The Rose Rent

Chapter Seven

“This is hers,” said Niall, looking up from the scrap of bronze with a fixed and formidable face. “I know it, though I did not make it. It belongs to that girdle she took back with her, the morning Brother Eluric lay here dead. I made the new buckle to match this design, this and the rosettes round the tongue-holes. I should know it anywhere. It is hers. Where did you find it?”

“Under the first arch of the bridge, where a boat had been hauled up in hiding.”

“To carry her away! And this - trodden into the mud, you say. See, when this was set in place it was hammered home into the leather with the pattern, it would not come loose easily, even after years, and with the leather softening and thinning from use, and perhaps a little greasy with handling. Someone was rough with the girdle, to tear this away.”

“And with the lady also,” Cadfael agreed grimly. “I could not be sure, myself, I hardly saw the girdle when she took it in her hands that day. But you could not be mistaken. Now I know. One step at least on the way. And a boat - a boat would be the simplest means of all of carrying her off. No neighbour passing close, to query such large freight, no one ashore to wonder at any passing skiff, they’re common enough along the Severn. The girdle from which this came may well have been snatched to help to bind her.”

“And she to be used so foully!” Niall wiped his large, capable hands on the rag of woollen cloth on his bench, and began purposefully unfastening and laying by his leathern apron. “What is to be done now? Tell me how best I can help - where first to look for her. I’ll close my shop...”

“No,” said Cadfael, “make no move, only keep watch still on the rose-bush, for I have this strange fancy the life of the one is bound up fast with the life of the other. What is there you could do elsewhere that Hugh Beringar cannot? He has men enough, and trust me, they’re all hard at it, he’ll see to that. Stay here and be patient, and whatever I discover you shall know. Your business is bronze, not boats, you’ve done your part.”

“And you, what will you do now?” Niall hesitated, frowning, unwilling to be left with the passive part.

“I’m off to find Hugh Beringar as fast as I can, and after him Madog, who knows all there is to know about boats, from his own coracles to the freight barges that fetch the wool clips away. Madog may be able to tell what manner of boat it was from the very dent it left behind in the mud. You bide here and be as easy as you can. With God’s help we’ll find her.”

He looked back once from the doorway, impressed by the charged silence at his back. The man of few words remained quite still, staring into some invisible place where Judith Perle stood embattled and alone, captive to greed and brutality. Even her good works conspired against her, even her generosity turned venomous, to poison her life. The controlled and uncommunicative face was eloquent enough at that moment. And if those big, adroit hands, so precise on his tiny crucibles and moulds, could once get a hold on the throat of whoever has rapt away Judith Perle, thought Cadfael as he hurried back towards the town, I doubt if the king’s justice would have any need of a hangman, or the trial cost the shire much money.

The porter at the town gate sent a boy hotfoot up to the castle in search of Hugh as soon as Cadfael came to report, somewhat breathlessly, that there was need of the sheriff down at the waterside. It took a little time to find him, however, and Cadfael made use of the interval by going in search of Madog of the Dead Boat. He knew well enough where to find him, provided he was not already out on the water somewhere, about some curious part of his varied business. He had a hut tucked under the lee of the western bridge that opened the road into his native Wales, and there he made coracles, or timber boats if required, fished in season, ferried fares on request, carried goods for a fee, anything to do with transport by water. The time being then past noon, Madog happened to be taking a brief rest and a solitary meal when Cadfael reached the bridge. A squat, muscular, hairy elderly Welshman, without kith or kin and in no need of either, for he was sufficient to himself and had been since childhood, he yet had an open welcome for his friends. He needed no one, but if others needed him he was at their disposal. Once summoned, he rose and came.

Hugh was at the gate before them. They crossed the bridge together, and came down to the waterside and under the dim, cool shadow of the arch.

