An Excellent Mystery

Chapter Thirteen

NICHOLAS WAS APPROACHING SHREWSBURY when the sky began to darken ominously, and he quickened his pace in the hope of reaching shelter in the town before the storm broke. But the first heavy drops fell as he reached the Foregate, and before his eyes the street was emptied of life, all its inhabitants going to ground within their houses, and closing doors and shutters against the rage to come. By the time he rode past the gatehouse of the abbey, abandoning the thought of waiting out the storm there, since he was now so close, the sky had opened, in a downpour so opaque and blinding that he found himself veering from side to side as he crossed the bridge, unable to steer a straight course. It seemed he was the only man left in a depopulated town in an empty world, for there was not another soul stirring.

Under the arch of the town gate he halted to draw breath and clear his eyes, shaking off the weight of the rain. The whole width of Shrewsbury lay between him and the castle, but Hugh’s house by Saint Mary’s was no great distance, only up the curve of the Wyle and the level street beyond. Hugh was as likely to be there as at the castle. At least he could call in and ask, on his way through to the High Cross, and the descent to the castle gatehouse. He could hardly get wetter than he already was. He set off up the hill. Saner folk peered out through the chinks in their shuttered windows, and watched him scurrying head-down through the deluge. Overhead the thunder rolled and rattled round a sky dark as midnight, and lightnings flickered, drawing the peals ever closer after them. The horse was unhappy but well-trained, and pressed on obedient but quivering with fear.

The gates of Hugh’s courtyard stood open, there was a degree of shelter under the lee of the house, and as soon as hooves were heard on the cobbles the hall door opened, and a groom came haring across from the stables to take the horse to cover. Aline stood peering anxiously out into the murky gloom, and beckoned the traveller in.

“Before you drown, sir,” she said, all concern, as Nicholas plunged into the shelter of the doorway and let fall his streaming cloak, to avoid bringing it within. They stood looking earnestly at each other, for the light was too dim for instant recognition. Then she tilted her head, recaptured a memory, and smiled. “You are Nicholas Harnage! You came here with Hugh, when first you came to Shrewsbury. I remember now. Forgive such a slow welcome back, but I am not used to midnight in the afternoon. Come within, and let me find you some dry clothes-though I fear Hugh’s will be a tight fit for you.”

He was warmed by her candour and kindness, but it could not divert him from the black intensity of his purpose here. He looked beyond her, where Constance hovered, clutching her tyrant Giles firmly by the hand, for fear he should mistake the deluge for a new amusement, and dart out into it.

“The lord sheriff is not here? I must see him as soon as may be. I bring grim news.”

“Hugh is at the castle, but he’ll come by evening. Can it not wait? At least until this storm blows by. It cannot last long.”

No, he could not wait. He would go on the rest of the way, fair or foul. He thanked her, almost ungraciously in his preoccupation, swung the wet cloak about him again, took back his horse from the groom, and was off again at a trot towards the High Cross. Aline sighed, shrugged, and went in, closing the door on the chaos without. Grim news! What could that mean? Something to do with King Stephen and Robert of Gloucester? Had the attempts at an exchange foundered? Or was it something to do with that young man’s personal quest? Aline knew the bare bones of the story, and felt a mild, rueful interest-a girl set free by her affianced husband, a favoured squire sent to tell her so, and too modest or too sensitive to pursue at once the attraction he felt towards her on his own account. Was the girl alive or dead? Better to know, once for all, than to go on tormented by uncertainty. But surely ‘grim news’ could only mean the worst.

Nicholas reached the High Cross, spectral through the streaming rain, and turned down the slight slope towards the castle, and the broad ramp to the gatehouse. Water lay ankle-deep in the outer ward, draining off far too slowly to keep pace with the flood. A sergeant leaned out from the guard-room, and called the stranger within.

