"He's feeling better, then," he said contentedly. I leaned against the corridor wall, and felt an answering smile spread slowly across my own face.
"Well, yes," I said, "he is."
On my way back to the main building from a morning spent in the herbary, I met Anselm coming from the cloister near the library. His face lighted when he saw me, and he hurried to join me in the courtyard. We walked together through the abbey grounds, talking.
"Yours is an interesting problem, to be sure," he said, breaking a stick from a bush near the wall. He examined the winter-tight buds critically, then tossed it aside, and glanced up at the sky, where a feeble sun poked its way through the light cloud layer.
"Warmer, but a good way to go until the spring," he observed. "Still, the carp should be lively today—let us go down to the fish pools."
Far from being the delicate ornamental structures I had imagined them to be, the fish pools were little more than utilitarian rock-lined troughs, placed conveniently near to the kitchens. Stocked with carp, they provided the necessary food for Fridays and fast days, when the weather was too rough to permit ocean fishing for the more customary haddock, herring, and flounder.
True to Anselm's word, the fish were lively, the fat fusiform bodies gliding past each other, white scales reflecting the clouds overhead, the vigor of their movements occasionally stirring up small waves that sloshed against the sides of their rocky prison. As our shadows fell on the water, the carp turned toward us like compass needles surging toward the north.
"They expect to be fed, when they see people," Anselm explained. "It would be a shame to disappoint them. One moment, chère madame."
He darted into the kitchens, returning shortly with two loaves of stale bread. We stood on the lip of the pool, tearing crumbs from the loaves and tossing them to the endlessly hungry mouths below.
"You know, there are two aspects to this curious situation of yours," Anselm said, absorbed in tearing bread. He glanced aside at me, a sudden smile lighting his face. He shook his head in wonderment. "I can scarcely believe it still, you know. Such a marvel! Truly, God has been good, to show me such things."
"Well, that's nice," I said, a bit dryly, "I don't know whether He's been quite so obliging to me."
"Really? I think so." Anselm sank down on his haunches, crumbling bread between his fingers. "True," he said, "the situation has caused you no little personal inconvenience—"
"That's one way of putting it," I muttered.
"But it may also be regarded as a signal mark of God's favor," he went on, disregarding my interruption. The bright brown eyes regarded me speculatively.
"I prayed for guidance, kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament," he went on, "and as I sat in the silence of the chapel, I seemed to see you as a shipwrecked traveler. And it seems to me that that is a good parallel to your present situation, is it not? Imagine such a soul, madame, suddenly cast away in a strange land, bereft of friends and familiarity, without resources save what the new land can provide. Such a happening is disaster, truly, and yet may be the opening for great opportunity and blessings. What if the new land shall be rich? New friends may be made, and a new life begun."
"Yes, but—" I began.
"So"—he said authoritatively, holding up a finger to hush me—"if you have been deprived of your earlier life, perhaps it is only that God has seen fit to bless you with another, that may be richer and fuller."
"Oh, it's full, all right," I agreed. "But—"
"Now, from the standpoint of canon law," he said frowning, "there is no difficulty regarding your marriages. Both were valid marriages, consecrated by the church. And strictly speaking, your marriage to the young chevalier in there antedates your marriage to Monsieur Randall."
"Yes, 'strictly speaking'," I agreed, getting to finish a sentence for once. "But not in my time. I don't believe canon law was constructed with such contingencies in mind."
Anselm laughed, the pointed end of his beard quivering in the slight breeze.
"More than true, ma chère, more than true. All that I meant was that, considered from a strictly legal standpoint, you have committed neither sin nor crime in what you have done regarding these two men. Those were the two aspects of your situation, of which I spoke earlier: what you have done, and what you will do." He reached up a hand and took mine, tugging me down to sit beside him, so our eyes were on a level.