Brother Cadfael 03: Monk's Hood

mortuary chapel, the bereaved house restored to order, the distracted members of the household at least set free to wander and wonder and grieve as was best for them. Meurig was gone, back to the shop in the town, to tell the carpenter and his family word for word what had befallen, for what comfort or warning that might give them. By this time, for all Cadfael knew, the sheriff's men had seized young Edwin ... Dear God, he had even forgotten the name of the man Richildis had married, and Bellecote was only her son-in-law.
    "Mistress Bonel asks," said Aelfric earnestly, "that you'll come and speak with her privately. She entreats you for old friendship, to stand her friend now."
    It came as no surprise. Cadfael was aware that he stood on somewhat perilous ground, even after forty years. He would have been happier if the lamentable death of her husband had turned out to be no mystery, her son in no danger, and her future none of his business, but there was no help for it. His youth, a sturdy part of the recollections that made him the man he was, stood in her debt, and now that she was in need he had no choice but to make generous repayment.
    "I'll come," he said. "You go on before, and I'll be with her within a quarter of an hour."
    When he knocked at the door of the house by the mill-pond, it was opened by Richildis herself. There was no sign either of Aelfric or Aldith, she had taken good care that the two of them should be able to talk in absolute privacy. In the inner room all was bare and neat, the morning's chaos smoothed away, the trestle table folded aside. Richildis sat down in the great chair which had been her husband's, and drew Cadfael down on the bench beside her. It was dim within the room, only one small rush-light burning; the only other brightness came from her eyes, the dark, lustrous brightness he was remembering more clearly with every moment.
    "Cadfael ..." she said haltingly, and was silent again for some moments. "To think it should really be you! I never got word of you, after I heard you were back home. I thought you would have married, and been a grandsire by this. As often as I looked at you, this morning, I was searching my mind, why I should be so sure I ought to know you ... And just when I was in despair, to hear your name spoken!"
    "And you," said Cadfael, "you came as unexpectedly to me. I never knew you'd been widowed from Eward Gurney - I remember now that was his name! - much less that you'd wed again."
    "Three years ago," she said, and heaved a sigh that might have been of regret or relief at the abrupt ending of this second match. "I mustn't make you think ill of him, he was not a bad man, Gervase, only elderly and set in his ways, and used to being obeyed. A widower he was, many years wifeless, and without any children, leastways none by the marriage. He courted me a long time, and I was lonely, and then he promised, you see ... Not having a legitimate heir, he promised if I'd have him he'd make Edwin his heir. His overlord sanctioned it. I ought to tell you about my family. I had a daughter, Sibil, only a year after I married Eward, and then, I don't know why, time went on and on, and there were no more. You'll remember, maybe, Eward had his business in Shrewsbury as a master-carpenter and carver. A good workman he was, a good master and a good husband."
    "You were happy?" said Cadfael, grateful at hearing it in her voice. Time and distance had done well by the pair of them, and led them to their proper places, after all.
    "Very happy! I couldn't have had a better man. But there were no more children then. And when Sibil was seventeen she married Eward's journeyman, Martin Bellecote, and a good lad he is, too, and she's as happy in her match as I was in mine, thank God! Well, then, in two years the girl was with child, and it was like being young again myself - the first grandchild! - it's always so. I was so joyful, looking after her and making plans for the birth, and Eward was as proud as I was, and what with one thing and another, you'd have thought we old folk were young newlyweds again ourselves. And I don't know how it happens, but when Sibil was four months gone, what should I find but I was carrying, too!
    "After all those years! And I in my forty-fourth year - it was like a miracle! And the upshot is, she and I both brought forth boys, and though there's the four months between them, they might as well be twins as uncle and nephew - and the uncle the younger, at