Brother Cadfael 11: An Excellent Mystery by Ellis Peters Page A

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 so!' said Humilis on a long breath, and sat silent to take in all that this news could mean. 'Now I wonder…No, why should she do such a thing unless it was truly her wish? It cannot have been because of me! No, she knew nothing of me, she had only once seen me, and must have forgotten me before my back was turned. She may even have been glad…It may be this is what she always wished, if she could have her way…' He thought for a moment, frowning, perhaps trying to recall what that little girl looked like. 'You told me, Nick, that I do remember, how she took my message. She was not distressed, but altogether calm and courteous, and gave me her grace and pardon freely. You said so!'
    'Truth, my lord,' said Nicholas earnestly, 'though she cannot have been glad.'
    'Ah, but she may - she may very well have been glad. No blame to her! Willing though she may have been to accept the match made for her, yet it would have tied her to a man more than twenty years her elder, and a stranger. Why should she not be glad, when I offered her her liberty - no, urged it upon her? Surely she must have made of it the use she preferred, perhaps had longed for.'
    'She was not forced,' Nicholas admitted, with somewhat reluctant certainty. 'Her brother says it was the girl's own choice, indeed her father was against it, and only gave in because she would have it so.'
    'That's well,' agreed Humilis with a relieved sigh. Then we can but hope that she may be happy in her choice.'
    'But so great a waste!' blurted Nicholas, grieving. 'If you had seen her, my lord, as I did! To shear such hair as she had, and hide such a form under the black habit! They should never have let her go, not so soon. How if she has regretted it long since?'
    Humilis smiled, but very gently, eyeing the downcast face and hooded eyes. 'As you described her to me, so gracious and sensible, of such measured and considered speech, I don't think she will have acted without due thought. No, surely she has done what is right for her. But I'm sorry for your loss, Nick. You must bear it as gallantly as she did - if ever I was any loss!'
    The Vesper bell had begun to chime. Humilis rose to go down to the church, and Nicholas rose with him, taking the summons as his dismissal.
    'It's late to set out now,' suggested Cadfael, emerging from the silence and withdrawal he had observed while these two talked together. 'And it seems there's no great haste, that you need leave tonight. A bed in the guest-hall, and you could set off fresh in the morning, with the whole day before you. And spend an hour or two more with Brother Humilis this evening, while you have the chance.'
    To which sensible notion they both said yes, and Nicholas recovered a little of his spirits, if nothing could restore the ardour with which he had ridden north from Winchester.
    What did somewhat surprise Brother Cadfael was the considerate way in which Fidelis, confronted yet again with this visitant from the time before he had known Humilis and established his own intimacy with him, withdrew himself from sight as he was withdrawn from the possibility of conversation, and left them to their shared memories of travel, Crusade and battle, things so far removed from his own experience. An affection which could so self-effacingly make room for a rival and prior affection was generous indeed.
    There was a merchant of Shrewsbury who dealt in fleeces all up and down the borders, both from Wales and from such fat sheep-country as the Cotswolds, and had done an interesting side-trade in information, for Hugh's benefit, in these