The Sanctuary Sparrow Part 4

Liliwin felt the terror of the outer world close in on him: it could not be long evaded. As some within here wore hovering haloes, so he wore a noose, invisible but ever-present.

"I meant no harm," he whispered hopelessly and turned, half-blind with misery, to grope for his poor bundle of toys and blunder hastily away.

"Tumbling and juggling, there in our gardens," Jerome reported, still burning with offence, "like a vagabond player at a fair. How can it be excused? Sanctuary is lawful for those who come in proper deference, but this... I reproved him, of course. I told him he should be thinking rather of his eternal part, having so mortal a charge against him. "My living," he says! And he with a life owing!"

Prior Robert looked down his patrician nose, and maintained the fastidious and grieved calm of his n.o.ble countenance. "Father Abbot is right to observe the sanct.i.ty of sanctuary, it may not be discarded. We are not to blame, and need not be concerned, for the guilt or innocence of those who lay claim to it. But we are, indeed, concerned for the good order and good name of our house, and I grant you this present guest is little honour to us. I should be happier if he took himself off and submitted himself to the law, that is true. But unless he does so, we must bear with him. To reprove where he offends is not only our due, but our duty. To use any effort to influence or eject him is far beyond either. Unless he leaves of his own will," said Prior Robert, "both you and I, Brother Jerome, must succour, shelter and pray for him."

How sincerely, how resolutely. But how reluctantly!

Chapter Five.

Monday: from dawn to Compline .

SUNDAY Pa.s.sED, CLEAR AND FINE, and Monday came up no less sunnily, a splendid washing day, with a warm air and a light breeze, and bushes and turf dry and springy. The Aurifaber household was always up and active early on washing days, which were saved up two or three weeks at a time, to make but one upheaval of the heating of so much water, and such labour of scrubbing and knuckling with ash and lye. Rannilt was up first, to kindle the fire under the brick and clay boiler and hump the water from the well. She was stronger than she looked and used to the weight. What burdened her far more, and to that she was not used, was the terror she felt for Liliwin.

It was with her every moment. If she slept, she dreamed of him, and awoke sweating with fear that he might be hunted out already and taken and she none the wiser. And while she was awake and working, his image was ever in her mind, and a great stone of anxiety hot and heavy in her breast. Fear for yourself crushes and compresses you from without, but fear for another is a monster, a ravenous rat gnawing within, eating out your heart.

What they said of him was false, could not under any circ.u.mstances be true. And it was his life at stake! She could not help hearing all that was said of him among them, how they all united to accuse him, and promised themselves he should hang for what he had done. What she was certain in her heart and soul he had not done! It was not in him to strike down any man, or rob any man's coffers.

The locksmith, up early for him, heard her drawing up the bucket from the well, and came out from his back door to stroll down into the garden in the sunlight and pa.s.s the time of day. Rannilt did not think he would have troubled if he had known it was only the maidservant. He made a point of being attentive to his landlord's family, and never missed the common neighbourly courtesies, but his notice seldom extended to Rannilt. Nor did he linger on this fine morning, but took a short turn about the yard and returned to his own door. There he looked back, eyeing for a moment the obvious preparations at the goldsmith's house, the great mound of washing in hand, and the normal bustle just beginning.

Susanna came down with her arms full of linen, and went to work with her usual brisk, silent competence. Daniel ate his breakfast and went to his workshop, leaving Margery solitary and irresolute in the hall. Too much had happened on her wedding night, she had had no time to grow used to house and household, or consider her own place in it. Wherever she turned to make herself useful, Susanna had been before her. Walter lay late, nursing his sore head, and Dame Juliana kept her own chamber, but Margery was too late to carry food and drink to either, it was already done. There was no need yet to think of cooking, and in any case all the household keys were on Susanna's girdle. Margery turned her attention to the one place where she felt herself and her own wishes to be dominant, and set to work to rearrange Daniel's bachelor chamber to her own taste, and clear out the chest and press which must now make room for her own clothes and stores of linen. In the process she discovered much evidence of Dame Juliana's noted parsimony. There were garments which must have belonged to Daniel as a growing boy, and could certainly never again be worn by him. Neatly mended again and again, they had all been made to last as long as possible, and even when finally outgrown, had still been folded away and kept. Well, she was now Daniel's wife, she would have this chamber as she wanted it, and be rid of these useless and miserly reminders of the past. Today the household might still be running on its customary wheels, as though she had no part to play, but it would not always be so. She was in no haste, she had a great deal of thinking to do before she took action.

