Chapter Thirteen

CADFAEL DID NOT STIR UNTIL THE chaplain came to take his place by the bedside. Twice the sick man had opened his eyes, that now lay sunken in bluish pits in the gaunt face, and watched him sitting there unmoving with the keys in his hand, but given no sign of wonder or disapproval, and uttered no more words. His part was done. Cadfael’s part could be left to Cadfael. And gradually Philip sank again beneath the surface of consciousness, having no more affairs to set in order. None, at least, that it was in his power to better. What remained awry must be left to God.

Cadfael watched him anxiously, marking the sunken hollows beneath the cheekbones, the blanching of the brow, the tension of drawn lips, and later the heavy sweat. A strong, tenacious life, not easy to quench. These wounds he had might well put an end to it, but it would not be yet. And surely by noon tomorrow FitzGilbert would be in La Musarderie, and Philip his prisoner. Even if the empress delayed her entry a day or two more, to have proper apartments prepared for her reception, the respite could last no longer. She would be implacable. He had made her of none account, and she would requite the injury in full. Even a man who cannot stand and is barely alive can be hoisted the extra yard or two in a noose, for an example to all others.

So there were still vital affairs to be set in order, as is proper before an imminent death. And under the prompting of God, who was to make provision?

When the chaplain came to relieve his watch, Cadfael took his keys, and went out from the comparative quiet of the keep into the din of battle in the ward. Inevitably the besiegers had pursued their assault upon the same spot they had already weakened, and this time with a hastily constructed sow to shield the ram and the men who wielded it. The hollow, purposeful rhythm of the ram shook the ground underfoot, and was perforated constantly by the irregular thudding of stones and iron flung down on the sow’s wooden roof from the damaged brattice above, and the embrasures along the guardwalk. The soft, sudden vibration of bowstrings and hiss of arrows came only very rarely from the air above. Archers were of less use now.

From wall to wall the clash and roar of steel and voices washed in echoing waves from the foot of the damaged tower, round the bulk of the keep, to die in the almost-silence under the other tower, that north-western tower under which Olivier lay in chains. But here where the hand-to-hand battle was joined the mass of men-at-arms, lancers, swordsmen, pikemen, heaved round and within the base of the breached tower. Above their heads, framed in the grotesque shapes left standing in the shattered outer wall, Cadfael could see fractured spaces of sky, paler than the opaque black of masonry, and tinted with the surviving glow of fire. The inner wall was pierced, the door and the stonework that surrounded it battered into the ward, lying here and there among the massed defenders. Not a great gap, and it seemed that the onslaught had been repelled, and the breach successfully filled up with men and steel; but a gap none the less. Not worth repairing, if tomorrow the castle was to be surrendered, but still worth holding to prevent further dying. Philip had dealt in accordance with his office; from the situation he had created he was extricating as many lives as he could, at the expense merely of his own.

It was still good policy to hug the walls when moving about the ward, though in the night the rain of missiles had ceased, and only the occasional fire-arrow was launched over the wall to attempt the diversion of a roof in flames. Cadfael circled the mass of the keep and came to the almost deserted north-western corner of the ward, where only the wall and the brattice were manned, and even much of the noise from the turmoil at the breach was strangely withdrawn into distance. The keys had grown warm in his hand, and the air this night was not frosty. Tomorrow, after the surrender, they might be able to bury their dead, and rest their many wounded.

The narrow door at the foot of the tower opened to the first key without so much as a creak. Two flights down, Philip had said. Cadfael descended. There was a flare in a sconce halfway down the winding staircase; nothing had been forgotten here, even in the stresses of siege. At the cell door he hesitated, breathing deeply and long. There was no sound from within, the walls were too thick; and here no sound from without, only the dim light pulsating silently as the flare flickered.

With the key in the lock, his hand trembled, and suddenly he was afraid. Not of finding some emaciated wreck within the cell; any such fear had long since left his mind. He was afraid of having achieved the goal of his journey, and being left with only the sickening fall after achievement, and the way home an endless, laborious descent into a long darkness, ending in nothing better than loss.

It was the nearest he had ever come to despair, but it lasted only a moment. At the metal kiss of key in lock it was gone, and his heart rose in him to fill his throat like a breaking wave. He thrust open the door, and came face to face with Olivier across the bare cell.

