Chapter Twelve

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T he morning came bright, veiled and still, therising sun a disc of copper, the mill pond flat and dull like apewter dish. The ripples evoked by Madog’s oars did no morethan heave sluggishly and settle again with an oily heaviness, ashe brought his boat in from the river after Prime.

Brother Edmund had fussed and hesitated over the wholeenterprise, unhappy at allowing the risk to his patient, but unableto prevent, since the abbot had given his permission. By way of acompromise with his conscience, he saw to it that every possibleprovision was made for the comfort of Humilis on the journey, butabsented himself from the embarkation to busy himself about hisother duties. It was Cadfael and Fidelis who carried Humilis in asimple litter out through the wicket in the enclave wall which leddirectly to the mill, and down to the waterside. For all his longbones, he weighed hardly as much as a half-grown boy. Madog,shorter by head and shoulders, hoisted him bodily in his armswithout noticeable effort, and bade Fidelis first take his place onthe thwart, so that the sick man could be settled on brychansagainst the young man’s knees, and propped comfortably withpillows. Thus he might travel with as little fatigue as possible.Fidelis drew the thin shoulders gently back to rest against him,the tonsured head, bared to the morning air, pillowed on his knees.The ring of dark hair still showed vigorous and young where allelse was enfeebled, drained and old. Only the eyes had kindled tounusual brightness in the excitement of this venture, thefulfilment of a dear wish. After all the great endeavours, all thecrossing and recrossing of oceans and continents, all the battlesand victories and strivings, adventure at last was a voyage of afew miles up an English river, to revisit a modest manor in apeaceful English shire.

Happiness, thought Cadfael, watching him, consists in smallthings, not in great. It is the small things we remember, when timeand mortality close in, and by small landmarks we may make our wayat last humbly into another world.

He drew Madog aside for a moment before he let them go. The twoin the boat were already engrossed, the one in the open day, thesky above him, the green and brightness of the land outside thecloister, the other in his beloved charge. Neither was payingattention to anything else.

“Madog,” said Cadfael earnestly, “if anythinguntoward should come to your notice—if there should beanything strange, anything to astonish you… for God’ssake say no word to any other, only bring it to me.”

Madog looked sideways at him, blinking knowingly through thethorn-bushes of his brows, and said: “And you, I suppose,will be no way astonished! I know you! I can see as far into a darknight as most men. If there’s anything to tell, you shall bethe first, and from me the only one to hear it.”

He clapped Cadfael weightily on the shoulder, slipped loose themooring rope he had twined about a stooping willow stump, and setfoot with a boy’s agility on the side of the boat, at oncepushing it off from the shore and sliding down to the thwart in onemovement. The dull sheen of the water heaved and sank lethargicallybetween boat and bank. Madog took the oars, and pulled the boatround easily into the outflowing current, lax and sleepy in theheat like a human creature, but still alive and in languidmotion.

Cadfael stood to watch them go. The morning light, hazy thoughit was, shone on the faces of the two travellers as the boat swunground, the young face and the older face, the one hovering,solicitous and grave, the other upturned and pallidly smiling forpleasure in his chosen day. Both great-eyed, intent, perhaps even alittle intimidated by the enterprise they had undertaken. Then theboat came round, the oars dipped, and it was on Madog’ssquat, capable figure the eastern light fell.

There was a ferryman called Charon, Cadfael recalled from hisfew forays into the writings of antiquity, who had the care ofsouls bound out of this world. He, too, took pay from hispassengers, indeed he refused them if they had not their fare. Buthe did not provide rugs and pillows and cerecloth for the souls heferried across to eternity. Nor had he ever cared to seek andsalvage the forlorn bodies of those the river took as its prey.Madog of the Dead Boat was the better man.

There is always a degree of coolness on the water,however sultry the air and sunken the level of the stream. On thestill, metallic lustre of the Severn there was at least theillusion of a breeze, and a breath from below that seemed to temperthe glow from above, and Humilis could just reach a frail arm overthe side and dip his fingers in the familiar waters of the riverbeside which he had been born. Fidelis nursed him anxiously, hishands braced to steady the pillowed head, so that it lay in achalice of his cupped palms, quite at rest. Later he might seek towithdraw the touch of his hands, flesh against flesh, for the sakeof coolness, but as yet there was no need. He hung above theupturned, dreaming face, delicately shifting his hands as Humilisturned his head from side to side, trying to take in and recallboth banks as they slid by. Fidelis felt no cramp, no weariness,almost no grief. He had lived so long with one particular griefthat it had settled amicably into his being, a welcome and kindlyguest. Here in the boat, thus islanded together, he found also anequally profound and poignant joy.

