One Corpse Too Many

Chapter Six

From the Frankwell end of the western bridge, the suburb outside the walls and over the river, the road set off due west, climbing steadily, leaving behind the gardens that fringed the settlement. At first it was but a single road mounting the hill that rose high above Severn, then shortly it branched into two, of which the more southerly soon branched again, three spread fingers pointing into Wales. But Cadfael took the road Nicholas and Torold had taken on the night after the castle fell, the most northerly of the three.

He had thought of calling on Edric Flesher in the town, and giving him the news that one, at least, of the two young couriers had survived and preserved his charge, but then he had decided against it. As yet Torold was by no means safe, and until he was well away, the fewer people who knew of his whereabouts the better, the less likely was word of him to slip out in the wrong place, where his enemies might overhear. There would be time later to share any good news with Edric and Petronilla.

The road entered the thick woodland of which Torold had spoken, and narrowed into a grassy track, within the trees but keeping close to the edge, where cultivated fields showed between the trunks. And there, withdrawn a little deeper into the woods, lay the hut, low and roughly timbered. From this place it would be a simple matter to carry a dead body on horseback as far as the castle ditch. The river, as everywhere here, meandered in intricate coils, and would have to be crossed in order to reach the place where the dead had been flung, but there was a place opposite the castle on this side where a central island made the stream fordable even on foot in such a dry season, once the castle itself was taken. The distance was small, the night had been long enough. Then somewhere off to the right lay Ulf s holding, where Torold had got his exchange of horses. Cadfael turned off in that direction, and found the croft not a quarter of a mile from the track.

Ulf was busy gleaning after carrying his corn, and not at first disposed to be talkative to an unknown monk, but the mention of Torold’s name, and the clear intimation that here was someone Torold had trusted, loosened his tongue.

“Yes, he did come with a lamed horse, and I did let him have the best of mine in exchange. I was the gainer, though, even so, for the beast he left with me came from FitzAlan’s stables. He’s still lame, but healing. Would you see him? His fine gear is well hidden, it would mark him out for stolen or worse if it was seen.”

Even without his noble harness the horse, a tall roan, showed suspiciously fine for a working farmer to possess, and undoubtedly he was still lame of one fore-foot. Ulf showed him the wound.

“Torold said a caltrop did this,” mused Cadfael. “Strange place to find such.”

“Yet a caltrop it was, for I have it, and several more like it that I went and combed out of the grass there next day. My beasts cross there, I wanted no more of them lamed. Someone seeded a dozen yards of the path at its narrowest there. To halt them by the hut, what else?”

“Someone who knew in advance what they were about and the road they’d take, and gave himself plenty of time to lay his trap, and wait in ambush for them to spring it.”

“The king had got wind of the matter somehow,” Ulf opined darkly, “and sent some of his men secretly to get hold of whatever they were carrying. He’s desperate for money — as bad as the other side.”

Nevertheless, thought Cadfael, as he walked back to the hut in the woods, for all that I can see, this was no party sent out by the king, but one man’s enterprise for his own private gain. If he had indeed been the king’s emissary he would have had a company with him. It was not King Stephen’s coffers that were to have profited, if all had gone according to plan.

To sum up, then, it was proven there had indeed been a third here that night. Over and over Torold was cleared of blame. The caltrops were real, a trail of them had been laid to ensure laming one or other of the horses, and so far the stratagem had succeeded, perhaps even better than expected, since it had severed the two companions, leaving the murderer free to deal with one first, and then lie in wait for the other.

Cadfael did not at once go into the hut; the surroundings equally interested him. Somewhere here, well clear of the hut itself, Torold had regarded the pricking of his thumbs, and tethered the horses forward on the road, ready for flight. And somewhere here, too, probably withdrawn deeper into cover, the third man had also had a horse in waiting. It should still be possible to find their traces. It had not rained since that night, nor was it likely that many men had roamed these woods since. All the inhabitants of Shrewsbury were still keeping close under their own roof-trees unless forced to go abroad, and the king’s patrols rode in the open, where they could ride fast.

It took him a little while, but he found both places. The solitary horse had been hobbled and left to graze, and by the signs he had been a fine creature, for the hoof-marks he had left in a patch of softer ground, a hollow of dried mud where water habitually lay after rain, and had left a smooth silt, showed large and well shod. The spot where two had waited together was well to westward of the hut, and in thick cover. A low branch showed the peeled scar where the tether had been pulled clear in haste, and two distinguishable sets of prints could be discerned where the grass thinned to bare ground.