“Here in the mud,” said Cadfael, “I found this, torn off surely in a struggle. It comes from a girdle belonging to Mistess Perle, for Niall Bronzesmith made a new buckle to match the belt fittings only a few days ago, and this was the pattern he had to copy. That puts it past doubt, he knows his work. And here someone had a boat laid up ready.”

“As like as not stolen,” said Madog judicially, eyeing the deep mark in the soil. “For such a cantrip, why use your own? Then if it’s noted, and any man smells something amiss about where it’s seen and what’s within it, nothing leads towards you. And this was early in the morning, yesterday? Now I wonder if any fisherman or waterman from the town has mislaid his boat from its moorings? I know a dozen could have left this scar. And all you need do, when you’d done with the skiff, would be turn it adrift to fetch up where it would.”

“That could only be downstream,” said Hugh, looking up from the little arrow-head of bronze in his palm.

“So it could! Only downstream from wherever he had done with it. And even that would surely be downstream from here, if here he set out with such a cargo. Far easier and safer than heading upstream. Early in the morning it may have been, and few people yet abroad, but by the time one rower, or even a pair, had taken a boat all round the walls of the town against the stream, as they’d have to do to get clear, there’d be folks enough about the shore and the water. Even after turning away from the town they’d have Frankwell to face - a good hour’s rowing before they’d be free of notice and curiosity. Downstream, once past this stretch of the wall and out from under the castle, they could breathe easily, they’d be between fields and woodland, clear of the town.”

“That’s good sense,” said Hugh. “I don’t say upstream is impossible, but we’ll follow the best chance first. God knows we’ve dragged every alley within the walls, and ransacked most of the houses, and are still hard at it in there finishing the work. Not a soul owns to having seen or heard anything of her since last she spoke with the watchman at the gate, and started across the bridge here. And if ever she went, or was taken, back into the town, it was not by the gate. The porter passed in no cart or load that could have been hiding her, so he swears. Still, there are wickets through here and there, though most of them into burgage gardens, and it would be no easy matter to get through to the streets without the household knowing of it. I begin to believe that she cannot be within the walls, but I’ve set men at every wicket that gives access to a street, and made entry to every house an order under the king’s justice. What’s the same for all cannot well be resisted or complained of.”

“And has not?” wondered Cadfael. “Never once?”

“They grumble, but even that under their breath. No, not one has put up any objection, nor shuffled and contrived to keep anything closed. And all yesterday until dusk I had her cousin treading on my heels, probing here and there like a worried hound on an uncertain scent. He’s set two or three of his weavers to help in the hunt for her. The foreman - Bertred they call him, a strapping young fellow all brawn and brag - he’s been out and about with us again all day, nose-down. He’s gone with a party of my men now, out along the Castle Foregate, searching the yards and gardens in the suburb, and round to the river again. All her household is biting its nails, frantic to find her. And no wonder, for it’s she who provides a living for the lot of them - a matter of twenty families or more depend on her. And never a hair of her to be found, and never a shadow of suspicion against any other creature, so far.”

“How did you do with Godfrey Fuller?” asked Cadfael, recalling what rumour said of Judith’s wooers.

Hugh laughed briefly. “I remember, too! And truth is truth, he seems as concerned about her almost as her cousin. What does he do but hand me all his keys, and bid me make free. And I did.”

“His keys for the dye-works and the fulling sheds, too?”

“All, though I needed none, for all his men were at work, and every corner open to view, and as innocent as the day. I think he would even have lent me some men to join the hunt, but that he’s too fond of money to let the work slacken.”

“And William Hynde?”

“The old woolman? He’s been away sleeping the night over with his shepherds and flocks, so his household said, and came home only this morning. He knew nothing about the girl going astray until then. Alan was there yesterday, and Hynde’s wife made no demur, but let him look where he would, but I went back there this morning and spoke with the man himself. He’s off back to the hills before night. It seems he has some hoggets up there with a rot of the feet, he and his man came back only to get a supply of the wash to treat them. And more concerned about them than about Mistress Perle, though he did say he was sorry to hear such news of her. By this time I’m certain she’s not within the town. So,” said Hugh briskly, “we may well look elsewhere. Downstream, we’re agreed. Madog, come back with us to the town gate and get us a boat, and we’ll take a look at what offers, downstream.”

