The Raven in the Foregate (16 page)

The house was low and narrow, but sturdy, and the dark
passage in which it stood braced against a taller dwelling looked crisp and
clean in the hard frost, though in moist, mild weather it might have been an
odorous hole. Cadfael rapped at the door, and for immediate reassurance called
out loudly: “Brother Cadfael from the abbey, mistress. Cynric said you need me
for the child.”

Whether it was his own name or Cynric’s that made him
welcome there was no knowing, but instantly there was a stir of movement
within, a baby howled fretfully, probably at being laid down in haste, and then
the door was opened wide, and from half-darkness a woman beckoned him within,
and made haste to close the door after him against the cold.

This one small room was all the house, and its only
inlet for light or outlet for smoke was a vent in the roof. In clement weather
the door would always be open from dawn to dusk, but frost had closed it, and
the dwelling was lit only by a small oil lamp and the dim but steady glow of a
fire penned in an iron cage on a flat stone under the vent. But blessedly
someone had supplied charcoal for the widow’s needs, and there was a mild fume
in the nostrils here but little smoke. Furnishings were few, a low bench-bed in
a corner, a few pots on the firestone, a rough, small table. Cadfael took a
little time to accustom his eyes to the dim light, and the shapes of things
emerged gradually. The woman stood by him, waiting, and like all else here,
grew steadily out of the gloom, a perceptible human being. The cradle, the
central concern of this house, was placed in the most sheltered corner, where
the warmth of the fire could come, but not the draught from door or vent. And
the child within was wailing indignantly within its wrappings, half-asleep but
unable by reason of discomfort to fall deeper into peace.

“I brought an end of candle with me,” said Cadfael,
taking in everything about him without haste. “I thought we might need more
light. With your leave!” He took it out from his scrip, tilted the wick into
the small flame of the lamp in its clay saucer, and stood the stump upon the
corner of the table, where it shed light closely upon the cradle. It was a
broad-based end discarded from one of the prickets in the wall brackets of the
church, he found them useful for carrying on his errands because they would
stand solidly on any flat surface, and run no risk of being overturned. Among
flimsy wooden cottages there was need of such care. This dwelling, poor as it
was, had been more solidly built than many.

“They keep you in charcoal?” asked Cadfael, turning to
the woman, who stood quite still, gazing at him with fixed and illusionless
eyes.

“My man who’s dead was a forester in Eyton. The
abbey’s man there remembers me. He brings me wood, as well, the dead twigs and
small chippings for kindling.”

“That’s well,” said Cadfael. “So young a babe needs to
be kept warm. Now you tell me, what’s her trouble?”

She was telling him herself, in small, fretful wails
from her cradle, but she was well wrapped and clean, and had a healthy,
well-nourished voice with which to complain.

“Three days now she’s sickened on her milk, and cries
with the wind inside. But I’ve kept her warm, and she’s taken no chill. If my
poor girl had lived this chit would have been at her breast, not sipping from a
spoon or my fingers, but she’s gone, and left this one to me, all I have now,
and I’ll do anything to keep her safe.”

“She’s been feeding well enough, by the look of her,”
said Cadfael, stooping over the whimpering child. “How old is she now? Six
weeks is it, or seven? She’s big and bonny for that age.”

The small, contorted face, all wailing mouth and
tight-shut eyes screwed up with annoyance, was round and clear-skinned, though
red now with exertion and anger. She had abundant, fine hair of a bright autumn
brown, and inclined to curl.

“Feed well, yes, indeed she did, until this upset. A
greedy-gut, even. I was proud of her.”

And kept plying her too long, thought Cadfael, and she
without the sense yet to know when she had enough. No great mystery here.

“That’s a part of her trouble, you’ll find. Give her
only a little at a time, and often, and put in the milk a few drops of the
cordial I’ll leave with you. Three or four drops will be enough. Get me a small
spoon, and she shall have a proper dose of it now to soothe her.”

