“And how did you, bed-held as you were, come by that syrup?” I stole the flask from Sister Magdalen,” said Melicent. “Ask her! She will tell you what a great dose has been taken from it.” So she would, with all gravity and concern. Hugh never doubted it, nor did he mean to put her to the necessity of answering. Nor Cadfael either. Both had considerately absented themselves from this trial, judge and culprits held the whole matter in their hands.
There was a brief, heavy silence that weighed distressfully on Elis, while Hugh eyed the pair of them from under knitted brows, and fastened at last with frowning attention upon Melicent.
“You of all people,” he said, “had the greatest right to require payment from Eliud. Have you so soon forgiven him? Then who else dare gainsay?”
“I am not even sure,” said Melicent slowly, “that I know what forgiveness is. Only it seems a sad waste that all a man’s good should not be able to outweigh one evil, however great. That is the world’s loss. And I wanted no more deaths. One was grief enough, the second would not heal it.” Another silence, longer than the first. Elis burned and shivered, wanting to hear his penalty, whatever it might be, and know the best and the worst. He quaked when Hugh rose abruptly from his seat.
“Elis ap Cynan, I have no charge to make in law against you. I want no exaction from you. You had best rest here a while yet. Your horse is still in the abbey stables. When you are fit to ride, you may follow your foster-brother home.” And before they had breath to speak, he was out of the room, and the door closing after him.
Brother Cadfael walked a short way beside his friend when Hugh rode back to Shrewsbury in the early evening. The last days had been mild, and in the long green ride the branches of the trees wore the first green veil of the spring budding. The singing of the birds, likewise, had begun to throb with the yearly excitement and unrest before mating and nesting and rearing the young. A time for all manner of births and beginnings, and for putting death out of mind.
“What else could I have done?” said Hugh. “This one has done no murder, never owed me that very comely neck he insists on offering me. And if I had hanged him I should have been hanging both, for God alone knows how even so resolute a girl as Melicent—or the one you spoke of in Tregeiriog for that matter—is ever going to part the two halves of that pair. Two lives for one is no fair bargain.” He looked down from the saddle of the raw-boned grey which was his favourite mount, and smiled at Cadfael, and it was the first time for some days that he had been seen to smile utterly without irony or reserve. “How much did you know?”
“Nothing,” said Cadfael simply. “I guessed at much, but I can fairly say I knew nothing and never lifted finger.” In silence and deafness and blindness he had connived, but no need to say that, Hugh would know it, Hugh, who could not have connived. Nor was there any need for Hugh ever to say with what secret gratitude he relinquished the judgement he would never have laid down of his own will.
“What will become of them all?” Hugh wondered. “Elis will go home as soon as he’s well enough, I suppose, and send formally to ask for his girl. There’s no man of her kin to ask but her own mother’s brother, and he’s far off with the queen in Kent and out of reach. I fancy Sister Magdalen will advise the girl to go back to her step-mother for the waiting time, and have all done in proper form, and she has sense enough to listen to advice, and the patience to wait for what she wants, now she’s assured of getting it in the end. But what of the other pair?” Eliud and his companions would be well into Wales by this time and need not hurry, to tire the invalid too much. The draught of forgetfulness they had given him might dull his senses for a while even when he awoke, and his fellows would do their best to ease his remorse and grief, and his fear for Elis. But that troubled and passionate spirit would never be quite at rest.
“What will Owain do with him?”
“Neither destroy nor waste him,” said Cadfael, “provided you cede your rights in him. He’ll live, he’ll marry his Cristina—there’ll be no peace for prince or priest or parent until she gets her way. As for his penance, he has it within him, he’ll carry it lifelong. There is nothing but death itself you or any man could lay upon him that he will not lay upon himself. But God willing, he will not have to carry it alone. There is no crime and no failure can drive Cristina from him.” They parted at the head of the ride. It was premature dusk under the trees, but still the birds sang with the extreme and violent joy that seemed loud enough to shake such fragile instruments into dust or burst the hearts in their breasts. There were windflowers quivering in the grass.
“I go lighter than I came,” said Hugh, reining in for a moment before he took the homeward road.
“As soon as I see that lad walking upright and breathing deep, I shall follow. And glad to be going home.” Cadfael looked back at the low timber roofs of Mother Mariana’s grange, where the silvery light through gossamer branches reflected the ceaseless quivering of the brook. “I hope we have made, between us all, the best of a great ill, and who could do more? Once, I remember, Father Abbot said that our purpose is justice, and with God lies the privilege of mercy. But even God, when he intends mercy, needs tools to his hand.”