Cadfael went into the hut. He had broad daylight to aid him, and with the door set wide there was ample light even within. The murderer had waited here for his victim, he must have left his traces.

The remains of the winter fodder, mown along the sunlit fringes of the woods, had been left here against the return of autumn, originally in a neat stack against the rear wall, but now a stormy sea of grass was spread and tossed over the entire earthen floor, as though a gale had played havoc within there. The decrepit manger from which Torold had plucked his loose plank was there, drunkenly leaning. The dry grass was well laced with small herbs now rustling and dead but still fragrant, and there was a liberal admixture of hooky, clinging goose-grass in it. That reminded him not only of the shred of stem dragged deep into Nick Faintree’s throat by the ligature that killed him, but also of Torold’s ugly shoulder wound. He needed goose-grass to make a dressing for it, he would look along the fringe of the fields, it must be plentiful here. God’s even-handed justice, that called attention to one friend’s murder with a dry stem of last year’s crop, might well, by the same token, design to soothe and heal the other friend’s injuries by the gift of this year’s.

Meantime, the hut yielded little, except the evident chaos of a hand-to-hand struggle waged within it. But in the rough timbers behind the door there were a few roving threads of deep blue woollen cloth, rather pile than thread. Someone had certainly lain in hiding there, the door drawn close to his body. There was also one clot of dried clover that bore a smaller clot of blood. But Cadfael raked and combed in vain among the rustling fodder in search of the strangler’s weapon. Either the murderer had found it again and taken it away with him, or else it lay deeply entangled in some corner, evading search. Cadfael worked his way backwards on hands and knees from the manger to the doorway, and was about to give up, and prise himself up from his knees, when the hand on which he supported his weight bore down on something hard and sharp, and winced from the contact in surprise. Something was driven half into the earth floor under the thinning layers of hay, like another caltrop planted here for inquisitive monks to encounter to their grief and injury. He sat back on his heels, and carefully brushed aside the rustling grasses, until he could get a hand to the hidden thing and prise it loose. It came away into his hand readily, filling his palm, hard, encrusted and chill. He lifted it to the invading sunlight in the doorway behind him, and it glittered with pinpoints of yellow, a miniature sun.

Brother Cadfael rose from his knees and took it into the full daylight of afternoon to see what he had found. It was a large, rough-cut gem stone, as big as a crab-apple, a deep-yellow topaz still gripped and half-enclosed by an eagle’s talon of silver-gilt. The claw was complete, finely shaped, but broken off at the stem, below the stone it clutched. This was the tip of some excellent setting in silver, perhaps the end of a brooch-pin — no, too large for that. The apex of a dagger-hilt? If so, a noble dagger, no common working knife. Beneath that jagged tip would have been the rounded hand-grip, and on the cross-piece, perhaps, some smaller topaz stones to match this master-stone. Broken off thus, it lay in his hand a sullen, faceted ball of gold.

One man had threshed and clawed here in his death-throes, two others had rolled and flailed in mortal combat; any one of the three, with a thrusting hip and the weight of a convulsed body, could have bored this hilt into the hardpacked earth of the floor, and snapped off the crown-stone thus at its most fragile point, and never realised the loss.

Brother Cadfael put it away carefully in the scrip at his girdle, and went to look for his goose-grass. In the thick herbage at the edge of the trees, where the sun reached in, he found sprawling, angular mats of it, filled his scrip, and set off for home with dozens of the little hooked seeds clinging in his skirts.

Godith slipped away as soon as all the brothers had dispersed to their afternoon work, and made her way by circumspect deviations to the mill at the end of the Gaye. She had taken with her some ripe plums from the orchard, the half of a small loaf of new bread, and a fresh flask of Cadfael’s wine. The patient had rapidly developed a healthy appetite, and it was her pleasure to enjoy his enjoyment of food and drink, as though she had a proprietorial interest in him by reason of having found him in need.

He was sitting on his bed of sacks, fully dressed, his back against the warm timbers of the wall, his long legs stretched out comfortably before him with ankles crossed. The cotte and hose fitted reasonably well, perhaps a little short in the sleeves. He looked surprisingly lively, though still rather greyish in the face, and careful in his movements because of the lingering aches and pains from his wounds. She was not best pleased to see that he had struggled into the cotte, and said so.

