Brother Cadfael 10: The Pilgrim of Hate

follow some minutes later, and was sure in his own mind that the self-styled merchant of Guildford would not be long after them. Time, too, for that unaccountably solitary young man, somehow loosed off his chain, to range this whole territory suddenly opened to him, and happen upon the solitary girl.
    Cadfael put up his feet on the wooden bench, and closed his eyes for a brief respite.
    Matthew was there at her back before she knew it. The sudden rustle as he stepped into sun-dried long grass at the edge of the field startled her, and she swung round in alarm, scrambling to her knees and staring up into his face with dilated eyes, half-blinded by the blaze of the sunset into which she had been steadily staring. Her face was utterly open, vulnerable and childlike. She looked as she had looked when he had swept her up in his arms and leaped the ditch with her, clear of the galloping horses. Just so she had opened her eyes and looked up at him, still dazed and frightened, and just so had her fear melted away into wonder and pleasure, finding in him nothing but reassurance, kindness and admiration.
    That pure, paired encounter of eyes did not last long. She blinked, and shook her head a little to clear her dazzled vision, and looked beyond him, searching, not believing he could be here alone.
    "Ciaran...? Is there something you need for him?"
    "No," said Matthew shortly, and for a moment turned his head away. "He's in his bed."
    "But you never leave his bed!" It was said in innocence, even in anxiety. Whatever she grudged to Ciaran, she still pitied and understood him.
    "You see I have left it," said Matthew harshly. "I have needs, too... a breath of air. And he is very well where he is, and won't stir."
    "I was well sure," she said with resigned bitterness, "that you had not come out to look for me." She made to rise, swiftly and gracefully enough, but he put out a hand, almost against his will, as it seemed, to take her under the wrist and lift her. It was withdrawn as abruptly when she evaded his touch, and rose to her feet unaided. "But at least," she said deliberately, "you did not turn and run from me when you found me. I should be grateful even for that."
    "I am not free," he protested, stung. "You know it better than any."
    "Then neither were you free when we kept pace along the road," said Melangell fiercely, "when you carried my burden, and walked beside me, and let Ciaran hobble along before, where he could not see how you smiled on me then and were gallant and cherished me when the road was rough and spoke softly, as if you took delight in being beside me. Why did you not give me warning then that you were not free? Or better, take him some other way, and leave us alone? Then I might have taken good heed in time, and in time forgotten you. As now I never shall! Never, to my life's end!"
    All the flesh of his lips and cheeks shrank and tightened before her eyes, in a contortion of either rage or pain, she could not tell which. She was staring too close and too passionately to see very clearly. He turned his head sharply away, to evade her eyes.
    "You charge me justly," he said in a harsh whisper, "I was at fault. I never should have believed there could be so clean and sweet a happiness for me. I should have left you, but I could not... Oh, God! You think I could have turned him? He clung to you, to your good aunt... Yet I should have been strong enough to hold off from you and let you alone..." As rapidly as he had swung away from her he swung back again, reaching a hand to take her by the chin and hold her face to face with him, so ungently that she felt the pressure of his fingers bruising her flesh. "Do you know how hard a thing you are asking? No! This countenance you never saw, did you, never but through someone else's eyes. Who would provide you a mirror to see yourself? Some pool, perhaps, if ever you had the leisure to lean over and look. How should you know what this face can do to a man already lost? And you marvel I took what I could get for water in a drought, when it walked beside me? I should rather have died than stay beside you, to trouble your peace. God forgive me!"
    She was five years nearer childhood than he, even taking into account the two years or more a girl child has advantage over the boys of her own age. She stood entranced, a little frightened by his intensity, and inexpressibly moved by the anguish she felt emanating from him like a raw, drowning odour. The long-fingered hand that