On her knees in the yard, Rannilt scrubbed and pummelled, her hands sore from the lye. By mid-morning the last of the washing was wrung and folded and piled into a great wicker basket. Susanna hoisted it on her hip and bore it away down the slope of the garden, and through the deep arch in the town wall, to spread it out on the bushes and the smooth plane of gra.s.s that faced almost due south to the sun. Rannilt cleared away the tub and mopped the floor, and went in to tend the fire and set the salt beef simmering for dinner.

Here quiet and alone, she was suddenly so full of her pain on Liliwin's account that her eyes spilled abrupt tears into the pot, and once the flow began she could not dam it. She groped blindly about the kitchen, working by touch, and shedding helpless tears for the first man who had caught her fancy, and the first who had ever fancied her.

Absorbed into her misery, she did not hear Susanna come quietly into the doorway behind her, and halt there at gaze, watching the fumbling hands feeling their way, and the half-blind eyes still streaming.

"In G.o.d's name, girl, what is it with you now?"

Rannilt started and turned guiltily, stammering that it was nothing, that she was sorry, that she was getting on with her work, but Susanna cut her off sharply: "It is not nothing! I'm sick of seeing you thus moping and useless. You've been limp as a sick kitten this two days past, and I know why. You have that miserable little thief on your mind-I know! I know he wound about you with his soft voice and his creeping ways, I've watched you. Must you be fool enough to fret over a guilty wretch the like of that?"

She was not angry; she was never angry. She sounded impatient, even exasperated, but still contemptuously kind, and her voice was level and controlled as ever. Rannilt swallowed the choking residue of tears, shook the mist from her eyes, and began to be very busy with her pots and pans, looking hurriedly about her for a distraction which would turn attention from herself at any cost. "It came over me just for a minute: I'm past it now. Why, you've got your feet and the hem of your gown wet," she exclaimed, seizing gratefully on the first thing that offered. "You should change your shoes."

Susanna shrugged the diversion scornfully aside. "Never mind my wet feet. The river's up a little, I was not noticing until I went too near the edge, leaning to hang a shirt on the bushes. What of your wet eyes? That's more to the point. Oh, fool girl, you're wasting your fancy! This is a common rogue of the roads, with many a smaller deed of the kind behind him, and he'll get nothing but his due in the noose that's waiting for him. Get sense, and put him out of your mind."

"He is not a rogue," said Rannilt, despairingly brave. "He did not do it, I know it, I know him, he could not. It isn't in him to do violence. And I do fret for him, I can't help it."

"So I see," said Susanna resignedly. "So I've seen ever since they ran him to ground. I tire of him and of you. I want you in your wits again. G.o.d's truth, must I carry this household on my back without even your small help?" She gnawed a thoughtful lip, and demanded abruptly: "Will it cure you if I let you go see for yourself that the tumbler is alive and whole, and out of our reach for a while, more's the pity? Yes, and likely to worm his way out of even this tangle in the end!"

She had spoken magical words. Rannilt was staring up at her dry-eyed, bright as a candle-flame. "See? See him? You mean I could go there?"

"You have legs," said Susanna tartly. "It's no distance. They don't close their gates against anyone. You may even come back in your right senses, when you see how little store he sets by you, while you're breaking your fool heart for him. You may get to know him for what he is, and the better for you. Yes, go. Go, and be done with it! This once I'll manage without you. Let Daniel's wife start making herself useful. Good practice for her."

"You mean it?" whispered Rannilt, stricken by such generosity. "I may go? But who will see to the broth here, and the meat?"

