Alone with Philip, Cadfael searched the chest and the press for woollen rugs to swathe his patient against cold and the buffeting of the roads, and wound him in a sheet, with only a single thickness of linen over his face, so that air might still reach him. One more dead man prepared for burial; and now all that remained was to get him either into the chapel with the rest, or out among the first to the turf of the meadow, where several of his men-at-arms were digging a communal grave. And which was the more hazardous course was a moot question. Cadfael had locked the door of the room while he went about his preparations, and hesitated to open it too soon, but from within he could not determine what was going on. It must be mid-morning by this time, and the garrison mustering for their withdrawal. And FitzGilbert in his rapid tour of the damage within must have taken note of the perilous state of one tower, and would be bringing masons in haste to make the stonework safe, even if proper repairs must wait.
Cadfael turned the key in the lock, and opened the door just wide enough to peer out along the passage. Two young men of the garrison passed by towards the outer door of the keep, bearing between them one of the long shutters from the inward-facing windows, with a shrouded body stretched upon it. It had begun already, as well move quickly. The bearers had no weapons now, with all arms already piled in the armoury, but at least their lives were secured. They handled these less fortunate souls they carried with rueful respect. And after this present pair came one of the officers of the marshall’s guard, in conversation with a workman clearly from the village, leather-jerkined, authoritative and voluble.
‘You’ll need timber props under that wall as fast as I can bring them in,’ he was saying as they passed. ‘Stone can wait. Keep your men well away from there when you enter, and I’ll have my lads here with props by the afternoon.’
The wind of his passing smelled of wood; and of wood there was plenty around Greenhamsted. The dangling stonework of the breached tower, inner wall and outer wall alike, would soon be braced into stability again, waiting for the masons. And by the sound of it, thought Cadfael, I at least had better venture in there before they come, for somewhere in the rubble there may well be a discarded cloak with the imperial eagle on the shoulder, and what I need least, at this moment, is the empress’s officers asking too many questions. True, such a thing might have belonged to one of the besiegers who had managed to penetrate within, but he would hardly be manning the ram hampered by his cloak. The less any man wonders, the better.
For the moment, however, his problem was here, and he needed another pair of hands, and needed them now, before more witnesses came on the scene. The officer had accompanied the master-builder only as far as the door of the keep. Cadfael heard him returning, and emerged into the passage full in his path, thrusting the door wide open at his back. His habit gave him a kind of right, at any rate, to be dealing with the dead, and possibly a slight claim on any handy help in the work.
‘Sir, of your kindness,’ he said civilly, ‘will you lend me a hand with this one more here? We never got him as far as the chapel.’
The officer was a man of fifty or so, old enough to be tolerant of officious Benedictine brothers, goodnatured enough to comply with casual demands on some minutes of his time, where he had little work to do but watch others at work, and already gratified at being spared any further fighting over La Musarderie. He looked at Cadfael, looked in without curiosity at the open door, and shrugged amiably. The room was bare enough and chill enough not to be taken at sight for the castellan’s own apartment. In his circuit of the hall and living quarters he had seen others richer and more comfortable.
‘Say a word in your prayers for a decent soldier,’ he said, ‘and I’m your man, brother. May someone do as much for me if ever I come to need it.’
‘Amen to that!’ said Cadfael. ‘And I won’t forget it to you at the next office.’ And that was fervent truth, considering what he was asking.
So it was one of the empress’s own men who advanced to the head of the bed, and stooped to take up the swathed body by the shoulders. And all the while Philip lay like one truly dead, and it was in Cadfael’s mind, resist it as he would, that so he might be before ever he left these walls. The stillness when the senses are out of the body, and only a thread of breath marks the border not yet crossed, greatly resembles the stillness after the soul is out. The thought aroused in him a strangely personal grief, as if he and not Robert of Gloucester had lost a son; but he put it from him, and refused belief.
‘Take up pallet and all,’ he said. ‘We’ll reclaim it afterwards if it’s fit for use, but he bled, and there’s no want of straw.’
The man shifted his grip compliantly, and lifted his end of the bier as lightly as if it had been a child they carried. Cadfael took the foot, and as they emerged into the passage sustained his hold one-handed for a moment while he drew the door closed. God prevent the accidental discovery too soon! But to linger and turn the key on an empty room would have been cause for immediate suspicion.
