep when the porter came edging along the passage between the cells to find him. He rose at once, and went silently down the night stairs and through the church, to confer with the messenger at the gatehouse.

‘The old dame, is it?’ He had no need to fetch anything from the herbarium, the best of what he could give her was already supplied and Susanna knew how to use it, if its use was still of any avail. ‘We’d best hurry, then, if it’s so grave.’

He set a sharp pace along the Foregate and over the bridge, and asked such questions as were necessary as they went.

‘How did she come to be up and active at this hour? And how did this fit come on?’

Iestyn kept station at his side and answered shortly. He had never many words to spare. ‘Mistress Susanna was up late seeing to her stores, for she’s forced to give up her keys. And Dame Juliana rose up, belike, to see what she was still about. The fit took her at the top of the stairs and she fell.’

‘But the seizure came first? And caused the fall?’

‘So the women say.’

‘The women?’

‘The maid was there and saw it.’

‘What’s her state now, then? The old dame? Has she bones broken? Can she move freely?’

‘The mistress says nothing broken, but one side of her stiff as a tree, and her face drawn all on a skew.’

They were let in at the town gate without question. Cadfael occasionally had much later errands and was well known. They climbed the steep curve of the Wyle in silence, the gradient making demands on their breath.

‘I warned her the last time,’ said Cadfael, when the slope eased, ‘that if she did not keep her rages in check the next fit might be the last. She was well in command of herself and all about her this morning, for all the mischief that was brewing in the house, but I had my doubts... What can have upset her tonight?’

But if Iestyn had any answer to that, he kept it to himself. A taciturn man, who did his work and kept his own counsel.

Walter was hopping about uneasily at the entrance to the passage, watching for them with a horn lantern in his hand. Daniel was huddled into his gown in the hall, with the spendthrift candles still burning unheeded around him, until Walter entered with the newcomers, and having seen them within, suddenly became aware of gross waste, and begun to go round and pinch out two out of three, leaving the smell of their hot wicks on the air.

‘We carried her up to bed,’ said Daniel, restless and wretched in this upheaval that disrupted his new content. ‘The women are there with her. Go up, they’re anxious for you.’ And he followed, drawn to a trouble that must be resolved before he could take any comfort, and hovered in the doorway of the sick-chamber, but did not step within, Iestyn remained at the foot of the stairs. In all the years of service here, most likely, he had never climbed them.

A brazier burned in an iron basket set upon a wide stone, and a small lamp on a shelf jutting out from the wall. Here in the upper rooms there were no ceilings, the rooms went up into the vault of the roof, dark wood on all sides and above. On one side of the narrow bed Margery, mute and pale, drew hastily back into the shadows to let Brother Cadfael come close. On the other, Susanna stood erect and still, and her head turned only momentarily to ascertain who it was who came.

Cadfael sank to his knees beside the bed. Juliana was alive, and if one sense had been snatched from her, the others she still had, at least for a brief while. In the contorted face the ancient eyes were alive, alert and resigned. They met Cadfael’s and knew him. The grimace could almost have been her old, sour smile. ‘Send Daniel for her priest,’ said Cadfael after one look at her, and without conceal. ‘His errand here is more now than mine.’ She would appreciate that. She knew she was dying.

He looked up at Susanna. No question now who held the mastery here; no matter how they tore each other, she of all these was Juliana’s blood, kin and match. ‘Has she spoken?’

‘No. Not a word.’ Yes, she even looked as this woman must have looked fifty years ago as a comely, resolute, able matron, married to a man of lesser fibre than her own. Her voice was low, steady and cool. She had done what could be done for the dying woman, and stood waiting for whatever broken words might fall from that broken mouth. She even leaned to wipe away the spittle that ran from its deformed lips at the downward corner.