"I will. I have often enough, G.o.d knows! I tell you, go, go quickly, before I change my mind, stay away all day long, if that will send you back cured. I can very well do without you this once. But wash your face, girl, and comb your hair, and do yourself and us credit. You can take some of those oat-cakes in a basket, if you wish, and whatever sc.r.a.ps were left from yesterday. If he felled my father," said Susanna roughly, turning away to pick up the ladle and stir the pot simmering on the hob, "there's worse waiting for him in the end, no need to grudge him a mouthful while he is man alive." She looked back over a straight shoulder at Rannilt, who still hovered in a daze. "Go and visit your minstrel, I mean it, you have leave. I doubt if he even remembers your face! Go and learn sense."

Lost in wonder, and only half believing in such mercies, Rannilt washed her face and tidied her tangle of dark hair with trembling hands, seized a basket and filled it with whatever morsels were brusquely shoved her way, and went out through the hall like a child walking in its sleep. It was wholly by chance that Margery was coming down the stairs, with a pile of discarded garments on her arm. She marked the small, furtive figure flitting past below, and in surprised goodwill, since this waif was alien and lonely here as she was, asked: "Where are you sent off to in such a hurry, child?"

Rannilt halted submissively, and looked up into Margery's rounded, fresh countenance. "Mistress Susanna gave me leave. I'm going to the abbey, to take this provision to Liliwin." The name, so profoundly significant to her, meant nothing to Margery. "The minstrel. The one they say struck down Master Walter. But I'm sure he did not! She said I may go, see for myself how he's faring-because I was crying..."

"I remember him," said Margery. "A little man, very young. They're sure he's the guilty one, and you are sure he is not?" Her blue eyes were demure. She hunted through the pile of garments on her arm, and very faintly and fleetingly she smiled. "He was not too well clothed, I recall. There is a cotte here that was my husband's some years ago, and a capuchon. The little man could wear them, I think. Take them with you. It would be a pity to waste them. And charity is approved of in Heaven, even to sinners."

She sorted them out gravely, a good dark-blue coat outgrown while it was still barely patched, and a much-mended caped hood in russet brown. "Take them! They're of no use here." None, except for the satisfaction it gave her to despatch them to the insignificant soul condemned by every member of her new family. It was her gesture of independence.

Rannilt, every moment more dazed, took the offerings and tucked them into her basket, made a mute reverence, and fled before this unprecedented and hardly credible vein of good will should run out, and food, clothing, holiday and all fall to ruin round her.

Susanna cooked, served, scoured and went about her circ.u.mscribed realm with a somewhat grim smile on her lips. The provisioning of the house under her governance was discreetly more generous than ever it had been under Dame Juliana, and on this day there was enough and to spare, even after she had carried his usual portion to Iestyn in the workshop, and sat with him for company while he ate, to bring back the dish to the kitchen afterwards. What remained was not worth keeping to use up another day, but there was enough for one. She shredded the remains of the boiled salt beef into it, and took it across to the locksmith's shop, as she had sometimes done before when there was plenty.

John Boneth was at work at his bench, and looked up as she entered, bowl in hand. She looked about her, and saw everything in placid order, but no sign of Baldwin Peche, or the boy Griffin, probably out on some errand.

"We have a surfeit, and I know your master's no great cook. I brought him his dinner, if he hasn't eaten already."

John had come civilly to his feet, with a deferential smile for her. They had known each other five years, but always at this same discreet distance. The landlord's daughter, the rich master-craftsman's girl, was no meat for a mere journeyman.

"That's kind, mistress, but the master's not here. I've not seen him since the middle of the morning, he's left me two or three keys to cut. I fancy he's off for the day. He said something about the fish rising."

There was nothing strange in that. Baldwin Peche relied on his man to take charge of the business every bit as competently as he could have done himself, and was p.r.o.ne to taking holidays whenever it suited his pleasure. He might be merely making the round of the ale-houses to barter his own news for whatever fresh scandal was being whispered, or he might be at the b.u.t.ts by the riverside, betting on a good marksman, or out in his boat, which he kept in a yard near the Watergate, only a few minutes down-river. The young salmon must be coming up the Severn by this time. A fisherman might well be tempted out to try his luck.