They had circled the whole of the town in their early passage,for the Severn, upstream from the abbey, made a great moat aboutthe walls, turning the town almost into an island, but for the neckof land covered and protected by the castle. Once underMadog’s western bridge, that gave passage to the roads intoWales, the meanderings of the river grew tortuous, and turned firstone cheek, then the other, to the climbing, copper sun. Here therewas ample water still, though below its common summer level, andthe few shoals clung inshore, and Madog was familiar with all ofthem, and rowed strongly and leisurely, conscious of hismastery.

“All this stretch I remember well,” said Humilis,smiling towards the Frankwell shore, as the great bend north of thetown brought them back on their westward course. “This ispure pleasure to me, friend, but I fear it must be hard labour toyou.”

“No,” said Madog, taciturn in English, but able tohold his own, “no, this water is my living and my life. I gogladly.”

“Even in wintry weather?”

“In all weathers,” said Madog, and glanced upbriefly at the sky, which continued a brazen vault, cloudless buthazy.

Beyond the suburb of Frankwell, outside the town walls and theloop of the river, they were between wide stretches ofwater-meadows, still moist enough to be greener than the grass onhigh ground, and a little coolness came up from the reedy shores,as though the earth breathed here, that elsewhere seemed to holdits breath. For a while the banks rose on either side, and old,tall trees overhung the water, casting a leaden shade. Heavywillows leaned from the banks, half their roots exposed by theerosion of the soil. Then the ground levelled and opened out againon their right hand, while on the left the bank rose in low, sandyterraces below and a slope of grass above, leading up to hillocksof woodland.

“It is not far now,” said Humilis, his eyes fixedeagerly ahead. “I remember well. Nothing here ischanged.”

He had gathered a degree of strength from his pleasure in thisexpedition, and his voice was clear and calm, but there were beadsof sweat on his brow and lip. Fidelis wiped them away, and leanedover him to give him shade without touching.

“I am a child given a holiday,” said Humilis,smiling. “It’s fitting that I should spend it where Iwas a child. Life is a circle, Fidelis. We go outward from oursource for half our time, leave behind our kin and our familiarplaces, value far countries and new-made friends. But then at thefurthest point we begin the roundabout return, drawing in againtowards the place from which we came. When the circle joins, thereis nowhere beyond to go in this world, and it’s time todepart. There is nothing sad in that. It’s right andgood.”

He made to raise himself a little in the boat to look ahead, andFidelis lifted and supported him under the arms. “Yonder,behind the screen of trees, there is the manor. We’rehome!”

The soil was reddish and sandy here, and provided a long, narrowbeach, beyond which a slope of grass climbed, and a trodden pathwent up through the trees. Madog ran his boat into the sand,shipped his oars, and stepped ashore to haul the boat firmlyaground and moor it.

“Bide quiet here a while, and I’ll go and tell themat the house.”

The tenant of Salton was a man of fifty-five, and had notforgotten the boy, nine years or so his junior, who had been bornto his lord in this manor, and lived the first few years of hislife there. He came himself in haste down to the river, with a pairof servants and an improvised chair to carry Godfrid up to thehouse. It was not the paladin of the Kingdom of Jerusalem he camehurrying to welcome, but the boy he had taught to fish and swim,and lifted on to his first pony at three years old. The earlycompanionship had not lasted many years, and perhaps he had notgiven it a thought now for thirty years or more, being busymarrying and raising a family of his own, but the memories werereadily reawakened. And in spite of Madog’s dry warning, hechecked in sharp and shocked dismay at sight of the frail spectrethat awaited him in the boat. He was quick to recover and run tooffer hand and knee and service, but Humilis had seen.

“You find me much changed, Aelred,” he said,fetching the name out of the well of his memory by instinct when itwas needed. “We are none of us the boys we once were. I havenot worn well, but never let that trouble you. I’m wellcontent. And glad, most glad, to see you here again on this samesoil where I left you so long ago, and looking in such goodheart.”

“My lord Godfrid, you do me great honour,” saidAelred. “All here is at your service. My wife and my sonswill be proud.”

He lifted his guest bodily out of the boat, startled by thelight weight, and set him carefully in the sling chair. As a boy oftwelve, long ago, son of his lord’s steward, he had more thanonce carried the little boy in his arms. The elder brother,Marescot’s heir, had scorned, at ten, to play nursemaid to amere baby. Now the same arms carried the last wisp of a life, andfound it scarcely heavier than the child.

“I am not come to put you to any trouble,” saidHumilis, “but only to sit here a while with you, and hearyour news, and see how your fields prosper and your children grow.That will be great pleasure. And this is my good friend and helper,Brother Fidelis, who takes such good care of me that I lacknothing.”