“The lord sheriff? He’s in the hall. If you bear round into the inner ward close to the wall you’ll escape the worst. I’ll have your horse stabled. Or wait a while here in the dry, if you choose, for this can’t last for ever…”

But no, he could not wait. The ring burned in his pouch, and the acid bitterness in his mind. He must get his tale at once to the ears of authority, and his teeth into the throat of Adam Heriet. He dared not stop hating, or the remaining grief became more than he could stand. He bore down on Hugh in the huge dark hall with the briefest of greetings and the most abrupt of challenges, an unkempt apparition, his wet brown hair plastered to forehead and temples, and water streaking his face.

“My lord, I’m back from Winchester, with plain proof Juliana is dead and her goods made away with long ago. And we must leave all else and turn every man you have here and I can raise in the south, to hunt down Adam Heriet. It was his doing-Heriet and his hired murderer, some footpad paid for his work with the price of Juliana’s jewellery. Once we lay hands on him, he won’t be able to deny it. I have proof, I have witnesses that he said himself she was dead!”

“Come, now!” said Hugh, his eyes rounding. “That’s a large enough claim. You’ve been a busy man in the south, I see, but so have we here. Come, sit, and let’s have the full story. But first, let’s have those wet clothes off you, and find you a man who matches, before you catch your death.” He shouted for the servants, and sent them running for towels and coats and hose.

“No matter for me,” protested Nicholas feverishly, catching at his arm. “What matters is the proof I have, that fits only one man, to my mind, and he going free, and God knows where…”

“Ah, but Nicholas, if it’s Adam Heriet you’re after, then you need fret no longer. Adam Heriet is safe behind a locked door here in the castle, and has been for a matter of days.”

“You have him? You found Heriet? He’s taken?” Nicholas drew deep and vengeful breath, and heaved a great sigh.

“We have him, and he’ll keep. He has a sister married to a craftsman in Brigge, and was visiting his kin like any honest man. Now he’s the sheriff’s guest, and stays so until we have the rights of it, so no more sweat for him.”

“And have you got any part of it out of him? What has he said?”

“Nothing to the purpose. Nothing an honest man might not have said in his place.”

“That shall change,” said Nicholas grimly, and allowed himself to notice his own sodden condition for the first time, and to accept the use of the small chamber provided him, and the clothes put at his disposal. But he was half into his tale before he had dried his face and his tousled hair and shrugged his way into dry garments.

“… never a trace anywhere of the church ornaments, which should be the most notable if ever they were marketed. And I was in two minds whether it was worth enquiring further, when the man’s wife came in, and I knew the ring she was wearing for Juliana’s. No, that’s to press it too far, I know-say rather I saw that it fitted only too well the description we had of Juliana’s. You remember? Enamelled all round with flowers in yellow and blue…”

“I have the whole register by heart,” said Hugh drily.

“Then you’ll see why I was so sure. I asked where she got it, and she said it was brought into the shop for sale along with two other pieces of jewellery, by a man about fifty years old. Three years back, on the twentieth day of August, for that was the day of her birth, and she asked the ring as a present, and got it from her husband. And the other two pieces, both sold since, they described to me as a necklace of polished stones and a silver bracelet engraved with sprays of vetch or pease. Three such, and all together! They could only be Juliana’s.”

Hugh nodded emphatic agreement to that. “And the man?”

“The description the woman gave me fits what little I have been told of Adam Heriet, for till now I have not seen him. Fifty years old, tanned from living outdoor like forester or huntsman… You have seen him, you know more. Brown-bearded she said and balding, a face of oak… Is that in tune?”

“To the letter and the note.”

“And the ring I have. Here, see! I asked it of the woman for this need, and she trusted me with it, though she valued it and would not sell, and I must give it back-when its work is done! Could this be mistaken?”

“It could not. Cruce and all his household will confirm it, but truth, we hardly need them. Is there more?”

“There is! For the jeweller questioned the ownership, seeing these were all a woman’s things, and asked if the lady who owned them had no further use for them. And the man said, as for the lady who had owned them, no, she had no further use for them, seeing she was dead!”

“He said so? Thus baldly?”

