Brother Cadfael 17: The Potter's Field

abbot's parlour. Hugh had waited for her at the gatehouse, to ensure that she should be carried at once the length of the great court to the very door of Radulfus's lodging. His solicitude, perhaps, reminded her of Eudo, for when he handed her out among the tattered autumnal beds of the abbot's garden she permitted all with a small, tight but tolerant smile, bearing the too-anxious assiduities of youth and health with the hard-learned patience of age and sickness. She accepted the support of his arm through the ante-room where normally Brother Vitalis, chaplain and secretary, might have been working at this hour, and Abbot Radulfus took her hand upon the other side, and led her within, to a cushioned place prepared for her, with the support of the panelled wall at her back.

    

Cadfael, watching this ceremonious installation without attempting to take any part in it, thought that it had something of the enthronement of a sovereign lady about it. That might even amuse her, privately. The privileges of mortal sickness had almost been forced upon her, what she thought of them might never be told. Certainly she had an imperishable dignity, and a large and tolerant understanding of the concern and even unease she caused in others and must endure graciously. She had also, thus carefully dressed for an ordeal and a social visit, a fragile and admirable elegance. Her gown was deep blue like her eyes, and like her eyes a little faded, and the bliaut she wore over it, sleeveless and cut down to either hip, was the same blue, embroidered in rose and silver at the hems. The whiteness of her linen wimple turned her drawn cheeks to a translucent grey in the light almost of noon.

    

Pernel had followed silently into the ante-room, but did not enter the parlour. She stood waiting in the doorway, her golden-russet eyes round and grave.

    

Pernel Otmere has been kind enough to bear me company all this way,' said Donata, 'and I am grateful to her for more than that, but she need not be put to the weariness of listening to the long conference I fear I may be forcing upon you, my lords. If I may ask, first... where is my son now?'

    

'He is in the castle,' said Hugh simply.

    

'Locked up?' she asked pointblank, but without reproach or excitement. 'Or on his parole?'

    

'He has the freedom of the wards,' said Hugh, and added no further enlightenment.

    

'Then, Hugh, if you would be kind enough to provide Pernel with some token that would let her in to him, I think they might spend the time more pleasantly together than apart, while we confer? Without prejudice,' she said gently, 'to any proceedings you may have in mind later.'

    

Cadfael saw Hugh's black, betraying brows twitch, and lift into oblique appreciation, and thanked God devoutly for an understanding rare between two so different.

    

'I will give her my glove,' said Hugh, and cast one sharp, enjoying glance aside at the mute girl in the doorway. 'No one will question it, no need for more.' And he turned and took Pernel by the hand, and went out with her.

    

Their plans had been made, of course, last night or this morning, in the solar at Longner where the truth came forth so far as truth was known, or on the journey at dawn, before they ever reached the ferry over Severn, where Cadfael had met them. A conspiracy of women had been hatched in Eudo's hall, that kept due consideration of Eudo's rights and needs, of his wife's contented pregnancy, even as it nurtured and advanced Pernel Otmere's determined pursuit of a truth that would set Sulien Blount free from every haunted and chivalrous burden that weighed him down. The young one and the old one - old not in years, only in the rapidity of her advance upon death - they had come together like lodestone and metal, to compound their own justice.

    

Hugh came back into the room smiling, though the smile was invisible to all but Cadfael. A burdened smile, none the less, for he, too, was in pursuit of a truth which might not be Pernel's truth. He closed the door firmly on the world without.

    

'Now, madam, in what particular can we be of service to you?'

    

She had composed herself into a settled stillness which could be sustained through a long conference. Without her cloak she made so slight a figure, it seemed a man could have spanned her body with his hands.

    

'I must thank you, my lords,' she said, 'for granting me this audience. I should have asked for it