Free Sanctuary Sparrow by Ellis Peters Page B

the gallows and the noose out of his mind for the moment. “You’ll remember her—a girl named Rannilt.”
    Liliwin’s face at once paled and brightened. It was the first smile Cadfael had yet seen from him, and even now tentative, humble, frightened to reach for anything desired, for fear it should vanish like melting snow as he clutched it.
    “You’ve seen her? Talked to her? And she does not believe what they all say of me?”
    “Not a word of it! She affirms—she knows—you never did violence nor theft in that house. If all the tongues in Shrewsbury cried out against you, she would still stand her ground and speak for you.”
    Liliwin sat cradling his broken rebec, as gently and shyly as if he clasped a sweetheart indeed. His faint, frightened smile shone in the dimming light within the cloister.
    “She is the first girl who ever looked kindly at me. You won’t have heard her sing—such a small, sweet voice, like a reed. We ate in the kitchen together. It was the best hour of my life, I never thought… And it’s true? Rannilt believes in me?”

 
     
    Chapter Four
     
    Sunday
     
    LILIWIN FOLDED AWAY HIS BRYCHANS and made himself presentable before Prime on the sabbath, determined to cause as little disruption as possible in the orderly regime within these walls. In his wandering life he had had little opportunity to become familiar with the offices of the day, and Latin was a closed book to him, but at least he could attend and pay his reverences, if that would make him more acceptable.
    After breakfast Cadfael dressed the gash in the young man’s arm again, and unwound the bandage from the graze on his head. “This is healing well,” he said approvingly. “We’d best leave it uncovered, and let in the air to it now. Good clean flesh you have, boy, if something too little of it. And you’ve lost that limp that had you going sidewise. How is it with all those bruises?”
    Liliwin owned with some surprise that most of his aches and pains were all but gone, and performed a few startling contortions to prove it. He had not lost his skills. His fingers itched for the coloured rings and balls he used for his juggling, safely tucked away in their knotted cloth under his bed, but he feared they would be frowned on here. The ruin of his rebec also reposed in the corner of the porch next the cloister. He returned there after his breakfast to find Brother Anselm turning the wreck thoughtfully in his hands, and running a questing finger along the worst of the cracks.
    The precentor was past fifty, a vague, slender, shortsighted person who peered beneath an untidy brown tonsure and bristling brows to match, and smiled amiably and encouragingly at the owner of this disastrous relic.
    “This is yours? Brother Cadfael told me how it had suffered. This has been a fine instrument. You did not make it?”
    “No. I had it from an old man who taught me. He gave it to me before he died. I don’t know,” said Liliwin, “how to make them.”
    It was the first time Brother Anselm had heard him speak since the shrill terror of the first invasion. He looked up alertly, tilting his head to listen. “You have the upper voice, very true and clear. I could use you, if you sing? But you must sing! You have not thought of taking the cowl, here among us?” He recalled with a sigh why that was hardly likely under present circumstances. “Well, this poor thing has been villainously used, but it is not beyond help. We may try. And the bow is lost, you say.” Liliwin had said no such thing, he was mute with wonder. Evidently Brother Cadfael had given precise information to a retentive enthusiast. “The bow, I must say, is almost harder to perfect than the fiddle, but I have had my successes. Have you skills on other instruments?”
    “I can get a tune out of most things,” said Liliwin, charmed into eagerness.
    “Come,” said Brother Anselm, taking him firmly by the arm, “I will show you my workshop and you and I between