They passed through all the activity in the ward, and out at the gatehouse into the dull grey December light, and the guard on the paved apron without passed them through indifferently. They had no interest in the dead; they were there only to ensure that no arms and accoutrements of value were taken away when the garrison departed, and perhaps to check that Philip FitzRobert should not pass as one of the wounded. A short space to the left from the causeway there was a level place where the common grave was being opened, and beside the plot the dead were laid decently side by side.
Between this mournful activity and the rim of the woodland several people from the village, and perhaps from further afield, had gathered to watch, curious but aloof. There was no great love among the commonalty for either of these factions, but the present threat was over. A Musard might yet come back to Greenhamsted. Four generations had left the family still acceptable to their neighbours.
A cart, drawn by two horses, came up the slope from the river valley, and ground steadily up the causeway towards the gatehouse. The driver was a thickset, bearded, well-fleshed man of about fifty, in dark homespun and a shoulder cape and capuchon of green, but all their colours faintly veiled and dusted over from long professional days spent in an air misty with the milling of grain. The lad at his back had sackcloth draped over his shoulders and the opened end of a sack over his head, a long young fellow in the common dun-coloured cotte and hose of the countryside. Cadfael watched them approach and gave thanks to God.
Beholding the work in progress in the meadow, the row of shrouded bodies, the last of them just brought forth and laid beside the rest, and the chaplain, drooping and disconsolate, stumbling after, the driver of the cart, blithely ignoring the guards at the gate, turned his team aside, and made straight for the place of burial. There he climbed down briskly, leaving his lad to descend after him and wait with the horses. It was to Cadfael the miller addressed himself, loudly enough to reach the chaplain’s ears also.
‘Brother, there was a nephew of mine serving here under Camville, and I’d be glad to know how he’s fared, for his mother’s sake. We heard you had dead, and a deal more wounded. Can I get news of him?’
He had lowered his voice by then as he drew close. For all it gave away his face might have been oak.
‘Rid your mind of the worst before you need go further,’ said Cadfael, meeting shrewd eyes of no particular colour, but bright with sharp intelligence. The chaplain was halted a little apart, talking to the officer of FitzGilbert’s guard. ‘Walk along the line with me, and satisfy yourself that none of these here is your man. And take it slowly,’ said Cadfael quietly. Any haste would be a betrayal. They walked the length of the ranks together, talking in low tones, stooping to uncover a face here and there, very briefly, and at every assay the miller shook his head.
‘It’s been a while since I saw him last, but I’ll know.’ He talked easily, inventing a kinsman not so far from the truth, not so close as to be an irreparable loss, or long or deeply lamented, but still having the claim of blood, and not to be abandoned. ‘Thirty year old, he’d be, black-avised, a good man of his hands with quarter-staff or bow. Not one for keeping out of trouble, neither. He’d be into the thick of it with the best.’
They had arrived at the straw pallet on which Philip lay, so still and mute that Cadfael’s heart misdoubted for a moment, and then caught gratefully at the sudden shudder and crepitation of breath. ‘He’s here!’
The miller had recognized not the man, but the moment. He broke off on a word, stiffening and starting back a single step, and then as promptly stooped, with Cadfael’s bulk to cover the deception, and made to draw back the linen from Philip’s face, but without touching. He remained so, bending over the body, a long moment, as if making quite sure, before rising again slowly, and saying clearly: ‘It is! This is our Nan’s lad.’
Still adroit, sounding almost as much exasperated as grieved, and quick to resignation from long experience now of a disordered land, where death came round corners unexpectedly, and chose and took at his pleasure. ‘I might have known he’d never make old bones. Never one to turn away from where the fire was hottest. Well, what can a man do? There’s no bringing them back.’
The nearest of the grave-diggers had straightened his back to get a moment’s relief and turned a sympathetic face.
‘Hard on a man to come on his own blood kin so. You’ll be wanting to have him away to lie with his forebears? They might allow it. Better than being put in the ground among all these, without even a name.’
Their close, half-audible conference had caught the attention of the guards. Their officer was looking that way, and in a moment, Cadfael judged, might come striding towards them. Better to forestall him by bearing down upon him with the whole tale ready.
‘I’ll ask,’ he offered, ‘if that’s your will. It would be a Christian act to take the poor soul in care.’ And he led the way back towards the gate at a purposeful pace, with the miller hard on his heels. Seeing this willing approach, the officer halted and stood waiting.