“He did. Wait, there’s more! The woman was a little curious about him, and followed him out of the shop when he left. And she saw him meet with a young fellow who was lurking by the wall outside, and give something over to him-a part of the money or the whole, or so she thought. And when they were aware of her watching, they slipped away round the corner out of sight, very quickly.”

“All this she will testify to?”

“I am sure she will. And a good witness, careful and clear.”

“So it seems,” said Hugh, and shut his fingers decisively over the ring. “Nicholas, you must take some food and wine now, while this downpour continues-for why should you drown a second time when we have our quarry already in safe hold? But as soon as it stops, you and I will go and confront Master Heriet with this pretty thing, and see if we cannot prise more out of him this time than a child’s tale of gaping at the wonders of Winchester.”

Ever since dinner Brother Cadfael had been dividing his time between the mill and the gatehouse, forewarned of possible trouble by the massing of the clouds long before the rain began. When the storm broke he took refuge in the mill, from which vantage-point he could keep an eye on both the pond and its outlet to the brook, and the road from the town, in case Madog should have found it advisable to land his charges for shelter in Frankwell, rather than completing the long circuit of the town, in which case he would come afoot to report as much.

The mill’s busy season was over, it was quiet and dim within, no sound but the monotonous dull drumming of the rain. It was there that Madog found him, a drowned rat of a Madog, alone. He had come by the path outside the abbey enclave, by which the town customers approached with their grain to be milled, rather than enter at the gatehouse. He loomed shadowy against the open doorway, and stood mute, dangling long, helpless arms. No man’s strength could fight off the powers of weather and storm and thunder. Even his long endurance had its limits.

“Well?” said Cadfael, chilled with foreboding.

“Not well, but very ill.” Madog came slowly within, and what light there was showed the dour set of his face. “Anything to astonish me, you said! I have had my fill of astonishment, and I bring it straight to you, as you wished. God knows,” he said, wringing out beard and hair, and shaking rivulets of rain from his shoulders, “I’m at a loss to know what to do about it. If you had foreknowledge, you may be able to see a way forward-I’m blind!” He drew deep breath, and told it all in words blunt and brief. “The rain alone would not have troubled us. The lightning struck a tree, heaved it at us as we passed, and split us asunder. The boat’s gone piecemeal down the river, where the shreds will fetch up there’s no guessing. And those two brothers of yours…”

“Drowned?” said Cadfael in a stunned whisper.

“The older one, Marescot, yes… Dead, at any rate. I got him out, the young one helping, though him I had to loose, I could not grapple with both. But I could get no breath back into Marescot. There was barely time for him to drown, the shock more likely stopped his heart, frail as he was-the cold, even the noise of the thunder. However it was, he’s dead. There’s an end. As for the other-what is there I could tell you of the other, that you do not know?”

He was searching Cadfael’s face with close and wondering attention. “No, there’s no astonishment in it for you, is there? You knew it all before. Now what do we do?”

Cadfael stirred out of his stillness, gnawed a cautious lip, and stared out into the rain. The worst had passed, the sky was growing lighter. Far along the river valley the diminishing rolls of thunder followed the foul brown flood-water downstream.

“Where have you left them?”

“On the far side of Frankwell, not a mile from the bridge, there’s a hut on the bank, the fishermen use it. We fetched up close by, and I got them into cover there. We’ll need a litter to bring Marescot home, but what of the other?”

“Nothing of the other! The other’s gone, drowned, the Severn has taken him. And no alarm, no litter, not yet. Bear with me, Madog, for this is a desperate business, but if we tread carefully now we may come through it unscathed. Go back to them, and wait for me there. I’m coming with you as far as the town, then you go on to the hut, and I’ll come to you there as soon as I can. And never a word of this, never to any, for the sake of us all.”

The rain had stopped by the time Cadfael turned in at the gate of Hugh’s house. Every roof glistened, every gutter streamed, as the grey remnants of cloud cleared from a sun now bright and benevolent, all its coppery malignancy gone down-river with the storm.