‘Have the priest come, for I am none. She is already promised our prayers, that she knows.’ And that was for her, to ensure that she was alive within this dead body, and need not regret all her gifts to the abbey, doled out so watchfully. Her faded eyes had still a flash within them; she understood. Wherever she was gone, she knew what was said and done about her. But she had said no word, nor even attempted speech.

Margery had stolen thankfully out of the room, to send her husband for the priest. She did not come back. Walter was below, pinching out candles and fretting over the few that must remain. Only Cadfael on one side of the bed and Susanna on the other kept watch still by Dame Juliana’s death.

The old woman’s live eyes in her dead carcase clung to Cadfael’s face, yet not, he thought, trying to convey to him anything but her defiant reliance on her own resources. When had she not been mistress of her own household? And these were still her family, no business of any other judge. Those outside must stay outside. This monk whom she had grown to respect and value, for all their differences, she admitted halfway, close enough to know and acknowledge her rights of possession. Her twisted mouth suddenly worked, emitted an audible sound, looked for a moment like a mouth that might speak memorable things. Cadfael stooped his ear close to her lips.

A laborious murmur, indistinguishable, and then: ‘It was I bred them... ‘ she said thickly, and again struggled with incommunicable thoughts, and rested with a rattling sigh. A tremor passed through her rigid body. A thread of utterance emerged almost clearly: ‘But for all that... I should have liked to hold... my great-grandchild...‘

Cadfael had barely raised his head when she closed her eyes. No question but it was by her will they closed, no crippling weakness. But for the priest, she had done.

Even with the priest she did not speak again. She bore with his urgings, and made the effort to respond with her eyelids when he made his required probings into her sense of sin and need and hope for absolution. She died as soon as he had pronounced it, or only moments later.

Susanna stood by her to the end and never uttered a word. When all was done, she stooped and kissed the leather cheek and chilling brow somewhat better than dutifully, and still with that face of marble calm. Then she went down to see Brother Cadfael courteously out of the house, and thank him for all his attentions to the dead.

‘She gave you, I know, more work than ever she repaid you for,’ said Susanna, with the slight, bitter curl to her lips and the wry serenity in her voice.

‘And is it you who tell me so?’ he said, and watched the hollows at the corners of her lips deepen. ‘I came to have a certain reverence for her, short of affection. Not that she ever required that of me. And you?’

Susanna stepped from the bottom stair, close to where Rannilt huddled against the wall, afraid to trespass, unwilling to abandon her devoted watch. Since Susanna had emerged from her room with the light, her cloak shed within now there was work to do, Rannilt had hovered attentive, waiting to be used.

‘I doubt,’ said Brother Cadfael, considering, ‘whether there was any here who loved her half so well as you.’

‘Or hated her half so well,’ said Susanna, lifting her head with one measured flash of grey eyes.

‘The two are often bed-fellows,’ he said, unperturbed. ‘You need not question either.’

‘I will not. Now I must go back to her. She is my charge, I’ll pay her what’s due.’ She looked round and said quite gently: ‘Rannilt, take Master Walter’s lantern, and light Brother Cadfael out. Then go to your bed, there is no more for you to do here.’

‘I’d rather stay and watch with you,’ said Rannilt timidly. ‘You’ll need hot water and cloths, and a hand to lift her, and to run errands for you.’ As if there were not enough of them, up there now about the bed, son, grandson, and grandson’s woman, and how much grief among the lot of them? For Dame Juliana had outstayed her time by a number of years and was one mouth less to feed once her burial was accomplished; not to speak of the whiplash tongue and the too-sharp eye removed from vexing.

‘So you may, then,’ said Susanna, gazing long upon the small, childlike figure regarding her with great eyes from the shadows, where Walter had quenched all but one candle, but inadvertently left his lantern burning. ‘You shall sleep tomorrow in the day, you’ll be ready then for your bed and your mind quiet. Come up, when you’ve shown Brother Cadfael out to the lane. You and I will care for her together.’

‘You were there?’ asked Cadfael mildly, walking on the girl’s heels along the pitch-dark passage. ‘You saw what happened?’