‘Sir,’ said Cadfael, ‘here’s the miller of Winstone, over the river there, has found his kinsman, his sister’s son, among our dead, and asks that he may take the lad’s body away for burial among his own people.’
‘Is that it?’ The guard looked the petitioner up and down, but in a very cursory examination, already losing interest in an incident nowadays so common. He considered for a moment, and shrugged.
‘Why not? One more or less... As well if we could clear the ground of them all at one deal. Yes, let him take the fellow. Here or wherever, he’s never going to let blood or shed it again.’
The miller of Winstone touched his forelock very respectfully, and gave fitting thanks. If there was an infinitesimal overtone of satire about his gratitude, it escaped notice. He went stolidly back to his cart and his charge. The long lad in sacking had drawn the cart closer. Between them they hoisted the pallet on which Philip lay, and, in full and complacent view of the marshall’s guards, settled it carefully in the cart. Cadfael, holding the horses meantime, looked up just once into the shadow of the sacking hood the young man wore, and deep into profound black eyes, golden round the pupils, that opened upon him in a blaze of affection and elation, promising success. There was no word said. Olivier sat down in the body of the cart, and cushioned the head of the thin straw pallet upon his knees. And the miller of Winstone clambered aboard and turned his team back towards the river, down the bleached green slope, never looking back, never hurrying, the picture of a decent man who had just assumed an unavoidable duty, and had nothing to account for to any man.
*
At noon FitzGilbert appeared before the gate with a company drawn up at his back, to watch the garrison march out and quit their possession of La Musarderie. They had mounted some of their wounded, who could ride but could not maintain a march for long, and put the rest into such carts as they had in store, and set these in the middle of their muster, to have fit men upon either flank in case of need. Cadfael had thought in time to establish his ownership of the fine young chestnut roan Hugh had lent him, and stayed within the stables to maintain his claim, in case it should be questioned. Hugh would lop me of my ears, he thought, if I should let him be commandeered from under my nose. So only late in the day, when the rearguard was passing stiffly by the watching and waiting victors, did he witness the withdrawal from La Musarderie.
Every rank as it passed was sharply scrutinized from either side, and the carts halted to search for concealed bows, swords and lances, but Camville, curling a lip at their distrust, watched without comment and protested only when some of the wounded were disturbed too roughly for his liking. When all was done, he led his garrison away eastward, over the river and through Winstone to the Roman road, heading, most likely, for Cricklade, which was secure from immediate threat, and the centre of a circle of other castles held by the king, Bampton, Faringdon, Purton and Malmesbury, among which safe harbours his fighting men and his wounded could be comfortably distributed. Olivier and the miller of Winstone had set off by the same way, but had not so far to go, a matter maybe of a dozen miles.
And now Cadfael had things yet to do here. He could not leave until a few other sufferers, too frail or sick to go with their fellows, were committed to responsible care under the marshall’s wardship. Nor did Cadfael feel justified in leaving until the worst of the empress’s rage had passed, and no one here was in peril of death in recompense for the death of which she had been cheated.
Minutes now, and all her main companies would be riding in, to fill the almost empty stables and living quarters, view their trophy of arms, and make themselves at home here. Cadfael slipped back into the ward ahead of them, and made his way cautiously into the shell of the broken tower. Stepping warily among the fallen ashlar and rubble from the filling of the wall, he found the folded cloak wedged into a gap in the stonework, where Olivier had thrust it the moment before he slipped out into the night among the besiegers. The imperial eagle badge was still pinned into the shoulder. Cadfael rolled it within, and took his prize away with him to his own cell. Almost it seemed to him that a trace of the warmth of Olivier’s body still clung to it.
They were all in before the light faded, all but the empress’s personal household, and their forerunners were already busy with hangings and cushions making the least Spartan apartment fit for an imperial lady. The hall was again habitable, and looked much as it had always looked, and the cooks and servants turned to feeding and housing one garrison as philosophically as another. The damaged tower was shored up stoutly with seasoned timbers, and a watch placed on it to warn off any unwary soul from risking his head within.
And no one yet had opened the door to Philip’s bedchamber, and found it empty. Nor had anyone had time to remark that the Benedictine guest who had been the last to sit in attendance on the wounded man had been at large about the ward and at the graveside for the past three hours, and so had the chaplain. Everyone had been far too preoccupied to wonder who, then, was keeping watch by the bedside during their absence. It was a point to which Cadfael had not given full consideration, and now that what was most urgent had been accomplished, it began to dawn upon him that he would have to make the discovery himself, in fairness to all the rest of Philip’s remaining household. But preferably with a witness.
