Chapter Fourteen

FORTUNATA BRACED HER HANDS UPON THE chest on which she leaned, and came slowly to her feet before she turned to face him. In the yellow gleam of the lamp she saw his face in white bone highlights and deep hollows of shadow, perfectly motionless, betraying nothing. And yet it was too late for dissembling; they had both betrayed themselves already, she by whatever sign she had inadvertently left at home to warn him, and by this present search, he by following her here. Too late by far to pretend there was nothing to hide, nothing to answer, nothing to be accounted for. Too late to attempt to reconstruct the simple trust she had always had in him. He knew it was gone, as she knew now, beyond doubt, that there was reason for its going.

She sat down on the chest she had just closed, and set the lamp safely apart on the one beside it. And since silence seemed even more impossible than speech, she said simply: “I wondered about the box. I saw that it was gone from its place.”

“I know,” he said. “I saw the signs you left for me. I thought you had given me the box. Am I still to account for whatever I do with it?”

“I was curious,” she said. “You were going to use it for the best of your books. I wondered that it had gone out of favour in one day. But perhaps you have found a better,” she said deliberately, “to take its place.”

He shook his head, advancing into the room the few steps that took him to the corner of the table where she had laid down the key. That was the moment when she was quite sure, and something withered in her memories of him, forcing her, like a wounded plant, in urgent haste towards maturity. The lamp showed his face arduously smiling, but it was more akin to a spasm of pain. “I don’t understand you,” he said. “Why must you meddle secretly? Could you not have asked me whatever you wanted to know?”

His hand crept almost stealthily to the key. He drew back into the shadows by the door, and without taking his eyes from her, felt behind him with a grating fumble for the lock, and locked them in together.

It seemed to Fortunata then that she would do well to be a little afraid, but all she could feel was a baffled sadness that chilled her to the heart. She heard her own voice saying: “Had Aldwin meddled secretly? Was that what ailed him?”

Jevan braced his shoulders back against the door, and stood staring at her with stubborn forbearance, as though dealing with someone unaccountably turned idiot, but his consciously patient smile remained fixed and strained, like a convulsion of agony.

“You are talking in riddles,” he said. “What has this to do with Aldwin? I can’t guess what strange fancy you’ve got into your head, but it is an illusion. If I choose to show the gem you gave me to a friend who would appreciate it, does that mislead you into thinking I have somehow misprised or misused it?”

“Oh, no!” said Fortunata in the flat tone of helpless despair. “It will not do! Today you have been nowhere but here, not alone. If there had been no more than that, you would have taken book and all to show, you would have said what you were about. And you would not have followed me here! It was a mistake! You should have waited. I’ve found nothing. But by your coming I do know now there is something here to be found. Why else should you trouble what I did?” A sudden gust of rage took her at his immovable and self-deceiving attempt at condescension, which struggled and failed to diminish her. “Why do we keep pretending?” she cried. “What is the use? If I had known I would have given you the book, or taken your price for it if that was what you wanted. But now there’s murder, murder, murder in between us, and there’s no turning back or putting that away out of mind. And you know it as well as I. Why do we not speak openly? We cannot stay here forever, unable to go forward or back. Tell me, what are we to do now?”

But that was what neither he nor she could answer. Her hands were tied like his, they were suspended in limbo together, and neither of them could cut the cord that fettered them. He would have to kill, she would have to denounce, before either of them could ever be free again, and neither of them could do it, and neither of them, in the end, would be able to refrain. There was no answer. He drew deep breath, and uttered something like a groan.

“You meant that? You could forgive me for robbing you?”

“Without a thought! What you took from me I can do without. But what you took from Aldwin there’s no replacing, and no one who is not Aldwin has the right to forgive it.”

“How do you know,” he demanded with abrupt ferocity, “that I ever did any harm to Aldwin?”

“Because if you had not, you would have denied it here and now, in defiance of what I may believe I know. Oh, why, why? But for that I could have held my tongue. For you I would have! But what had Aldwin ever done, to come by such a death?”

“He opened the box,” said Jevan starkly, “and looked inside. No one else knew. When it was opened before us all he would have blabbed it out. Now you have it! An inquisitive fool who walked in my way, and he could have betrayed me, and I should have lost it... lost it forever... It was the box, the box that made me marvel. And he was before me, and had seen what afterward I saw... and coveted!”

Long, heavy silences had broken the low, furious thread of this speech, as if for minutes at a time he forgot where he was, and what manner of audience he was addressing. Outside, the light was gently dimming. Within, the lamp began to burn lower. It seemed to Fortunata that they had been there together for a very long time.