"And you don't know if he'll be back?" Susanna read his face, shrugged and smiled. "I know! Well, if he's not here to eat it... I daresay you have still room to put this away, John?" He brought with him, usually, a hunk of bread and a strip of salt bacon or a piece of cheese, meat was festival fare in his mother's house. Susanna set down her bowl before him on the bench, and sat down on the customer's stool opposite, spreading her elbows comfortably along the boards. "It's his loss. In an ale-house he'll pay more for poorer fare. I'll sit with you, John, and take back the bowl."

Rannilt came down the Wyle to the open gate of the town, and pa.s.sed through its shadowed arch to the glitter of sunlight on the bridge. She had fled in haste from the house, for fear of being called back, but she had lingered on the way through the town for fear of what lay before her. For the course was fearful, to one unschooled, half-wild, rejected by Wales and never welcomed in England but as a pair of labouring hands. She knew nothing of monks or monasteries, and none too much even of Christianity. But there inside the abbey was Liliwin, and thither she would go. The gates, Susanna had said, were never closed against any.

On the far side of the bridge she pa.s.sed close by the copse where Liliwin had curled up to sleep, and been hunted out at midnight. On the other side of the Foregate lay the mill pool, and the houses in the abbey's grant, and beyond, the wall of the enclave began, and the roofs of infirmary and school and guest-hall within, and the tall bulk of the gatehouse. The great west door of the church, outside the gates, confronted her in majesty. But once timidly entering the great court, she found rea.s.surance. Even at this hour, perhaps the quietest of the day, there was a considerable bustle of coming and going within there, guests arriving and departing, servants ambling about on casual errands, pet.i.tioners begging, packmen taking a midday rest, a whole small world of people, some of them as humble as herself. She could walk in there among them, and never be noticed. But still she had to find Liliwin, and she cast about her for the most sympathetic source of information.

She was not blessed in her choice. A small man, in the habit of the house, scurrying across the court; she chose him because he was as small and slight as Liliwin, and his shoulders had a discouraged droop which reminded her of Liliwin, and because someone who looked so modest and disregarded must surely feel for others as insignificant as himself. Brother Jerome would have been deeply offended if he had known. As it was, he was not displeased at the low reverence this suppliant girl made to him, and the shy whisper in which she addressed him.

"Please, sir, I am sent by my lady with alms for the young man who is here in sanctuary. If you would kindly teach me where I may find him."

She had not spoken his name because it was a private thing, to be kept jealously apart. Jerome, however he might regret that any lady should be so misguided as to send alms to the offender, was somewhat disarmed by the approach. A maid on an errand was not to be blamed for her mistress's errors.

"You will find him there, in the cloister, with Brother Anselm." He indicated the direction grudgingly, disapproving of Brother Anselm's complacent usage with an accused man, but not censuring Rannilt, until he noted the brightening of her face and the lightness of her foot as she sprang to follow where he pointed. Not merely an errand-girl, far too blithe! "Take heed, child, what message you have to him must be done decorously. He is on probation of a most grave charge. You may have half an hour with him, you may and you should exhort him to consider on his soul. Do your errand and go!"

She looked back at him with great eyes, and was very still for one instant in her flight. She faltered some words of submission, while her eyes flamed unreadably, with a most disquieting brilliance. She made a further deep reverence, to the very ground, but sprang from it like an angel soaring, and flew to the cloister whither he had pointed her.

It seemed vast to her, four-sided in stony corridors about an open garden, where spring flowers burst out in gold and white and purple on a gra.s.sy ground. She flitted the length of one walk between terror and delight, turned along the second in awe of the alcove cells furnished with slanted tables and benches, empty but for one absorbed scholar copying wonders, who never lifted his head as she pa.s.sed by. At the end of this walk, echoing from such another cell, she heard music. She had never before heard an organ played, it was a magical sound to her, until she heard a sweet, lofty voice soar happily with it, and knew it for Liliwin's.

