Brother Cadfael 20: Brother Cadfael's Penance

never comes the day when I can do whatever needs to be done in your worship and for your sake. But I trust it may come, and soon."
    "Who knows?" said Cadfael. "There is a thing I want now, if I could see how to come by it."
    "Yes?" Olivier shook off his own preoccupations in penitent haste. "Tell me!" He came back to his bed, and drew Cadfael down beside him. "Tell me what is happening here. You say he is not dead, Philip. He gave you the keys?" It seemed to him a thing only possible from a deathbed. "And who is it laying siege to this place? He made enemies enough, that I know, but this must be an army battering the walls."
    "The army of your liege lady the empress," said Cadfael ruefully. "And stronger than commonly, since she was accompanied home into Gloucester by several of her earls and barons. Yves, when he was loosed, rode for Gloucester to rouse her to come and rescue you, and come she most surely has, but not for your sake. The lad told her Philip was here in person. She has vowed, too publicly to withdraw even if she wished, and I doubt she does, to take his castle and his body, and hang him from his own towers, and before his own men. No, she won't withdraw. She is determined to take, humiliate and hang him. And I am equally resolute," said Cadfael roundly, "that she shall not, though how it's to be prevented is more than I yet know."
    "She cannot do it," said Olivier, aghast. "It would be wicked folly. Surely she knows it? Such an act would have every able man in the land, if he had laid down his weapons, rushing to pick them up again and get into the field. The worst of us, on either side, would hesitate to kill a man he had bested and captured. How do you know this is truth, that she has so sworn?"
    "I know it from Yves, who was there to hear it, and is in no doubt at all. She is in earnest. Of all men she hates Philip for what she holds to be his treason."
    "It was treason," said Olivier, but more temperately than Cadfael had expected.
    "By all the rules, so it was. But also it was more than simply treason, however extreme the act. Before long," said Cadfael heavily, "some of the greatest among us, on both sides of the argument, and yes, the best, will be accused of treason on the same grounds. They may not turn to fight upon the other side, but to leave their swords in the sheath and decline to continue killing will just as surely be denounced as treachery. Whatever his crime may be called, she wants him in her grasp, and means to be his death. And I am determined she shall not have him."
    Olivier thought for a moment, gnawing his knuckles and frowning. Then he said: "It would be well, for her more than any, that someone should prevent." He turned the intensity of his troubled stare upon Cadfael. "You have not told me all. There is something more. How far has this attack gone? They have not broken through?" The use of 'they' might simply have been because he was enforcedly out of this battle, instead of fighting for his chosen cause with the rest, but it seemed to set him at an even greater distance from the besiegers. Cadfael had almost heard the partisan 'we' springing to mind to confront the 'they'.
    "Not yet. They have breached one tower, but have not got in, or had not when I came down to you," he amended scrupulously. "Philip refused surrender, but he knows what she intends to do with him..."
    "How does he know?" demanded Olivier alertly.
    "He knows because I told him. Yves brought the message at his own risk. At no risk to me I delivered it. But I think he knew. He said then that if God, by chance, should choose to forestall the empress, he must take thought for the men of his garrison. He has done so. He has handed over the charge of La Musarderie to his deputy Camville, and given him leave, no, orders!, to get the best terms he can for the garrison, and surrender the castle. And tomorrow that will be done."
    "But he would not..." began Olivier, and cried out abruptly: "You said he is not dead!"
    "No, he is not dead, But he is badly hurt. I don't say he will die of his wounds, though he may. I do say he will not die of his wounds in time to escape being dragged aloft, whatever his condition, in the empress's noose, once she gets into La Musarderie. He has consented in his own shameful death to procure the release of his men. She cares nothing for any of them, if she has Philip. She'll keep the castle and the arms, and let the men depart alive."
    "He has consented to this?" asked Olivier,