In midstream, running with the current, and with only a twitch of Madog’s oars now and then to keep them on course, they had the whole expanse of Shrewsbury’s eastern side unrolling past them, a steep bank of green under the wall, here and there a cluster of low bushes at the water’s edge, here and there a trailing willow tree, but chiefly one long sweep of seeding summer grass, and then the lofty grey stone of the wall. Barely a single ridge of roof showed over the crest, only the top of Saint Mary’s spire and tower, and a more distant glimpse of the tip of Saint Alkmund’s. There were three wickets in the wall before they reached the mouth of Saint Mary’s water-lane, which gave access to the river from town and castle at need, and in places the householders within had extended their gardens to the outer side, or made use of the ground, where it was level enough, for their stores of wood or other materials for their crafts. But the slope here made cultivation difficult except in favoured spots, and the best gardens outside the wall were on the south-west, within the great serpent-coil of the river.

They passed the narrow walled chute of the water-lane, and beyond was another steep slope of grass, more cloaked in bushes here, before the town wall drew closer to the river, flanking the level, cleared strip of green where the young men were accustomed to set up the butts and practise their archery on holidays and fair-days. At the end of this ground there was one last wicket, close under the first tower of the castle, and past that the ground levelled, a sweep of open field between the water and the high road that emerged under the castle gates. Here, as on the Welsh side, the town had spilled beyond the wall for a short way, and little houses, close-set, bordered the road, huddling under the shadow of the great hulk of stone towers and curtain wall that straddled the only dry-shod approach to Shrewsbury.

The open meadows stretched away, widening, into an undulating expanse of field and woodland, peaceful and serene. The only remaining reminders of the town were here close beside the river, Godfrey Fuller’s sheds and fulling-troughs and tenterground, and a short way beyond, the substantial warehouse where William Hynde’s best fleeces lay corded and ready, waiting for the middleman’s barge to come and collect them, and the narrow, stout jetty where it would draw alongside to load.

There were men going busily in and out here about the fulling workshop, and two lengths of bright russet cloth stretched and drying on the frames. This was the season for the reds, browns and yellows. Cadfael looked back along the castle wall to the last wicket giving access to the town, and recalled that Fuller’s house lay not far from the castle precinct. So, for that matter, though a little more distant, close to the high cross, did William Hynde’s. This gate was convenient for both. Fuller kept a watchman here at night, living on the workshop premises.

“Small chance of ever hiding a captive lady here,” said

Hugh resignedly. “By day it would be impossible, with so many busy about the place, and by night the fellow who sleeps here is paid to keep a close eye on Hynde’s property, too, and keeps a mastiff into the bargain. I don’t recall that there’s anything but meadow and woodland beyond, but we’ll go a little further.”

The green banks drifted by on either side, encroaching trees overhanging both shores, but there was no thick woodland, and no building, not even a hut for half a mile or more. They were about to give up the hunt and turn back, and Cadfael was preparing to tuck up his sleeves and take an oar to help Madog back upstream, when Madog checked and pointed.

“What did I say? No need to go beyond this, here’s what marks the end of the chase.”

Close under the left bank, where a curving current had hollowed the ground and exposed the roots of a small hawthorn, causing it to lean at an angle over the water, its branches had snared a fish of their own. The empty boat lay unevenly, its bow held between two thorn-boughs, its oars shipped, rocking gently in the shallows.

“This one I know,” said Madog, drawing alongside and laying a hand to the thwart to hold them together. “It belongs to Arnald the fishmonger, under the Wyle, he moors it there at the town end of the bridge. Your man had nothing to do but row it across and hide it. Arnald will be raging round Shrewsbury clouting every lad on suspicion. I’d best do him a good turn and get it back to him, before he twists off an ear or two. He’s had this borrowed once before, but at least they brought it back that time. Well, my lord, here it ends. Are you satisfied?”

