There was another figure moving softly round the parish altar, a silent shadow in the dimness still lit only by the constant lamps. Cadfael followed him into the choir, and watched him light a twisted straw taper at the small red glow, and kindle the altar candles ready for Prime. It was a duty that was undertaken in a rota, and Cadfael had no idea at this moment whose turn this day might be, until he had advanced almost within touch of the man standing quietly, with head raised, gazing at the altar. An erect figure, lean but sinewy and strong, with big, shapely hands folded at his waist, and deepset eyes wide and fixed in a rapt dream. Brother Ruald heard the steady steps drawing near to him, but felt no need to turn his head or in any other way acknowledge a second presence. Sometimes he seemed almost unaware that there were others sharing this chosen life and this place of refuge with him. Only when Cadfael stood close beside him, sleeve to sleeve, and the movement made the candles flicker briefly, did Ruald look round with a sharp sigh, disturbed out of his dream.
‘You are early up, Brother,’ he said mildly. ‘Could you not sleep?’
‘I rose to see the sheriff and his company set out,’ said Cadfael.
“They are gone already?’ Ruald drew breath wonderingly, contemplating a life and a discipline utterly alien to his former or his present commitment. Half the life he could expect had been spent as a humble craftsman, for some obscure reason the least regarded among craftsmen, though why honest potters should be accorded such low status was a mystery to Cadfael. Now all the life yet remaining to him would be spent here in the devoted service of God. He had never so much as shot at the butts for sport, as the young bloods of Shrewsbury’s merchant families regularly did, or done combat with singlesticks or blunt swords at the common exercise-ground. ‘Father Abbot will have prayers said daily for their safe and early return,’ he said. ‘And so will Father Boniface at the parish services.’ He said it as one offering reassurance and comfort to a soul gravely concerned, but by something which touched him not at all. A narrow life his had been, Cadfael reflected, and looked back with gratitude at the width and depth of his own. And suddenly it began to seem to him as though all the passion there had been even in this man’s marriage, all the blood that had burned in its veins, must have come from the woman.
‘It is to be hoped,’ he said shortly,’that they come back as many as they have set out today.’
‘So it is,’ agreed Ruald meekly, ‘yet they who take the sword, so it’s written, will perish by the sword.’
‘You will not find a good honest swordsman quarrelling with that,’ said Cadfael. “There are far worse ways.’
‘That may well be true,’ said Ruald very seriously. ‘I do know that I have things to repent, things for which to do penance, fully as dreadful as the shedding of blood. Even in seeking to do what God required of me, did not I kill? Even if she is still living, there in the east, I took as it were the breath of life from her. I did not know it then. I could not even see her face clearly, to understand how I tore her. And here am I, unsure now whether I did well at all in following what I thought was a sacred beckoning, or whether I should not have forgone even this, for her sake. It may be God was putting me to the test. Tell me, Cadfael, you have lived in the world, travelled the world, known the extremes to which men can be driven, for good or ill. Do you think there was ever any man ready to forgo even heaven, to stay with another soul who loved him, in purgatory?’
To Cadfael, standing close beside him, this lean and limited man seemed to have grown taller and more substantial; or it might have been simply the growing strength and clarity of the light now gleaming in at every window, paling the candles on the altar. Certainly the mild and modest voice had never been so eloquent.
‘Surely the range is so wide,’ he said with slow and careful deliberation, ‘that even that is possible. Yet I doubt if such a marvel was demanded of you.’
‘In three days more,’ said Ruald more gently, watching the flames he had lit burn tall and steady and golden, ‘it will be Saint Illtud’s day. You are Welsh, you will know what is told of him. He had a wife, a noble lady, willing to live simply with him in a reed hut by the River Nadafan. An angel told him to leave his wife, and he rose up early in the morning, and drove her out into the world alone, thrusting her off, so we are told, very roughly, and went to receive the tonsure of a monk from Saint Dyfrig. I was not rough, yet that is my own case, for so I parted from Generys. Cadfael, what I would ask is, was that an angel who commanded it, or a devil?’
‘You are posing a question,’ said Cadfael,’to which only God can know the answer, and with that we must be content. Certainly others before you have received the same call that came to you, and obeyed it. The great earl who founded this house and sleeps there between the altars, he, too, left his lady and put on the habit before he died.’ Only three days before he died, actually, and with his wife’s consent, but no need at this moment to say any word of that.
Never before had Ruald opened up the sealed places within him where his wife was hidden, even from his own sight, first by the intensity of his desire for holiness, then by the human fallibility of memory and feeling which had made it hard even to recall the lines of her face. Conversion had fallen on him like a stunning blow that had numbed all sensation, and now in due time he was coming back to life, remembrance filling his being with sharp and biting pain. Perhaps he never could have wrenched his heart open and spoken about her, except in this timeless and impersonal solitude, with no witness but one.
For he spoke as if to himself, clearly and simply, rather recalling than recounting. ‘I had no intent to hurt herGenerys
I could not choose but go, yet there are ways and ways of taking leave. I was not wise. I had no skills, I did not do it well. And I had taken her from her own people, and she content all these years with little reward but the man I am, and wanting nothing more. I can never have given her a tenth part, not a mere tithe, of all that she gave me.’
Cadfael was motionless, listening, as the quiet voice continued its threnody. ‘Dark, she was, very dark, very beautiful. Everyone would call her so, but now I see that none ever knew how beautiful, for to the world outside it was as if she went vetted, and only I ever saw her uncover her face. Or perhaps, to childrento them she might show herself unconcealed. We never had children, we were not so blessed. That made her tender and loving to those her neighbours bore. She is not yet past all hope of bearing children of her own. Who knows but with another man, she might yet conceive.’
‘And you would be glad for her?’ said Cadfael, so softly as not to break this thread.
‘I would be glad. I would be wholly glad. Why should she continue barren, because I am fulfilled? Or bound, where I am free? I never thought of that when the longing came on me.’
‘And do you believe she told you truth, the last time, saying that she had a lover?’
‘Yes,’ said Ruald, simply and without hesitation, ‘I do believe. Not that she might not lie to me then, for I was crass and did her bitter offence, as now I understand, even by visiting her then I offended. I believe because of the ring. You remember it? The ring that Sulien brought back with him when he came from Ramsey.’
‘I remember it,’ said Cadfael.
The dormitory bell was just ringing to rouse the brothers for Prime. In some remote corner of their consciousness it sounded very faintly and distantly, and neither of them heeded it.
‘It never left her finger, from the time I put it there. I would not have thought it could be eased over her knuckle, after so long. The first time that I visited her with Brother Paul I know she was wearing it as she always did. But the second time
I had forgotten, but now I understand. It was not on her finger when I saw her the last time. She had stripped her marriage to me from her finger with the ring, and given it to someone else, as she stripped me from her life, and offered it to him. Yes, I believe Generys had a lover. One worth the loving, she said. With all my heart I hope he has proved so to her.’