“I had only until Girard came home. I took it that very night, and put what I had in its place. I did not want to cheat you of all, I paid what I had... But then there was Aldwin. When could he ever keep to himself anything he knew? And my brother on his way home...”

Another haunted silence, in which he began to stir from his post by the door, moving restlessly the length of the room, past where she sat almost forgotten, silent and still.

“When he went running back after Elave, that day, I had almost grown reconciled. My word against his! A risk... but almost I came to terms with it. Even now–do you see it?–all this is my word against yours, if you so choose!” He said it without emphasis, almost indifferently. But he had remembered her again, a danger like the other. His unquiet prowling drove him back to the table. He ran the hand that was not clutching the key along the rack of his knives, in a kind of absent caress for a profession he had enjoyed and at which he had excelled.

“In the end it was pure chance. Can you believe that? Chance that I had the knife... It was no lie, I came out here to work that afternoon. I had been using a knife–this knife...”

Time and silence hung for a long while as he took it from the rack and drew it slowly out of its leather sheath, running long fingers down the thin, sharp blade.

“I had the sheath strapped to my belt. I forgot and left it there when I locked up to go home. And I thought I would go on through the town and go to Vespers at Holy Cross, seeing it was the day of Saint Winifred’s translation...”

He turned to look at her, darkly and intently, she sitting there slender and still on the chest beside the lamp, her grave eyes fixed unwaveringly on him. Just once he saw her glance down briefly at the knife in his hand. He turned the blade thoughtfully to catch the light. Now how easily he could end her, take the prize for which he had killed, and set out towards the west, as many and many a wanted man had done from here before him. Wales was not far, fugitives crossed that border both ways at need. But more is needed than mere opportunity. Time was passing, and it seemed this deadlock must last forever, in a kind of self-created purgatory.

“... I came late, they were all within, I heard the chanting. And then he came out from the little door that leads to the priest’s room! If he had not, I should have gone into the church, and there would have been no death. Do you believe that?”

Once again he had remembered her fully, as the niece of whom he had been humanly fond. And this time he wanted a reply; there was hunger in the very vibration of his voice.

“Yes,” she said, “I do believe it.”

“But he came. And seeing he turned towards the town, to go home, I changed my mind. It happens in a moment, in a breath, and everything is changed. I fell in beside him and went with him. There was no one to see, they were all in the church. And I remembered the knife–this knife! It was very simple... nothing unseemly... He was just newly confessed and shriven, as near content as ever I knew him. At the head of the path down to the riverside I slid it into him, and drew him away in my arm down through the bushes, down to the boat under the bridge. It was still almost full daylight then. I hid him there until dark. So there was no one left to betray me.”

“Except yourself,” she said, “and now me.”

“And you will not,” said Jevan. “You cannot... any more than I can kill you...”

This time the silence was longer and even more strained, and the close, stifling air within the room dulled Fortunata’s senses. It was as if they had shut themselves forever into a closed world where no one else could come, to shatter the tension between them and set them free to move again, to act, to go forward or back. Jevan began once more to pace the floor, turning and twisting at every few steps as though intense pain convulsed him. It went on for a long time, before he suddenly halted, and lowering with a long sigh the hands that still gripped the knife and the key, went on as though only a second had passed since he last spoke:

“... and yet in the end one of us will have to give way. There is no one else to deliver us.”

He had barely uttered it when a fist banged briskly at the door, and Hugh Beringar’s voice called loudly and cheerfully: “Are you within there, Master Jevan? I saw your light through the shutters. I brought your kin some good news a while ago, but you weren’t there to hear it. Open the door and hear it now!”

For one shocked moment Jevan froze where he stood. She felt him stiffen into ice, but his rigor lasted no longer than the flicker of an eyelid, before he heaved himself out of it with a contortion of effort like a man plucking up the weight of the world, and summoned up from somewhere the most matter-of-fact of voices to call back an answer. “One moment only! I’m just finishing here.” He was at the door and turning the key as silently and softly as a cat moves. She had risen to her feet, but had not moved from her place, uncertain what he meant to do, but filled with a kind of passive wonder that kept her from making any move of her own. He gripped her by the arm with his left hand, sliding his arm through hers to hold her close and fondly by the wrist, close as a lover or an affectionate father. There was never a word said of threatening or pleading, no request for her silence and submission. Perhaps he was already sure of it, if she was not. But she watched him turn the naked knife he held in his right hand, so that the blade lay along his forearm, and the sleeve concealed it. His long fingers were competent and assured on the shaped haft. He drew her with him to the door, and she went unresisting. With the hand that nursed the knife he set the door wide open, and led her out with him onto the green meadow, into the gentle, cloudless evening light that from within had seemed to be ultimate darkness.