“Hugh is still at the castle,” said Aline, surprised and pleased as she rose to meet him. “He has a visitor with him there-Nicholas Harnage is come back, he says with grim news, but he did not stay to confide it to me.”

“He? He’s back?” Cadfael was momentarily distracted, even alarmed. “What can he have found, I wonder? And how wide will he have spread it already?” He shook the speculation away from him. “Well, that makes my business all the more urgent. Girl dear, it’s you I want! Had Hugh been here, I would have begged the loan of you of your lord in a proper civil fashion, but as things are… I need you for an hour or two. Will you ride with me in a good cause? We’ll need horses-one for you to go and return, and one for me to go further still-one of Hugh’s big fellows that can carry two at a pinch. Will you be my advocate, and see me back into good odour if I borrow such a horse? Trust me, the need is urgent.”

“Hugh’s stables have always been open to you,” said Aline,”since ever we got to know you. And I’ll lend myself for any enterprise you tell me is urgent. How far have we to go?”

“Not far. Over the western bridge and across Frankwell. I must ask the loan of some of your possessions, too,” said Cadfael.

“Tell me what you want, and then you go and saddle the horses-Jehan is there, tell him you have my leave. And you can tell me what all this means and what I’m needed for on the way.”

Adam Heriet looked up sharply and alertly when the door of his prison was opened at an unexpected hour of the early evening. He drew himself together with composure and caution when he saw who entered. He was practised and prepared in all the questions with which he had so far had to contend, but this promised or threatened something new. The bold oaken face the jeweller’s wife had so shrewdly observed served him well. He rose civilly in the presence of his betters, but with a formal stiffness and a blank countenance which suggested that he did not feel himself to be in any way inferior. The door closed behind them, though the key was not turned. There was no need, there would be a guard outside.

“Sit, Adam! We have been showing some interest in your movements in Winchester, at the time you know of,” said Hugh mildly. “Would you care to add anything to what you’ve already told us? Or to change anything?”

“No, my lord. I have told you what I did and where I went. There is no more to tell.”

“Your memory may be faulty. All men are fallible. Can we not remind you, for instance, of a silversmith’s shop in the High Street? Where you sold three small things of value-not your property?”

Adam’s face remained stonily stoical, but his eyes flickered briefly from one face to the other. “I never sold anything in Winchester. If anyone says so, they have mistaken me for some other man.”

“You lie!” said Nicholas, flaring. “Who else would be carrying these very three things? A necklace of polished stones, an engraved silver bracelet-and this!”

The ring lay in his open palm, thrust close under Adam’s nose, its enamels shining with a delicate lustre, a small work of art so singular that there could not be a second like it. And he had known the girl from infancy, and must have been familiar with her trinkets long before that journey south. If he denied this, he proclaimed himself a liar, for there were plenty of others who could swear to it.

He did not deny it. He even stared at it with a well-assumed wonder and surprise, and said at once: “That is Juliana’s! Where did you get it?”

“From the silversmith’s wife. She kept it for her own, and she remembered very well the man who brought it, and painted as good a picture of him as the law will need to put your name to him. Yes, this is Juliana’s!” said Nicholas, hoarse with passion. “That is what you did with her goods. What did you do with her?”

“I’ve told you! I parted from her a mile or more from Wherwell, at her orders, and I never saw her again.”

“You lie in your teeth! You destroyed her.”

Hugh laid a hand on the young man’s arm, which started and quivered at the touch, like a pointing hound distracted from his aim.

“Adam, you waste your lying, which is worse. Here is a ring you acknowledge for your mistress’s property, sold, according to two good witnesses, on the twentieth of August three years ago, in a Winchester shop, by a man whose description fits you better than your own clothes…”

“Then it could fit many a man of my age,” protested Adam stoutly. “What is there singular about me? The woman has not pointed the finger at me, she has not seen me…”

“She will, Adam, she will. We can bring her, and her husband, too, to accuse you to your face. As I accuse you,” said Hugh firmly. “This is too much to be passed off as a children’s tale, or a curious chance. We need no better case against you than this ring and those two witnesses provide-for robbery, if not for murder. Yes, murder! How else did you get possession of her jewellery? And if you did not connive at her death, then where is she now? She never reached Wherwell, nor was she expected there, it was quite safe to put her out of the world, her kin here believing her safe in a nunnery, the nunnery undisturbed by her never arriving, for she had given no forewarning. So where is she, Adam? On the earth or under it?”

