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workshop, to sit down comfortably with Anselm for a quarter of an hour, until
the Vesper bell, and talk and perhaps argue about music. But the memory of the
dumb youth, so kindly sent out to his brief pleasure in the orchard among his
peers, stirred in him as he entered the cloister, and the gaunt visage of
Brother Humilis rose before him, self-contained, uncomplaining, proudly
solitary. Or should it be, rather, humbly solitary? That was the quality he had
claimed for himself and by which he desired to be accepted. A large claim, for
one so celebrated. There was not a soul within here now who did not know his
reputation. If he longed to escape it, and be as mute as his servitor, he had
been cruelly thwarted.
    Cadfael
veered from his intent, and turned instead along the north walk of the
cloister, where the carrels of the scrip scriptorium basked in the sun, even at
this hour. Humilis had been given a study midway, where the light would fall
earliest and linger longest. It was quiet there, the soft tones of Anselm’s
organetto seemed very distant and hushed. The grass of the open garth was
blanched and dry, in spite of daily watering.
    “Brother
Humilis…” said Cadfael softly, at the opening of the carrel.
    The
leaf of parchment was pushed askew on the desk, a small pot of gold had spilled
drops along the paving as it rolled. Brother Humilis lay forward over his desk
with his right arm flung up to hold by the wood, and his left hand gripped hard
into his groin, the wrist braced to press hard into his side. His head lay with
the left cheek on his work, smeared with the blue and the scarlet, and his eyes
were shut, but clenched shut, upon the controlled awareness of pain. He had not
uttered a sound. If he had, those close by would have heard him. What he had,
he had contained. So he would still.
    Cadfael
took him gently about the body, pinning the sustaining arm where it rested. The
blue-veined eyelids lifted in their high vaults, and eyes brilliant and
intelligent behind their veils of pain peered up into his face. “Brother
Cadfael…?”
    “Lie
still a moment yet,” said Cadfael. I’ll fetch Edmund-Brother Infirmarer…”
    “No!
Brother, get me hence… to my bed… This will pass… it is not new. Only softly,
softly help me away! I would not be a show…”
    It
was quicker and more private to help him up the night stairs from the church to
his own cell in the dortoir, rather than across the great court to the
infimary, and that was what he earnestly desired, that there might be no
general alarm and fuss about him. He rose more by strength of will than any
physical force, and with Cadfael’s sturdy arm about him, and his own arm
leaning heavily round Cadfael’s shoulders, they passed unnoticed into the cool
gloom of the church and slowly climbed the staircase. Stretched on his own bed,
Humilis submitted himself with a bleakly patient smile to Cadfael’s care, and
made no ado when Cadfael stripped him of his habit, and uncovered the oblique
stain of mingled blood and pus that slanted across the left hip of his linen
drawers and down into the groin.
    “It
breaks,” said the calm thread of a voice from the pillow. “Now and then it
suppurates — I know. The long ride… Pardon brother! I know the stench offends…”
    “I
must bring Edmund,” said Cadfael, unloosing the drawstring and freeing the
shirt. He did not yet uncover what lay beneath. “Brother Infirmarer must know.”
    “Yes…
But no other! What need for more?”
    “Except
Brother Fidelis? Does he know all?”
    “Yes,
all!” said Humilis, and faintly and fondly smiled. “We need not fear him, even
if he could speak he would not, but there’s nothing of what ails me he does not
know. Let him rest until Vespers is over.”
    Cadfael
left him lying with closed eyes, a little eased, for the lines of his face had
relaxed from their tight grimace of pain, and went down to find Brother Edmund,