Up the green slope and through the windbreak of trees theycarried their burden, and there in the fields of the demesne, smallbut well husbanded, was the manor-house of Salton in its ring fencelined with byres and barns. A low, modest house, no more than ahall and one small chamber over a stone undercroft, and a separatekitchen in the yard. There was a little orchard outside the fence,and a wooden bench in the cool under the apple-trees. There theyinstalled Humilis, with brychans and pillows to ease his sparselycovered bones, and ran busily back and forth in attendance on himwith ale, fruit, new-baked bread, every gift they could offer. Thewife came, fluttered and shy, dissembling startled pity as well asshe could. Two big sons came, the elder about thirty, the youngersurely achieved after one or two infant losses, for he was fifteenyears younger. The elder son brought a young wife to make herreverence beside him, a dark, elfin girl, already pregnant.

Under the apple-trees Fidelis sat silent in the grass, leavingthe bench for host and guest, while Aelred talked with suddenunwonted eloquence of days long past, and recounted all that hadhappened to him since those times. A quiet, settled, hard-workinglife, while crusaders roamed the world and came home childless,unfruitful and maimed. And Humilis listened with a faint, contentedsmile, his own voice used less and less, for he was tiring, andmuch of the stimulus of excitement was ebbing away. The sun was inthe zenith, still a hazed and angry sun, but in the west swags ofcloud were gathering and massing.

“Leave us now a little while,” said Humilis,“for I tire easily, and I would not wear you out, as well.Perhaps I may sleep. Fidelis will watch by me.”

When they were alone he drew breath deep, and was silent a longtime, but certainly not sleeping. He reached a lean hand to pluckFidelis up by the sleeve, and have him sit beside him, in the placeAelred had vacated. A soft, drowsy lowing came to them from thebyres, preoccupied as the humming of bees. The bees had had ahectic summer, frenziedly harvesting the flowers that bloomed solavishly but died so soon. There were three hives at the end of theorchard. There would be honey in store.

“Fidelis…” The voice that had begun to flagand fail him had recovered clarity and calm, only it sounded at alittle distance, as though he had already begun to depart.“My heart, I brought you here to be with you, you only, youof all the world, here where I began. No one but you should hearwhat I say now. I know you better than I know my own soul. I valueyou as I value my own soul and my hope of heaven. I love you aboveany creature on this earth. Oh, hush… still!”

The arm on which his hand lay so gently had jerked andstiffened, the mute throat had uttered some small sound like asob.

“God forbid I should cause you any manner of pain, even byspeaking too freely, but time is short. We both know it. And I havethings to say while there’s time. Fidelis… your sweetcompanionship has been the blessing, the bliss, the joy and comfortof these last years of mine. There is no way I can recompense youbut by loving you as you have loved me. And so I do. There can benothing beyond that. Remember it, when I am gone, and remember thatI go exulting, knowing you now as you know me, and loving as youhave loved me.”

Beside him Fidelis sat still and mute as stone, but stones donot weep, and Fidelis was weeping, for when Humilis stooped andkissed his cheek he tasted tears.

That was all that passed. And shortly thereafterMadog stood before them, saying practically that there was apossible storm brewing, and they had better either make up theirminds to stay where they were, or else get aboard at once and maketheir way briskly down with what current there was in this slackwater, back to Shrewsbury.

The day belonged to Humilis, and so did the decision, andHumilis looked up at the western sky, darkening into an ominoustwilight, looked at his companion, who sat like one straining toprolong a dream, remote and passive, and said, smiling, that theyshould go.

Aelred’s sons carried him down to the shore, Aelred liftedhim to his place in the bottom of the boat on his bed of rugs, withFidelis to prop and cherish him. The east was still sullenlybright, they launched towards the light. Behind them the loomingclouds multiplied with black and ominous speed, dangling likeoverfull udders of venomous milk. Under that darkness, Wales hadvanished, distance became a matter of three miles or four.Somewhere there to westward there had already been torrential rain.The first turgid impulse of storm-water, creeping insidiously,began to muddy the Severn under them, and push them purposefullydownstream.

They were well down the first reach between the water-meadowswhen the east suddenly darkened, almost instantly, to reflect backthe purple-black frown of the west, and suddenly the light diedinto dimness, and the rumblings of thunder began, coming from thewest at speed, like rolls of drums following them, or peals ofdeep-mouthed hounds on their trail in a hunt by demi-gods. Madog,untroubled but ready, rested on his oars to unfold the waxed clothhe used for covering goods in passage, and spread it over Humilisand across the body of the boat, making a canopy for his head,which Fidelis held over spread hands to prevent it from impedingthe sick man’s breathing.

Then the rain began, first great, heavy, single drops strikingthe stretched cloth loud as stones, then the heavens opened and letfall all the drowning accumulation of water of which the bleachedearth was creditor, a downpour that set the Severn seething as ifit boiled, and spat abrupt fountains of sand and soil from thebanks. Fidelis covered his head, and bent to sustain the cover overHumilis. Madog made out into the centre of the stream, for thelightning, though it followed the course of the river, would strikefirst and most readily at whatever stood tallest along thebanks.