He was bending over the instrument, and did not hear her come. Neither did Brother Anselm, equally absorbed in fitting together the fragments of the rebec's back. She stood timidly in the opening of the carrel, and only when the song ended did she venture speech. At this vital moment she did not know what her welcome would be. What proof had she that he had thought of her, since that hour they had spent together, as she had thought ceaselessly of him? It might well be that she was fooling herself, as Susanna had said.

"If you please..." began Rannilt humbly and hesitantly.

Then they both looked up. The old man viewed her with mildly curious eyes, unastonished and benign. The young one stared, gaped and blazed, in incredulous joy, set aside his strange instrument of music blindly on the bench beside him, and came to his feet slowly, warily, all his movements soft almost to stealth, as though any sudden start might cause her to quiver and dissolve into light, vanishing like morning mist.

"Rannilt... It was you?"

If this was indeed foolery, then she was not the only fool. She looked rather at Brother Anselm, whose devoted fingers were held poised, not to divert by the least degree the touch he had suspended on his delicate operations.

"If you please, I should like to speak with Liliwin. I have brought him some gifts."

"By all means," said Brother Anselm amiably. "You hear, boy? You have a visitor. There, go along and be glad of her. I shall not need you now for some hours. I'll hear your lesson later."

They moved towards each other in a dream, wordless, took hands and stole away.

"I swear to you, Rannilt, I never struck him, I never stole from him, I never did him wrong." He had said it at least a dozen times, here in the shadowy porch where his brychans were folded up, and his thin pallet spread, and the poor tools of his craft hidden away in a corner of the stone bench as though some shame attached to them. And there had never been any need to say it even once, as she a dozen times had answered him.

"I know, I know! I never believed for a moment. How could you doubt it? I know you are good. They will find it out, they will have to own it."

They trembled together and kept fast hold of hands in a desperate clasp, and the touch set their unpractised bodies quivering in an excitement neither of them understood.

"Oh, Rannilt, if you knew! That was the worst of all, that you might shrink from me and believe me so vile... They believe it, all of them. Only you..."

"No," she said stoutly, "I'm not so sure. The brother who comes to physic Dame Juliana, the one who brought back your things... And that kind brother who is teaching you... Oh, no, you are not abandoned. You must not think it!"

"No!" he owned thankfully. "Now I do believe, I do trust, if you are with me..." He was lost in wonder that anyone in that hostile household should send her to him. "She was good, your lady! I'm so beholden to her..."

Not for the gifts of food, orts to her, delicacies to him. No, but for this nearness that clouded his senses in a fevered warmth and delight and disquiet he had never before experienced, and which could only be love, the love he had sung by rote for years, while his body and mind were quite without understanding.

Brother Jerome, true to what he felt to be his duty, had marked the pa.s.sing of time, and loomed behind them, approaching inexorably along the walk from the great court. His sandals silent on the flagstones, he observed as he came the shoulders pressed close, the two heads, the flaxen and the black, inclined together with temples almost touching. Certainly it was time to part them, this was no place for such embraces.

"It will all be well in the end," said Rannilt, whispering. "You'll see! Mistress Susanna-she says as they say, and yet she let me come. I think she doesn't really believe... She said I might stay away all day long..."

"Oh, Rannilt... Oh, Rannilt, I do so love you..."

"Maiden," said Brother Jerome, harshly censorious behind them, "you have had time enough to discharge your mistress's errand. There can be no further stay. You must take your basket and depart."

A shadow no bigger than Liliwin's, there behind them black against the slanting sun of mid-afternoon, and yet he cast such a darkness over them as they could hardly bear. They had only just linked hands, barely realised the possibilities that lie within such slender bodies, and they must be torn apart. The monk had authority, he spoke for the abbey, and there was no denying him. Liliwin had been granted shelter, how could he then resist the restrictions laid upon him?

They rose, tremulous. Her hand in his clung convulsively, and her touch ran through him like a stiffening fire, drawn by a great, upward wind that was his own desperation and anger.

"She is going," said Liliwin. "Only give us, for pity's sake, some moments in the church together for prayer."