‘Yes, sir. I couldn’t sleep. You were there this morning when they all turned against her, and even the old woman said she must yield her place... You know...‘

‘I know, yes. And you were aggrieved for her.’

‘She - was never unkind to me... ‘ How was it possible to say that Susanna had been kind, where the chill forbade any such word? ‘It was not fair that they should turn and elbow her out, like that.’

‘And you were watching and listening, and grieving. And you went in. When was that?’

She told him, as plainly as if she lived it again. She told him, as far as she could recall it, and that was almost word for word, what she had heard pass between grandmother and grandchild, and how she had heard the shriek that heralded the old woman’s seizure, and burst in to see her panting and swaying and clutching her bosom, the lamp tilting out of her hand, before she rolled headlong down the stairs.

‘And there was no other soul stirring then? No one within hand’s-touch of her, there above?’

‘Oh no, no one. She dropped the lamp just as she fell.’ The little snake of fire, spitting sparks and sudden leaping flame as it found the end of tow, seemed to Rannilt to have nothing to do with what had happened. ‘And then it was dark, and the mistress said keep still, and went for a light.’

Certain, then, yes quite certain she fell. No one was there to help her fall, the only witnesses were below. And if they had not gone to her aid at once, and sent as promptly for him, he would never have arrived here in time to see Dame Juliana die. Let alone hear the only words she had spoken before dying. For what they were worth! ‘I bred them all... For all that, I should have liked to hold my great-grandchild...‘

Well, her grandson, the only being she was reported to dote upon, was now a husband, her proud old mind might well strain forward to embrace a future generation.

‘No, don’t come out into the lane, child, time for you to be withindoors, and I know my way.’

She went, shy, wild and silent. And Cadfael made his way back thoughtfully to his own cell in the dortoir and took what comfort he might, and what enlightenment, but it was not much. In this death, at least, there was no question of foul play. Juliana had fallen when no other person was near by, and in an unquestionable seizure such as she had suffered twice before. The dissensions within the house, moreover, had broken out in a disturbing form that same day, cause enough for an old woman’s body and heart and irascible nature to fail her. The wonder was this had not happened earlier. Yet for all he could do, Cadfael’s mind could not separate this death from the first, nor that from the felony of which Liliwin stood accused. There was, there must be, a thread that linked them all together. Not by freakish chance was an ordinary burgess household thus suddenly stricken with blow after blow. A human hand had set off the chain; from that act all these later events stemmed, and where the impetus would finally run out and the sequence of fatalities end was a speculation that kept Cadfael awake half the night.

In Dame Juliana’s death chamber the single lamp burned, a steady eye of fire, at the head of the bed. The night hung deep and silent over the town, past the mid-point between dusk and dawn. On a stool on one side Susanna sat, her own hands folded in her lap, quiet at last. Rannilt crouched at the foot of the bed, very weary but unwilling to go to her humble place, and certain that sleep would not come to her if she did. The lofty timbers of the roof soared above them into deep darkness. The three women, two living and one dead, were drawn together into a close, mute intimacy, for these few hours islanded from the world.

Juliana lay straight and austere, her grey hair combed into smooth order, her face uncovered, the sheet folded at her chin. Already the contortion was beginning to ease out of her features, and leave her at peace.

Neither of the two who watched beside her had spoken a word since their work was finished. Susanna had made no bones about dismissing Margery’s reluctant offer of help, and had no difficulty in getting rid of all three of her kin. They were not sorry to return to their beds and leave all to her. Mistress and maid had the vigil to themselves.

‘You’re cold,’ said Rannilt, breaking the silence very softly as she saw Susanna shiver. ‘Shall I fetch up your cloak? You felt the want of it even about the store, when you were on the move, and now we sit here, and the night chiller than then. I’ll creep down for it.’