“You should keep that shoulder easy, there was no need to force it into a sleeve yet. If you don’t rest it, it won’t heal.”

“I’ve very well,” he said abstractedly. “And I must bear whatever discomfort there may be, if I’m to get on my way soon. It will knit well enough, I dare say.” His mind was not on his own ills, he was frowning thoughtfully over other matters. “Godric, I had no time to question, this morning, but — your Brother Cadfael said Nick’s buried, and in the abbey. Is that truth?” He was not so much doubting their word as marvelling how it had come about. “How did they ever find him?”

“That was Brother Cadfael’s own doing,” said Godith. She sat down beside him and told him. “There was one more than there should have been, and Brother Cadfael would not rest until he had found the one who was different, and since then he has not let anyone else rest. The king knows there was murder done, and has said it should be avenged. If anyone can get justice for your friend, Brother Cadfael is the man.”

“So whoever it was, there in the hut, it seems I did him little harm, only dimmed his wits for a matter of minutes. I was afraid of it. He was fit enough and cunning enough to get rid of his dead man before morning.”

“But not clever enough to deceive Brother Cadfael. Every individual soul must be accounted for. Now at least Nicholas has had all the rites of the church in his own clean name, and has a noble tomb.”

“I’m glad,” said Torold, “to know he was not left there to rot uncoloured, or put into the ground nameless among all the rest, though they were our comrades, too, and not deserving of such a death. If we had stayed, we should have suffered the same fate. If they caught me, I might suffer it yet. And yet King Stephen approves the hunt for the murderer who did his work for him! What a mad world!”

Godith thought so, too; but for all that, there was a difference, a sort of logic in it, that the king should accept the onus of the ninety-four whose deaths he had decreed, but utterly reject the guilt for the ninety-fifth, killed treacherously and without his sanction.

“He despised the manner of the killing, and he resented being made an accomplice in it. And no one is going to capture you,” she said firmly, and hoisted the plums out of the breast of her cotte, and tumbled them between them on the blanket. “Here’s a taste of something sweeter than bread. Try them!”

They sat companionably eating, and slipping the stones through a chink in the floorboards into the river below. “I still have a task laid on me,” said Torold at length, soberly, “and now I’m alone to see it done. And heaven knows, Godric, what I should have done without you and Brother Cadfael, and sad I shall be to set off and leave you behind, with small chance of seeing you again. Never shall I forget what you’ve done for me. But go I must, as soon as I’m fit and can get clear. It will be better for you when I’m gone, you’ll be safer so.”

“Who is safe? Where?” said Godith, biting into another ripe purple plum. “There is no safe place.”

“There are degrees in danger, at any rate. And I have work to do, and I’m fit to get on with it now.”

She turned and gave him a long, roused look. Never until that moment had she looked far enough ahead to confront the idea of his departure. He was something she had only newly discovered, and here he was, unless she was mistaking his meaning, threatening to take himself off, out of her hands and out of her life. Well, she had an ally in Brother Cadfael. With the authority of her master she said sternly:

“If you’re thinking you’re going to set off anywhere until you’re fully healed, then think again, and smartly, too. You’ll stay here until you’re given leave to go, and that won’t be today, or tomorrow, you can make up your mind to that!”

Torold gaped at her in startled and delighted amusement, laid his head back against the rough timber of the wall, and laughed aloud. “You sound like my mother, the time I had a bad fall at the quintain. And dearly I love you, but so I did her, and I still went my own way. I’m fit and strong and able, Godric, and I’m under order that came before your orders. I must go. In my place, you’d have been out of here before now, as fierce as you are.”

“I would not,” she said furiously, “I have more sense. What use would you be, on the run from here, without even a weapon, without a horse — you turned your horses loose, remember, to baffle the pursuit, you told us so! How far would you get? And how grateful would FitzAlan be for your folly? Not that we need go into it,” she said loftily, “seeing you’re not fit even to walk out of here as far as the river. You’d be carried back on Brother Cadfael’s shoulders, just as you came here the first time.”

“Oh, would I so, Godric, my little cousin?” Torold’s eyes were sparkling mischief. He had forgotten for the moment all his graver cares, amused and nettled by the impudence of this urchin, vehemently threatening him with humiliation and failure. “Do I look to you so feeble?”

