A Rare Benedictine (8 page)

“And
left you behind?” said Cadfael gently.

“What
chance had he to take me? Or even to bid me farewell? He was thrust out to manual
labour on FitzHamon’s other manor. When his chance came, he took it and fled. I
was not sad! I rejoiced! Whether I live or die, whether he remembers or forgets
me, he is free. No, but in two days more he will be free. For a year and a day
he will have been working for his living in his own craft, in a charter
borough, and after that he cannot be haled back into servitude, even if they
find him.”

“I
do not think,” said Brother Cadfael, “that he will have forgotten you! Now I
see why our brother may speak after three days. It will be too late then to try
to reclaim a runaway serf. And you hold that these exquisite things you are
cradling belong by right to Alard who made them?”

“Surely,”
she said, “seeing he never was paid for them, they are still his.”

“And
you are setting out tonight to take them to him. Yes! As I heard it, they had
some cause to pursue him towards London... indeed, into London, though they
never found him. Have you had better word of him? From him?”

The
pale face smiled. “Neither he nor I can read or write. And whom should he trust
to carry word until his time is complete, and he is free? No, never any word.”

“But
Shrewsbury is also a charter borough, where the unfree may work their way to
freedom in a year and a day. And sensible boroughs encourage the coming of good
craftsmen, and will go far to hide and protect them. I know! So you think he
may be here. And the trail towards London a false trail. True, why should he
run so far, when there’s help so near? But, daughter, what if you do not find
him in Shrewsbury?”

“Then
I will look for him elsewhere until I do. I can live as a runaway, too, I have
skills, I can make my own way until I do get word of him. Shrewsbury can as
well make room for a good seamstress as for a man’s gifts, and someone in the
silversmith’s craft will know where to find a brother so talented as Alard. I
shall find him!”

“And
when you do? Oh, child, have you looked beyond that?”

To
the very end,” said Elfgiva firmly. “If I find him and he no longer wants me,
no longer thinks of me, if he is married and has put me out of his mind, then I
will deliver him these things that belong to him, to do with as he pleases, and
go my own way and make my own life as best I may without him. And wish well to
him as long as I live.”

Oh,
no, small fear, she would not be easily forgotten, not in a year, not in many
years. “And if he is utterly glad of you, and loves you still?”

“Then,”
she said, gravely smiling, “if he is of the same mind as I, I have made a vow
to Our Lady, who lent me her semblance in the old man’s eyes, that we will sell
these candlesticks where they may fetch their proper price, and that price
shall be delivered to your almoner to feed the hungry. And that will be our
gift, Alard’s and mine, though no one will ever know it.”

“Our
Lady will know it,” said Cadfael, “and so shall I. Now, how were you planning
to get out of this enclave and into Shrewsbury? Both our gates and the town
gates are closed until morning.”

She
lifted eloquent shoulders. “The parish doors are not barred. And even if I
leave tracks, will it matter, provided I find a safe hiding-place inside the
town?”

“And
wait in the cold of the night? You would freeze before morning. No, let me
think. We can do better for you than that.”

Her
lips shaped: “We?” in silence, wondering, but quick to understand. She did not
question his decisions, as he had not questioned hers. He thought he would long
remember the slow, deepening smile, the glow of warmth mantling her cheeks.
“You believe me!” she said.

“Every
word! Here, give me the candlesticks, let me wrap them, and do you put up your
hair again in net and hood. We’ve had no fresh snow since morning, the path to
the parish door is well trodden, no one will know your tracks among the many.
And, girl, when you come to the town end of the bridge there’s a little house
off to the left, under the wall, close to the town gate. Knock there and ask
for shelter over the night till the gates open, and say that Brother Cadfael
sent you. They know me, I doctored their son when he was sick. They’ll give you
a warm corner and a place to lie, for kindness’ sake, and ask no questions, and
answer none from others, either. And likely they’ll know where to find the
silversmiths of the town, to set you on your way.”

