“I have transgressed against my vocation,” said Cadfael, at once solaced and saddened by the season and the hour. “I know it. I undertook the monastic life, but now I am not sure I could support it without you, without these stolen excursions outside the walls. For so they are. True, I am often sent upon legitimate labours here without, but also I steal, I take more than is my due by right. Worse, Hugh, I do not repent me! Do you suppose there is room within the bounds of grace for one who has set his hand to the plough, and every little while abandons his furrow to turn back among the sheep and lambs?”
“I think the sheep and lambs might think so,” said Hugh, gravely smiling. “He would have their prayers. Even the black sheep and the grey, like some you’ve argued for against God and me in your time.”
“There are very few all black,” said Cadfael. “Dappled, perhaps, like this great rangy beast you choose to ride. Most of us have a few mottles about us. As well, maybe, it makes for a more tolerant judgement of the rest of God’s creatures. But I have sinned, and most of all in relishing my sin. I shall do penance by biding dutifully within the walls through the winter, unless I’m sent forth, and then I’ll make haste with my task and hurry back.”
“Until the next waif stumbles across your path. And when is this penance to begin?”
“As soon as this matter is fittingly ended.”
“Why, these are oracular utterances!” said Hugh, laughing. “And when will that be?”
“Tomorrow,” said Cadfael. “If God wills, tomorrow.”
Chapter Fourteen
ON HIS WAY DOWN THE COURT TO THE STABLES, leading his horse, and with the better part of an hour left before Compline, Cadfael saw Dame Dionisia coming from the abbot’s lodging, and walking with sober step and decorously covered head towards the guest hall. Her back was as erect as ever, her gait as firm and proud, but somewhat slower than was her wont, and the draped head was lowered, with eyes on the ground rather than fixed challengingly into the distance before her. Not a word would ever be said concerning her confession, but Cadfael doubted if she had left anything out. She was not one to do things by halves. There would be no more attempts to extract Richard from the abbot’s care. Dionisia had suffered too profound a reverse to take any such risks again until time had dimmed the recollection of sudden unshriven death coming to meet her. It seemed she meant to stay overnight, perhaps to make her peace tomorrow, in her own arbitrary fashion, with a grandson by this time fast asleep in his bed, blessedly unmarried still, and back where he preferred to be. The boys would sleep well tonight, absolved of their sins and with their lost member restored. Matter for devout thanksgiving. And as for the dead man in the mortuary chapel, bearing a name which it seemed could hardly be his name, he cast no shadow on the world of the children.
Cadfael led his horse into the stable yard, lighted by two torches at the gate, unsaddled him and rubbed him down. There was no sound within there but a small sighing of the breeze that had sprung up with evening, and the occasional easy shift and stir of hooves in the stalls. He stabled his beast and hung up his harness, and turned to depart.
There was someone standing in the gateway, compact and still. “Good even, Brother!” said Rafe of Coventry.
“Is it you?” said Cadfael. “And were you looking for me? I’m sorry to have kept you up late, and you with a journey to make in the morning.”
“I saw you come down the court. You made an offer,” said the quiet voice. “If it is still open I should like to take advantage of it. I find it is not so easy to dress a wound neatly with one hand.”
“Come!” said Cadfael. “Let’s go to my hut in the garden, we can be private there.”
It was deep dusk, but not yet dark. The late roses in the garden loomed spikily on overgrown stems, half their leaves shed, ghostly floating pallors in the dimness. Within the walls of the herb garden, high and sheltering, warmth lingered. “Wait,” said Cadfael, “till I make light.” It took him a few minutes to get a spark he could blow gently into flame, and set to the wick of his lamp. Rafe waited without murmur or movement until the light burned up steadily, and then came into the hut and looked about him with interest at the array of jars and flasks, the scales and mortars, and the rustling bunches of herbs overhead, stirring headily in the draught from the doorway. Silently he stripped off his coat, and drew down his shirt from the shoulder until he could withdraw his arm from the sleeve. Cadfael brought the lamp, and set it where the light would best illuminate the stained and crumpled bandage that covered the wound. Rafe sat patient and attentive on the bench against the wall, steadily eyeing the weathered face that stooped over him. “Brother,” he said deliberately, “I think I owe you a name.”
“I have a name for you,” said Cadfael. “Rafe is enough.”
“For you, perhaps. Not for me. Where I take help, generously given, there I repay with truth. My name is Rafe de Genville…”
“Hold still now,” said Cadfael. “This is stuck fast, and will hurt.” The soiled dressing came away with a wrench, but if it did indeed hurt, de Genville suffered it as indifferently as he did the foregoing pain. The gash was long, running down from the shoulder into the upper arm, but not deep; but the flesh was so sliced that the lips gaped, and a single hand had not been able to clamp them together. “Keep still! We can better this, you’ll have an ugly scar else. But you’ll need help when it’s dressed again.”
“Once away from here I can get help, and who’s to know how I got the gash? But you do know, Brother. He drew blood, you said. There is not very much you do not know, but perhaps a little I can still tell you. My name is Rafe de Genville, I am a vassal, and God knows a friend to Brian FitzCount, and a liege man to my overlord’s lady, the empress. I will not suffer gross wrong to be done to either, while I have my life. Well, he’ll draw no more blood, neither from any of the king’s party nor oversea, in the service of Geoffrey of Anjou—which I think was his final intent, when the time seemed right.” Cadfael folded a new dressing closely about the long gash.
“Lend your right hand here, and hold this firmly, it shuts the wound fast. You’ll get no more bleeding, or very little, and it should heal closed. But rest it as best you can on the road.”
“I will so.” The bandage rolled firmly over the shoulder and round the arm, flat and neat. “You have a skilled hand, Brother. If I could I would take you with me as a prize of war.”
“They’ll have need of all the surgeons and physicians they can get in Oxford, I fear,” Cadfael acknowledged ruefully.
“Ah, not there, not this tide. There’ll be no breaking into Oxford until the earl brings up his army. I doubt it even then. No, I go back to Brian at Wallingford first, to restore him what is his.” Cadfael secured the bandage above the elbow, and held the sleeve of the shirt carefully as Rafe thrust his arm back into it. It was done. Cadfael sat down beside him, face to face, eye to eye. The silence that came down upon them was like the night, mild, tranquil, gently melancholy. “It was a fair fight,” said Rafe after a long pause, looking into and through Cadfael’s eyes to see again the bare stony chapel in the forest. “I laid by my sword, seeing he had none. His dagger he’d kept.”
“And used,” said Cadfael, “on the man who had seen him in his own shape at Thame, and might have called his vocation in question. As the son did, after Cuthred was dead, and never knew he was looking at his father’s murderer.”
“Ah, so that was it! I wondered.”
“And did you find what you came for?”
“I came for him,” said Rafe grimly. “But, yes, I understand you. Yes, I found it, in the reliquary on the altar. Not all in coin. Gems go into a small compass, and are easily carried. Her own jewels, that she valued. And valued even more the man to whom she sent them.”