Brother Cadfael 20: Brother Cadfael's Penance

told him?"
    "There is no need for him to know. No shame there, but no pride, either. His course is nobly set, why cause any tremor to deflect or shake it?"
    "You ask nothing, want nothing of him?" The perilous bitterness was back in Philip's voice, husky with the pain of all he had hoped for from his own father, and failed to receive. Too fierce a love, perverted into too fierce a hate, corroded all his reflections on the anguished relationship between fathers and sons, too close and too separate, and never in balance.
    "He owes me nothing," said Cadfael. "Nothing but such friendship and liking as we have deserved of each other by free will and earned trust, not by blood."
    "And yet it is by blood," said Philip softly, "that you conceive you owe him so much, even to a life. Brother, I think you are telling me something I have learned to know all too well, though it took me years to master it. We are born of the fathers we deserve, and they engender the sons they deserve. We are our own penance and theirs. The first murderous warfare in the world, we are told, was between two brothers, but the longest and the bitterest is between fathers and sons. Now you offer me the father for the son, and you are offering me nothing that I want or need, in a currency I cannot spend. How could I ease my anger on you? I respect you, I like you, there are even things you might ask of me that I would give you with goodwill. But I will not give you Olivier."
    It was a dismissal. There was no more speech between them that night. From the chapel, hollowly echoing along the corridors of stone, the bell chimed for Compline.
    Chapter Nine
    Cadfael rose at midnight, waking by long habit even without the matins bell, and being awake, recalled that he was lodged in a tiny cell close to the chapel. That gave him further matter for thought, though he had not considered earlier that it might have profound implications. He had declared himself honestly enough in his apostasy to Philip, and Philip, none the less, had lodged him here, where a visiting cleric might have expected such a courtesy. And being so close, and having been so considerately housed there, why should he not at least say Matins and Lauds before the altar? He had not surrendered or compromised his faith, however he had forfeited his rights and privileges.
    The very act of kneeling in solitude, in the chill and austerity of stone, and saying the familiar words almost silently, brought him more of comfort and reassurance than he had dared to expect. If grace was not close to him, why should he rise from his knees so cleansed of the doubts and anxieties of the day, and clouded by no least shadow of the morrow's uncertainties?
    He was in the act of withdrawing, and a pace or two from the open door, which he had refrained from closing in case it should creak loudly enough to wake others, when one who was awake, and as silent as he, looked in upon him. The faint light showed them to each other clearly enough.
    "For an apostate," said Philip softly, "you keep the hours very strictly, brother." He wore a heavy furred gown over his nakedness, and walked barefooted on the stone. "Oh, no, you did not disturb me. I sat late tonight. For that you may take the blame if you wish."
    "Even a recusant," said Cadfael, "may cling by the hems of grace. But I am sorry if I have kept you from sleep."
    "There may be better than sorrow in it for you," said Philip. "We will speak again tomorrow. I trust you have all you need here, and lie at least as softly as in the dortoir at home? There is no great difference between the soldier's bed and the monk's, or so they tell me. I have tried only the one, since I came to manhood."
    Truth, indeed, since he had taken up arms in this endless contention in support of his father before he reached twenty.
    "I have known both," said Cadfael, "and complain of neither."
    "So they told me, I recall, at Coventry. Some who knew of you. As I did not, not then," said Philip, and drew his gown closer about him. "I, too, had a word to say to God," he said, and passed Cadfael and entered his chapel. "Come to me after Mass."
    "Not behind a closed door this time," said Philip, taking Cadfael by the arm as they came out from Mass, "but publicly in hall. No, you need not speak at all, your part is done. I have considered all that has emerged concerning Brien de Soulis and Yves Hugonin, and if the one matter is still unproven, guilty or no, the other cries out too loud to be passed