Brother Cadfael 13: The Rose Rent by Ellis Peters Page A

there were two unshuttered windows, green of foliage and gold of sun came quivering in, and filled the chamber with light. She was not afraid of light, she sat where it played over her, gilding and trembling as the breeze quickened. She was alone when Cadfael came back from the garden.
    "The smith has a customer," she said with the palest of smiles. "I bade him go. A man must tend to his trade."
    "So must a woman," said Cadfael, and laid his moulded waxen form carefully down on the stone floor, where the draught would play over it as the sunlight did over her.
    "Yes, so I shall. You need not fear me, I have a respect for life. All the more," she said gravely, "now that I have seen death close to, yet again. Tell me! You said you would."
    He sat down with her on the uncushioned bench, and told her fully all that had happened that morning - the defection of Eluric, the coming of Niall with his story of finding the crumpled body and the broken bush, even the first grim suspicion of deliberate damage and self-murder, before sign after sign pointed another way. She heard him out with unwavering attention, those arresting grey eyes dauntingly wide and intelligent.
    "But still," she said, "I do not understand. You speak as if there was nothing of note or consequence in his leaving the enclave by night as he did. But you know it is something utterly unknown, for a young brother so to dare. And he, I thought, so meek and dutiful, no breaker of rules. Why did he do so? What can have made it so important to him to visit the rose-bush? Secretly, illicitly, by night? What did it mean to him, to drive him so far out of his proper way?"
    No question but she was asking honestly. She had never thought of herself as a disturber of any man's peace. And she meant to have an answer, and there was none to give her but the truth. The abbot might have hesitated at this point. Cadfael did not hesitate.
    "It meant to him," he said simply, "the memory of you. It was no change of policy that removed him from being bearer of the rose. He had begged to be relieved of a task which had become torment to him, and his request was granted. He could no longer bear the pain of being in your presence and as far from you as the moon, of seeing you, and being within touch of you, and forbidden to love. But when he was released, it seems he could not bear absence, either. In a manner, he was saying his goodbye to you. He would have got over it," said Cadfael with resigned regret, "if he had lived. But it would have been a long, bleak sickness."
    Still her eyes had not wavered nor her face changed, except that the blood had drained from her cheeks and left her pale and translucent as ice. "Oh, God!" she said in a whisper. "And I never knew! There was never word said, never a look... And I so much his elder, and no beauty! It was like sending one of the singing boys from the school to me. Never a wrong thought, how could there be?"
    "He was cloistered almost from his cradle," said Cadfael gently, "he had never had to do with a woman since he left his mother. He had no defence against a gentle face, a soft voice and a motion of grace. You cannot see yourself with his eyes, or you might find yourself dazzled."
    After a moment of silence she said: "I did feel, somehow, that he was not happy. No more than that. And how many in this world can boast of being happy?" And she asked, looking up again into Cadfael's face: "How many know of this? Need it be spoken of?"
    "No one but Father Abbot, Brother Richard his confessor, Brother Anselm and myself. And now you. No, it will never be spoken of to any other. And none of these can or will ever think one thought of blame for you. How could we?"
    "But I can," said Judith.
    "Not if you are just. You must not take to yourself more than your due. That was Eluric's error."
    A man's voice was raised suddenly in the shop, young and agitated, and Niall's voice replying in hasty reassurance. Miles burst in through the open doorway, the