“Bitterly unsatisfied,” said Hugh ruefully, “but I take your meaning. Downstream, we agreed! Well, somewhere downstream from the bridge and upstream from here, it seems, Mistress Perle was put ashore and laid in safe-keeping. Too safe by far! For still I have no notion where.”

With the aid of a trailing mooring rope, which had been frayed to suggest that it had parted of itself, they took the stolen boat in tow, and turned to the hard pull upstream,

Cadfael taking an oar, and settling himself solidly on the thwart to try and match Madog’s experienced skill. But when they drew level with the fuller’s workshop they were hailed from the bank, and down to the water’s edge came two of Hugh’s officers, dusty and tired, with three or four volunteers from among the townsmen holding off respectfully at a little distance. Among them, Cadfael observed, was that same weaver Bertred, all brawn and brag, as Hugh had called him, bestriding the greensward with the large confidence of a man who likes himself well, and by the look of him not at all downcast at fetching up empty-handed at the end of his voluntary search. Cadfael had seen him occasionally in attendance on Miles Coliar, though he knew little of him but his appearance. Which was eminently presentable, fresh-coloured and healthy and beautifully built, with the kind of open face which may be just what it seems, or may be well adapted to conceal the fact that there is an inner chamber which is very firmly closed. Something slightly knowing about the apparently candid eyes, and a smile just a little too ready. And what was there to smile about in failing to find Judith Perle, close to the end of this second day of searching for her?

“My lord,” said the older sergeant, laying a hand to hold the boat still and inshore, “we’ve been over well-nigh every tuft of grass between these two reaches of the river, both sides, and nothing to be found, nor a soul who owns to knowing anything.”

“I’ve done no better,” said Hugh resignedly, “except that this must be the boat that carried her off. It was caught in thorn-branches, a little way downstream from here, but it belongs at the bridge. No need to look beyond here, unless the poor woman’s been moved and moved again, and that’s unlikely.”

“Every house and garden along the road we’ve searched. We saw you making down-river, my lord, so we took yet another look round here, but you see everything’s open as the day. Master Fuller made us free of all his holding.”

Hugh looked about him in a long, sweeping, none too hopeful glance. “No, small chance of doing anything here unperceived, at least by daylight, and it was early in the day she vanished. Someone has looked in Master Hynde’s warehouse there?”

“Yesterday, my lord. His wife gave us the key readily, I was there myself, so was my lord Herbard. Nothing within but his baled fleeces, the loft all but full of them, floor to roof. He had a good clip this year, seemingly.”

“Better than I did,” said Hugh. “But I don’t keep above three hundred sheep, small coin to him. Well, you’ve been at it all day, as well take a rest and be off home.” He set foot lightly to the thwart and stepped ashore. The boat rocked softly to the motion. “There’s nothing more we can do here. I’d best get back to the castle, and see if by chance someone else has had better luck. I’ll go in here by the eastern gate, Madog, but we can lend you two rowers, if you like, and help you back upstream with both boats. Some of these lads who’ve been on the hunt with us could do with a voyage back to the bridge.” He cast a glance round the group that held off respectfully, watching and listening. “Better than walking, lads, after all the walking you’ve done this day. Who’s first?”

Two of the men came forward eagerly to uncouple the boats and settle themselves on the thwarts. They shoved gently off into the stream ahead of Madog, and set a practised pace. And it might well be, Cadfael thought, noting how Bertred the weaver hung well back from offering his own stout arms, that his walk home from the nearby castle gate into the town was barely longer than it would have been from the bridge gate after disembarking, so that he saw small gain in volunteering. It might even be that he was no expert with an oar. But that did not quite account for the small, bland smile and the look of glossy content on his comely young face as he withdrew himself discreetly from notice behind his companions. And it certainly did not account for the last glimpse Cadfael had of him, as he glanced back over his shoulder from midstream. For Bertred had lagged behind Hugh and his henchmen as they set off briskly towards the road and the eastern gate of the town, had halted a moment to watch them as they breasted the rise, and then had turned his back and made off at a purposeful but unhurried pace in the opposite direction, towards the nearest stand of woodland, as though he had important business there.

