Brother Cadfael 10: The Pilgrim of Hate

He went to look for him everywhere... He came to me here in the garden. "God keep you, Melangell," he said, "you must fend for yourself now, sorry as I am..." Almost every word of that encounter she had by heart, she repeated them like a tired child repeating a lesson. "I said too much, he knew I had spoken with Ciaran, he knew that I knew he'd meant to go secretly..."
    "And then, after you had owned as much?"
    "He laughed," she said, and her very voice froze into a despairing whisper. "I never heard him laugh until this morning, and then it was such a sweet sound. But this laughter was not so! Bitter and raging." She stumbled through the rest of it, every word another fine line added to the reversed image that grew in Cadfael's mind, mocking his memory. "He sets me free!" And "You must be his confederate!" The words were so burned on her mind that she even reproduced the savagery of their utterance. And how few words it took, in the end, to transform everything, to turn devoted attendance into remorseless pursuit, selfless love into dedicated hatred, noble self-sacrifice into calculated flight, and the voluntary mortification of the flesh into body armour which must never be doffed.
    He heard again, abruptly and piercingly, Ciaran's wild cry of alarm as he clutched his cross to him, and Matthew's voice saying softly: "Yet he should doff it. How else can he truly be rid of his pains?"
    How else, indeed! Cadfael recalled, too, how he had reminded them both that they were here to attend the feast of a saint who might have life itself within her gift, "even for a man already condemned to death!" Oh, Saint Winifred, stand by me now, stand by us all, with a third miracle to better the other two!
    He took Melangell brusquely by the chin, and lifted her face to him. "Girl, look to yourself now for a while, for I must leave you. Do up your hair and keep a brave face, and go back to your kin as soon as you can bear their eyes on you. Go into the church for a time, it will be quiet there now, and who will wonder if you give a longer time to your prayers? They will not even wonder at past tears, if you can smile now. Do as well as you can, for I have a thing I must do."
    There was nothing he could promise her, no sure hope he could leave with her. He turned from her without another word, leaving her staring after him between dread and reassurance, and went striding in haste through the gardens and out across the court, to the abbot's lodging.
    If Radulfus was surprised to have Cadfael ask audience again so soon, he gave no sign of it, but had him admitted at once, and put aside his book to give his full attention to whatever this fresh business might be. Plainly it was something very much to the current purpose and urgent.
    "Father," said Cadfael, making short work of explanations, "there's a new twist here. Messire de Bretagne has gone off on a false trail. Those two young men did not leave by the Oswestry road, but crossed the Meole brook and set off due west to reach Wales the nearest way. Nor did they leave together. Ciaran slipped away during the morning, while his fellow was with us in the procession, and Matthew has followed him by the same way as soon as he learned of his going. And, Father, there's good cause to think that the sooner they're overtaken and halted, the better surely for one, and I believe for both. I beg you, let me take a horse and follow. And send word of this to Hugh Beringar in the town, to come after us on the same trail."
    Radulfus received all this with a grave but calm face, and asked no less shortly: "How did you come by this word?"
    "From the girl who spoke with Ciaran before he departed. No need to doubt it is all true. And, Father, one more thing before you bid me go. Open, I beg you, that scrip they left behind, let me see if it has anything more to tell us of this pair, at the least, of one of them."
    Without a word or an instant of hesitation, Radulfus dragged the linen scrip into the light of his candles, and unbuckled the fastening. The contents he drew out fully upon the desk, sparse enough, what the poor pilgrim would carry, having few possessions and desiring to travel light.
    "You know, I think," said the abbot, looking up sharply, "to which of the two this belonged?"
    "I do not know, but I guess. In my mind I am sure, but I am also fallible. Give me leave!"
    With a sweep of his hand he spread the meagre belongings over the desk. The purse, thin enough when Prior Robert had handled