Brother Cadfael 08: The Devil's Novice

Exceedingly grown-up, not at all the colours or the cut to which a wild child would fly, allowed for once to dine with the adults. Her bearing, always erect and confident, had acquired a lordly dignity to go with the dress, and her gait as she entered was princely. The close necklace of heavy natural stones, polished but not cut, served beautifully to call the eye to the fine carriage of her head. She wore no other ornaments.
    'It would do for me,' said Cadfael simply, 'if I were a green boy expecting a hoyden known from a child. Are you as unprepared for him, I wonder, as he will be for you?'
    Isouda shook her head until the brown curls danced, and settled again into new and distracting patterns on her shoulders. 'No! I've thought of all you've told me, and I know my Meriet. Neither you nor he need fear. I can deal!'
    'Then before we go,' said Cadfael, 'you had better be armed with everything I have gleaned in the meantime.' And he sat down with her and told her. She heard him out with a serious but tranquil face, unshaken.
    'Listen, Brother Cadfael, why should he not come to see his brother married, since things are as you say? I know it would not be a kindness, not yet, to tell him he's known as an innocent and deceives nobody, it would only set him agonising for whoever it is he's hiding. But you know him now. If he's given his parole, he'll not break it, and he's innocent enough, God knows, to believe that other men are as honest as he, and will take his word as simply as he gives it. He would credit it if Hugh Beringar allowed even a captive felon to come to see his brother married.'
    'He could not yet walk so far,' said Cadfael, though he was captivated by the notion.
    'He need not. I would send a groom with a horse for him. Brother Mark could come with him. Why not? He could come early, and cloaked, and take his place privately where he could watch. Whatever follows,' said Isouda with grave determination, 'for I am not such a fool as to doubt there's grief here somehow for their house - whatever follows, I want him brought forth into daylight, where he belongs. Or whatever faces may be fouled! For his is fair enough, and so I want it shown.'
    'So do I,' said Cadfael heartily, 'so do I!'
    'Then ask Hugh Beringar if I may send for him to come. I don't know - I feel there may be need of him, that he has the right to be there, that he should be there.'
    'I will speak to Hugh,' said Cadfael. 'And now, come, let's be off to Saint Giles before the light fails.' They walked together along the Foregate, veered right at the bleached grass triangle of the horse-fair, and out between scattered houses and green fields to the hospice. The shadowy, skeleton trees made lace patterns against a greenish, pallid sky thinning to frost.
    'This is where even lepers may go for shelter?' she said, climbing the gentle grassy slope to the boundary fence. 'They medicine them here, and do their best to heal? That is noble!'
    'They even have their successes,' said Cadfael. 'There's never any want of volunteers to serve here, even after a death. Mark may have gone far to heal your Meriet, body and soul.'
    'When I have finished what he has begun,' she said with a sudden shining smile, 'I will thank him properly. Now where must we go?' Cadfael took her directly to the barn, but at this hour it was empty. The evening meal was not yet due, but the light was too far gone for any activity outdoors. The solitary low pallet stood neatly covered with its dun blanket.
    'This is his bed?' she asked, gazing down at it with a meditative face.
    'It is. He had it up in the loft above, for fear of disturbing his fellows if he had bad dreams, and it was here he fell. By Mark's account he was on his way in his sleep to make confession to Hugh Beringar, and get him to free his prisoner. Will you wait for him here? I'll find him and bring him to you.'
    Meriet was seated at Brother Mark's little desk in the anteroom of the hall, mending the binding of a service-book with a strip of leather. His face was grave in concentration on his task, his fingers patient and adroit. Only when Cadfael informed him that he had a visitor waiting in the barn was he shaken by sudden agitation. Cadfael he was used to, and did not mind, but he shrank from showing himself to others, as though he carried a contagion.
    'I had rather no one came,' he said, torn between gratitude for an intended kindness and reluctance to have to make the effort of bearing the consequent pain. 'What