“As a starving cat,” she said, and plunged a plum-stone between the boards with a vicious snap. “A ten-year-old could lay you on your back!”

“You think so, do you?” Torold rolled sideways and took her about the middle in his good arm. “I’ll show you, Master Godric, whether I’m fit or no!” He was laughing for pure pleasure, feeling his muscles stretch and exult again in a sudden, sweet bout of horseplay with a trusted familiar, who needed taking down a little for everyone’s good. He reached his wounded arm to pin the boy down by the shoulders. The arrogant imp had uttered only one muffled squeak as he was tipped on his back. “One hand of mine can more than deal with you, my lovely lad!” crowed Torold, withdrawing half his weight, and flattening his left palm firmly in the breast of the over-ample cotte, to demonstrate.

He recoiled, stricken and enlightened, just as Godith got breath enough to swear at him, and strike out furiously with her right hand, catching him a salutary box on the ear. They fell apart in a huge, ominous silence, and sat up among the rumpled sacks with a yard or more between them.

The silence and stillness lasted long. It was a full minute before they so much as tilted cautious heads and looked sidewise at each other. Her profile, warily emerging from anger into guilty sympathy, was delicate and pert and utterly feminine, he must have been weak and sick indeed, or he would surely have known. The soft, gruff voice was only an ambiguous charm, a natural deceit. Torold scrubbed thoughtfully at his stinging ear, and asked at last, very carefully: “Why didn’t you tell me? I never meant to offend you, but how was I to know?”

“There was no need for you to know,” snapped Godith, still ruffled, “if you’d had the sense to do as you’re bid, or the courtesy to treat your friends gently.”

“But you goaded me! Good God,” protested Torold, “it was only the rough play I’d have used on a younger brother of my own, and you asked for it.” He demanded suddenly:

“Does Brother Cadfael know?”

“Of course he does! Brother Cadfael at least can tell a hart from a hind.”

There fell a second and longer silence, full of resentment, curiosity and caution, while they continued to study each other through lowered lashes, she furtively eyeing the sleeve that covered his wound, in case a telltale smear of blood should break through, he surveying again the delicate curves of her face, the jut of lip and lowering of brows that warned him she was still offended.

Two small, wary voices uttered together, grudgingly:

“Did I hurt you?”

They began to laugh at the same instant, suddenly aware of their own absurdity. The illusion of estrangement vanished utterly; they fell into each other’s arms helpless with laughter, and nothing was left to complicate their relationship but the slightly exaggerated gentleness with which they touched each other.

“But you shouldn’t have used that arm so,” she reproached at last, as they disentangled themselves and sat back, eased and content. “You could have started it open again, it’s a bad gash.”

“Oh, no, there’s no damage. But you — I wouldn’t for the world have vexed you.” And he asked, quite simply, and certain of his right to be told: “Who are you? And how did you ever come into such a coil as this?”

She turned her head and looked at him long and earnestly; there would never again be anything with which she would hesitate to mist him.

“They left it too late,” she said, “to send me away out of Shrewsbury before the town fell. This was a desperate throw, turning me into an abbey servant, but I was sure I could carry it off. And I did, with everyone but Brother Cadfael. You were taken in, weren’t you? I’m a fugitive of your party, Torold, we’re two of a kind. I’m Godith Adeney.”

“Truly?” He beamed at her, round-eyed with wonder and delight. “You’re Fulke Adeney’s daughter? Praise God! We were anxious for you! Nick especially, for he knew you … I never saw you till now, but I, too …” He stooped his fair head and lightly kissed the small, none too clean hand that had just picked up the last of the plums. “Mistress Godith, I am your servant to command! This is splendid! If I’d known, I’d have told you better than half a tale.”

“Tell me now,” said Godith, and generously split the plum in half, and sent the stone whirling down into the Severn. The riper half she presented to his open mouth, effectively closing it for a moment. “And then,” she said, “I’ll tell you my side of it, and we shall have a useful whole.”

Brother Cadfael did not go straight to the mill on his return, but halted to check that his workshop was in order, and to pound up his goose-grass in a mortar, and prepare a smooth green salve from it. Then he went to join his young charges, careful to circle into the shadow of the mill from the opposite direction, and to keep an eye open for any observer. Time was marching all too swiftly, within an hour he and Godith would have to go back for Vespers.