He went to the kitchens, almost an hour before Vespers, and asked for a measure of wine and a leather bucket of hot water for his patient, and enlisted the help of a scullion to carry the heavy bucket for him across the ward and into the keep.
‘He was in fever,’ he said as they entered the corridor, ‘when I left him some hours ago to go out to the burial ground. We may manage to break it, if I bathe him now and try to get a drop of wine into him. Will you spare me a few minutes to help lift him and turn him?’
The scullion, a shock-headed young giant, his mouth firmly shut and his face equally uncommunicative under this new and untested rule, slid a glance along his shoulder at Cadfael, made an intelligent estimate of what he saw there, and uttered through motionless lips but clearly: ‘Best let him go, brother, if you wish him well.’
‘As you do?’ said Cadfael in a very similar fashion. It was a small skill, but useful on occasion.
No answer to that, but he neither expected nor needed one.
‘Take heart! When the time comes, tell what you have seen.’
They reached the door of the deserted bedchamber. Cadfael opened it, the wine flask in his hand. Even in the dimming light the bed showed disordered and empty, the covers tumbled every way, the room shadowy and stark. Cadfael was tempted to drop the flask in convincing astonishment and alarm, but reflected that by and large Benedictine brothers do not respond to sudden crises by dropping things, least of all flasks of wine, and further, that he had just as good as confided in this random companion, to remove all necessity for deception. There were certainly some among Philip’s domestic household who would rejoice in his deliverance.
So neither of them exclaimed. On the contrary, they stood in mute and mutual content. The look they exchanged was eloquent, but ventured no words, in case of inconvenient ears passing too close.
‘Come!’ said Cadfael, springing to life. ‘We must report this. Bring the bucket,’ he added with authority. ‘It’s the details that make the tale ring true.’
He led the way at a run, the wine flask still gripped in his hand, and the scullion galloping after, splashing water overboard from his bucket at every step. At the hall door Cadfael rushed almost into the arms of one of Bohun’s knights, and puffed out his news breathlessly.
‘The lord marshall – is he within? I must speak to him. We’re just come from FitzRobert’s chamber. He’s not there. The bed’s empty, and the man’s gone.’
*
Before the marshall, the steward and half a dozen earls and barons in the great hall it made an impressive story, and engendered a satisfying uproar of fury, exasperation and suspicion; satisfying because it was also helpless. Cadfael was voluble and dismayed, and the scullion had wit enough to present a picture of idiot consternation throughout.
‘My lords, I left him before noon to go out and help the chaplain with the dead. I am here only by chance, having begged some nights’ lodging, but I have some skills, and I was willing to nurse and medicine him as well as I could. When I left him he was still deep out of his senses, as he has been most of the time since he was hurt. I thought it safe to leave him. Well, my lord, you saw him yourself this morning... But when I went back to him...’ He shook a disbelieving head. ‘But how could it happen? He was fathoms deep. I went to get wine from the buttery, and hot water to bathe him, and asked this lad to come and give me a hand to raise him. And he’s gone! Impossible he should even lift himself upright, I swear. But he’s gone! This man will tell you.’
The scullion nodded his head so long and so vigorously that his shaggy hair shook wildly over his face. ‘God’s truth, sirs! The bed’s empty, the room’s empty. He’s clean gone.’
‘Send and see for yourself, my lord,’ said Cadfael. ‘There’s no mistake.’
‘Gone!’ exploded the marshall. ‘How can he be gone? Was not the door locked upon him when you left him? Or someone set to keep watch?’
‘My lord, I knew no reason,’ said Cadfael, injured. ‘I tell you, he could not stir a hand or foot. And I am no servant in the household, and had no orders, my part was voluntary, and meant for healing.’
‘No one doubts it, brother,’ said the marshall shortly, ‘but there was surely something lacking in your care if he was left some hours alone. And with your skill as a physician, if you took so active a soul for mortally ill and unable to move.’
‘You may ask the chaplain,’ said Cadfael. ‘He will tell you the same. The man was out of his senses and likely to die.’
‘And you believe in miracles, no doubt,’ said Bohun scornfully.
‘That I will not deny. And have had good cause. Your lordships might consider on that,’ agreed Cadfael helpfully.
