Brother Cadfael 13: The Rose Rent

miracle.
    "Niall..." she said on a slow, hesitant breath, and that was the first time she had ever called him by his name.
    "I've brought you your rent," he said simply, and took a few paces towards her and held out the rose, half-open, fresh and white without a stain.
    "They told me," she said, marvelling, "there was nothing left, that all was burned. How is this possible?" And in her turn she went to meet him, almost warily, as though if she touched the rose it might crumble into ash.
    Niall detached his hand very gently from the child's grasp, as she hung back shyly. "I picked it yesterday, for myself when we came home."
    The two extended hands reached out and met in the band of brightness, and the opened petals turned to the rosy sheen of mother-of-pearl. Their fingers touched and clasped on the stem, and it was smooth, stripped of thorns.
    "You've taken no harm?" she said. "Your wound will heal clean?"
    "It's nothing but a scratch. I dread," said Niall, "that you have come by worse grief."
    "It's over now. I shall do well enough." But she felt that to him she seemed beyond measure solitary and forsaken. They were looking steadily into each other's eyes, with an intensity that was hard to sustain and harder to break. The little girl took a shy step or two and again hesitated to venture nearer.
    "Your daughter?" said Judith.
    "Yes." He turned to hold out his hand to her. "There was no one with whom I could leave her."
    "I'm glad. Why should you leave her behind when you come to me? No one could be more welcome."
    The child came to her father in a sudden rush of confidence, seeing this strange but soft-voiced woman smile at her. Five years old and tall for her age, with a solemn oval face of creamy whiteness with the gloss of the sun on it, she stepped into the bar of brilliance, and lit up like a candle-flame, for the hair that clustered about her temples and hung on her shoulders was a true dark gold, and long gold lashes fringed her dark-blue eyes. She made a brief dip of the knee by way of reverence, without taking those eyes or their bright, consuming curiosity from Judith's face. And in a moment, having made up her mind, she smiled, and unmistakably held up her face for the acceptable kiss from an accepted elder.
    She could as well have put her small hand into Judith's breast and wrung the heart that had starved so many years for just such fruit. Judith stooped to the embrace with tears starting to her eyes. The child's mouth was soft and cool and sweet. On the way through the town she had carried the rose, and the scent of it was still about her. She had nothing to say, not yet, she was too busy taking in and appraising the room and the woman. She would be voluble enough later, when both became less strange.
    "It was Father Adam gave her her name," said Niall, looking down at her with a grave smile. "An unusual name - she's called Rosalba."
    "I envy you!" said Judith, as she had said once before.
    A slight constraint had settled upon them again, it was difficult to find anything to say. So few words, and so niggardly, had been spent here throughout. He took his daughter's hand again, and drew back out of the bar of light towards the door, leaving Judith with the white rose still sunlit on her breast. The other white rose gave a skipping step back, willing to go, but looked back over her shoulder to smile by way of leave-taking.
    "Well, chick, we'll be making for home. We've done our errand."
    And they would go, both of them, and there would be no more roses to bring, no more rents to pay on the day of Saint Winifred's translation. And if they went away thus, there might never again be such a moment, never these three in one room together again.
    He had reached the door when she said suddenly: "Niall..."
    He turned, abruptly glowing, to see her standing full in the sunlight, her face as white and open as the rose.
    "Niall, don't go!" She had found words at last, the right words, and in time. She said to him what she had said in the dead of night, at the gate of Godric's Ford:
    "Don't leave me now!"