Brother Jerome found that becoming, even disarming, and stood back from them as Liliwin drew her with him, the basket in his free hand, in through the porch to the dark interior of the church. Silence and dimness closed on them. Brother Jerome had respected their privacy and remained without, though he would not go far until he saw one of them emerge alone.

And it might be the last time he would ever see her! He could not bear it that she should go so soon, perhaps to be lost for ever, when she had leave to be absent all day long. He closed his hand possessively on her arm, drawing her deep into the shadowy, stony recesses of the transept chapel beyond the parish altar. She should not go like this! They were not followed, there was no one else here within at this moment, and Liliwin was well acquainted now with every corner and cranny of this church, having prowled it restlessly and fearfully on his first night here alone, when his ears were still p.r.i.c.ked for sounds of pursuit, and he was afraid to sleep on his pallet in the porch.

"Don't go, don't go!" His arms were clasped tightly about her as they pressed together into the darkest corner, and his lips were whispering agitatedly against her cheek. "Stay with me! You can, you can, I'll show you a place... No one will know, no one will find us."

The chapel was narrow, the altar wide, all but filling the s.p.a.ce between its containing columns, and stood out somewhat from the niche that tapered behind it. There was a little cavern there, into which only creatures as small and thin as they could creep. Liliwin had marked it down as a place to which he might retreat if the hunters broke in, and he knew his own body could negotiate the pa.s.sage, so for her it would be no barrier. And within there was darkness, privacy, invisibility.

"Here, slip in here! No one will see. When he's satisfied, when he goes away, I'll come to you. We can be together until Vespers."

Rannilt went where he urged her; she would have done anything he asked, her hunger was as desperate as his. The empty basket was drawn through the narrow s.p.a.ce after her. Her wild whisper breathed back from the darkness: "You will come? Soon?"

"I'll come! Wait for me..."

Invisible and still, she made no murmur nor rustle. Liliwin turned, trembling, and went back past the parish altar, and out at the south porch into the east walk of the cloisters. Brother Jerome had had the grace to withdraw into the garth, to keep his jealous watch a little less blatantly, but his sharp eyes were still on the doorway, and the emergence of the solitary figure, head drooping and shoulders despondent, appeared to satisfy him. Liliwin did not have to feign dejection, he was already in tears of excitement, compounded of joy and grief together. He did not turn along the scriptorium to go back to Brother Anselm, but went straight past the bench in the porch, where the gifts of food and clothing lay on his folded brychans, and out into the court and the garden beyond. But not far, only into cover among the first bushes, where he could look back and see Brother Jerome give over his vigil, and depart briskly in the direction of the grange court. The girl was gone, from the west door of the church; the disturbing presence was removed, monastic order restored, and Brother Jerome's authority had been properly respected.

Liliwin flew back to his pallet in the porch, rolled up food and clothing in his blankets, and looked round carefully to make sure there was now no one paying any attention to him, either within or without the church. When he was certain, he slipped in with his bundle under his arm, darted into the chapel, and slid as nimbly as an eel between altar and pillar into the dark haven behind. Rannilt's hands reached out for him, her cheek was pressed against his, they shook together, almost invisible even to each other, and by that very mystery suddenly loosed from all the restraints of the outer world, able to speak without speech, delivered from shyness and shame, avowed lovers. This was something quite different even from sitting together in the porch, before Jerome's serpent hissed into their Eden. There they had never got beyond clasping hands, and even those clasped hands hidden between them, as if a matter for modesty and shame. Here there was neither, only a vindicated candour that expanded in darkness, giving and receiving pa.s.sionate, inexpert caresses.

There was room there to make a nest, with the blankets and the basket and Daniel's outgrown clothes, and if the stone floor was thick with a generation or more of soft, fine dust, that only helped to cushion the couch they laid down for themselves. They sat huddled together with their backs against the stone wall, sharing their warmth, and the morsels Susanna had discarded, and holding fast to each other for rea.s.surance, until they drifted into a dream-like illusion of safety where rea.s.surance was unnecessary.

