An Excellent Mystery (11 page)

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!”

Chapter Six

NICHOLAS
COMMANDEERED A CHANGE OF HORSES twice on the way south, leaving those he had
ridden hard to await the early return he foresaw, with the news he had promised
to carry faithfully, whether good or bad. The stench of burning, old and acrid
now, met him on the wind some miles from Wherwell, and when he entered what was
left of the small town it was to find an almost de-peopled desolation. The few
whose houses had survived unlooted and almost undamaged were sorting through
their premises and salvaging their goods, but those who had lost their
dwellings in the fire held off cautiously as yet from coming back to rebuild.
For though the raiding party from Winchester had been either wiped out or made
prisoner, and William of Ypres had withdrawn the queen’s Flemings to their old
positions ringing the city and the region, this place was still within the
circle, and might yet be subjected to more violence.

Nicholas
made his way with a cramped and anxious heart to the enclave of the nunnery,
one of the three greatest in the shire, until this disaster fell upon its
buildings and laid the half of them flat and the rest uninhabitable. The shell
of the church stood up gaunt and blackened against the cloudless sky, the walls
jagged and discoloured like decayed teeth. There were new graves in the nuns’
cemetery.

As
for the survivors, they were gone, there was no home for them here. He looked
at the newly-turned earth with a sick heart, and wondered whose daughters lay
beneath. There had not yet been time to do more for them than bury them, they
were nameless.

He
would not let himself even consider that she might be there. He looked for the
parish church and sought out the priest, who had gathered two homeless families
beneath his roof and in his barn. A careworn, tired man, growing old, in a
shabby gown that needed mending.

“The
nuns?” he said, stepping out from his low, dark doorway. “They’re scattered,
poor souls, we hardly know where. Three of them died in the fire. Three that we
know of, but there may well be more, lying under the rubble there still. There
was fighting all about the court and the Flemings were dragging their prisoners
out of the church, but neither side cared for the women. Some are fled into
Winchester, they say, though there’s little safety to be found there, but the
lord bishop must try to do something for them, their house was allied to the
Old Minster. Others… I don’t know! I hear the abbess is fled to a manor near
Reading, where she has kin, and some she may have taken with her. But all’s
confusion — who can tell?”

“Where
is this manor?” demanded Nicholas feverishly, and was met by a weary shake of
the head.

“It
was only a thing I heard — no one said where. It may not even be true.”

“And
you do not know, Father, the names of those sisters who died?” He trembled as
he asked it.

“Son,”
said the priest with infinite resignation, “what we found could not have a
name. And we have yet to seek there for others, when we have found enough food
to keep those alive who still live. The empress’s men looted our houses first,
and after them the Flemings. Those who have, here, must share with those who
have nothing. And which of us has very much? God knows not I!”

Nor
had he, in material things, only in tired but obstinate compassion. Nicholas
had bread and meat in his saddlebag, brought for provision on the road from his
last halt to change horses. He hunted it out and put it into the old man’s
hands, a meagre drop in a hungry ocean, but the money in his purse could buy
nothing here where there was nothing to buy. They would have to milk the
countryside to feed their people. He left them to their stubborn labours, and
rode slowly through the rubble of Wherwell, asking here and there if anyone had
more precise information to impart. Everyone knew the sisters had dispersed, no
one could say where. As for one woman’s name, it meant nothing, it might not
even be the name by which she had entered on her vows. Nevertheless, he
continued to utter it wherever he enquired, doggedly proclaiming the
irreplaceable uniqueness of Julian Grace, separate from all other women.

From
Wherwell he rode on into Winchester. A soldier of the queen could pass through
the iron ring without difficulty, and in the city it was plain that the
empress’s faction were hard-pressed, and dared not venture far from their tight
fortress in the castle. But the nuns of Winchester, themselves earlier
endangered and now breathing more easily, could tell him nothing of Julian
Grace. Some sisters from Wherwell they had taken in and cherished, but she was
not among them. Nicholas had speech with one of their elder members, who was
kind and solicitous, but could not help him.

“Sir,
it is a name I do not know. But consider, there is no reason I should know it,
for surely this lady may have taken a very different name when she took her
vows, and we do not ask our sisters where they came from, nor who they once
were, unless they choose to tell us freely. And I had no office that should
bring me knowledge of these things. Our abbess would certainly be able to
answer you, but we do not know where she is now. Our prioress, also. We are as
lost as you. But God will find us, and bring us together again. As he will find
for you the one you seek.”

She
was a shrewd, agile, withered woman, thin as a gnat but indestructible as
scutch grass. She eyed him with mildly amused sympathy, and asked blandly: “She
is kin to you, this Julian?”

“No,”
said Nicholas shortly, “but I would have had her kin, and very close kin, too.”

“And
now?”

“I
want to know her safe, living, content. There is no more in it. If she is so,
God keep her so, and I am satisfied.”

“If
I were you,” said the lady, after viewing him closely for some moments in
silence, “I should go on to Romsey. It is far enough removed to be a safer
place than here, and it is the greatest of our Bendictine houses in these
parts. God knows which of our sisters you may find there, but surely some, and
it may be, the highest.”

He
was young enough and innocent enough still, for all his travels, to be strongly
moved by any evidence of trust and kindness, and he caught and kissed her hand
in taking leave, as though she had been his hostess somewhere in hall. She, for
her part, was too old and experienced to blush or bridle, but when he was gone
she sat smiling a long, quiet while, before she rejoined her sisters. He was a
very personable young man.