They had both known his step; when he entered they were sitting side by side with backs propped against the wall, watching the doorway with rapt, expectant smiles. They had a certain serene, aloof air about them, as though they inhabited a world immune from common contacts or, common cares, but generously accessible to him. He had only to look at them, and he knew they had no more secrets; they were so rashly and candidly man and woman together that there was no need even to ask anything. Though they were both waiting expectantly to tell him!

“Brother Cadfael …” Godith began, distantly radiant.

“First things first,” said Cadfael briskly. “Help him out of cotte and shirt, and start unwinding the bandage until it sticks — as it will, my friend, you’re not out of the wood yet. Then wait, and I’ll ease it off.”

There was no disconcerting or chastening them. The girl was up in a moment, easing the seam of the cotte away from Torold’s wound, loosening the ties of his shirt to slip it down from his shoulder, gently freeing the end of the linen bandage and beginning to roll it up. The boy inclined this way and that to help, and never took his eyes from Godith’s face, as she seldom took hers from his absorbed countenance, and only to concentrate upon his needs.

“Well, well!” thought Cadfael philosophically. “It seems Hugh Beringar will seek his promised bride to little purpose — if, indeed, he really is seeking her?”

“Well, youngster,” he said aloud, “you’re a credit to me and to yourself, as clean-healing flesh as ever I saw. This slice of you that somebody tried to sever will stay with you lifelong, after all, and the arm will even serve you to hold a bow in a month or so. But you’ll have the scar as long as you live. Now hold steady, this may burn, but mist me, it’s the best salve you could have for green wounds. Torn muscles hurt as they knit, but knit they will.”

“It doesn’t hurt,” said Torold in a dream. “Brother Cadfael …”

“Hold your tongue until we have you all bound up trim. Then you can talk your hearts out, the both of you.”

And talk they did, as soon as Torold was helped back into his shirt, and the cotte draped over his shoulders. Each of them took up the thread from the other, as though handed it in a fixed and formal ceremony, like a favour in a dance; Even their voices had grown somehow alike, as if they matched tones without understanding that they did it. They had not the least idea, as yet, that they were in love. The innocents believed they were involved in a partisan comradeship, which was but the lesser half of what had happened to them in his absence.

“So I have told Torold all about myself,” said Godith, “and he has told me the only thing he did not tell us before. And now he wants to tell you.”

Torold picked up the tendered thread willingly. “I have FitzAlan’s treasury safely hidden,” he said simply. “I had it in two pairs of linked saddlebags, and I kept it afloat, too, all down the river, though I had to shed sword and swordbelt and dagger and all to lighten the load. I fetched up under the first arch of the stone bridge. You’ll know it as well as I. That first pier spreads, there used to be a boat-mill moored under it, some time ago, and the mooring chain is still there, bolted to a ring in the stone. A man can hold on there and get his breath, and so I did. And I hauled up the chain and hooked my saddlebags on to it, and let them down under the water, out of sight. Then I left them there, and drifted on down here just about alive, to where Godith found me.” He found no difficulty in speaking of her as Godith; the name had a jubilant sound in his mouth. “And there all that gold is dangling in the Severn still, I hope and believe, until I can reclaim it and get it away to its rightful owner. Thank God he’s alive to benefit by it.” A last qualm shook him suddenly and severely. “There’s been no word of anyone finding it?” he questioned anxiously. “We should know if they had?”

“We should know, never doubt it! No, no one’s hooked any such fish. Why should anyone look for it there? But getting it out again undetected may not be so easy. We three must put our wits together,” said Cadfael, “and see what we can do between us. And while you two have been swearing your alliance, let me tell you what I’ve been doing.”

He made it brief enough. “I found all as you told it. The traces of your horses are there, and of your enemy’s, too. One horse only. This was a thief bent on his own enrichment, no zealot trying to fill the king’s coffers. He had seeded the path for you liberally with caltrops, your kinsman collected several of them next day, for the sake of his own cattle. The signs of your struggle within the hut are plain enough. And pressed into the earth floor I found this.” He produced it from his scrip, a lump of deep yellow roughly faceted, and clenched in the broken silver-gilt claw. Torold took it from him and examined it curiously, but without apparent recognition.

