Brother Cadfael 04: St. Peter's Fair

There would be time, later. Now there was no time for anything but living, and exulting in living, and being glad and grateful, and perhaps, gradually and with unpractised pleasure, loving.
    "What will become of him?" she asked.
    "He'll surely tell all he knows, and lay the worst blame where it belongs, on his lord." Cadfael doubted, all the same, whether Turstan could hope to evade the gallows, and doubted whether he should, but he did not say so to her. She was deeply preoccupied at this moment with life and death, and willed mercy even to the lowest and worst in the largeness of the mercy shown to her. And that was good, God forbid he should say any word to deface it.
    "Are you cold?" asked Philip tenderly, feeling her shiver in his arm.
    "No," she said at once, and turned her head a little in the hollow of his shoulder, resting her forehead against his grimy cheek. He felt the soft curving of her lips in the hollow of his throat as she smiled, and was filled with so secure a sense of possession that no one would ever be able to take her away from him.
    Hugh Beringar came to them across the trampled grass of the court, even his neatness smoked and odorous.
    "What can be done's done," he said, wiping his face. "We had better get her back to Shrewsbury, there's no provision here. I'm leaving my sergeant and most of the men here for the time being, but the place for you," he said, smiling somewhat wearily at Emma, "is in a comfortable bed, with your hurt properly dressed, and no need for you to think or stir until you're restored. Bristol will have to wait for you. We'll take you to Aline at the abbey, you'll be easy there."
    "No," said Philip, with large assurance. "I am taking Emma to my mother in Shrewsbury."
    "Very well, so you shall," agreed Hugh, "it's hardly a step further. But give Cadfael time at the abbey to hunt out the salves and potions he wants from his workshop, and let Aline see for herself that we've not let Emma come to any great harm. And don't forget, friend, you owe Aline something for entertaining the fellow you robbed of his horse, and guarding your back for you until you can restore him."
    Beneath his coating of soot Philip could still blush. "True enough, I'm likely to end in gaol again for theft, but not until I've seen Emma safe lodged in my mother's care."
    Hugh laughed, and clapped him amiably on the shoulder. "Nor then nor ever, while I'm in office - not unless you choose to kick the law in the teeth on some other occasion. We'll satisfy the merchant, Aline will have sweetened him into complacency, you'll find. And his horse has been rubbed down and watered and rested, while you've been otherwise occupied, and we'll take him back with us unloaded, none the worse for his adventures. There are horses enough here, I'll find you the pick of them, a steady ride fit to bear two." He had had one eye on Emma while he had been mustering water-carriers and husbanding household effects, he knew better than to try to wrest her out of Philip's arms, or send for a horse-litter to carry her back. There were two here so joined together that only a fool would attempt to part them even for a few hours; and Hugh was no fool.
    They wrapped her gently in a brychan borrowed from the salvaged bedding, rather for comfortable padding than for warmth, for the evening was still serene and mild, though she might yet suffer the cold that comes after effort is all over. She accepted everything with serenity, like one in a dream, though the pain of her hand must, they reasoned, be acute. She seemed to feel nothing but a supreme inner peace that made everything else of no account. They mounted Philip on a great, broad-backed, steady-paced gelding, and then lifted Emma up to him in her swathing blanket, and she settled into the cradle of his lap and arms and braced shoulder as though God had made her to fit there.
    "And perhaps so he did," said Brother Cadfael, riding behind with Hugh Beringar close beside him.
    "So he did what?" wondered Hugh, starting out of very different considerations, for two officers brought a bound Turstan Fowler behind them.
    "Direct all," said Cadfael. "It is, after all, a way he has."
    Halfway back towards Shrewsbury she fell asleep in his arms, nestled on his breast. For the fall of her black, smoke-scented hair he could see only the lower part of her face, but the mouth was soft and moist and smiling, and all her weight melted and moulded into the cradle of his loving body as into a