Brother Cadfael 07: The Sanctuary Sparrow

discarded, and holding fast to each other for reassurance, until they drifted into a dream-like illusion of safety where reassurance 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 fulfillment, 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 pricked in their direction. 'No doubt he felt no appetite 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