“I know no more than I’ve told you,” said Adam, setting his teeth.

“Ah, but you do! You know how much you got from the silversmith-and how much of it you paid over to your hired assassin, outside the shop. Who was he, Adam?” demanded Hugh softly. “The woman saw you meet him, pay him, slither away round the corner with him when you saw her standing at the door. Who was he?”

“I know nothing of any such man. It was not I who went there, I tell you.” His voice was still firm, but a shade hurried now, and had risen a tone, and he was beginning to sweat.

“The woman has described him, too. A young fellow about twenty, slender, and kept his capuchon over his head. Give him a name, Adam, and it may somewhat lighten your load. If you know a name for him? Where did you find him? In the market? Or was he bespoken well before for the work?”

“I never entered such a shop. If all this happened, it happened to other men, not to me. I was not there.”

“But Juliana’s possessions were, Adam! That’s certain. And brought by someone who much resembled you. When the woman sees you in the flesh, then I may say, brought by you. Better to tell us, Adam. Spare yourself a long uncovering, make your confession of your own will, and be done. Spare the silversmith’s wife a long journey. For she will point the finger, Adam. This, she will say when she sets eyes on you, this is the man.”

“I have nothing to confess. I’ve done no wrong.”

“Why did you choose that particular shop, Adam?”

“I was never in the shop. I had nothing to sell. I was not there…”

“But this ring was, Adam. How did it get there? And with neckless and bracelet, too? Chance? How far can chance stretch?”

“I left her a mile from Wherwell…”

“Dead, Adam?”

“I parted from her living, I swear it!”

“Yet you told the silversmith that the lady who had owned these gems was dead. Why did you so?”

“I told you, it was not I, I was never in the shop.”

“Some other man, was it? A stranger, and yet he had those ornaments, all three, and he resembled you, and he knew and said that the lady was dead. Here are so many miraculous chances, Adam, how do you account for them?”

The prisoner let his head fall back against the wall. His face was grey. “I never laid hand on her. I loved her!”

“And this is not her ring?”

“It is her ring. Anyone at Lai will tell you so.”

“Yes, they will, Adam, they will! They will tell the court so, when your time comes. But only you can tell us how it came into your possession, unless by murder. Who was the man you paid?”

“There was none. I was not there. It was not I…”

The pace had steadily increased, the questions coming thick as arrows and as deadly. Round and round, over and over the same ground, and the man was tiring at last. If he was breakable at all, he must break soon.

They were so intent, and strung so taut, like overtuned instruments, that they all three started violently when there was a knock at the door of the cell, and a sergeant put his head in, visibly agape with sensational news. “My lord, pardon, but they thought you should know at once… There’s word in town that a boat sank today in the storm. Two brothers from the abbey drowned in Severn, they’re saying, and Madog’s boat smashed to flinders by a tree the lightning fetched down. They’re searching downstream for one of the pair…”

Hugh was on his feet, aghast. “Madog’s boat? That must be the hiring Cadfael told me of… Drowned? Are they sure of their tale? Madog never lost man nor cargo till now.”

“My lord, who can argue with lightning? The tree crashed full on them. Someone in Frankwell saw the bolt fall. The lord abbot may not even know of it yet, but they’re all in the same story in the town.”

“I’ll come!” said Hugh, and swung hurriedly on Nicholas. “God knows I’m sorry, Nick, if this is true. Brother Humilis-your Godfrid-had a longing to see his birthplace at Salton again, and set out with Madog this morning, or so he intended-he and Fidelis. Come with me! We’d best go find out the truth of it. Pray God they’ve made much of little, as usual, and they’ve come by nothing worse than a ducking… Madog can outswim most fish. But let’s go and make sure.”

