Brother Cadfael 16: The Heretic's Apprentice

meat with us?"
    He promised readily, glad to have their relationship established and understood. To tell the truth, he thought he might have felt confined and restricted here now, dealing with the buying of stock and paying of wages, the weighing and marketing of wool, and the small profits and expenses of a good but limited business. He was not yet sure what he did want; he could afford to spend a little while looking round before committing himself. Going out at the hall door he came shoulder-to-shoulder with Conan, on his way out to the stable, and dropped back to let Margaret's messenger go first.
    A young woman with a basket on her arm had just emerged from the narrow entry that led to the street, and was crossing the yard towards them. She was not overtall, but looked tall by reason of her erect bearing and long, free step, light and springy from the ground like the gait of a mettlesome colt. Her plain grey gown swayed with the lissome movement of a trim body, and the well-poised head on her long neck was crowned with a great coiled braid of dark hair lit with shadowy gleams of red. Halfway across the yard towards them she halted abruptly, gazing open-mouthed and wide-eyed, and suddenly she laughed aloud, a joyous, silver sound of pleasurable amazement.
    "You!" she said in a soft, delighted cry. "Is it truth? I am not dreaming?"
    She had stopped them both on the instant, brought up short by the warmth of her greeting, Elave gaping like an idiot at this unknown girl who yet appeared not only to recognize him, but to take pleasure in the recognition, Conan fallen warily silent beside him, his face expressionless, his eyes roving from one face to the other, narrowed and intent.
    "Do you not know me?" cried the girl's clear bell of a voice, through the bubbling spring of her laughter.
    Fool that he was, who else could she be, coming in thus bareheaded from the shops of the town? But it was true, he would not have known her. The thin little pointed face had filled out into a smooth ivory oval. The teeth that had looked far too many and too large for her mouth shone now even and white between dark-rose lips that smiled at his astonishment and confusion. All the sharp little bones had rounded into grace. The long hair that had hung in elflocks round scrawny childish shoulders looked like a crown, thus braided and coiled upon her head, and the greenish hazel eyes whose stare he had found disconcerting seven years ago now sparkled and glowed with pleasure at seeing him again, a very arresting flattery.
    "I know you now," he said, fumbling for words. "But you're changed!"
    "You are not," she said. "Browner, perhaps, and your hair's even fairer than it used to be, but I'd have known you anywhere. And you turn up like this without a word of warning, and they were letting you go without waiting for me?"
    "I'm coming again tomorrow," he said, and hesitated to attempt the explanation, here in the yard, with Conan still lingering on the borders of their meeting. "Mistress Margaret will tell you about it. I had messages to bring..."
    "If you knew," said Fortunata, "how often and how long we've talked of you both, and wondered how you were faring in those far places. It's not every day we have kinsfolk setting out on such an adventure. Do you think we never gave you a thought?"
    Hardly once in all those years had it entered his mind to wonder about any of those left behind. Closest to him in this house, and alone significant, had been William, and with William he had gone, blithely, without a thought for anyone left to continue life here, least of all a leggy little girl of eleven with a spotty skin and a disconcerting stare.
    "I doubt," he said, abashed, "that I ever deserved you should."
    "What has dessert to do with it?" she said. "And you were leaving now until tomorrow? No, that you can't! Come back with me into the house, if only for an hour. Why must I wait until tomorrow to get used to seeing you again?"
    She had him by the hand, turning him back towards the open door, and though he knew it was no more than the open and gallant friendliness of one who had known him from her childhood, and wished him well in absence as she wished well to all men of goodwill - nothing more than that, not yet! - he went with her like a bidden child, silenced and charmed. He would have gone wherever she led him. He had that to tell her that would cloud her brightness for a while, and afterward no rights in her or in this house, no reason to