She
bound up her pale, bright hair and covered her head, wrapping the cloak about
her, and was again the maidservant in homespun. She obeyed without question his
every word, moved silently at his back round the great court by way of the
shadows, halting when he halted, and so he brought her to the church, and let
her out by the parish door into the public street, still a good hour before
Matins. At the last moment she said, close at his shoulder within the half-open
door. “I shall be grateful always. Some day I shall send you word.”

“No
need for words,” said Brother Cadfael, “if you send me the sign I shall be
waiting for. Go now, quickly, there’s not a soul stirring.”

She
was gone, lightly and silently, flitting past the abbey gatehouse like a tall
shadow, towards the bridge and the town. Cadfael closed the door softly, and
went back up the night stairs to the dortoir, too late to sleep, but in good
time to rise at the sound of the bell, and return in procession to celebrate
Matins.

There
was, of course, the resultant uproar to face next morning, and he could not
afford to avoid it, there was too much at stake. Lady FitzHamon naturally
expected her maid to be in attendance as soon as she opened her eyes, and
raised a petulant outcry when there was no submissive shadow waiting to dress
her and do her hair. Calling failed to summon and search to find Elfgiva, but
it was an hour or more before it dawned on the lady that she had lost her
accomplished maid for good. Furiously she made her own toilet, unassisted, and
raged out to complain to her husband, who had risen before her, and was waiting
for her to accompany him to Mass. At her angry declaration that Elfgiva was
nowhere to be found, and must have run away during the night, he first scoffed,
for why should a sane girl take herself off into a killing frost when she had
warmth and shelter and enough to eat where she was? Then he made the inevitable
connection, and let out a roar of rage.

“Gone,
is she? And my candlesticks gone with her, I dare swear! So it was she! The
foul little thief! But I’ll have her yet, I’ll drag her back, she shall not
live to enjoy her ill-gotten gains...”

It
seemed likely that the lady would heartily endorse all this; her mouth was
already open to echo him when Brother Cadfael, brushing her sleeve close as the
agitated brothers ringed the pair, contrived to shake a few grains of lavender
on to her wrist. Her mouth closed abruptly. She gazed at the tiny things for
the briefest instant before she shook them off, she flashed an even briefer
glance at Brother Cadfael, caught his eye, and heard in a rapid whisper:
“Madam, softly! proof of the maid’s innocence is also proof of the mistress’s.”

She
was by no means a stupid woman. A second quick glance confirmed what she had
already grasped, that there was one man here who had a weapon to hold over her
at least as deadly as any she could use against Elfgiva. She was also a woman
of decision, and wasted no time in bitterness once her course was chosen. The
tone in which she addressed her lord was almost as sharp as that in which she
had complained of Elfgiva’s desertion.

“She
your thief, indeed! That’s folly, as you should very well know. The girl is an
ungrateful fool to leave me, but a thief she never has been, and certainly is
not this time. She can’t possibly have taken the candlesticks, you know well
enough when they vanished, and you know I was not well that night, and went
early to bed. She was with me until long after Brother Prior discovered the
theft. I asked her to stay with me until you came to bed. As you never did!”
she ended tartly. “You may remember!”

Hamo
probably remembered very little of that night; certainly he was in no position
to gainsay what his wife so roundly declared. He took out a little of his
ill-temper on her, but she was not so much in awe of him that she dared not
reply in kind. Of course she was certain of what she said! She had not drunk
herself stupid at the lord abbot’s table, she had been nursing a bad head of
another kind, and even with Brother Cadfael’s remedies she had not slept until after
midnight, and Elfgiva had then been still beside her. Let him hunt a runaway
maidservant, by all means, the thankless hussy, but never call her a thief, for
she was none.

Hunt
her he did, though with less energy now it seemed clear he would not recapture
his property with her. He sent his grooms and half the lay servants off in both
directions to enquire if anyone had seen a solitary girl in a hurry; they were
kept at it all day, but they returned empty-handed.