‘Go question the guard on the gate,’ the marshall ordered, rounding abruptly on some of his officers, ‘if any man resembling FitzRobert passed out among the wounded.’
‘None did,’ said Bohun with crisp certainty, but nevertheless waved out three of his men to confirm the strictness of the watch.
‘And you, brother, come with me. Let’s view this miracle.’ And he went striding out across the ward with a comet’s tail of anxious subordinates at his heels, and after them Cadfael and the scullion, with his bucket now virtually empty.
The door stood wide open as they had left it, and the room was so sparse and plain that it was scarcely necessary to step over the threshold to know that there was no one within. The heap of discarded coverings disguised the fact that the straw pallet had been removed, and no one troubled to disturb the tumbled rugs, since plainly whatever lay beneath, it was not a man’s body.
‘He cannot be far,’ said the marshall, whirling about as fiercely as he had flown to the proof. ‘He must be still within, no one can have passed the guards. We’ll have every rat out of every corner of this castle, but we’ll find him.’ And in a very few minutes he had all those gathered about him dispersed in all directions. Cadfael and the scullion exchanged a glance which had its own eloquence, but did not venture on speech. The scullion, wooden-faced outwardly but gratified inwardly, departed without haste to the kitchen, and Cadfael, released from tension into the languor of relief, remembered Vespers, and refuged in the chapel.
The search for Philip was pursued with all the vigour and thoroughness the marshall had threatened, and yet at the end of it all Cadfael could not fail to wonder whether FitzGilbert was not somewhat relieved himself by the prisoner’s disappearance. Not out of sympathy for Philip, perhaps not even from disapproval of such a ferocious revenge, but because he had sense enough to realize that the act contemplated would have redoubled and prolonged the killing, and made the empress’s cause anathema even to those who had served her best. The marshall went through the motions with energy, even with apparent conviction: and after the search ended in failure, an unexpected mercy, he would have to convey the news to his imperial lady this same evening, before ever she made her ceremonial entry into La Musarderie. The worst of her venom would be spent, on those even she dared not utterly humiliate and destroy, before she came among vulnerable poor souls expendable and at her mercy.
Philip’s tired chaplain stumbled his way through Vespers, and Cadfael did his best to concentrate his mind on worship. Somewhere between here and Cirencester, perhaps by now even safe in the Augustinian abbey there, Olivier nursed and guarded his captor turned prisoner, friend turned enemy – call that relationship what you would, it remained ever more fixed and inviolable the more it turned about. As long as they remained in touch, each of them would be keeping the other’s back against the world, even when they utterly failed to understand each other.
Neither do I understand, thought Cadfael, but there is no need that I should. I trust, I respect and I love. Yet I have abandoned and left behind me what most I trust, respect and love, and whether I can ever get back to it again is more than I know. The assay is all. My son is free, whole, in the hand of God, I have delivered him, and he has delivered his friend, and what remains broken between them must mend. They have no need of me. And I have needs, oh, God, how dear, and my years are dwindling to a few, and my debt is grown from a hillock to a mountain, and my heart leans to home.
‘May our fasts be acceptable to you, Lord, we entreat: and by expiating our sins make us worthy of your grace...’
Yes, amen! After all, the long journey here has been blessed. If the long journey home proves wearisome, and ends in rejection, shall I cavil at the price?
*
The empress entered La Musarderie the next day in sombre state and a vile temper, though by then she had herself in hand. Her blackly knotted brows even lightened a little as she surveyed the prize she had won, and reconciled herself grudgingly to writing off what was lost.
Cadfael watched her ride in, and conceded perforce that, mounted or afoot, she was a regal figure. Even in displeasure she had an enduring beauty, tall and commanding. When she chose to charm, she could be irresistible, as she had been to many a lad like Yves, until he felt the lash of her steel.
She came nobly mounted and magnificently attired, and with a company at her back, outriders on either side of herself and her women. Cadfael remembered the two gentlewomen who had attended her at Coventry, and had remained in attendance in Gloucester. The elder must be sixty, and long widowed, a tall, slender person with the remains of a youthful grace that had lasted well beyond its prime, but was now growing a little angular and lean, as her hair was silvering almost into white. The girl Isabeau, her niece, in spite of the many years between them, bore a strong likeness to her aunt, so strong that she probably presented a close picture of what Jovetta de Montors had been in her girlhood. And a vital and attractive picture it was. A number of personable young men had admired it at Coventry.
