The Raven in the Foregate by Ellis Peters

waited, close and
quivering, for the first jubilant antiphon of Matins, and the triumphant
answering cry:
    “Christ is born unto us!”
    “Oh, come, let us worship!”
    Benet set his hand over hers on the massive latch, and
lifted it softly as the hymn began. Outside, the night’s darkness matched the
darkness within. Who was to pay any attention now to two young creatures
slipping through the chink of the door into the cold of the night, and
cautiously letting the latch slide back into place? There was no one in the
cloister, no one in the great court as they crossed it. Whether it was Benet
who reached for her hand, or she for his, they rounded the corner of the thick
box hedge in the garden hand in hand, and slowed to a walk there, panting and
smiling, palms tightly clasped together, their breath a faint silver mist. The
vast inverted bowl of sky, dark blue almost to blackness but polished bright
and scintillating with stars, poured down upon them a still coldness they did
not feel.
    Brother Cadfael’s timbered hut, solid and squat in the
sheltered enclosure, never quite lost its warmth. Benet closed the door gently
behind them, and groped along the little shelf he knew now almost as well as
did Cadfael himself, where the tinder box and lamp lay ready to hand. It took
him two or three attempts before the charred linen caught at the spark, and let
him blow it carefully into a glow. The wick of the lamp put up a tiny, wavering
flame that grew into a steady flare, and stood up tall and erect. The leather
bellows lay by the brazier, he had only to shift a turf or two and spend a
minute industriously pumping, and the charcoal glowed brightly, and accepted a
feeding of split wood to burn into a warm hearth.
    “He’ll know someone has been here,” said the girl, but
very tranquilly.
    “He’ll know I was here,” said Benet, getting up
lithely from his knees, his bold, boy’s face conjured into summer bronze by the
glow from the brazier. “I doubt if he’ll say so. But he may wonder why. And
with whom!”
    “You’ve brought other women here?” She tilted her head
at him in challenge, abruptly displeased.
    “Never any, until now. Never any, hereafter. Unless
you so pleasure me a second time,” he said, and stared her down with fiery
solemnity.
    Some resinous knot in the new wood caught and hissed,
sending up a clear, white flame for a moment between them. Across its pale,
pure gold the two young faces sprang into mysterious brightness, lit from
below, lips parted, eyes rounded in astonished gravity.
    Each of them stared into a mirror, matched and mated,
and could not look away from the unexpected image of love.

 
     
     
    Chapter Five
     
    PRIME WAS SAID AT AN EARLY HOUR, after a very short
interlude for sleep, and the dawn Mass followed with first light. Almost all
the people of the Foregate had long since gone home, and the brothers, dazed
with long standing and strung taut with the tensions of music and wonder, filed
a little unsteadily up the night stairs to rest briefly before preparing for
the day.
    Brother Cadfael, stiff with being still for so long a
time, felt himself in need rather of movement than of rest. Solitary in the
lavatorium, he made unusually leisurely ablutions, shaved with care, and went
out into the great court, just in time to see Dame Diota Hammet come hurrying
in through the wicket in the gate, stumbling and slipping on the glazed
cobbles, clutching her dark cloak about her, and gazing round in evident
agitation. A furry fringe of hoar frost had formed on the collar of her cloak
from her breath. Every outline of wall or bush or branch was silvered with the
same glittering whiteness.
    The porter had come out to greet her and ask her
business, but she had observed Prior Robert emerging from the cloisters, and
made for him like a homing bird, making him so low and unwary a reverence that
she almost fell on her knees.
    “Father Prior, my