“Good news is always welcome,” he said, confronting Hugh at a few yards distance with an open and untroubled countenance, from which he had banished the brief, icy pallor by force of will. “I should have heard it soon–we’re bound for home now. My niece has been sweeping and tidying my workshop for me. You need not have gone out of your way for me, my lord, but it was gracious in you.”

“I am not out of my way,” said Hugh. “We were close, and your brother said you would be here. The matter is, I’ve set your shepherd free. A liar Conan may be, but a murderer he is not. Every part of his day is accounted for at last, and he’s back home and clear of blame. As well you should hear it from me, you may well have been wondering yourself, after all the lies he told, how deep he was mired in this business.”

“Then does this mean,” asked Jevan calmly, “that you have found the real murderer?”

“Not yet,” said Hugh, with an equally confident and deceptive face, “though it narrows the field. You’ll be glad to get your man back. And he’s mortal glad to be back, I can tell you. I suppose that affects your brother’s side of the business rather than yours, but according to Conan he has been known to help you with the skins sometimes.” He had advanced to the door of the workshop, and was peering curiously within, into a cavern dimly lit by the little glowworm lamp, still burning on the lid of the chest. The yellow gleam faded in the light flooding in through the wide-open door. Hugh’s eyes roamed with an inquisitive layman’s interest over the great table under the shuttered window, the chests, the lime tanks, and arrived at the long rack of knives ranged along the wall, knives for dressing, for fleshing, for scraping, for trimming. And one of the sheaths empty.

Cadfael, standing a little apart with the horses, between the belt of trees that curved round close to the river on his left hand, and the open slope of meadow on his right, had a brightly lit view of the exterior of the workshop, the grassy slope, and the three figures gathered outside the open door. The sun was low, but not yet sunk behind the ridge of bushes, and the slanting westward light picked out detail with golden, glittering clarity, and found every point from which it could reflect. Cadfael was watching intently, for from this retired position he might see things hidden from Hugh, who stood close. He did not like the way Jevan was clasping Fortunata’s arm, holding her hard against his side. That embrace, uncharacteristic of so cool and self-sufficient a person as Jevan of Lythwood, Hugh certainly would not have missed. But had he seen, as Cadfael had, in one ruby-red shaft from the setting sun, and for one instant only, the steel of the knife flashing from under the cuff of Jevan’s right sleeve?

There was nothing strange in the girl’s appearance, except perhaps the unusual stillness of her face. She had nothing to say, made no motion of fear or distrust, was not uneasy at being held so, or if she was, there was no discerning it in her bearing. But she knew, quite certainly, what Jevan had in his other hand.

“So this is where you perform your mysteries,” Hugh was saying, advancing curiously into the workshop. “I’ve often wondered about your craft. I know the quality of what you produce, I’ve seen it in use, but how the leaves come by that whiteness, seeing what the raw hides are like, I’ve never understood.”

Like any inquisitive stranger, he was prowling about the room, probing into corners, but avoiding the rack of knives, since the gap would be too obvious to be missed if he went near it and made no comment. He was tempting Jevan, if he felt any anxiety or had things to hide within, to loose his hold of the girl and follow, but Jevan never relaxed his grip, only drew Fortunata with him to the doorway, and followed no farther. And now indeed that strained and tethered movement began to seem sinister, and how to break the link began to seem a matter of life and death. Cadfael moved a little nearer, leading the horses.

Hugh had emerged from the hut again, still at gaze, still curious. He passed by the close-linked pair and went down towards the edge of the bank, where the netted cages were moored in the river. Jevan followed, but still retaining his hold on the girl’s arm, cramped into the hollow of his side. Woman walks on the left, so that her man’s right arm may be free to defend her, whether with fist or sword. Jevan held Fortunata so fast on his left in order that she might be within instant reach of his knife, if this matter ended past hope. Or was the knife for himself?

Elave had come, as the riders had, through the town, in by one bridge, out by the other, running, after the first frenzy, no longer like a demented man, but steadily, at a pace and rhythm he knew he could maintain. From past years he knew exactly the quickest path beyond the suburb, upriver to the curve where the current had carved its bed deep and fast. When he came over the ridge, and was able to halt and look down towards the solitary workshop in the meadow, withdrawn far enough up the slope to evade even the thaw-water spate unless in a very bad year, he lingered in cover among the trees to take in the scene below, and get his breath back while he assessed it.