Nicholas had risen with him, startled and slow to take it in. “My lord? And he so sick? Oh, God, he could not live through such a shock. Yes, I’ll come… I must know!”

And they were away, abandoning their prisoner. The door closed briskly between, and the key turned in the lock. No one had given another look or thought to Adam Heriet, who sank back slowly on his hard bed, and bowed himself into his cupped hands, a demoralised hulk of a man, worn out and emptied at heart. Gradually slow tears began to seep between his braced fingers and fall upon his pillow, but there was no one there to see and wonder, and no one to interpret.

They took horse in haste through the town, through streets astonishingly drying out already in the gentle warmth after the deluge. It was still broad day and late sunlight, and the roofs and walls and roads steamed, so that the horses waded a shallow, frail sea of vapour. They passed by Hugh’s house without halting. As well, for they would have found no Aline there to greet them.

People were emerging into the streets again wherever they passed, gathering in twos and threes, heads together and chins earnestly wagging. The word of tragedy had gone round rapidly, once it was whispered. Nor was it any false alarm this time. Out through the eastern gate and crossing the bridge towards the abbey, Hugh and Nicholas drew rein at sight of a small, melancholy procession crossing ahead of them. Four men carried an improvised litter, an outhouse door taken from its hinges in some Frankwell householder’s yard, and draped decently with rugs to carry the corpse of one victim, at least, of the storm. One only, for it was a narrow door, and the four bearers handled it as if the weight was light, though the swathed body lay long and large-boned on its bier.

They fell in reverently behind, as many of the townsfolk afoot were also doing, swelling the solemn progress like a funeral cortege. Nicholas stared and strained ahead, measuring the mute and motionless body. So long and yet so light, fallen away into age before age was due, this could be no other but Godfrid Marescot, the maimed and dwindling flesh at last shed by its immaculate spirit. He stared through a mist, trying impatiently to clear his eyes.

“That is this Madog, that man who leads them?”

Hugh nodded silently, yes. No doubt but Madog had recruited friends from the suburb, part Welsh, as he was wholly Welsh, to help him bring the dead man home. He commanded his helpers decorously, dolorously, with great dignity.

“The other one-Fidelis?” wondered Nicholas, recalling the retiring anonymous figure forever shrinking into shadow, yet instant in service. He felt a pang of self-reproach that he grieved so much for Godfrid, and so little for the young man who had made himself a willing slave to Godfrid’s nobility.

Hugh shook his head. There was but one here.

They were across the bridge and moving along the approach to the Foregate, between the Gaye on the left hand and the mill and mill-pool on the right, and so to the gatehouse of the abbey. There the bearers turned in to the right with their burden, under the arch, into the great court, where a silent, solemn assembly had massed to wait for them, and there they set down their charge, and stood in silent attendance.

The news had reached the abbey as the brothers came from Vespers. They gathered in a stunned circle, abbot, prior, obedientiaries, monks and novices, brought thus abruptly to the contemplation of mortality. The townspeople who had followed the procession to its destination hovered within the gate, somewhat apart, and gazed in awed silence.

Madog approached the abbot with the Welshman’s unservile readiness to accept all men as equals, and told his story simply. Radulfus acknowledged the will of God and the helplessness of man with an absolving motion of his hand, and stood looking down at the swathed body a long moment, before he stooped and drew back the covering from the face.

Humilis in dying had shed all but his proper years. Death could not restore the lost and fallen flesh, but it had relaxed the sharp, gaunt lines, and smoothed away the engraved hollows of pain. Hugh and Nicholas, standing aloof at the corner of the cloister, caught a brief glimpse of Humilis translated, removed into superhuman serenity and repose, before Radulfus lowered the cloth again, blessed the bier and the bearers, and motioned to his obedientiaries to take up the body and carry it into the mortuary chapel.