‘No,’ said Susanna absently. ‘It was a goose walking over my grave. I’m warm enough.’ She turned her head and gave the girl a long, sombre stare. ‘Were you so vexed for me that you must wake and watch into the night with me? I thought you came very quickly. Did you see and hear all?’

Rannilt trembled at the thought of having intruded uninvited, but Susanna’s voice was equable and her face calm. ‘No. I wasn’t listening, but some part I couldn’t help hearing. She praised your providing. Perhaps she was sorry then... It was strange she should take to thinking on such things, and suddenly take pride that you should still have the oatmeal crock above half-full... That I heard. Surely she was sorry in the end that you should be so misprised. She thought better of you than of any other.’

‘She was returning to the days when she ruled all,’ said Susanna, ‘and had all on her shoulders, as I have had. The old go back, before the end.’ Her eyes, large and intent upon Rannilt’s face, gleamed in the dim, reflected light from the lamp. ‘You’ve burned your hand,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s nothing,’ said Rannilt, removing her hands hurriedly from sight into her lap. ‘I was clumsy. The tow flared. It doesn’t hurt.’

‘The tow... ?’

‘Tied round the bundle that was lying there. It had a frayed end and took the flame before I was aware.’

‘A pity!’ said Susanna, and sat silent for some moments, watching her grandmother’s dead face. The corners of her lips curved briefly in what hardly had time to become a smile. ‘There was a bundle there, was there? And I was wearing my cloak... yes! You noticed much, considering the fright we must have given you, between us.’

In the prolonged silence Rannilt watched her lady’s face and went in great awe, having trodden where she had no right to go, and feeling herself detected in a trespass she had never intended.

‘And now you are wondering what was in that bundle, and where it vanished to before ever we began lighting candles. Along with my cloak!’ Susanna fixed her austere, half-smiling regard upon Rannilt’s daunted face. ‘It is only natural you should wonder.’

‘Are you angry with me?’ ventured Rannilt in a whisper.

‘No. Why should I be angry? I believe, I do believe, you have sometimes felt for me as a woman for a woman. Is that true, Rannilt?’

‘This morning... ‘ faltered Rannilt, half-afraid, ‘I could not choose but grieve...‘

‘I know. You have seen how I am despised here.’ She went very gently and quietly, a woman speaking with a child, but a child whose understanding she valued. ‘How I have always been despised. My mother died, my grandmother grew old, I was of value until my brother should take a wife. Yes, but barely a day longer. All those years gone for nothing, and I am left here husbandless and barren and out of office.’

There was another silence, for though Rannilt felt her breast bursting with indignant sympathy, her tongue was frozen into silence. In the lofty darkness of the roof-beams the faint, soft light quivered in a passing draught.

‘Rannilt,’ said Susanna gravely and softly, ‘can you keep a secret?’

‘Your secret I surely can,’ whispered Rannilt.

‘Swear never to breathe a word to any other, and I’ll tell you what no one else knows.’

Rannilt breathed her vow devotedly, flattered and warmed at having such trust placed in her.

‘And will you help me in what I mean to undertake? For I should welcome your help... I need your help!’

“I’ll do anything in my power for you.’ No one had ever expected or required of her such loyalty, no one had ever considered her as better than menial and impotent, no wonder her heart responded.

‘I believe and trust you.’ Susanna leaned forward into the light. ‘My bundle and my cloak I made away out of sight before I brought the candle, and hid them in my bedchamber. Tonight, Rannilt, but for this mortal stay, I meant to leave this place, to quit this house that has never done me right, and this town in which I have no honourable place. Tonight God prevented. But tomorrow night, tomorrow night I am going! If you will help me I can take with me more of my poor possessions than I can carry the first short piece of the way alone. Come nearer, child, and I’ll tell you.’ Her voice was very low and soft, a confiding breath in Rannilt’s ear. ‘Across the bridge, at my father’s stable beyond Frankwell, someone who sets a truer value on me will be waiting‘.