Brother Cadfael 10: The Pilgrim of Hate

she said. "My own fault. I was in the garden, I ran too fast and I fell. I know it's unsightly, but it doesn't hurt now."
    Her eyes were very calm, not reddened, only a little swollen as to the lids. Well, Matthew had gone, abandoned her to go with his friend, letting her fall only too disastrously after the heady running together of the morning hours. That could account for tears now past. But should it account for a bruised cheek? He hesitated whether to question further, but clearly she did not wish it. She had gone back doggedly to her work, and would not look up again.
    Cadfael sighed, and went out across the great court to the guest-hall. Even a glorious day like this one must have its vein of bitter sadness.
    In the men's dortoir Rhun sat alone on his bed, very still and content in his blissfully restored body. He was deep in his own rapt thoughts, but readily aware when Cadfael entered. He looked round and smiled.
    "Brother, I was wishing to see you. You were there, you know. Perhaps you even heard... See, how I'm changed!" The leg once maimed stretched out perfect before him, he bent and stamped the boards of the floor. He flexed ankle and toes, drew up his knee to his chin, and everything moved as smoothly and painlessly as his ready tongue. "I am whole! I never asked it, how dared I? Even then, I was praying not for this, and yet this was given..." He went away again for a moment into his tranced dream.
    Cadfael sat down beside him, noting the exquisite fluency of those joints hitherto flawed and intransigent. The boy's beauty was perfected now.
    "You were praying," said Cadfael gently, "for Melangell."
    "Yes. And Matthew too. I truly thought... But you see he is gone. They are both gone, gone together. Why could I not bring my sister into bliss? I would have gone on crutches all my life for that, but I couldn't prevail."
    "That is not yet determined," said Cadfael firmly. "Who goes may also return. And I think your prayers should have strong virtue, if you do not fall into doubt now, because heaven has need of a little time. Even miracles have their times. Half our lives in this world are spent in waiting. It is needful to wait with faith."
    Rhun sat listening with an absent smile, and at the end of it he said: "Yes, surely, and I will wait. For see, one of them left this behind in his haste when he went away."
    He reached down between the close-set cots, and lifted to the bed between them a bulky but lightweight scrip of unbleached linen, with stout leather straps for the owner's belt. "I found it dropped between the two beds they had, drawn close together. I don't know which of them owned this one, the two they carried were much alike. But one of them doesn't expect or want ever to come back, does he? Perhaps Matthew does, and has forgotten this, whether he meant it or no, as a pledge."
    Cadfael stared and wondered, but this was a heavy matter, and not for him. He said seriously: "I think you should bring this with you, and give it into the keeping of Father Abbot. For he sent me to bring you to him. He wants to speak with you."
    "With me?" wavered Rhun, stricken into a wild and rustic child again. "The lord abbot himself?"
    "Surely, and why not? You are Christian soul as he is, and may speak with him as equal."
    The boy faltered: "I should be afraid..."
    "No, you would not. You are not afraid of anything, nor need you ever be."
    Rhun sat for a moment with fists doubled into the blanket of his bed; then he lifted his clear, ice-blue gaze and blanched, angelic face and smiled blindingly into Cadfael's eyes. "No, I need not. I'll come." And he hoisted the linen scrip and stood up stately on his two long, youthful legs, and led the way to the door.
    "Stay with us," said Abbot Radulfus, when Cadfael would have presented his charge and left the two of them together. "I think he might be glad of you." Also, said his eloquent, austere glance, your presence may be of value to me as witness. "Rhun knows you. Me he does not yet know, but I trust he shall, hereafter." He had the drab, brownish scrip on the desk before him, offered on entry with a word to account for it, until the time came to explore its possibilities further.
    "Willingly, Father," said Cadfael heartily, and took his seat apart on a stool withdrawn into a corner, out of the way of those two pairs of formidable eyes that met, and wondered, and probed with equal intensity across the small space of the parlour. Outside the windows the garden