“And newly back from Jerusalem,” mused Hugh, “no way to blame for what hisfaction did to Worcester. He’ll be too recent in the service to be known toyou, I suppose?”

“Another generation, lad. It’s twenty-six years since I left the Holy Land.”Cadfael lifted his pot from the brazier, and stood it aside on the earth floorto cool gradually overnight. He straightened his back carefully. He was not sofar from sixty, even it he did not look it by a dozen years. “Everything willbe changed there now, I doubt. The lustre soon tarnished. From which port did theysay he sailed?”

“Tripoli, according to Herward. In your unregenerate youth I suppose youmust have known that city well? It seems to me there’s not much of that coastyou haven’t covered in your time.”

“It was St. Symeon I favored myself. There were good craftsmenin the shipyards there, a fine harbor, and Antioch only a few miles upriver.”

He had good cause to remember Antioch, for it was there he had begun andended his long career as a crusader, and his love affair with Palestine, thatlovely, inhospitable, cruel land of gold and sand and drought. From this quiet,busy harbor in which he had chosen at last to drop anchor, he had had littletime to hark back to those remembered haunts of his youth. The town came backto him now vividly, the lush green of the river valley, the narrow, gratefulshade of the streets, the babel of the market. And Mariam, selling her fruitsand vegetables in the Street of the Sailmakers, her young, fine-boned facehoned into gold and silver by the fierce sunlight, her black, oiled hairgleaming beneath her veil. She had graced his arrival in the east, a mere boyof eighteen, and his departure, a seasoned soldier and seafarer ofthirty-three. A widow, young, passionate and lonely, a woman of the people, notto everyone’s taste, too spare, too strong, too scornful. The void left by herdead man had ached unbearably, and drawn in the young stranger heart and soulinto her life, to fill the gap. For a whole year he had known her, before theforces of the Cross had moved on to invest Jerusalem.