Bertred came home for his supper only with the early dusk, to a distracted household which had lost its routine and limped through the day forgetful of work, meal-times, and every other factor that served to mark the hours in an orderly and customary fashion. Miles fretted from workshop to street a dozen times an hour, and ran out to accost any passing soldier of the garrison for news, of which there was none. In two days he had grown so tense and brittle that even his mother, for once daunted into comparative silence, tended to slip aside out of his way. The girls in the spinning room whispered and wondered far more than they worked, and foregathered with the weavers to gossip as often as his back was turned.

“Who’d have thought he cared so much for his cousin!” Branwen marvelled, awed by his strained and anxious face. “Of course a man feels for his own kin, but - you’d have thought it was his bride he’d lost, not his cousin, he goes so grieved.”

“He’d be a sight less concerned for his Isabel,” said a cynic among the weavers. “She’ll bring him a passable dowry, and he’s well enough satisfied with his bargain, but there are as good fish in the sea if she slipped off the hook. Mistress Judith is his keep and future and all. Besides, the two get on well enough, for all I could ever see. He’s got every call to worry.”

And worry he did, in a nail-biting, brow-furrowing frenzy of concern and anxiety that continued unbroken through the day, and at night, when search was perforce abandoned, subsided into a mute, resigned dejection, waiting for morning to renew the hunt. But by this second twilight it seemed every corner of the town had been ransacked, and every house and garden and pasture in the suburbs at least visited, and where were they to look next?

“She can’t be far,” Dame Agatha insisted strenuously. “They’ll surely find her.”

“Far or near,” said Miles wretchedly,”she’s too well hidden.

And some villain holding her, for certain. And how if she’s forced to give way and take him? Then what’s to become of you and me, if she lets a master into the house?”

“She never would, and she so set against marrying. No, that she won’t do. Why, if a man uses her so ill, more like by far, once she’s free of him - as she will be! - to do what she’s thought of doing so long, and go into a nunnery. And only two days now to the day of the rent!” Agatha pointed out. “Then what’s to be done, if that passes and she still lost?”

“Then the bargain’s broken, and there’s time to think again and think better, but only she can do it. Until she’s found there’s nothing to be done, and no comfort. Tomorrow I’ll go out again myself,” Miles vowed, shaking an exasperated head over the failure of the king’s sheriff and all his men.

“But where? Where is there left they haven’t searched already?”

A hard question indeed, and one without an answer. And into this waiting and frustrated household Bertred came sidling in the dusk, discreetly quiet and solemn about the continuing failure to find any trace of his mistress, and yet looking so sleek and bright-eyed that Miles was brutally short with him, not at all his usual good-tempered self, and followed him with a long, glowering stare when Bertred wisely made off into the kitchen. On warm summer evenings it was pleasanter to be outdoors than there in the dim, smoky room with the heat of the fire, even when it was turfed down for the night or raked out until morning, and the rest of the household had gone out on their own ploys. Only Bertred’s mother Alison, who cooked for the family and its workers, was waiting there none too patiently for her truant son, with a pot still warming over the naked fire.

“Where have you been till this time?” she wanted to know, turning on him with the ladle in her hand as he tramped briskly in at the door and went to his place at the long trestle table. He gave her a casual kiss in passing, brushing her round red cheek lightly. She was a plump, comfortable figure of a woman with some worn traces still of the good looks she had handed on to her son. “All very well,” she said, setting the wooden bowl before him with a crash, “after keeping me waiting here so late. And much good you must have done all day, or you’d be telling me now you’ve brought her home, and preening yourself like a peacock over it. There were some of the men came home two hours ago and more. Where have you been loitering since then?”

