Brother Cadfael 16: The Heretic's Apprentice

further ahead than the next day, and no further behind than the day just passed. Now I see it whole, and it is wonderful."
    "But not all good," said Cadfael. "That couldn't be, we couldn't ask it. Remember the cold and the rain and the hunger at times, and the losses by thieves now and then, and a few knocks from those who prey on travelers - oh, never tell me you met none! And the weariness, and the times when William fell ill, the bad food, the sour water, the stones of the road. You've met all that. Every man who travels that far across the world has met it all."
    "I do remember all that," said Elave sturdily, "but it is still wonderful."
    "Good! So it should be," said Cadfael, sighing. "Lad, I should be glad to sit and talk with you about every step of the way, when your time's free. You go and deliver your box to Master Girard, and that's your duty done. And what will you do now? Go back to work for them as before?"
    "No, not that. It was for William I worked. They have their own clerk. I wouldn't wish to displace him, and they don't need two. Besides, I want more, and different. I'll take time to look about me. I've come back with more skills than when I went, I'd like to use them." He rose, and tucked the carved box securely under his arm.
    "I've forgotten," said Cadfael, following the gesture thoughtfully, "if indeed I ever knew - how did he come by the child? He had none of his own, and as far as I know, Girard has none, and the other brother has never married. Where did the girl come from? Some foundling he took in?"
    "You could say so. They had a serving maid, a simple soul, who fell foul of a small huckster at the fair one year, and brought forth a daughter. William gave houseroom to the pair of them, and Margaret cared for the baby like her own child, and when the mother died they simply kept the girl. A pretty little thing she was. She had more wit than her mother. It was William named her Fortunata, for he said she'd come into the world with nothing, not even a father, and still found herself a home and a family, and so she'd still fall on her feet lifelong. She was eleven, rising twelve," said Elave, "when we set out, and grown into a skinny, awkward little thing, all teeth and elbows. They say the prettiest pups make the ugliest dogs. She'll need a decent dowry to make up for her gawky looks."
    He stretched his long person, hoisted his box more firmly under his arm, dipped his fair head in a small, friendly reverence, and was off along the path, his haste to discharge all the final duties with which he had been entrusted tempered somewhat by a sense of the seven years since he had seen William's family, and the inevitable estrangement that time must have brought about, until now scarcely realized. What had once been familiar was now alien, and it would take time to edge his way back to it. Cadfael watched him disappear round the corner of the box hedge, torn between sympathy and envy.
    The house of Girard of Lythwood, like so many of the merchant burgages of Shrewsbury, was in the shape of an L, the short base directly on the street, and pierced by an arched entry leading through to the yard and garden behind. The base of the L was of only one story, and provided the shop where Jevan, the younger brother, stored and sold his finished leaves and gatherings of vellum and the cured skins from which they were folded and cut to order. The upright of the L showed its gable end to the street, and consisted of a low undercroft and the living floor above, with a loft in the steep roof that provided extra sleeping quarters. The entire burgage was not large, space being valuable within so enclosed a town, in its tight noose of river. Outside the loop, in the suburbs of Frankwell on one side and the Foregate on the other, there was room to expand, but within the wall every inch of ground had to be used to the best advantage.
    Elave halted before the house, and stood a moment to take in the strangeness of what he felt, a sudden warmth of homecoming, an almost panic reluctance to go in and declare himself, a mute wonder at the smallness of the house that had been his home for a number of years. In the overwhelming basilicas of Constantinople, as in the profound isolation of deserts, a man grows used to immensity.
    He went in slowly through the narrow entry and into the yard. On his right the stables, the byre for the cow, the store shed, and the low coop for the chickens were just as he remembered them, and on his