Brother Cadfael 12: The Raven in the Foregate

bore the shadowy richness of its former red-brown colouring. There was no saying whether the dark, hollow eyes that studied her grandchild with such a bitter burden of love were dark blue, but they well might have been. She was probably barely forty. Cadfael had seen her about the Foregate now and then, but never before paid close attention to her.
    "A fine babe you have there," said Cadfael. "She may well grow into a beautiful child."
    "Better she should be plain as any drab," said the widow with abrupt passion, than take after her mother's beauty, and go the same way. "You do know whose child she is? Everyone knows it!"
    "No fault of this little one she left behind," said Cadfael. "I hope the world will treat her better than it treated her mother."
    "It was not the world that cast her off," said Nest, "but the church. She could have lived under the world's malice, but not when the priest shut her out of the church."
    "Did her worship truly mean so much to her," asked Cadfael gravely, that she could not live excommunicate?"
    "Truly it did. You never knew her! As wild and rash as she was beautiful, but such a bright, kind, warm creature to have about the house, and for all her wildness she was easily hurt. She who never could bear to wound any other creature was open to wounds herself. But for the thing she could not help, no one could have been a better and sweeter daughter to me. You can't know how it was! She could not refuse to anyone whatever he asked of her, if it was in her power to give it. And the men found it out, and having no shame - for sin was something she spoke of without understanding - she could not say no to men, either. She would go with a man because he was melancholy, or because he begged her, or because he had been blamed or beaten unjustly and was aggrieved at the world.
    "And then it would come over her that this might indeed be sin, as Father Adam had told her, though she could not see why. And then she went flying to confession, in tears, and promised amendment, and meant it, too. Father Adam was gentle with her, seeing she was not like other young women. He always spoke her kindly and fair, and gave her light penance, and never refused her absolution. Always she promised to amend, but then she forgot for some boy's light tongue or dark eyes, and sinned again, and again confessed and was shriven. She couldn't keep from men, but neither could she live without the blessing and comfort of the church. When the door was shut in her face she went solitary away, and solitary she died. And for all she was a torment to me, living, she was a joy, too, and now I have only torment, and no joy-but for this fearful joy here in the cradle. Look, she's asleep!"
    "Do you know," asked Cadfael, brooding, "who fathered the child?"
    Nest shook her head, and a faint, dry smile plucked at her lips. "No. As soon as she understood it might bring blame on him, whoever he was, she kept him a secret even from me. If, indeed, she knew herself which one of them had quickened her! Yet I think she did know. She was neither mad nor dull of understanding. She was brighter than most, but for the part of caution that was left out of her. She might have confronted the man to his face, but she would never betray him to the black priest. Oh, he asked her! He threatened her, he raged at her, but she said that for her sins she would answer and do penance, but another man's sins were his own, and so must his confession be."
    A good answer! Cadfael acknowledged it with a nod and a sigh.
    The candle was cold and set. He restored it to his scrip, and turned to take his leave. "Well, if she's fretful again and you need me, let me know of it by Cynric, or leave word at the gatehouse, and I'll come. But I think you'll find the cordial will serve your turn." He looked back for a second with his hand on the latch of the door. "What have you named her? Eluned, for her mother?"
    "No," said the widow. "It was Eluned chose her name. Praise God, it was Father Adam who christened her, before he fell ill and died. She's called Winifred."
    Cadfael walked back along the Foregate with that last echo still ringing in his mind. The daughter of the outcast and excommunicate, it seemed, was named for the town's own saint, witness enough to the truth of Eluned's undisciplined devotion. And doubtless Saint Winifred would know where to find and watch over both the living child and the dead mother, whom the parish of Saint Chad, more prodigally merciful