The captive had sprung erect at the first inward movement of his prison door, and stood braced, expecting to be confronted by the only visitor he ever had now, apart from the gaoler who attended him, and confounded by this unexpected apparition. He must have heard, funnelled downwards through the slanting shaft from the ward to his cell, the clamour of battle, and fretted at his own helplessness, wondering what was happening above. The glare he had fixed upon the doorway was suddenly softened and shaken by bewilderment; then his face was still, intent and wary. He believed what he saw; he had his warning. But he did not understand. His wide, wild, golden stare neither welcomed nor repelled; not yet. The chains at his ankles had clashed one sharp peal, and lay still.

He was harder, leaner, unnervingly bright, bright to incandescence with energy frustrated and restrained. The candle on its shelf of rock cast its light sidelong over him, honing every sharp line of his face into a quivering razor-edge, and flaming in the dazzling irises of his eyes, dilated with doubt and wonder. Neat, shaven clean, no way defaced, only the fetters marking him as a prisoner. He had been lying on his bed when the key turned in the lock; his burnished black hair clasped his olive cheeks with ruffled wings, casting blue shadows into the hollows there beneath the smooth, salient bones. Cadfael had never seen him more beautiful, not even on that first day when he had glimpsed this face through the open gate at the priory of Bromfield, stooping suave cheek to cheek with the girl who was now his wife. Philip had not failed to respect, value and preserve this elegance of body and mind, even though it had turned irrevocably against him.

Cadfael took a long step forward towards the light, uncertain whether he was clearly seen. The cell was spacious beyond what he had expected, with a low chest in a dark corner, and items of clothing or harness folded upon it. “Olivier?” he said hesitantly. “You know me?”

“I know you,” said Oliver, low-voiced. “I have been taught to know you. You are my father.” He looked from Cadfael’s face to the open door, and then to the keys in Cadfael’s hand. “There’s been fighting,” he said, struggling to make sense of all these chaotic factors that crowded in on him together. “What has happened? Is he dead?”

He. Philip. Who else could have told him? And now he asked instantly after his sometime friend, supposing, Cadfael divined, that only after that death could these keys have come into other hands. But there was no eagerness, no satisfaction in the voice that questioned, only a flat finality, as one accepting what could not be changed. How strange it was, thought Cadfael, watching his son with aching intensity, that this complex creature should from the first have been crystal to the sire who engendered him.

“No,” he said gently, “he is not dead. He gave them to me.”

He advanced, almost cautiously, as though afraid to startle a bird into flight, and as warily opened his arms to embrace his son, and at the first touch the braced body warmed and melted, and embraced him ardently in return.

“It is true!” said Olivier, amazed. “But of course, true! He never lies. And you knew? Why did you never tell me?”

“Why break into another man’s life, midway, when he is already in noble transit and on his way to glory? One breath of a contrary wind might have driven you off course.” Cadfael stood him off between his hands to look closely, and kissed the hollow oval cheek that leaned to him dutifully. “All the father you needed you had from your mother’s telling, better than truth. But now it’s out, and I am glad. Come, sit down here and let me get you out of these fetters.”

He kneeled beside the bed to fit the last key into the anklets, and the chains rang again their sharp, discordant peal as he opened the gyves and hoisted the irons aside, dropping the coil against the rock wall. And all the time the golden eyes hung upon his face, with passionate concentration, searching for glimpses that would confirm the continuity of the blood that bound them together. And after a moment Olivier began to question, not the truth of this bewildering discovery, but the circumstances that surrounded it, and the dazzling range of possibilities it presented.

“How did you know? What can I ever have said or done to make you know me?”

“You named your mother,” said Cadfael, “and time and place were all as they should be. And then you turned your head, and I saw her in you.”

“And never said word! I said once, to Hugh Beringar I said it, that you had used me like a son. And never trembled when I said it, so blind I was. When he told me you were here, I said it could not be true, for you would not leave your abbey unless ordered. Recusant, apostate, unblessed, he said, he is here to redeem you. I was angry!” said Olivier, wrenching at memory and acknowledging its illogical pain. “I said you had cheated me! You should not so have thrown away all you valued, for me, made yourself exile and sinner, offered your life. Was it fair to load me with such a terrible burden of debt? Lifelong I could not repay it. All I felt was the sting of my own injury. I am sorry! Truly I am sorry! I know better now.”

“There is no debt,” said Cadfael, rising from his knees. “All manner of reckoning or bargaining is for ever impossible between us two.”

“I know it! I do know it! I felt so far outdone, it scalded my pride. But that’s gone.” Olivier rose, stretched his long legs, and stalked his cell back and forth. “There is nothing I will not take from you, and be grateful, even if there never comes the day when I can do whatever needs to be done in your worship and for your sake. But I trust it may come, and soon.”

