Brother Cadfael 10: The Pilgrim of Hate by Ellis Peters Page B

one come to be ranging the country like a penniless vagabond, without root or attachment but to a dying man?
    "Tell me truth," said Cadfael. "Is it indeed true - is it certain - that Ciaran goes this way towards his death?"
    There was a brief moment of silence, as Matthew's wide-set eyes grew larger and darker. Then he said very softly and deliberately, "It is truth. He is already marked for death. Unless your saint has a miracle for us, there is nothing can save him. Or me!" he ended abruptly, and wrenched himself away to return to his devoted watch.
    Cadfael turned his back on supper in the refectory, and set off instead along the Foregate towards the town. Over the bridge that spanned the Severn, in through the gate, and up the curving slope of the Wyle to Hugh Beringar's town house. There he sat and nursed his godson Giles, a large, comely, self-willed child, fair like his mother, and long of limb, some day to dwarf his small, dark, sardonic father. Aline brought food and wine for her husband and his friend, and then sat down to her needlework, favouring her menfolk from time to time with a smiling glance of serene contentment. When her son fell asleep in Cadfael's lap she rose and lifted the boy away gently. He was heavy for her, but she had learned how to carry him lightly balanced on arm and shoulder. Cadfael watched her fondly as she bore the child away into the next room to his bed, and closed the door between.
    "How is it possible that that girl can grow every day more radiant and lovely? I've known marriage rub the fine bloom off many a handsome maid. Yet it suits her as a halo does a saint."
    "Oh, there's something to be said for marriage," said Hugh idly. "Do I look so poorly on it? Though it's an odd study for a man of your habit, after all these years of celibacy... And all the stravagings about the world before that! You can't have thought too highly of the wedded state, or you'd have ventured on it yourself. You took no vows until past forty, and you a well-set-up young fellow crusading all about the east with the best of them. How do I know you have not an Aline of your own locked away somewhere, somewhere in your remembrance, as dear as mine is to me? Perhaps even a Giles of your own," he added, whimsically smiling, "a Giles God knows where, grown a man now..."
    Cadfael's silence and stillness, though perfectly easy and complacent, nevertheless sounded a mute warning in Hugh's perceptive senses. On the edge of drowsiness among his cushions after a long day out of doors, he opened a black, considering eye to train upon his friend's musing face, and withdrew delicately into practical business.
    "Well, so this Simeon Poer is known in the south. I'm grateful to you and to Brother Adam for the nudge, though so far the man has set no foot wrong here. But these others you've pictured for me... At Wat's tavern in the Foregate they've had practice in marking down strangers who come with a fair or a feast, and spread themselves large about the town. Wat tells my people he has a group moving in, very merry, some of them strangers. They could well be these you name. Some of them, of course, the usual young fellows of the town and the Foregate with more pence than sense. They've been drinking a great deal, and throwing dice. Wat does not like the way the dice fall."
    "It's as I supposed," said Cadfael, nodding. "For every Mass of ours they'll be celebrating the Gamblers' Mass elsewhere. And by all means let the fools throw their money after their sense, so the odds be fair. But Wat knows a loaded throw when he sees one."
    "He knows how to rid his house of the plague, too. He has hissed in the ears of one of the strangers that his tavern is watched, and they'd be wise to take their school out of there. And for tonight he has a lad on the watch, to find out where they'll meet. Tomorrow night we'll have at them, and rid you of them in good time for the feast day, if all goes well."
    Which would be a very welcome cleansing,