In the dim kitchen his small, self-satisfied smile could barely be seen, but the tone of his voice conveyed the same carefully contained elation. He took her by the arm and drew her down to the bench beside him.

“Never mind where, and leave it to me why! There was a thing I had to wait for, and it was worth the waiting. Mother... ” He leaned close, and sank his voice to a confidential whisper. “How would you like to be more than a servant in this house? A gentlewoman, an honoured dowager! Wait a little while, and I mean to make my fortune and yours, too. What do you say to that?”

“Great notions you always had,” she said, none too impressed, but too fond to mock him. “And how do you mean to do that?”

“I’m telling nothing yet, not till I can say it’s done. There’s not one of those busy hounds out hunting all this day knows what I know. That’s all I’m saying, and not a word to any but you. And

Mother, I must go out again tonight, when it’s well dark. Never you worry, I know what I’m about, only wait, and you’ll be glad of it. But tonight you mustn’t say a word, not to anyone.”

She held him off doubtfully to get a better look at his smiling, teasing face. “What are you up to? I can keep as close a mouth as any where there’s need. But don’t you go running your head into trouble. If there’s ought you know, why haven’t you told?”

“And spend the credit along with my breath? No, leave all to me, Mother, I know what I’m about. Tomorrow you’ll see for yourself, but not a word tonight. Promise it!”

“Your sire was just such another,” she said, relaxing into smiles, “always full of great plans. Well, if I spend the night wakeful out of pure curiosity, so be it. Would I ever stand in your way? Not a word out of me, I promise.” And instantly she added, with a brief blaze of unease and foreboding: “Only take care! There may be more than you out about risky business in the night.”

Bertred laughed, and hugged her impulsively in long arms, and went away whistling into the dusk of the yard.

His bed was in the weaving-shed with the looms, and there he had no companion to wake and hear him rise and do on his clothes, more than an hour after midnight. Nor was it any problem to slip out from the yard by the narrow passage to the street, without so much as risking being seen by any other member of the household. He had chosen his time with care. It must not be too soon, or there would still be people stirring. It must not be too late, or the moon would be up, and darkness suited his purpose better. And it was dark indeed in the narrow lanes between the overhanging houses and shops, as he threaded the mass of streets between Maerdol-head and the castle. The town gate there on the eastern side was a part of the castle defences, and would be closed and guarded during the night hours. For the past few years Shrewsbury had been safe enough from any threat on the eastern approach, only the occasional brief Welsh raid from the west had troubled the peace of the shire, but Hugh Beringar maintained the routine watchfulness without a break. But the most easterly wicket, giving access to the river under the very towers of the fortress, was there to be used freely. Only in times of possible danger were all the wickets closed and barred, and sentries set on the walls. Horsemen, carts, market wagons, all must wait for the gates to be opened at dawn, but a solitary man might pass through at any hour.

Bertred knew his way in the dark as well as by day, and could tread as lightly and move as silently as a cat. He stepped through the wicket into the slope of grass and bushes above the river, and drew the wooden door closed after him. Below him the flow of the Severn made fleeting ribbons and glints of moving light, just perceptible as tremors in the darkness. The sky was lightly veiled and showed no stars, and was just sufficiently less dark than the solid masses of masonry, earth and trees to show their outlines in deeper black. When the moon came up, more than an hour later than this, the heavens would probably clear. He had time to stand for a moment and think out what he had to do. There was little wind, but he had better take it into consideration, it would not do to approach the watchman’s mastiff at the fulling works downwind. He wet a finger and tested. The slight, steady breeze was blowing from the south-west, from upstream. He would have to move round the bulk of the castle virtually to the fringes of the gardens along the high road, and come about from downwind in a cautious circle to reach the back of the wool warehouse.

