Brother Cadfael 10: The Pilgrim of Hate

spare?" The last words ached with his uncomprehending wonder.
    "He did not find you worth the killing," said Cadfael, as gently and mercifully as he could, but honestly. "Now he goes in anguish and shame because he spent so much time on you that might have been better spent. It is a matter of values. Study to learn what is worth and what is not, and you may come to understand him."
    "I am a dead man while I live," said Ciaran, writhing, "without master, without friends, without a cause..."
    "All three you may find, if you seek. Go where you were sent, bear what you were condemned to bear, and look for the meaning," said Cadfael. "For so must we all."
    He turned away with a sigh. No way of knowing how much good words might do, or the lessons of life, no telling whether any trace of compunction moved in Ciaran's bludgeoned mind, or whether all his feeling was still for himself. Cadfael felt himself suddenly very tired. He looked at Hugh with a somewhat lopsided smile. "I wish I were home. What now, Hugh? Can we go?"
    Hugh stood looking down with a frown at the confessed murderer, sunken in the grass like a broken-backed serpent, submissive, tear-stained, nursing minor injuries. A piteous spectacle, though pity might be misplaced. Yet he was, after all, no more than twenty-five or so years old, able-bodied, well-clothed, strong, his continued journey might be painful and arduous, but it was not beyond his powers, and he had his bishop's ring still, effective wherever law held. These three footpads now tethered fast and under guard would trouble his going no more. Ciaran would surely reach his journey's end safely, however long it might take him. Not the journey's end of his false story, a blessed death in Aberdaron and burial among the saints of Ynys Ennli, but a return to his native place, and a life beginning afresh. He might even be changed. He might well adhere to his hard terms all the way to Caergybi, where Irish ships plied, even as far as Dublin, even to his ransomed life's end. How can you tell?
    "Make your own way from here," said Hugh, "as well as you may. You need fear nothing now from footpads here, and the border is not far. What you have to fear from God, take up with God."
    He turned his back, with so decisive a movement that his men recognised the sign that all was over, and stirred willingly about the captives and the horses.
    "And those two?" asked Hugh. "Had I not better leave a man behind on the track there, with a spare horse for Luc? He followed his quarry afoot, but no need for him to foot it back. Or ought I to send men after them?"
    "No need for that," said Cadfael with certainty. "Olivier will manage all. They'll come home together."
    He had no qualms at all, he was beginning to relax into the warmth of content. The evil he had dreaded had been averted, however narrowly, at whatever cost. Olivier would find his stray, bear with him, follow if he tried to avoid, wrung and ravaged as he was, with the sole obsessive purpose of his life for so long ripped away from him, and within him only the aching emptiness where that consuming passion had been. Into that barren void Olivier would win his way, and warm the ravished heart to make it habitable for another love. There was the most comforting of messages to bring from Juliana Bossard, the promise regained of a home and a welcome. There was a future. How had Matthew-Luc seen his future when he emptied his purse of the last coin at the abbey, before taking up the pursuit of his enemy? Surely he had been contemplating the end of the person he had hitherto been, a total ending, beyond which he could not see. Now he was young again, there was a life before him, it needed only a little time to make him whole again.
    Olivier would bring him back to the abbey, when the worst desolation was over. For Olivier had promised that he would not leave without spending some time leisurely with Cadfael, and upon Olivier's promise the heart could rest secure.
    As for the other... Cadfael looked back from the saddle, after they had mounted, and saw the last of Ciaran, still on his knees under the tree, where they had left him. His face was turned to them, but his eyes seemed to be closed, and his hands were wrung tightly together before his breast. He might have been praying, he might have been simply experiencing with every particle of his flesh the life that had been left to him. When we are all gone, thought Cadfael, he will fall asleep there where he lies, he can