Brother Cadfael - 09 - Dead Man's Ransom by Ellis Peters

Author:Ellis Peters
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780754012764
Publisher: Chivers Press
Published: 1999-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

“I intend,” said Melicent, rather grandly because of the jolt the blunt question had given her, “to take the veil, and I would like it to be among the Benedictine sisters of Polesworth.”

“Sit down here beside me,” said Sister Magdalen comfortably, “and tell me what has turned you to this withdrawal, and whether your family are in your confidence and approve your choice. You are very young, and have the world before you…”

“I am done with the world,” said Melicent.

“Child, as long as you live and breathe you will not have done with this world. We within the pale live in the same world as all poor souls without. Come, you have your reasons for wishing to enter the conventual life. Sit and tell me, let me hear them. You are young and fair and nobly born, and you wish to abandon marriage, children, position, honours, all… Why?” Melicent, yielding, sank beside her on the bench, hugged her slenderness in the warmth of the brazier, and let fall the barriers of her bitterness to loose the flood. What she had vouchsafed to the preoccupied ears of Sybilla was no more than the thread on which this confession was strung. All that heady dream of minstrels’ love-tales poured out of her.

“Even if you are right in rejecting one man,” said Magdalen mildly, “you may be most unjust in rejecting all. Let alone the possibility that you mistake even this Elis ap Cynan. For until it is proved he lies, you must bear in mind he may be telling truth.”

“He said he would kill for me,” said Melicent, relentless, “he went to where my father lay, and my father is dead. There was no other known to have gone near. As for me, I have no doubts. I wish I had never seen his face, and I pray I never may again.”

“And you will not wait to make your peace with one betrayal, and still show your countenance to others who do not betray?”

“At least I do know,” said Melicent bitterly, “that God does not betray. And I am done with men.”

“Child,” said Sister Magdalen, sighing, “not until the day of your death will you have done with men. Bishops, abbots, priests, confessors, all are men, blood-brothers to the commonest of sinful mankind. While you live, there is no way of escape from your part in humanity.”

“I have finished, then, with love,” said Melicent, all the more vehemently because a morsel of her heart cried out to her that she lied.

“Oh, my dear soul, love is the one thing with which you must never dispense. Without it, what use are you to us or to any? Granted there are ways and ways of loving,” said the nun come late to her celibacy, recalling what at the time she had hardly recognised as deserving the title, but knew now for one aspect of love, “yet for all there is a warmth needed, and if that fire goes out it cannot be rekindled. Well,”

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