And there they were, just outside the door of the workshop, which was in the upstream end of the hut, to prolong the evening light from the west, as the wide opening in the inland, south-facing wall admitted it through the main part of the day. He could see the two netted frames in the water by the way the surface eddies span; they lay slightly downstream, where the raised bank afforded firm anchorage. Behind the linked figures of Jevan and Fortunata the door of the hut stood wide open, in a deceptive suggestion of honesty, as the linked arms of uncle and niece presented a travesty of affection. In all the years of her childhood, never had Jevan handled and petted the little girl freely, as Girard would do by his nature. This was a different kind of man, private, self-sufficient, not given to touching or being touched, not effusive in his likings. He had been a kind uncle to her in his cool, teasing way, surely had loved her, but never thus. It was not love that joined them now. What had she become? His hostage? His protection, for a short while if no more? No, if she had nothing to reveal against him, and he was sure of her, what need to clasp her so close? She could have stood apart, and helped him all the better to an appearance of normality, to fend off the sheriff at least for today. He held fast to her because he was not sure of her; he had to remind her by his grip that if she spoke the wrong word he could avenge himself.

Elave crept round in the cover of the trees, which swept in a long, thinning curve down towards the Severn, upstream of the hut, and shrank into scrub and bushes perhaps fifty paces from the bank. He was nearer now, he could hear the sound of voices but not what was said. Between him and the group at the door stood Brother Cadfael with the horses, for the time being holding off from a nearer approach. And it was all a play, Elave saw that now, a play to preserve the face of normality between all these people. Nothing must shatter it; a too open word, a threatening move might precipitate disaster. The very voices were casual, light, and current, like acquaintances exchanging the day’s trivial news in the street.

He saw Hugh go into the workshop, and saw that Jevan did not loose his hold of Fortunata to follow him, but stood immovably without. He saw the sheriff emerge again, animated and smiling, brushing past the pair of them and waving Jevan with him towards the river, but when they followed him they moved as one. Then Cadfael stirred himself abruptly and led the horses down the slope to join them, suddenly treading close on Jevan’s heels as it seemed, but Jevan never turned his head or relaxed his hold. And Fortunata all this time went silently where she was led, with a still and wary face.

What they needed, what they were trying to achieve, was a diversion, anything that would break that mated pair apart, enable Hugh to pluck the girl away from the man, unhurt. Once robbed of her, Jevan could be dealt with. But they were only two, and he was well aware of both of them, and could so contrive as to keep them both at arm’s length and beyond. As long as he held Fortunata by the arm he was safe, and she in peril, and no one could afford to demolish the pretence that everything was as it always was.

But he, Elave, could! Of him Jevan was not aware, and against him he could not be on guard. And there must be something that would shatter his pretence and startle his hand from its attendant shield, and leave him defenceless. Only there would be no more than one chance.

A last long, red ray of the setting sun before it sank pierced the veil of bushes, and at once paled the small yellow glow from within the hut, which Elave had all this time seen without seeing, and glittered for one instant at the wrist of Jevan’s right hand. Elave recognized at once fire and steel, and knew why Hugh held off so patiently. Knew, also, what he was about to do. For the whole group, with the led horses, had moved downstream towards the netted cages where the skins swayed and writhed in the current. A few yards more, and he could put the bulk of the workshop between him and them as he crossed the meadow to the open door.

Hugh Beringar was doing the talking, pretending interest in the processes involved in vellum-making, trying to occupy Jevan’s attention to such an extent that he should relax his vigilance. Cadfael ranged distractingly close with the horses, but Jevan never looked round. He had surely left the door of the hut open and the lamp burning to force the sheriff to draw off in the end, mount and ride away, and leave the tolerant craftsman to close up his affairs for the night. Hugh was just as set on outstaying even this relentless patience. And while they were deadlocked there, standing over the bank of Severn, here was one free agent who could act, and only one.

