Brother Cadfael 16: The Heretic's Apprentice

sending him reeling as a spurt of flame surged between and drove them apart. Stumbling backward and falling in the tufted grass, Elave saw the drifting smoke momentarily coiled aside in an eddy of wind. He was staring full into the open doorway, and could not choose but see what happened within.
    Jevan had blundered heedless through the smoke, and clambered onto the long table, and was stretching up with both arms plunged to the elbow in the burning thatch, that dangled in swags above his head, reaching for something secreted there. He had it, he tugged wildly to bring it down into his arms, moaning and writhing at the pain of his burned hands. Then it seemed that half the disturbed thatch collapsed in a great explosion of flame on top of him, and he vanished in a dazzling rose of fire and a long howl of anguish and rage.
    Elave clawed his way up from the ground and lunged forward with arms over his face to shield him. Hugh came up breathless and balked in the doorway, as the heat drove them both back, coughing and retching for clean air. And suddenly a blackened figure burst out between them, trailing a comet's tail of smoke and sparks, his clothing and hair on fire, something muffled and shapeless hugged protectively and passionately in his arms. He was keening in a thin wail, like the wind in winter in door and chimney. They sprang to intercept him and try to beat out the flames, but he was too sudden and too swift. Down the slope of grass he went, a living torch, and leaped far out into mid-current. The Severn hissed and spat, and Jevan was gone, swept downstream past his own nets and skins, past Fortunata, rigid and mute with shock in Cadfael's arms, down this free-flowing reach of the river, to drift ashore somewhere in the slower stretches and lower water where Severn encircled the town.
    Fortunata saw him pass, turning with the current, very soon lost to sight. He was not swimming. Both arms embraced fiercely the swathed burden for which he had killed and now was dying.
    It was over. There was nothing now to be done for Jevan of Lythwood, nothing for his blackened and blazing property but to let it burn out. There was nothing near enough to catch fire from it, only the empty field. What mattered now, to Hugh as to Cadfael, was to get these two shocked and inarticulate souls safely back into a real world among familiar things, even if for one of them it must be a return to a household horrified and bereaved, and for the other to a stone cell and a threatened condemnation. Here and now, all Fortunata could say, over and over again, was: "He would not have have hurt me - he would not!" and at last, after many such repetitions, almost inaudibly: "Would he?"
    And nothing as yet could be got out of Elave but the horrified protest: "I never wanted that! How could I know? How could I know? I never wished him that!" And at last, in a kind of fury against himself, he said: "And we do not even know he is guilty of anything, even now we do not know!"
    "Yes," said Fortunata then, quickening out of her icy numbness, "I do know! He told me."
    But that was a story she was not yet able to tell fully, nor would Hugh allow her to waste present time on it, for she was cold with an unnatural cold from within, and he wanted her home.
    "See to the lad, Cadfael, and get him back where his bishop wants him, before this truancy is added to the charges against him. I'll take the lady back to her mother."
    "The bishop knows I'm gone," said Elave, rousing himself to respond, with a great heave of his shoulders that still could not shrug off the stunning load they carried. "I begged him, and he gave me leave."
    "Did he so?" said Hugh, surprised. "Then the more credit to him and to you. I have hopes of such a bishop." He was up into the saddle with a vigorous spring, and reaching down a hand to Fortunata. His favourite raw-boned grey would never notice the slight extra weight. "Hand her up, boy... that's it, your foot on mine. And now be wise, leave all till tomorrow. What more needs be done, I'll do." He had shed his coat to wrap round the girl's shoulders, and settled her securely in his arm. "Tomorrow, Cadfael, I'll be early with the abbot. Doubtless we shall all meet before the day's out."
    They were gone, away at a canter up the slope of the field, turning their backs on the blaze that was already settling down into a blackened, smouldering heap of roofless timber, and the netted sheepskins weaving and swaying in the sharp current,