Only then, when Brother Edmund, reminded of old reticences those two lost brothers had shared, and manifestly deprived of Fidelis, looked round for the one other man who was in the intimate secrets of Humilis’s broken body, and failed to find him-only then did Hugh realise that Brother Cadfael was the one man missing from this gathering. He, who of all men should have been ready and dutiful in whatever concerned Humilis, to be elsewhere at this moment! The dereliction stuck fast in Hugh’s mind, until he made sense of it later. It was, after all, possible that a dead man should have urgent unfinished business elsewhere, even more dear to him than the last devotions paid to his body.

They extended their respects and condolences to Abbot Radulfus, with the promise that search should be made downstream for the body of Brother Fidelis, as long as any hope remained of finding him, and then they rode back at a walking pace into the town, host and guest together. The dusk was closing gently in, the sky clear, bland, innocent of evil, the air suddenly cool and kind. Aline was waiting with the evening meal ready to be served, and welcomed two men returning as graciously as one. And if there was still a horse missing from the stables, Hugh did not linger to discover it, but left the horses to the grooms, and devoted his own attention to Nicholas.

“You must stay with us,” he said over supper, “until his burial. I’ll send word to Cruce, he’ll want to pay the last honours to one who once meant to become his brother by law, and he has a right to know how things stand now with Heriet.”

That caused Aline to prick up her ears. “And how do things stand now with Heriet? So much has happened today, I seem to have missed at least the half of it. Nicholas did say he brought grim news, but even the downpour couldn’t delay him long enough to say more. What has happened?”

They told her, between them, all that had passed, from the dogged search in Winchester to the point where news of Madog’s disaster had interrupted the questioning of Adam Heriet, and sent them out in consternation to find out the truth of the report. Aline listened with a slight, anxious frown.

“He burst in crying that two brothers from the abbey were dead, drowned in the river? Named names, did he? There in the cell, in front of your prisoner?”

“I think it was I who named names,” said Hugh. “It came at the right moment for Heriet, I fancy he was nearing the end of his tether. Now he can draw breath for the next bout, though I doubt if it will save him.”

Aline said no more on that score until Nicholas, short of sleep after his long ride and the shocks of this day, took himself off to his bed. When he was gone, she laid by the embroidery on which she had been working, and went and sat down beside Hugh on the cushioned bench beside the empty hearth, and wound a persuasive arm about his neck.

“Hugh, love-there’s something you must hear-and Nicholas must not hear, not yet, not until all’s over and safe and calm. It might be best if he never does hear it, though perhaps he’ll divine at least half of it for himself in the end. But you we need now.”

“We?” said Hugh, not too greatly surprised, and turned to wind an arm comfortably about her waist and draw her closer to his side.

“Cadfael and I. Who else?”

“So I supposed,” said Hugh, sighing and smiling. “I did wonder at his abandoning the disastrous end of a venture he himself helped to launch.”

“But he did not abandon it, he’s about resolving it this moment. And if you should hear someone about the stables, a little later, no need for alarm, it will only be Cadfael bringing back your horse, and you know he can be trusted to see to his horse’s comfort before he gives a thought to his own.”

“I foresee a long story,” said Hugh. “It had better be interesting.” Her fair hair was soft and sweet against his cheek. He turned to touch his lips to hers, very softly and briefly.

“It is. As any matter of life and death must be. You’ll see! And since it was blurted out in front of poor Adam Heriet that two brothers have drowned, you ought to pay him a visit as soon as you can, tomorrow, and tell him he need not fret, that things are not always what they seem.”

“Then tell me,” said Hugh, “what they really are.”

She settled herself warmly into the circle of his arm, and very gravely told him.

The search for the body of Brother Fidelis was pursued diligently from both banks of the river, at every spot where floating debris commonly came ashore, for more than two days, but all that came to light was one of his sandals, torn from his foot by the river and cast up in the sandy shoals near Atcham. Most bodies that went into the Severn were also put ashore by the Severn, sooner or later. This one never would be. Shrewsbury and the world had seen the last of Brother Fidelis.