“Who knows?” said Cadfael. “There is a thing I want now, if I could see how to come by it.”

“Yes?” Olivier shook off his own preoccupations in penitent haste. “Tell me!” He came back to his bed, and drew Cadfael down beside him. “Tell me what is happening here. You say he is not dead, Philip. He gave you the keys?” It seemed to him a thing only possible from a deathbed. “And who is it laying siege to this place? He made enemies enough, that I know, but this must be an army battering the walls.”

“The army of your liege lady the empress,” said Cadfael ruefully. “And stronger than commonly, since she was accompanied home into Gloucester by several of her earls and barons. Yves, when he was loosed, rode for Gloucester to rouse her to come and rescue you, and come she most surely has, but not for your sake. The lad told her Philip was here in person. She has vowed, too publicly to withdraw even if she wished, and I doubt she does, to take his castle and his body, and hang him from his own towers, and before his own men. No, she won’t withdraw. She is determined to take, humiliate and hang him. And I am equally resolute,” said Cadfael roundly, “that she shall not, though how it’s to be prevented is more than I yet know.”

“She cannot do it,” said Olivier, aghast. “It would be wicked folly. Surely she knows it? Such an act would have every able man in the land, if he had laid down his weapons, rushing to pick them up again and get into the field. The worst of us, on either side, would hesitate to kill a man he had bested and captured. How do you know this is truth, that she has so sworn?”

“I know it from Yves, who was there to hear it, and is in no doubt at all. She is in earnest. Of all men she hates Philip for what she holds to be his treason.”

“It was treason,” said Olivier, but more temperately than Cadfael had expected.

“By all the rules, so it was. But also it was more than simply treason, however extreme the act. Before long,” said Cadfael heavily, “some of the greatest among us, on both sides of the argument, and yes, the best, will be accused of treason on the same grounds. They may not turn to fight upon the other side, but to leave their swords in the sheath and decline to continue killing will just as surely be denounced as treachery. Whatever his crime may be called, she wants him in her grasp, and means to be his death. And I am determined she shall not have him.”

Olivier thought for a moment, gnawing his knuckles and frowning. Then he said: “It would be well, for her more than any, that someone should prevent.” He turned the intensity of his troubled stare upon Cadfael. “You have not told me all. There is something more. How far has this attack gone? They have not broken through?” The use of ‘they’ might simply have been because he was enforcedly out of this battle, instead of fighting for his chosen cause with the rest, but it seemed to set him at an even greater distance from the besiegers. Cadfael had almost heard the partisan ‘we’ springing to mind to confront the ‘they’.

“Not yet. They have breached one tower, but have not got in, or had not when I came down to you,” he amended scrupulously. “Philip refused surrender, but he knows what she intends to do with him...”

“How does he know?” demanded Olivier alertly.

“He knows because I told him. Yves brought the message at his own risk. At no risk to me I delivered it. But I think he knew. He said then that if God, by chance, should choose to forestall the empress, he must take thought for the men of his garrison. He has done so. He has handed over the charge of La Musarderie to his deputy Camville, and given him leave, no, orders!, to get the best terms he can for the garrison, and surrender the castle. And tomorrow that will be done.”

“But he would not...” began Olivier, and cried out abruptly: “You said he is not dead!”

“No, he is not dead, But he is badly hurt. I don’t say he will die of his wounds, though he may. I do say he will not die of his wounds in time to escape being dragged aloft, whatever his condition, in the empress’s noose, once she gets into La Musarderie. He has consented in his own shameful death to procure the release of his men. She cares nothing for any of them, if she has Philip. She’ll keep the castle and the arms, and let the men depart alive.”

“He has consented to this?” asked Olivier, low-voiced.

“He has ordered it.”

“And his condition? His injuries?”

“He has badly broken ribs, and I fear some lacerations inside from the broken bones. And head injuries. They tossed in a crate of lumps of iron, broken lance-heads, cinder from the furnaces. He was close when it struck and burst. A bad head wound from a piece of a lance, and maybe foul at that. He came to his senses long enough to make his dispositions, and that he did clearly, and will be obeyed. When they enter, tomorrow, he will be her prisoner. Her only prisoner, for if FitzGilbert agrees to terms he’ll keep his word.”