The widow brought him a little horn spoon, and he
unstoppered the glass bottle he had brought, moistened the tip of a finger at
its lip, and touched it to the lower lip of the baby’s angry mouth. In an
instant the howling broke off short, and the contorted countenance resumed a
human shape, and even a human expression of wonder and surprise. The mouth
closed, small moist lips folding on an unexpected sweetness; and miraculously
this became a mouth too shapely and delicate for a baby of seven weeks, with a
distant promise of beauty. The angry red faded slowly to leave the round cheeks
flushed with rose, and Eluned’s daughter opened great eyes of a blue almost as
dark as the night sky, and smiled an aware, responsive smile, too old for her
few weeks of life. True, she wrinkled her face and uttered a warning wail the
next moment, but the far-off vision of loveliness remained.

“The creature!” said her grandmother, ruefully fond.
“She likes it!”

Cadfael half-filled the little spoon, touched it
gently to the baby’s lower lip, and instantly her mouth opened, willing to suck
in the offering. It went down fairly tidily, leaving only a gloss upon the
relaxed lips. She gazed upward in silence for a moment, from those eyes that devoured
half her face under the rounded brow and fluff of auburn hair. Then she turned
her cheek a little into the flat pillow under her, belched resoundingly, and
lay quiescent with lids half-closed, her infinitesimal fingers curled into
small, easy fists under her chin.

“Nothing amiss with her that need cause you any
worry,” said Cadfael, re-stoppering the bottle. “If she wakes and cries in the
night, and is again in pain, you can give her a little of this in the spoon, as
I did. But I think she’ll sleep. Give her somewhat less food at a time than
you’ve been giving, and put three or four drops of this in the milk, and we’ll
see how she fares in a few days more.”

“What is in it?” asked the widow, looking curiously at
the bottle in her hand.

“There’s dill, fennel, mint, just a morsel of poppy
juice… and honey to make it agreeable to the taste. Put it somewhere safe and
use it as I’ve said. If she’s again troubled this way, give her the dose you
saw me give. If she does well enough without it, then spare it but for the drop
or two in her food. Medicines are of more effect if used only when there’s
need.”

He blew out the end of candle he had brought, leaving
it to cool and congeal, for it had still an hour or so of burning left in it,
and could serve again in the same office. On the instant he was sorry he had
diminished the light in the room so soon, for only now had he leisure to look
at the woman. This was the widowed mother of the girl who had been shut out of
the church as an irredeemable sinner, whose very penitence and confession were
not to be trusted, and therefore could justifiably be rejected. Out of this
small, dark dwelling that disordered beauty had blossomed, borne fruit, and
died.

The mother must herself have been comely, some years
ago, she had still fine features, though worn and lined now in shapes of
discouragement, and her greying hair, drawn back austerely from her face, was
still abundant, and bore the shadowy richness of its former red-brown
colouring. There was no saying whether the dark, hollow eyes that studied her
grandchild with such a bitter burden of love were dark blue, but they well
might have been. She was probably barely forty. Cadfael had seen her about the
Foregate now and then, but never before paid close attention to her.

“A fine babe you have there,” said Cadfael. “She may
well grow into a beautiful child.”

“Better she should be plain as any drab,” said the
widow with abrupt passion, than take after her mother’s beauty, and go the same
way. You do know whose child she is? Everyone knows it!”

“No fault of this little one she left behind,” said
Cadfael. “I hope the world will treat her better than it treated her mother.”

“It was not the world that cast her off,” said Nest,
“but the church. She could have lived under the world’s malice, but not when
the priest shut her out of the church.”

“Did her worship truly mean so much to her,” asked
Cadfael gravely, that she could not live excommunicate?”

