The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [79]
‘You might know, though, mightn’t you?’
She was conscious of the smell of his habit. There was a scent of wax candles in the damp wool. She could smell him, too. A nice smell.
‘He could be the other end of England by now.’ She sighed. This, too, was true. He could have been.
Adam looked thoughtful. When he asked a question the lines on his broad forehead wrinkled. But when he was thinking he tilted his head slightly back and the lines smoothed in a way that was pleasing.
‘You said to me that morning at the abbey’, he said carefully, ‘that it might have been an accident – that he might not have meant to strike Brother Matthew.’ She was silent. ‘If so, I think he should come and say so.’
‘He’ll never return here, I think,’ she answered sadly. ‘He’ll have to walk to the ends of the earth.’ She wasn’t sure this satisfied the monk.
And then she did something she had never done before.
How does a woman let a man know that she desires him? It can be done with a smile, a look, a gesture. But these outward and visible signs would have been off-putting to a monk like Brother Adam. So she just stood in front of him and sent out that simple, primitive signal: the heat from her body. And Brother Adam felt it – how could he not? – that invisible, unmistakable, radiating, warmth that came from her stomach to his. Then she smiled and he turned away, confused.
Why did she do it? She was an honest woman. She didn’t flirt. She acted from a primordial instinct. She wanted to suggest an intimacy and attraction that, even if it shocked him, would divert the monk’s attention. She had to lay a false trail to protect her little brother.
Moments later, Brother Adam left the barn.
The storm did not abate. They put charcoal on the brazier for a second night. Once again, after the evening meal, Brother Adam led them all in prayer. But some hours later, alone with her husband and only the glow from the charcoal showing in the great barn’s cavernous dark, she allowed herself a faintly ironic smile when, as Tom raised his stocky haunches over her, she closed her eyes and thought secretly of Brother Adam.
It was deep in the night, about the time of the night office, when Brother Adam awoke from a fitful sleep and became aware that the moaning of the wind outside had ceased and that all around the grange was quiet.
Rising from the bench on which he had been sleeping, he went through the psalm and prayers by himself in a whisper. Then, still not satisfied, he whispered a Pater Noster. Pater Noster, qui es in coelis: Our Father, who art in Heaven …
Amen. The night. The time when the silent voice of God’s universe descended upon him. Why, then, should he feel so disquieted? He got up, wanted to pace about but could hardly do so without waking the lay brothers. He lay down again.
The woman. She was asleep, no doubt, with her husband in the barn. A good woman, probably, in her way. Like all the peasant women, she had slightly red cheeks and smelled of the farm. He closed his eyes. Her warmth. He had never felt such a thing before. He tried to sleep. The Furzey fellow. Had he made love to her in the barn this night? Might they, possibly, be doing so now, even as he lay there in the silence? Was the cart maker enveloped in that warmth?
He opened his eyes. Dear God, what was he thinking? And why? Why should his mind be dwelling on her? Then he sighed. He should have known better. It was just the devil, up to his usual tricks: a little test of faith; a new one.
Was the devil in this woman, then? Of course. The devil had been in all women from the first. When she had stood in front of him like that this afternoon he should perhaps have spoken severely to her. But it was the devil who was using her, really; just as he was using her image now to distract him. He closed his eyes again.
He did not sleep.
The morning was sparkling. The wind had passed