“And it is bad? He cannot ride? He cannot even stand and walk? But what use,” said Olivier helplessly, “even if he could? Having bought their freedom he would not make off and leave the price unpaid. Never of his own will. I know him! But a man so sick, and at her mercy... She would not!” said Olivier strenuously, and looked along his shoulder at Cadfael’s face, and ended dubiously: “Would she?”

“He struck her to the heart, where her pride is. Yes, I fear she would. But when I left him to come to you, Philip was again out of his senses, and I think may well remain so for many hours, even days. The head wound is his danger.”

“You think we might move him, and he not know? But they are all round us, no easy way out. I do not know this castle well. Is there a postern that might serve? And then, it would need a cart. There are those in the village that I do know,” said Olivier, “but they may be no friends to Philip. But at the mill by Winstone I’m known, and they have carts. Now, while the night is black, is there anywhere a man could get out? For if they get their truce, by morning they’ll cease their close watch. Something might yet be done.”

“There’s a clear way out where they’ve breached the tower,” said Cadfael, “I saw sky through it. But they’re still outside there with the ram, and only held outside by force of arms. If a man of the garrison tried to slip out there, it would be one way of dying quickly. Even if they draw off, he could hardly go along with them.”

“But I can!” Olivier was on his feet, glowing. “Why not? I’m one of them. I’m known to have kept my fealty. I have her badge on my sword-belt, and her colours on my surcoat and my cloak. There may be some there who know me.” He crossed to the chest, and swept the covering cloak from sword and scabbard and light chainmail coat, the links ringing.

“You see? All my harness, everything that came with me when I was dragged out of Faringdon, and the lions of Anjou, that the old king gave to Geoffrey when he married his daughter to him, clear to be seen, marking me for hers. He would not so much as displace the least of another man’s possessions, though he might kill the man. In chainmail and armed, and in the dark, who’s to pick me out from any of the other besiegers outside the walls? If I’m challenged I can openly answer that I’ve broken out in the turmoil. If not, I can keep my own counsel, and make for the mill. Reinold will help me to the loan of a cart. But it would be daylight before I could get it here,” he checked, frowning. “How can we account for it then?”

“If you are in earnest,” said Cadfael, carried away in this gale, “something might be attempted. Once there’s truce, there can be movement in and out, and traffic with the village. For all I know, there may be local men within here, and some wounded or even among the dead, and their kin will be wanting to get news of them, once the way’s open.”

Olivier paced, hugged his body in embracing arms, and considered. “Where is the empress now?”

“She set up her court in the village, so they say. I doubt if she’ll make her appearance here for a day or so, she’ll need a degree of state, and a grand entrance. But even so,” said Cadfael, “all the time we have is the rest of this night, and the first few hours of truce, while there’s still confusion, and no such close watch.”

“Then we must make it enough,” said Olivier. “And say we do begin well... Where would you have him taken? To have the care he needs?”

Cadfael had given thought to that, though then without much hope of ever being able to pursue it. “There is a house of the Augustinians in Cirencester. I remember the prior at Haughmond has regular correspondence with one of the canons there, and they have a good name as physicians. And with them sanctuary would be inviolable. But it is a matter of ten miles or more.”

“But the best and fastest road,” said Olivier, gleaming brightly in this fury of planning, “and would not take us near the village. Once through Winstone we should be on the straight run to Cirencester. Now, how are we to get him out of the castle and keep him man alive?”

“Perhaps,” said Cadfael slowly, “as a man already dead. The first task, when the gates are open, will be to carry out the dead and lay them ready for burial. We know how many there should be, but FitzGilbert does not. And should there be a man from Winstone shrouded among them, his kin might very well come with a cart, to fetch him home.”

With his eyes burning steadily upon Cadfael’s face, Olivier voiced the final question and the final fear: “And if he is in his senses then, and forbids, as he might, what then?”

“Then,” said Cadfael, “I will remove him at least into the chapel, and we’ll put her and any other under the ban of the Church if they dare break his sanctuary. But there is no more I can do. I have no medicines here that could put a man to sleep for hours. And even if I had, you said that I had cheated you by laying you in my debt without your knowledge. He might accuse me of forcing him to default on a debt, to his dishonour. I have not the hardihood to do that to Philip.”

“No,” agreed Olivier, and suddenly smiled. “So we had better make a success of it while he is still senseless. Even that may be straining our rights, but we’ll argue that afterwards. And if I am going, as well go quickly. This once, my father, will you be my squire and help me to arm?”

