Brother Cadfael 07: The Sanctuary Sparrow

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 pricked 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 space 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 passage, 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 space 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 passionate, 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