His manner was so urgent and his demand so incisive that Cadfael shrugged off immediate enquiry. 'As you and he wish, then. Come!'
They were admitted to the abbot's parlour without question. No doubt Radulfus had been expecting Sulien to seek an audience as soon as Mass was over. If it surprised him to find the boy bringing a sponsor with him, whether as advocate to defend his decision, or in mere meticulous duty as the mentor to whom he had been assigned in his probation, he did not allow it to show in face or voice.
'Well, my son? I hope you found all well at Longner? Has it helped you to find your way?'
'Yes, Father.' Sulien stood before him a little stiffly, his direct stare very bright and solemn in a pale face. 'I come to ask your permission to leave the Order and go back to the world.'
'That is your considered choice?' said the abbot in the same mild voice. 'This time you are in no doubt?'
'No doubt, Father. I was at fault when I asked admission. I know that now. I left duties behind, to go in search of my own peace. You said, Father, that this must be my own decision.'
'I say it still,' said the abbot. 'You will hear no reproach from me. You are still young, but a good year older than when you sought refuge within the cloister, and I think wiser. It is far better to do whole-hearted service in another field than remain half-hearted and doubting within the Order. I see you did not yet put off the habit,' he said, and smiled.
'No, Father!' Sulien's stiff young dignity was a little affronted at the suggestion. 'How could I, until I have your leave? Until you release me I am not free.'
'I do release you. I would have been glad of you, if you had chosen to stay, but I believe that for you it is better as it is, and the world may yet be glad of you. Go, with my leave and blessing, and serve where your heart is.'
He had turned a little towards his desk, where more mundane matters waited for his attention, conceiving that the audience was over, though without any sign of haste or dismissal: but Sulien held his ground, and the intensity of his gaze checked the abbot's movement, and made him look again, and more sharply, at the son he had just set free.
'There is something more you have to ask of us? Our prayers you shall certainly have.'
'Father,' said Sulien, the old address coming naturally to his lips, 'now that my own trouble is over, I find I have blundered into a great web of other men's troubles. At Longner my brother has told me what was spared me here, whether by chance or design. I have learned that when ploughing began on the field my father granted to Haughmond last year, and Haughmond exchanged for more convenient land with this house two months ago now, the coulter turned up a woman's body, buried there some while since. But not so long since that the manner, the time, the cause of her death can go unquestioned. They are saying everywhere that this was Brother Ruald's wife, whom he left to enter the Order.'
'It may be said everywhere,' the abbot agreed, fronting the young man with a grave face and drawn brows, 'but it is not known anywhere. There is no man can say who she was, no way of knowing, as yet, how she came by her death.'
'But that is not what is being said and believed outside these walls,' Sulien maintained sturdily. 'And once so terrible a find was made known, how could any man's mind escape the immediate thought? A woman found where formerly a woman vanished, leaving no word behind! What else was any man to think but that this was one