“Broken off from a hilt, would you think?”

“Not from yours, then?”

“Mine?” Torold laughed. “Where would a poor squire with his way to make get hold of so fine a weapon as this must have been? No, mine was a plain old sword my grandsire wore before me, and a dagger to match, in a heavy hide sheath. If it had been light as this, I’d have tried to keep it. No, this is none of mine.”

“Nor Faintree’s, either?”

Torold shook his head decidedly. “If he had any such, I should have known. Nick and I are of the same condition, and friends three years and more.” He looked up intently into Brother Cadfael’s face. “Now I remember a very small thing that may have meaning, after all. When I broke free and left the other fellow dazed, I trod on something under the hay where we’d been struggling, a small, hard thing that almost threw me. I think it could well have been this. It was his? Yes, it must have been his! Snapped off against the ground as we rolled.”

“His, almost certainly, and the only thing we have to lead us to him,” said Cadfael, taking back the stone and hiding it again from view in his pouch. “No man would willingly discard so fine a thing because one stone was broken from it. Whoever owned it still has it, and will get it repaired when he dare. If we can find the dagger, we shall have found the murderer.”

“I wish,” said Torold fiercely, “I could both go and stay! I should be glad to be the one to avenge Nick, he was a good friend to me. But my part is to obey my orders, and get FitzAlan’s goods safely over to him in France. And,” he said, regarding Cadfael steadily, “to take with me also Fulke Adeney’s daughter, and deliver her safe to her father. If you will trust her to me.”

“And help us,” added Godith with immense confidence.

“Trust her to you — I might,” said Cadfael mildly. “And help you both I surely will, as best I can. A very simple matter! All I have to do — and mark you, she has the assurance to demand it of me! — is to conjure you two good horses out of the empty air, where even poor hacks are gold, retrieve your hidden treasure for you, and see you well clear of the town, westward into Wales. Just a trifle! Harder things are done daily by the saints …”

He had reached this point when he stiffened suddenly, and spread a warning hand to enjoin silence. Listening with ears stretched, he caught for a second time the soft sound of a foot moving warily in the edge of the rustling stubble, close to the open door.

“What is it?” asked Godith in a soundless whisper, her eyes immense in alarm.

“Nothing!” said Cadfael as softly. “My ears playing tricks.” And aloud he said: “Well, you and I must be getting back for Vespers. Come! It wouldn’t do to be late.”

Torold accepted his silent orders, and let them go without a word from him. If someone had indeed been listening … But he had heard nothing, and it seemed to him that even Cadfael was not sure. Why alarm Godith? Brother Cadfael was her best protector here, and once within the abbey walls she would again be in sanctuary. As for Torold, he was his own responsibility, though he would have been happier if he had had a sword!

Brother Cadfael reached down into the capacious waist of his habit, and drew out a long poniard in a rubbed and worn leather scabbard. Silently he put it into Torold’s hands. The young man took it, marvelling, staring as reverently as at a first small miracle, so apt was the answer to his thought. He had it by the sheath, the cross of the hilt before his face, and was still gazing in wonder as they went out from him into the evening, and drew the door closed after them. Cadfael took the memory of that look with him into the fresh, saffron air of sunset. He himself must once have worn the same rapt expression, contemplating the same uplifted hilt. When he had taken the Cross, long ago, his vow had been made on that hilt, and the dagger had gone with him to Jerusalem, and roved the eastern seas with him for ten years. Even when he gave up his’ sword along with the things of this world, and surrendered all pride of possessions, he had kept the poniard. Just as well to part with it at last, to someone who had need of it and would not disgrace it

He looked about him very cautiously as they rounded the corner of the mill and crossed the race. His hearing was sharp as a wild creature’s, and he had heard no whisper or rustle from outside until the last few moments of their talk together, nor could he now be certain that what he had heard was a human foot, it might well have been a small animal slipping through the stubble. All the same, he must take thought for what might happen if they really had been spied upon. Surely, at the worst, only the last few exchanges could have been overheard, though those were revealing enough. Had the treasure been mentioned? Yes, he himself had said that all that was required of him was to obtain two horses, retrieve the treasure, and see them safely headed for Wales. Had anything been said then of where the treasure was hidden? No, that had been much earlier. But the listener, if listener there had been, could well have learned that a hunted fugitive of FitzAlan’s party was in hiding there, and worse, that Adeney’s daughter was being sheltered in the abbey.