He put on the mail hauberk, to make one more among the besiegers who were massed outside the walls, drawn off for a few minutes to regroup and attack yet again, and over it the surcoat of linen that bore the lions of Anjou plain to be seen. Cadfael buckled the sword-belt round his son’s loins, and for a moment had the world in his arms.

The cloak was necessary cover here within the walls, to hide Geoffrey’s blazon, for no one but Cadfael yet knew that Philip had set his prisoner free, and some zealous man-at-arms might strike first and question afterwards. True, it bore on the shoulder the imperial eagle which the empress had never consented to relinquish after her first husband’s death, but the badge was dark and unobtrusive on the dark cloth, and would not be noticed. If Olivier could inveigle himself successfully in among the defenders in the obscurity and confusion within the tower, he must discard the cloak before attempting to break out and venture among the attackers, so that the lions might show clear on the pallor of the linen, even by night, and be recognized.

“Though I would rather pass unrecognized,” admitted Olivier, stretching his broad shoulders under the weight of the mail, and settling the belt about his hips. “Every moment of this night I need, without wasting any in questioning and accounting. Well, my father, shall we go and make the assay?”

Cadfael locked the door after them, and they climbed the spiral stair. At the outer door Cadfael laid a hand on Olivier’s arm, and peered out cautiously into the ward, but in the shelter of the keep all was still, only the movements of the guards on the wall came down to them almost eerily.

“Stay by me. We’ll make our way close along the wall until we’re among them. Then take your moment when you see it. Best when the next thrust comes, and they crowd into the tower to fend it off. And no goodbyes! Go, and God go with you!”

“It will not be goodbye,” said Oliver. Cadfael felt him tensed and quivering at his back, confident, almost joyous. After long confinement his frustrated energy ached for release. “You will see me tomorrow, whether in my own or another shape. I have kept his back many a time, and he mine. This one more time, with God’s help and yours, I’ll do him that same service, whether he will or no.”

The door of the tower Cadfael also locked, leaving all here as it should be. They crossed the open ward to the keep, and circled in its shadow to reach the threatened tower on the other side. Even here the clamour of battle had subsided into the shifting murmur of recoil between onsets, and even that subdued, to keep the hearing sharp and ready for the next alarm. They stirred restlessly, like the sea in motion, spoke to one another briefly and in lowered voices, and kept their eyes fixed upon the foremost ranks, filling the jagged gap in the base of the tower. Fragments of masonry and rubble littered the ground, but the torn hole was not yet so big as to threaten the tower’s collapse. The fitful light of torches, such as still burned, and the dull glow in the sky outside the wall, where fire had burned out half the roof of the sow, left the ward almost in darkness.

A sudden warning outcry from within the tower, taken up and echoed back over the ranks within the ward, foretold the next assault. The mass drove in, tightening in support, to seal the breach with their bodies. Cadfael, on the fringe of the throng, felt the instant when Olivier slipped away from him like the tearing of his own flesh. He was gone, in among the men of the garrison, lithe and rapid and silent, lost to view in a moment.

Nevertheless, Cadfael drew back only far enough to be out of the way of the fighting men, and waited patiently for this assault, like the last, to be driven back. It never reached the ward. Certainly there was bitter fighting within the shell of the tower, but never a man of the attackers got beyond. It took more than half an hour to expel them completely, and drive them to a safe distance away from the walls, but after that the strange, tense quietness came back and with it a number of those who had fought the foremost came back to draw breath in safety until the next bout. But not Olivier. Either he was lurking somewhere in the broken shell, or else he was out into the turmoil of the night with the repelled invaders, and on his way, God grant, to cover in the woodland, and thence to some place where he could cross the river, and emerge on the road to the mill at Winstone.

Cadfael went back to the chamber where Philip lay, the chaplain nodding gently beside him. Philip’s breathing scarcely lifted the sheet over his breast, and then in a short, rapid rhythm. His face was livid as clay, but impenetrably calm, no lines of pain tightening his forehead or lips. He was deep beyond awareness of any such trivial matters as peril, anger or fear. God keep him so a while yet, and prevent impending evil.

There would be need of help in carrying this body towards its peace along with the rest, but it must be in innocence. For a moment Cadfael considered asking the priest, but discarded the idea almost as soon as it was conceived. There could be no embroiling this tired old man in an enterprise which could incur the empress’s deadly disfavour, and place him in reach of her immediate and implacable rage. What was to be done must be done in such a way that no one else could be blamed, or feel any betraying uneasiness.