The women halted in the courtyard, and FitzGilbert and half a dozen of his finest vied to help them down from the saddle and escort them to the apartments prepared for them. La Musarderie had a new chatelaine in place of its castellan.
And where was that castellan now, and how faring? If Philip had lived through the journey, surely he would live. And Olivier? While there was doubt, Olivier would not leave him.
Meantime, here was Yves lighting down and leading away his horse into the stables, and as soon as he was free he would be looking for Cadfael. There was news to be shared, and Yves must be hungry for it.
*
They sat together on the narrow bed in Cadfael’s cell, as once before, sharing between them everything that had happened since they had parted beside the crabbed branches of the vine, with the guard pacing not twenty yards away.
‘I heard yesterday, of course,’ said Yves, flushed with wonder and excitement, ‘that Philip was gone, vanished away like mist. But how, how was it possible? If he was so gravely hurt, and could not stand...? She is saved from breaking with the earl, and... and worse... So much has been saved. But how?’ He was somewhat incoherent in his gratitude for such mercies, but grave indeed the moment he came to speak of Olivier. ‘And, Cadfael, what has happened to Olivier? I thought to see him among the others in hall. I asked Bohun’s steward after any prisoners, and he said what prisoners, there were none found here. So where can he be? Philip told us he was here.’
‘And Philip does not lie,’ said Cadfael, repeating what was evidently an article of faith with those who knew Philip, even among his enemies. ‘No, true enough, he does not lie. He told us truth. Olivier was here, deep under one of the towers. As for where he is now, if all has gone well, as why should it not? – he has friends in these parts! – he should be now in Cirencester, at the abbey of the Augustinians.’
‘You helped him to break free, even before the surrender? But then, why go? Why should he leave when FitzGilbert and the empress were here at the gates? His own people?’
‘I did not rescue him,’ said Cadfael patiently. ‘When he was wounded and knew he might die, Philip took thought for his garrison, and ordered Camville to get the best terms he could for them, at the least life and liberty, and surrender the castle.’
‘Knowing there would be no mercy for himself?’ said Yves,
‘Knowing what she had in mind for him, as you instructed me,’ said Cadfael, ‘and knowing she would let all others go, to get her hands on him. Yes. Moreover, he took thought also for Olivier. He gave me the keys, and sent me to set him free. And so I did, and together with Olivier I have, I trust, despatched Philip FitzRobert safely to the monks of Cirencester, where by God’s grace I hope he may recover from his wounds.’
‘But how? How did you get him out of the gates, with her troops already on guard there? And he? Would he even consent?’
‘He had no choice,’ said Cadfael. ‘He was in his right senses only long enough to dispose of his own life in a bargain for his men’s lives. He was sunk deep out of them when I shrouded him, and carried him out among the dead. Oh, not Olivier, not then. It was one of the marshall’s own men helped me carry him. Olivier had slipped out by night when the besiegers drew off, and gone to get a cart from the mill, and under the noses of the guards he and the miller from Winstone came to claim the body of a kinsman, and were given leave to take it freely.’
‘I wish I had been with you,’ said Yves reverently.
‘Child, I was glad you were not. You had done your part, I thanked God there was one of you safe out of all this perilous play. No matter now, it’s well done, and if I have sent Olivier away, I have you for this day, at least. The worst has been prevented. In this life that is often the best that can be said, and we must accept it as enough.’ He was suddenly very weary, even in this moment of release and content.
‘Olivier will come back,’ said Yves, warm and eager against his shoulder, ‘and there is Ermina in Gloucester, waiting for him and for you. By now she will be near her time. There may be another godson for you.’ He did not know, not yet, that the child would be even closer than that, kin in the blood as well as the soul. ‘You have come so far already, you should come home with us, stay with us, where you are dearly valued. A few days borrowed – what sin is there in that?’
But Cadfael shook his head, reluctantly but resolutely.
‘No, that I must not do. When I left Coventry on this quest I betrayed my vow of obedience to my abbot, who had already granted me generous grace. Now I have done what I discarded my vocation to accomplish, barring perhaps one small duty remaining, and if I delay longer still I am untrue to myself as I am already untrue to my Order, my abbot and my brothers. Some day, surely, we shall all meet again. But I have a reparation to make, and a penance to embrace. Tomorrow, Yves, whether the gates at Shrewsbury will open to me again or no, I am going home.’