This was getting too warm for comfort. Best get them away as soon as the boy was fit to ride. But if this evening passed, and the night, and no move was made to betray them, he would suspect he had been fretting over nothing. There was no one in sight here but a solitary boy fishing, absorbed and distant on the river bank.

“What was it?” asked Godith, meek and attentive beside him. “Something made you uneasy, I know.”

“Nothing to worry your head about,” said Cadfael. “I was mistaken. Everything is as it should be.”

From the corner of his eye, at that moment, he caught the sudden movement down towards the river, beyond the clump of bushes where she had found Torold. Out of the meagre cover a slight, agile body unfolded and stood erect, stretching lazily, and drifted at an oblique angle towards the path on which they walked, his course converging with theirs. Hugh Beringar, his stride nicely calculated to look accidental and yet bring him athwart their path at the right moment, showed them a placid and amiable face, recognising Cadfael with pleasure, accepting his attendant boy with benevolence.

“A very fair evening, brother! You’re bound for Vespers? So am I. We may walk together?”

“Very gladly,” said Cadfael heartily. He tapped Godith on the shoulder, and handed her the small sacking bundle that held his herbs and dressings. “Run ahead, Godric, and put these away for me, and come down to Vespers with the rest of the boys. You’ll save my legs, and have time to give a stir to that lotion I have been brewing. Go on, child, run!”

And Godith clasped the bundle and ran, taking good care to run like an athletic boy, rattling one hand along the tall stubble, and whistling as she went, glad enough to put herself out of that young man’s sight. Her own eyes and mind were full of another young man.

“A most biddable lad you have,” said Hugh Beringar benignly, watching her race ahead.

“A good boy,” said Cadfael placidly, matching him step for step across the field blanched to the colour of cream. “He has a year’s endowment with us, but I doubt if he’ll take the cowl. But he’ll have learned his letters, and figuring, and a good deal about herbs and medicines, it will stand him in good stead. You’re at leisure today, my lord?”

“Not so much at leisure,” said Hugh Beringar with equal serenity, “as in need of your skills and knowledge. I tried your garden first, and not finding you there, thought you might have business today over here in the main gardens and orchard. But for want of a sight of you anywhere, I sat down to enjoy the evening sunshine, here by the river. I knew you’d come to Vespers, but never realised you had fields beyond here. Js all the corn brought in now?”

“All that we have here. The sheep will be grazing the stubble very shortly. What was it you wanted of me, my lord? If I may serve you in accord with my duty, be sure I will.”

“Yesterday morning, Brother Cadfael, I asked you if you would give any request of mine fair consideration, and you told me you give fair consideration to all that you do. And I believe it. I had in mind what was then no more than a rumoured threat, now it’s a real one. I have reason to know that King Stephen is already making plans to move on, and means to make sure of his supplies and his mounts. The siege of Shrewsbury has cost him plenty, and he now has more mouths to feed and more men to mount. It’s not generally known, or too many would be taking thought to evade it, as I am,” owned Beringar blithely, “but he’s about to issue orders to have every homestead in the town searched, and a tithe of all fodder and provisions in store commandeered for the army’s use. And all — mark that, all — the good horses to be found, no matter who owns them, that are not already in army or garrison service. The abbey stables will not be exempt.”

This Cadfael did not like at all. It came far too pat, a shrewd thrust at his own need of horses, and most ominous indication that Hugh Beringar, who had this information in advance of the general citizens, might also be as well informed of what went on in other quarters. Nothing this young man said or did would ever be quite what it seemed, but whatever game he played would always be his own game. The less said in reply, at this stage, the better. Two could play their own games, and both, possibly, benefit. Let him first say out what he wanted, even if what he said would have to be scrutinised from all angles, and subjected to every known test.

“That will be bad news to Brother Prior,” said Cadfael mildly.

“It’s bad news to me,” said Beringar ruefully. “For I have four horses in those same abbey stables, and while I might have a claim to retain them all for myself and my men, once the king has given me his commission, I can’t make any such claim at this moment with security. It might be allowed, it might not. And to be open with you, I have no intention of letting my two best horses be drafted for the king’s army. I want them out of here and in some private place, where they can escape Prestcote’s foraging parties, until this flurry is over.”

