The Pilgram of Hate by Ellis Peters Page B

rather than ask for healing?
    Matthew
had not yet noticed Cadfael’s approach. His deep voice, measured and resolute,
said just audibly, “Save your breath! For I will go with you, step for step, to
the very end.”
    Then
Cadfael was close, and they were both aware of him, and stirred defensively out
of their private anguish, heaving in breath and schooling their faces to
confront the outer world decently. They drew a little apart on the stone bench,
welcoming Cadfael with somewhat strained smiles.
    “I
saw no need to make you come to me,” said Cadfael, dropping to his knees and
opening his scrip in the bright green turf, “when I am better able to come to
you. So sit and be easy, and let me see how much work is yet to be done before
you can go forth in good heart.”
    “This
is kind, brother,” said Ciaran, rousing himself with a sigh. “Be assured that I
do go in good heart, for my pilgrimage is short and my arrival assured.”
    At
the other end of the bench Matthew’s voice said softly, “Amen!”
    After
that it was all silence as Cadfael anointed the swollen soles, kneading spirit
vigorously into the misused skin, surely heretofore accustomed always to going
well shod, and soothed the ointment of cleavers into the healing grazes.
    “There!
Keep off your feet through tomorrow, but for such offices as you feel you must
attend. Here there’s no need to go far. And I’ll come to you tomorrow and have
you fit to stand somewhat longer the next day, when the saint is brought home.”
When he spoke of her now, he hardly knew whether he was truly speaking of the
mortal substance of Saint Winifred, which was generally believed to be in that
silver-chaced reliquary, or of some hopeful distillation of her spirit which
could fill with sanctity even an empty coffin, even a casket containing
pitiful, faulty human bones, unworthy of her charity, but subject, like all
mortality, to the capricious, smiling mercies of those above and beyond
question. If you could reason by pure logic for the occurrence of miracles,
they would not be miracles, would they?
    He
scrubbed his hands on a handful of wool, and rose from his knees. In some
twenty minutes or so it would be time for Vespers.
    He
had taken his leave, and almost reached the archway into the great court, when
he heard rapid steps at his heels, a hand reached deprecatingly for his sleeve,
and Matthew’s voice said in his ear, “Brother Cadfael, you left this lying.”
    It
was his jar of ointment, of rough, greenish pottery, almost invisible in the
grass. The young man held it out in the palm of a broad, strong, workmanlike
hand, long-fingered and elegant. Dark eyes, reserved but earnestly curious,
searched Cadfael’s face.
    Cadfael
took the jar with thanks, and put it away in his scrip. Ciaran sat where
Matthew had left him, his face and burning gaze turned towards them; they stood
at a distance, between him and the outer day, and he had, for one moment, the
look of a soul abandoned to absolute solitude in a populous world.
    Cadfael
and Matthew stood gazing in speculation and uncertainty into each other’s eyes.
This was that able, ready young man who had leaped into action at need, upon
whom Melangell had fixed her young, unpractised heart, and to whom Rhun had
surely looked for a hopeful way out for his sister, whatever might become of
himself. Good, cultivated stock, surely, bred of some small gentry and taught a
little Latin as well as his schooling in arms. How, except by the compulsion of
inordinate love, did this 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