They talked, but in few and whispered words.

"Are you cold?"

"No."

"Yes, you're trembling." He shifted and drew her into his arm, close against his breast, and with his free hand plucked up a corner of the blanket over her shoulder, binding her to him. She stretched up her arm within the rough wool, slipped her hand about his neck, and embraced him with lips and cheek and nestling forehead, drawing him down with her until they lay breast to breast, heaving as one to great, deep-drawn sighs.

There was some manner of lightning-stroke, as it seemed, that convulsed them both, and fused them into one without any coherent action on their part. They were equally innocent, equally knowing. Knowing by rote is one thing. What they experienced bore no resemblance to what they had thought they knew. Afterwards, shifting a little only to entwine more closely and warmly, they fell asleep in each other's arms, to quicken an hour or more later to the same compulsion, and love again without ever fully awaking. Then they slept again, so deeply, in such an exhaustion of wonder and fulfilment, that even the chanting of Vespers in the choir did not disturb them.

"Shall I fetch in the linen for you?" Margery offered in the afternoon, making a conciliatory foray into Susanna's domain, and finding that composed housekeeper busy with preparations for the evening's supper.

"Thank you," said Susanna, hardly looking up from her work, "but I'll do that myself." Not one step is she going to advance towards me, thought Margery, damped. Her linen, her stores, her kitchen! And at that Susanna did look up, even smiled; her usual, wry smile, but not unfriendly. "If you wish me well, do take charge of my grandmother. You are new to her, she'll take more kindly to you, and be more biddable. I have had this some years, she and I wear out each other. We are too like. You come fresh. It would be a kindness."

Margery was silenced and disarmed. "I will," she said heartily, and went away to do her best with the old woman, who, true enough, undoubtedly curbed her malevolence with the newcomer.

Only later in the evening, viewing Daniel across the trestle table, mute, inattentive and smugly glowing with some private satisfaction, did she return to brooding on her lack of status here, and reflecting at whose girdle the keys were hung, and whose voice bound or loosed the maidservant who was still absent.

"I marvel," said Brother Anselm, coming out from the refectory after supper, "where my pupil can have got to. He's been so eager, since I showed him the written notes. An angel's ear, true as a bird, and a voice the same. And he has not even been to the kitchen for his supper."

"Nor come to have his arm dressed," agreed Brother Cadfael, who had spent the whole afternoon busily planting, brewing and compounding in his herbarium. "Though Oswin did look at it earlier, and found it healing very well."

"There was a maidservant here bringing him a basket of dainties from her mistress's table," said Jerome, one ear p.r.i.c.ked in their direction. "No doubt he felt no appet.i.te for our simple fare. I had occasion to admonish them. He may have taken some grief, and be moping solitary."

It had not occurred to him, until then, that he had not seen the unwanted guest since the boy had come out of the church alone; now it seemed, moreover, that Brother Anselm, who had had more reason to expect to spend time with his pupil, had not seen hide or hair of him, either. The abbey enclave was extensive, but not so great that a man virtually a prisoner should disappear in it. If, that is, he was still within it?

Jerome said no word more to his fellows, but spent the final half-hour before Compline making a rapid search of every part of the enclave, and ended at the south porch. The pallet on the stone bench was bare and unpressed, the brychans unaccountably missing. He did not notice the small cloth bundle tucked under a corner of the straw. As far as he could see, there was no sign left of Liliwin's presence.

He reported as much to Prior Robert, returning breathless just before Compline was due to begin. Robert did not exactly smile, his ascetic face remained benign and bland as ever, but he did somehow radiate an air of relief and cautious pleasure.

"Well, well!" said Robert. "If the misguided youth has been so foolish as to quit his place of safety on account of a woman, it is his own choice. A sad business, but no blame lights upon any within here. No man can be wise for another." And he led the procession into the choir with his usual impressive gait and saintly visage, and breathed the more easily now that the alien burr had been dislodged from his skin. He did not warn Jerome to say no word yet to anyone else within here; there was no need, they understood each other very well.

Chapter Six.