delight, looking round her with bright, inquisitive eyes. The maid, submissive
and still, scarcely turned her head, but her eyes ranged from left to right,
and a faint colour touched life into her cheeks. The many faint, sweet scents
made her nostrils quiver, and her lips curve just perceptibly with pleasure.
Curious
as a cat, the lady probed into every sack and jar and box, peered at mortars
and bottles, and asked a hundred questions in a breath.
“And
this is rosemary, these little dried needles? And in this great sack is it grain?”
She plunged her hands wrist-deep inside the neck of it, and the hut was filled
with sweetness. “Lavender? Such a great harvest of it? Do you, then, prepare
perfumes for us women?”
“Lavender
has other good properties,” said Cadfael. He was filling a small vial with a
clear syrup he made from eastern poppies, a legacy of his crusading years. “It
is helpful for all disorders that trouble the head and spirit, and its scent is
calming. I’ll give you a little pillow filled with that and other herbs, that shall
help to bring you sleep. But this draught will ensure it. You may take all that
I give you here, and get no harm, only a good night’s rest.”
She
had been playing inquisitively with a pile of small clay dishes he kept by his
work-bench, rough dishes in which the fine seeds sifted from fruiting plants
could be spread to dry out; but she came at once to gaze eagerly at the modest
vial he presented to her. “Is it enough? It takes much to give me sleep.”
“This,”
he assured her patiently, “would bring sleep to a strong man. But it will not
harm even a delicate lady like you.”
She
took it in her hand with a small, sleek smile of satisfaction. “Then I thank
you indeed! I will make a gift shall I? to your almoner in requital. Elfgiva,
you bring the little pillow. I shall breathe it all night long. It should
sweeten dreams.”
So
her name was Elfgiva. A Norse name. She had Norse eyes, as he had already
noted, blue as ice, and pale, fine skin worn finer and whiter by weariness. All
this time she had noted everything that passed, motionless, and never said
word. Was she older, or younger, than her lady? There was no guessing. The one
was so clamant, and the other so still.
He
put out his lamp and closed the door, and led them back to the great court just
in time to take leave of them and still be prompt for Compline. Clearly the
lady had no intention of attending. As for the lord, he was just being helped
away from the abbot’s lodging, his grooms supporting him one on either side,
though as yet he was not gravely drunk. They headed for the guest-hall at an
easy roll. No doubt only the hour of Compline had concluded the drawn-out
supper, probably to the abbot’s considerable relief. He was no drinker, and
could have very little in common with Hamo FitzHamon. Apart, of course, from a
deep devotion to the altar of St. Mary.
The
lady and her maid had already vanished within the guest-hall. The younger groom
carried in his free hand a large jug, full, to judge by the way he held it. The
young wife could drain her draught and clutch her herbal pillow with
confidence; the drinking was not yet at an end, and her sleep would be solitary
and untroubled. Brother Cadfael went to Compline mildly sad, and obscurely
comforted.
Only
when service was ended, and the brothers on the way to their beds, did he
remember that he had left his flask of poppy syrup unstoppered. Not that it
would come to any harm in the frosty night, but his sense of fitness drove him
to go and remedy the omission before he slept.
His
sandalled feet, muffled in strips of woollen cloth for warmth and safety on the
frozen paths, made his coming quite silent, and he was already reaching out a
hand to the latch of the door, but not yet touching, when he was brought up
short and still by the murmur of voices within. Soft, whispering, dreamy voices
that
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