Read Online An Excellent Mystery by Ellis Peters - Free Book Online Page B

Julian Grace, from a family with manors in the north of this shire, and
in Stafford, too.”
    He
stirred and sighed for the follies of men, and the presumptuous solemnity of
the arrangements they made for lives they would never live. The presence beside
him drew near, put back the cowl, and sat down on the stool Nicholas had vacated.
They looked each other in the eyes gravely and without words, longer than most
men can look each other in the eyes and not turn aside.
    “God
knew better, my son!” said Humilis. “His plans for me were not as mine. I am
what I am now. She is what she is. Julian Cruce… I am glad she should escape me
and go to a better man. I pray she has not yet given herself to any, for this
Nicholas of mine would make her a fitting match, one that would set my soul at
rest. Only to her do I feel myself a debtor, and forsworn.”
    Brother
Fidelis shook his head at him, reproachfully smiling, and leaned and laid a
finger for an instant over the mouth that spoke heresy.
     
    Cadfael
had left Hugh waiting at the gatehouse, and was crossing the court to return to
his duties in the herb-garden, when Nicholas Harnage emerged from the arch of
the stairway, and recognising him, hailed him loudly and ran to pluck him
urgently by the sleeve.
    “Brother,
a word!”
    Cadfael
halted and turned to face him. “How do you find him? The long ride put him to
too great a strain, and he did not seek help until his wound was broken and
festering, but that’s over now. All’s clean, wholesome and healing. You need
not fear we shall let him founder like that a second time.”
    “I
believe it, Brother,” said the young man earnestly. “But I see him now for the
first time after three years, and much fallen even from the man he was after he
got his injuries. I knew they were grave, the doctors had him in care between
life and death a long time, but when he came back to us at least he looked like
the man we knew and followed. He made his plans then to come home, I know, but
he had served already more years than he had promised, it was time to attend to
his lands and his life here at home. I made that voyage with him, he bore it
well. Now he has lost flesh, and there’s a languor about him when he moves a
hand. Tell me the truth of it, how bad is it with him?”
    “Where
did he ever get such crippling wounds?” asked Cadfael, considering scrupulously
how much he could tell, and guessing at how much this boy already knew, or at
least hazarded.
    “In
that last battle with Zenghi and the men of Mosul. He had Syrian doctors after
the battle.”
    That
might very well be why he survived so terrible a maiming, thought Cadfael, who
had learned much of his own craft from both Saracen and Syrian physicians.
Aloud he asked cautiously: “You have not seen his wounds? You don’t know their
whole import?”
    Surprisingly,
the seasoned crusader was struck silent for a moment, and a slow wave of blood
crept up under his golden tan, but he did not lower his eyes, very wide and
direct eyes of a profound blue. “I never saw his body, no more than when I
helped him into his harness. But I could not choose but understand what I can’t
claim I know. It could not be otherwise, or he would never have abandoned the
girl he was betrothed to. Why should he do so? A man of his word! He had
nothing left to give her but a position and a parcel of dower lands. He chose
rather to give her her freedom, and the residue of himself to God.”
    “There
was a girl?” said Cadfael.
    There
is a girl. And I am on my way to her now,” said Nicholas, as defiantly as if
his right had been challenged. “I carried the word to her and her father that
he was gone into the monastery at Hyde Mead. Now I am going to Lai to ask for
her hand myself, and he has given me his consent and blessing. She was a small
child when she was affianced to him, she has never seen him since. There is no reason
she should not