The
party from Lidyate, less one member, left for home next day. Lady FitzHamon
rode demurely behind young Madoc, her cheek against his broad shoulders; she
even gave Brother Cadfael the flicker of a conspiratorial smile as the
cavalcade rode out of the gates, and detached one arm from round Madoc’s waist
to wave as they reached the roadway. So Hamo was not present to hear when
Brother Jordan, at last released from his vow, told how Our Lady had appeared
to him in a vision of light, fair as an angel, and taken away with her the
candlesticks that were hers to take and do with as she would, and how she had
spoken to him, and enjoined on him his three days of silence. And if there were
some among the listeners who wondered whether the fair woman had not been a
more corporeal being, no one had the heart to say so to Jordan, whose vision
was comfort and consolation for the fading of the light.

That
was at Matins, at midnight of the day of St Stephen’s. Among the scattering of
alms handed in at the gatehouse next morning for the beggars, there was a
little basket that weighed surprisingly heavily. The porter could not remember
who had brought it, taking it to be some offerings of food or old clothing,
like all the rest; but when it was opened it sent Brother Oswald, almost
incoherent with joy and wonder, running to Abbot Heribert to report what seemed
to be a miracle. For the basket was full of gold coin, to the value of more
than a hundred marks. Well used, it would ease all the worst needs of his
poorest petitioners, until the weather relented.

“Surely,”
said Brother Oswald devoutly, “Our Lady has made her own will known. Is not
this the sign we have hoped for?”

Certainly
it was for Cadfael, and earlier than he had dared to hope for it. He had the
message that needed no words. She had found him, and been welcomed with joy.
Since midnight Alard the silversmith had been a free man, and free man makes
free wife. Presented with such a woman as Elfgiva, he could give as gladly as
she, for what was gold, what was silver, by comparison?

Eye Witness

IT
WAS UNDOUBTEDLY INCONSIDERATE OF BROTHER AMBROSE to fall ill with a raging
quinsy just a few days before the yearly rents were due for collection, and
leave the rolls still uncopied, and the new entries still to be made. No one
knew the abbey rolls as Brother Ambrose did. He had been clerk to Brother
Matthew, the cellarer, for four years, during which time fresh grants to the
abbey had been flooding in richly, a new mill on the Tern, pastures, assarts,
messuages in the town, glebes in the countryside, a fishery up-river, even a
church or two, and there was no one who could match him at putting a finger on
the slippery tenant or the field-lawyer, or the householder who had always
three good stories to account for his inability to pay. And here was the
collection only a day away, and Brother Ambrose on his back in the infirmary,
croaking like a sick raven, and about as much use.

Brother
Matthew’s chief steward, who always made the collection within the town and
suburbs of Shrewsbury in person, took it almost as a personal injury. He had
had to install as substitute a young lay clerk who had entered the abbey
service not four months previously. Not that he had found any cause to complain
of the young man’s work. He had copied industriously and neatly, and shown
great alertness and interest in his quick grasp of what he copied, making
round, respectful eyes at the value of the rent-roll.

But
Master William Rede had been put out, and was bent on letting everyone know of
it. He was a querulous, argumentative man in his fifties, who, if you said
white to him, would inevitably say black, and bring documentary evidence to
back up his contention. He came to visit his old friend and helper in the abbey
infirmary, the day before the town collection was due, but whether to comfort
or reproach was matter for speculation. Brother Ambrose, still voiceless,
essayed speech and achieved only a painful wheeze, before Brother Cadfael, who
was anointing his patient’s throat afresh with goose-grease, and had a soothing
syrup of orpine standing by, laid a palm over the sufferer’s mouth and ordered
silence.

“Now,
William,” he said tolerantly, “if you can’t comfort, don’t vex. This poor
soul’s got you on his conscience as it is, and you know, as well as I do, that
you have the whole matter at your finger-ends. You tell him so, and fetch up a
smile, or out you go.” And he wrapped a length of good Welsh flannel round the
glistening throat, and reached for the spoon that stood in the beaker of syrup.
Brother Ambrose opened his mouth with the devoted resignation of a little bird
waiting to be fed, and sucked in the dose with an expression of slightly
surprised appreciation.