An Excellent Mystery by Ellis Peters Page A

and contention. If
only he had spoken out what he felt in his heart at the first sight of her,
even hampered as he had been by the knowledge of the blow he was about to deal
her, and gagged by that knowledge when for once he might have been eloquent.
She might have listened, and at least delayed, even if she could feel nothing
for him then. She might have thought again, and waited, and even remembered
him. Now it was far too late, she was a bride for the second time, and even
more indissolubly.
    This
time there was no question of argument. The betrothal vows made by or for a
small girl might justifiably be dissolved, but the vocational vows of a grown
woman, taken in the full knowledge of their meaning, and of her own choice,
never could be undone. He had lost her.
    Nicholas
lay all night in the small guest-chamber prepared for him, fretting at the knot
and knowing he could not untie it. He slept shallowly and uneasily, and in the
morning he took his leave, and set out on the road back to Shrewsbury.

 
     
     
    Chapter Five
     
    IT
SO HAPPENED THAT BROTHER CADFAEL WAS PRIVATE with Humilis in his cell in the
dortoir when Nicholas again rode in at the gatehouse and asked leave to visit
his former lord, as he had promised. Humilis had risen with the rest that
morning, attended Prime and Mass, and scrupulously performed all the duties of
the horarium, though he was not yet allowed to exert himself by any form of
labour. Fidelis attended him everywhere, ready to support his steps if need
arose, or fetch him whatever he might want, and had spent the afternoon
completing, under his elder’s approving eye, the initial letter which had been
smeared and blotted by his fall. And there they had left the boy to finish the
careful elaboration in gold, while they repaired to the dortoir, physician and
patient together.
    “Well
closed,” said Cadfael, content with his work, “and firming up nicely, clean as
ever. You scarcely need the bandages, but as well keep them a day or two yet,
to guard against rubbing while the new skin is still frail.”
    They
were grown quite easy together, these two, and if both of them realised that
the mere healing of a broken and festered wound was no sufficient cure for what
ailed Humilis, they were both courteously silent on the subject, and took their
moderate pleasure in what good they had achieved.
    They
heard the footsteps on the stone treads of the day stairs, and knew them for
booted feet, not sandalled. But there was no spring in the steps now, and no
hasty eagerness, and it was a glum young man who appeared, shadowy, in the
doorway of the cell. Nor had he been in any hurry on the way back from Lai,
since he had nothing but disappointment to report. But he had promised, and he
was here.
    “Nick!”
Humilis greeted him with evident pleasure and affection. “You’re soon back!
Welcome as the day, but I had thought…” There he stopped, even in the dim
interior light aware that the brightness was gone from the young man’s face.
“So long a visage? I see it did not go as you would have wished.”
    “No,
my lord.” Nicholas came in slowly, and bent his knee to both his elders. “I
have not sped.”
    “I
am sorry for it, but no man can always succeed. You know Brother Cadfael? I owe
the best of care to him.”
    “We
spoke together the last time,” said Nicholas, and found a half-hearted smile by
way of acknowledgement. “I count myself also in his debt.”
    “Spoke
of me, no doubt,” said Humilis, smiling and sighing. “You trouble too much for
me, I am well content here. I have found my way. Now sit down a while, and tell
us what went wrong for you.”
    Nicholas
plumped himself down on the stool beside the bed on which Humilis was sitting,
and said what he had to say in commendably few words: “I hesitated three years
too long. Barely a month after you took the cowl at Hyde, Julian Cruce took the
veil at Wherwell.”
    “Did
she