Brother Cadfael 19: The Holy Thief Read Free Page B

and a brother of its brothers I no longer am. Abbot Walter sent me back here, very fairly, to consider my vocation, which he knew to be dubious, and committed my probation to Abbot Radulfus, who has absolved me. But come within, and we can confer as friends. I will listen reverently, Father, and respect all you may have to say."
    And so he would, for he was a young man brought up to observe all the duties of youth towards his elders; all the more as a younger son with no inheritance and his own way to make, and therefore all the greater need to please those who had power and authority, and could advance his career. He would listen and defer, but he would not be shifted. Nor did he need any friendly witness to support his side of the case, and why should Herluin's side of it be weighted even by a devout and silent young acolyte, imposing on an ex-brother by his very presence a duty he no longer owed, and had undertaken mistakenly and for the wrong reasons in the first place?
    "You will wish to confer strictly in private," said Cadfael, following the sub-prior up the stone steps to the hall door. "With your leave, Sulien, this young brother and I will look in upon your mother. If, of course, she is well enough and willing to receive visits."
    "Yours, always!' said Sulien, with a brief, flashing smile over his shoulder. "And a new face will refresh her. You know how she views life and the world now, very peacefully."
    It had not always been so. Donata Blount had suffered years of some consuming and incurable disease that devoured her substance slowly and with intense pain. Only with the last stages of her bodily weakness had she almost outlived pain itself, and grown reconciled to the world she was leaving as she drew nearer to the door opening upon another.
    "It will be very soon," said Sulien simply. He halted in the high dim hall. "Father Herluin, be pleased to enter the solar with me, and I will send for some refreshment for you. My brother is at the farm. I am sorry he is not here to greet you, but we had no prior word. You will excuse him. If your errand is to me, it may be better so." And to Cadfael: "Go in to my mother's chamber. I know she is awake, and never doubt but you are always welcome to her."
    The Lady Donata, confined to her bed at last, lay propped on pillows in her small bedchamber, her window unshuttered, a little brazier burning in one corner on the bare stone of the floor. She was nothing but fine bones and translucent skin, the hands quiet on her coverlet like fallen petals of lilies in their transparent emaciation. Her face was honed into a fragile mask of silver bones, and the deep pits of her eyes were filled with ice-blue shadow round the startling, imperishable beauty of the eyes themselves, still clear and intelligent, and the darkest and most luminous of blues. The spirit encased in this frail shell was still alert, indomitable, and sharply interested in the world about her, without any fear of leaving it, or any reluctance to depart.
    She looked up at her visitors, and greeted Cadfael in a low voice that had lost none of its quality. "Brother Cadfael, this is a pleasure! I've hardly seen you through the winter. I should not have liked to leave without your valediction."
    "You could have sent for me," he said, and went to set a stool by her bedside. "I am biddable. And Radulfus would not refuse you."
    "He came himself," said Donata, "to take my confession at Christmas. I am an adopted ewe of his flock. He does not forget me."
    "And how do your affairs stand?" he asked, studying the serenity of her face. There was never need to go roundabout with Donata, she understood him as he meant, and preferred it so.
    "In the matter of life and death," she said, "excellently well. In the matter of pain... I have gone beyond pain, there is not enough of me to feel it, or regard it if it could make itself felt. I take that as the sign I've looked for." She spoke without apprehension or regret, or even impatience