“Truly it did. You never knew her! As wild and rash as
she was beautiful, but such a bright, kind, warm creature to have about the
house, and for all her wildness she was easily hurt. She who never could bear
to wound any other creature was open to wounds herself. But for the thing she
could not help, no one could have been a better and sweeter daughter to me. You
can’t know how it was! She could not refuse to anyone whatever he asked of her,
if it was in her power to give it. And the men found it out, and having no
shame—for sin was something she spoke of without understanding—she could not say
no to men, either. She would go with a man because he was melancholy, or
because he begged her, or because he had been blamed or beaten unjustly and was
aggrieved at the world.

And then it would come over her that this might indeed
be sin, as Father Adam had told her, though she could not see why. And then she
went flying to confession, in tears, and promised amendment, and meant it, too.
Father Adam was gentle with her, seeing she was not like other young women. He
always spoke her kindly and fair, and gave her light penance, and never refused
her absolution. Always she promised to amend, but then she forgot for some
boy’s light tongue or dark eyes, and sinned again, and again confessed and was
shriven. She couldn’t keep from men, but neither could she live without the
blessing and comfort of the church. When the door was shut in her face she went
solitary away, and solitary she died. And for all she was a torment to me,
living, she was a joy, too, and now I have only torment, and no joy—but for
this fearful joy here in the cradle. Look, she’s asleep!”

“Do you know,” asked Cadfael, brooding, “who fathered
the child?”

Nest shook her head, and a faint, dry smile plucked at
her lips. “No. As soon as she understood it might bring blame on him, whoever
he was, she kept him a secret even from me. If, indeed, she knew herself which
one of them had quickened her! Yet I think she did know. She was neither mad
nor dull of understanding. She was brighter than most, but for the part of
caution that was left out of her. She might have confronted the man to his
face, but she would never betray him to the black priest. Oh, he asked her! He
threatened her, he raged at her, but she said that for her sins she would
answer and do penance, but another man’s sins were his own, and so must his
confession be.”

A good answer! Cadfael acknowledged it with a nod and
a sigh.

The candle was cold and set. He restored it to his
scrip, and turned to take his leave. “Well, if she’s fretful again and you need
me, let me know of it by Cynric, or leave word at the gatehouse, and I’ll come.
But I think you’ll find the cordial will serve your turn.” He looked back for a
second with his hand on the latch of the door. “What have you named her? Eluned,
for her mother?”

“No,” said the widow. “It was Eluned chose her name.
Praise God, it was Father Adam who christened her, before he fell ill and died.
She’s called Winifred.”

Cadfael walked back along the Foregate with that last
echo still ringing in his mind. The daughter of the outcast and excommunicate,
it seemed, was named for the town’s own saint, witness enough to the truth of
Eluned’s undisciplined devotion. And doubtless Saint Winifred would know where
to find and watch over both the living child and the dead mother, whom the
parish of Saint Chad, more prodigally merciful than Father Ailnoth, had buried
decently, observing a benevolent Christian doubt concerning the circumstances
of her unwitnessed death. A strong strain, these Welsh women married into
Shropshire families. He knew nothing of the English forester who had been
husband to the widow Nest, but surely it must be she who had handed on to her
self-doomed child the fierce beauty that had been her downfall, and the same
face, in prophetic vision, waited for the infant Winifred in her cradle.
Perhaps the choice of her venerated name had been a brave gesture to protect a
creature otherwise orphaned and unprotected, a waif in an alien world where too
prodigal a union of beauty and generosity brought only grief.

Now there, in the cottage he had left behind, was one
being who had the best of all reasons to hate Ailnoth, and might have killed
him if a thought could have done it, but was hardly likely to follow him
through the winter night and strike him down from behind, much less roll him,
stunned, into the pool. She had too powerful a lodestone to keep her watchful
and protective at home. But the vengeful fire in her might drive a man to do it
for her sake, if she had so close and resolute a friend. Among all those men
who had taken comfort from the world’s spite in Eluned’s arms, might there not
be more than one ready and willing? And in particular, if he knew what seed he
had sown, the father of the infant Winifred.