“Only two?” said Cadfael innocently. “Why not all?”

“Oh, come, I know you have more cunning than that. Would I be here without horses at all? If they found none of mine, they’d be hunting for all, and small chance I’d have left for royal favour. But let them take the two nags, and they won’t question further. Two I can afford. Brother Cadfael, it takes no more than a few days in this place to know that you are the man to take any enterprise in hand, however rough and however risky.” His voice was brisk and bland, even hearty, he seemed to intend no double meanings. “The lord abbot turns to you when he’s faced with an ordeal beyond his powers. I turn to you for practical help. You know all this countryside. Is there a place of safety where my horses can lie up for a few days, until this round-up is over?”

So improbable a proposal Cadfael had not looked for, but it came as manna from heaven. Nor did he hesitate long over taking advantage of it for his own ends. Even if lives had not depended on the provision of those two horses, he was well aware that Beringar was making use of him without scruple, and he need have no scruples about doing as much in return. It went a little beyond that, even, for he had a shrewd suspicion that at this moment Beringar knew far too much of what was going on in his, Cadfael’s mind, and had no objection whatever to any guesses Cadfael might be making as to what was going on in his, Beringar’s. Each of us, he thought, has a hold of sorts upon the other, and each of us has a reasonable insight into the other’s methods, if not motives. It will be a fair fight. And yet this debonair being might very well be the murderer of Nicholas Faintree. That would be a very different duel, with no quarter asked or offered. In the meantime, make the most of what might or might not be quite accidental circumstances.

“Yes,” said Cadfael, “I do know of such a place.”

Beringar did not even ask him where, or question his judgment as to whether it would be remote enough and secret enough to be secure. “Show me the way tonight,” he said outright, and smiled into Cadfael’s face. “It’s tonight or never, the order will be made public tomorrow. If you and I can make the return journey on foot before morning, ride with me. Rather you than any!”

Cadfael considered ways and means; there was no need to consider what his answer would be.

“Better get your horses out after Vespers, then, out to St Giles. I’ll join you there when Compline is over, it will be getting dark then. It wouldn’t do for me to be seen riding out with you, but you may exercise your own horses in the evening as the fit takes you.”

“Good!” said Beringar with satisfaction. “Where is this place? Have we to cross the river anywhere?”

“No, nor even the brook. It’s an old grange the abbey used to maintain in the Long Forest, out beyond Pulley. Since the times grew so unchancy we’ve withdrawn all our sheep and cattle from there, but keep two lay brothers still -in the house. No one will look for horses there, they know it’s all but abandoned. And the lay brothers will credit what I say.”

“And St Giles is on our way?” It was a chapel of the abbey, away at the eastern end of the Foregate.

“It is. We’ll go south to Sutton, and then bear west and into the forest. You’ll have three miles or more to walk back by the shorter way. Without horses we may save a mile or so.”

“I think my legs will hold me up for that distance,” said Beringar demurely. “After Compline, then, at St Giles.” And without any further word or question he left Cadfael’s side, lengthening his easy stride to gain ground; for Aline Siward was just emerging from the doorway of her house and turning towards the abbey gateway on her way to church. Before she had gone many yards Beringar was at her elbow; she raised her head and smiled confidingly into his face. A creature quite without guile, but by no means without proper pride or shrewd sense, and she opened like a flower at sight of this young man devious as a serpent, whatever else of good or ill might be said of him. That, thought Cadfael, watching them walk before him in animated conversation, ought to signify something in his favour? Or was it only proof of her childlike trustfulness? Blameless young women have before now been taken in by black-hearted villains, even murderers; and black-hearted villains and murderers have been deeply devoted to blameless young women, contradicting their own nature in this one perverse tenderness.

Cadfael was consoled and cheered by the sight of Godith in church, nobody’s fool, nudging and whispering among the boys, and flicking him one rapid, questioning blue glance, which he answered with a reassuring nod and smile. None too well-founded reassurance, but somehow he would make it good. Admirable as Aline was, Godith was the girl for him. She reminded him of Arianna, the Greek boat-girl, long ago, skirts kilted above the knee, short hair a cloud of curls, leaning on her long oar and calling across the water to him …

Ah, well! The age he had been then, young Torold had not even reached yet. These things are for the young. Meantime, tonight after Compline, at St Giles!