But now there was nothing to be done but be still and pray, and wait for the summons to action. Cadfael sat in a corner of the room, and watched the old man drowse, and the wounded man’s withdrawal into something far more profound than sleep. He was still sitting there motionless when he heard the sound of the blown trumpets, calling the attention of the investing forces to the white banners fluttering from the towers of La Musarderie in the first dim light of predawn.

FitzGilbert rode down from the village, ceremoniously attended, and talked with Guy Camville before the gate. Brother Cadfael had come out into the ward to hear the terms of the exchange, and was not surprised when the first words the marshall uttered were: “Where is Philip FitzRobert?” Blunt and urgent: patently he had his orders.

“My lord,” said Camville from the walk above the gate, “is wounded, and has authorized me to make terms with you to surrender the castle. I ask that you will treat the garrison fairly and with honour. Upon reasonable conditions La Musarderie shall be yielded to the empress, but we are not so pressed as to accept shameful or ungenerous usage. We have wounded, we have dead. I ask that we may have truce from this hour, and will open the gates to you now, that you may see we are prepared to observe that truce and lay by all arms. If you are satisfied we are in good faith, give us the morning hours until noon to restore some order here within, and marshal our wounded, and carry out our dead for burial.”

“Fair asking so far,” said the marshall shortly. “What then?”

“We were not the attackers here,” said Camville equally briskly, “and have fought according to our sworn allegiance, as men owing fealty must. I ask that the garrison may be allowed to march out at noon and depart without hindrance, and that we take with us all our wounded who are fit to go. Those with worse injuries I ask that you will see tended as well as may be, and our dead we will bury.”

“And if I do not like your terms?” asked FitzGilbert. But it was plain from the complacency of his voice that he was well satisfied to be gaining, without further effort or waste of time, what all the empress’s host had come to win. The common soldiery here within would have been only so many more mouths to feed, and a continuing risk if things went wrong. To have them depart was a satisfaction.

“Then you may go back empty-handed,” said Camville boldly, “and we will fight you to the last man and the last arrow, and make you pay dear for a ruin you may have intact if you choose well.”

“You abandon here all your arms,” said the marshall, “even personal arms. And leave all engines undamaged.”

Camville, encouraged by this indication of consent, made a token objection, hardly meant to be taken seriously, and withdrew it when it was rejected. “Very well, we go disarmed.”

“So far, good! We allow your withdrawal. All but one! Philip FitzRobert stays here!”

“I believe you have agreed, my lord,” said Camville, “that the wounded who cannot go with us shall be properly tended. I trust you make no exceptions to that? I have told you my lord is wounded.”

“In the case of FitzRobert I gave no assurances,” said the marshall, goaded. “You surrender him into the empress’s hands unconditionally or there will be no agreement.”

“On that head,” said Camville, “I am already instructed by my lord Philip, and it is at his orders, not at yours, FitzGilbert, that I leave him here at your mercy.”

There was a perilous silence for a long moment. But the marshall was long experienced in accommodating himself to these embarrassments endemic in civil warfare.

“Very well! I will confirm truce, as I have already called a halt to action. Be ready to march out by noon, and you may go unhindered. But hark, I shall leave a party here outside the gates until noon, when we enter formally, to view everything and every man you take away with you. You will have to satisfy them that you are keeping to terms.”

“The terms I make I keep,” said Camville sharply.

“Then we shall not renew the quarrel. Now open the gate to me, let me see in what state you leave all within.”

By which he meant, Cadfael judged, let him see that Philip lay wounded and helpless within, and could not slip through the empress’s fingers. Cadfael took the hint, and went back hastily to the bedchamber, to be there in attendance when FitzGilbert reached it, which he did very promptly. Priest and monastic flanked the bed when Camville and the marshall entered. Philip’s shallow breathing had begun to rasp hollowly in throat and breast. His eyes were still closed, the full, arched lids had an alabaster pallor.

FitzGilbert came close, and stood looking down at the drawn face for a long time, whether with satisfaction or compunction Cadfael could not determine. Then he said indifferently: “Well...” and shrugged, and turned away abruptly. They heard his footsteps echoing along the stony corridors of the keep, and out into the ward. He departed assured that the empress’s arch-enemy could not so much as lift a hand to ward off the noose, much less rise from his bed and ride away out of reach of her vengeance.

When the marshall was gone, and the trumpets exchanging their peremptory signals across the bleached grass of the open ground between the armies, Cadfael drew breath deep, and turned to Philip’s chaplain.

“There’ll be no worse now. It’s over. You have watched the night through. Go and get your proper rest. I’ll stay with him now.”