Already soaked, he shook off water merrily as a fish, as much athome in it as beside it. He had been out in storms quite as suddenand drastic as this, and furious though it might be, he was assuredit would not last very long.

But somewhere far upstream they had received this baptismseveral hours ago, for flood water was coming down by this time ina great, foul brown wave, sweeping them before it. Madog ran withit, using his oars only to keep his boat well out in midstream. Andsteadily and viciously the torrent of rain fell, and the rolls andpeals and slashes of thunder hounded them down towards Shrewsbury,and the lightnings, hot on the heels of the thunder, flashed andflamed and criss-crossed their path, the only light in a howlingdarkness. They could barely see either bank except when thelightning flared and vanished, and the blindness after its passingmade the succeeding blaze even more blinding.

Wet and streaming as a seal, Fidelis shook off water on eitherside, and held the cover over Humilis with braced and achingforearms. His eyes were tight-shut against the deluge of the rain,he opened them only by burdened glimpses, peering through thedownpour. He did not know where they were, except by flamingvisions that forced light through his very eyelids, and caused himto blink the torment away. Such a flare showed him trees leaning,gaunt and sinister, magnified by the lurid light before they wereswallowed in the darkness. So they were already past the openwater-meadows, surely by now morasses dimpled and pitted with heavyrain. They were being driven fast be tween the trees, not far nowfrom possible shelter in Frankwell.

In spite of the covering cloth they were awash. Water swirled inthe bottom of the boat, cold and sluggish, a discomfort, but not adanger. They ran with the current, fouled and littered with leavesand the debris of branches, muddied and turgid and curling inperverse eddies. But very soon now they could come ashore inFrankwell and take cover in the nearest dwelling, hardly the worsefor all this turmoil and violence.

The thunder gathered and shrieked, one ear-bursting bellow. Thelightning struck in time with it, a blinding glare. Fidelis openedhis drowned eyes in shock at the blow, in time to see the thickest,oldest, most misshapen willow on the left bank leap, split asunderin flame, wrench out half its roots from the slithering, soddenshore, and burst into a tremendous blossom of fire, hurled intomidstream over them, and blazing as it fell.

Madog flung himself forward over Humilis in the shell of theboat. Like a bolt from a mangonel the shattered tree crashed downupon the bow of the skiff, smashed through its sides and split itapart like a cracked egg. Trunk and boat and cargo went down deeptogether into the murky waters. The fire died in an immensehissing. Everything was dark, everything suddenly cold and inmotion and heavier than lead, dragging body and soul down among theweed and debris of storm, turning and turning and drifting fast,drawn irresistibly towards the ease and languor of death.

Fidelis fought and kicked his way upward withbursting heart, against the comforting persuasion of despair, thecramping, crippling weight of his habit, and the swirling andbattering of drifting branches and tangling weeds. He came to thesurface and drew deep breath, clutching at leaves that slid throughhis fingers, and fastening greedily on a branch that held fast, andsupported him with his head above water. Gasping, he shook offwater and opened his eyes upon howling darkness. A cage ofshattered branches surrounded and held him. Torn but stilltenacious roots anchored the willow, heaving and plunging, againstthe surging current. A brychan from the boat wound itself about hisarm like a snake, and almost tore him from his hold. He draggedhimself along the branch, peering and straining after any glimpseof a floating hand, a pale face, phantom-like in all that chaoticgloom.

A fold of black cloth coiled past, driven through the threshingleaves. The end of a sleeve surfaced, a pallid hand trailed by andwent under again. Fidelis loosed his hold, and launched himselfafter it, clear of the tree, diving beneath the trammellingbranches. The hem of the habit slid through his fingers, but he gota grip on the billowing folds of the cowl, and struck out towardsthe Frankwell shore to escape the trailing wreckage of the willow.Clinging desperately, he shifted to a better hold, holding the laxbody of Humilis above him. Once they went down together. Then Madogwas beside them, hoisting the weight of the unconscious body fromarms that could not have sustained it longer.

Fidelis drifted for a moment on the edge of acceptance, in anexhaustion which rendered the idea of death perilously attractive.Better by far to let go, abandon struggle, go wherever the currentmight take him.

And the current took him and stranded him quite gently in themuddied grass of the shore, and laid him face-down beside the bodyof Brother Humilis, over which Madog of the Dead Boat was labouringall in vain.

The rain slackened suddenly, briefly, the wind,which had the whistle of anguish on its driving breath, subsidedfor an instant, and the demons of thunder rolled and rumbled awaydownstream, leaving a breath of utter silence and almost stillness,between frenzies. And piercing through the lull, a great scream ofdeprivation and loss and grief shrilled aloft over Severn,startling the hunched and silent birds out of the bushes, andechoing down the flood in a long ululation from bank to bank,crying a bereavement beyond remedy.