He had taken a good look at it in the afternoon. So had they all, the sheriff and his sergeants and the townsmen helping them in the search. But they had not, like Bertred, been in and out two or three times at that warehouse, when fetching away fleeces for Mistress Perle. Nor had they been present in Mistress Perle’s kitchen on the night before her disappearance, to hear Branwen declare her mistress’s intent to go to the abbey early in the morning and make a new charter, rendering her gift of property unconditional. So they had not seen, as Bertred had, Hynde’s man Gunnar drink up his ale and pocket his dice shortly afterwards, and take himself off in some haste, though he had seemed to be comfortably rooted for the evening. That was one more creature besides Bertred who had known of that intent, and surely had slipped so promptly away to disclose it to yet one more. Which one, the old or the young, made no matter. The strange thing was that it had taken Bertred himself so long to grasp the possibilities. The sight of the old counting-house hatch, that afternoon, securely shuttered and barred on the outer side, and probably also made fast within, had been all that was needed to enlighten him. If he had then waited patiently in the cover of the trees until dusk, to see who slipped out from the wicket in the town wall, and exactly where he headed with his rush basket, it had been only a final precaution, to render certainty even more certain.

Heavy against his side, in the great pocket stitched inside his coat, he had a long chisel and a hammer, though he would have to avoid noise if he could. The outer bar across the hatch need only be drawn back out of the socket, but he suspected the shutter was also nailed fast to its frame. A year ago a bale of fleeces had been stolen by entry through this hatch, and as the small counting-house within was already disused, old Hynde had had the window sealed against any further attempt. That was one more thing the sheriff did not know.

Bertred came down softly along the meadow beyond the warehouse, with the gentle wind in his face. By then shapes of things showed clearly, black against faded black. The bulk of the building was between him and Godfrey Fuller’s workshops, the very faint shimmer of the river a little way off on his left hand. And double his own height above him was the square of the shuttered hatch, just perceptible to his night eyes.

The climb presented no problems, he had made sure of that. The building was old, and due to this rear wall backing into the slope, the base of the wall of vertical planks had suffered wet damage over the years, and rotted, and old Hynde, never one to spend lavishly, had reinforced it with split logs fastened across horizontally on top of the massive sill-beam, affording easy toe-holds high enough for him to reach up and get a grip on the rough sill under the hatch, which was just wide enough to lend him a secure resting-place with an ear to the shutters.

He drew himself up carefully, got a hand firmly on the bar that sealed the hatch, and a thigh along the sill, and drew breath and cautiously held it, wary of the first strange and unexpected thing. The shutters fitted together well, but not quite perfectly. For about a hand’s-length down the centre, where the two leaves met, a hairline of light showed, too fine to give a view of anything within, a mere quill-stroke of faint gold. Perhaps not so strange, after all. Perhaps they had had the grace at least to let her have a candle or a lamp in her prison. It would pay, surely, to accommodate her in as many harmless ways as possible, while trying to break down her resistance. Force need only be tried if all else failed. But two days without gain began to look very like failure.

The chisel inside his coat was jabbing him painfully in the ribs. He worked a hand cautiously into the pocket and drew out the tools, laying them beside him on the sill, so that he could ease himself a little nearer to the sliver of light, and lay his ear to the crack.

The sudden start he made all but toppled him from his perch. For a voice spoke up, firmly and clearly, quite close on the inner side of the shutters:

“No, you will not change me. You should have known it. I am your problem. You brought me here, now get me hence as best you can.”

The voice that answered was more distant, perhaps at the far side of the room, in hopeless retreat, and the words did not come over clearly, but the tone was of desperate complaining and abject pleading, and the speaker was a man, though so unrecognisable that Bertred could not be sure whether he was old or young, master or servant.

His own plan was already awry. At best he must wait, and if he had to wait too long the moon would be up, and the risks more than doubled. The place was right, his judgement confirmed, the woman was there. But the time was ill-guessed, for her gaoler was there with her.