Elave broke cover and ran, using the hut as shield, headlong for the open doorway and the dim interior, and caught up the lamp. The thatch of the roof was old, dried from a fine summer, bellying loosely between its supporting beams. He set the flame of the lamp to it in two places, over the long table where the draught from the shutters would fan it, and again close to the doorway as he backed out again. Outside he plucked out the burning wick and flung it up on the slope of the roof, and the remaining oil after it. The breeze that often stirred at sunset after a still day was just waking from the west, and caught at the small spurt of flame, sending a thin, sinuous serpent of fire up the roof. Inside the hut he heard what sounded like a giant’s gusty sigh, and flames exploded and licked from truss to truss along the thatch between the rafters. Elave ran, not back into the cover of the bushes, but round to the shutters on the landward side of the hut, and gripped and tore at the best hold he could get on the boards until one panel gave and swung clear, and billowing smoke gushed out first, and after it tall tongues of flame as the air fanned the fire within. He sprang back, and stood off to see the fearful thing he had done, as smoke billowed and flame soared above the roof.

Cadfael was the first to see, and cry an alarm: “Fire! Look, your hut’s afire!”

Jevan turned his head, perhaps only half believing, and saw what Cadfael had seen. He uttered one awful scream of despair and loss, flung Fortunata away from him so suddenly and roughly that she almost fell, flung off the knife he held to quiver upright in the turf, and ran frenziedly straight for the hut. Hugh yelled after him: “Stop! You can do nothing!” and ran after, but Jevan heeded nothing but the tower of fire and smoke, dimming the sunset against which he saw it, and blackening the rose and pale gold of the sky. Round to the far wall of the workshop he ran headlong, and in through the drifting smoke that filled the doorway.

Elave, rounding the corner of the building just in time to confront him face-to-face, beheld a horrified mask with open, screaming mouth and frantic eyes, before Jevan plunged without pause into the choking darkness within. Elave even grasped at his sleeve to halt him from such madness, and Jevan turned on him and hurled him off with a blow in the face, sending him reeling as a spurt of flame surged between and drove them apart. Stumbling backward and falling in the tufted grass, Elave saw the drifting smoke momentarily coiled aside in an eddy of wind. He was staring full into the open doorway, and could not choose but see what happened within.

Jevan had blundered heedless through the smoke, and clambered onto the long table, and was stretching up with both arms plunged to the elbow in the burning thatch, that dangled in swags above his head, reaching for something secreted there. He had it, he tugged wildly to bring it down into his arms, moaning and writhing at the pain of his burned hands. Then it seemed that half the disturbed thatch collapsed in a great explosion of flame on top of him, and he vanished in a dazzling rose of fire and a long howl of anguish and rage.

Elave clawed his way up from the ground and lunged forward with arms over his face to shield him. Hugh came up breathless and balked in the doorway, as the heat drove them both back, coughing and retching for clean air. And suddenly a blackened figure burst out between them, trailing a comet’s tail of smoke and sparks, his clothing and hair on fire, something muffled and shapeless hugged protectively and passionately in his arms. He was keening in a thin wail, like the wind in winter in door and chimney. They sprang to intercept him and try to beat out the flames, but he was too sudden and too swift. Down the slope of grass he went, a living torch, and leaped far out into mid-current. The Severn hissed and spat, and Jevan was gone, swept downstream past his own nets and skins, past Fortunata, rigid and mute with shock in Cadfael’s arms, down this free-flowing reach of the river, to drift ashore somewhere in the slower stretches and lower water where Severn encircled the town.

Fortunata saw him pass, turning with the current, very soon lost to sight. He was not swimming. Both arms embraced fiercely the swathed burden for which he had killed and now was dying.

It was over. There was nothing now to be done for Jevan of Lythwood, nothing for his blackened and blazing property but to let it burn out. There was nothing near enough to catch fire from it, only the empty field. What mattered now, to Hugh as to Cadfael, was to get these two shocked and inarticulate souls safely back into a real world among familiar things, even if for one of them it must be a return to a household horrified and bereaved, and for the other to a stone cell and a threatened condemnation. Here and now, all Fortunata could say, over and over again, was: “He would not have have hurt me–he would not!” and at last, after many such repetitions, almost inaudibly: “Would he?”

And nothing as yet could be got out of Elave but the horrified protest: “I never wanted that! How could I know? How could I know? I never wished him that!” And at last, in a kind of fury against himself, he said: “And we do not even know he is guilty of anything, even now we do not know!”

“Yes,” said Fortunata then, quickening out of her icy numbness, “I do know! He told me.”

But that was a story she was not yet able to tell fully, nor would Hugh allow her to waste present time on it, for she was cold with an unnatural cold from within, and he wanted her home.

“See to the lad, Cadfael, and get him back where his bishop wants him, before this truancy is added to the charges against him. I’ll take the lady back to her mother.”

“The bishop knows I’m gone,” said Elave, rousing himself to respond, with a great heave of his shoulders that still could not shrug off the stunning load they carried. “I begged him, and he gave me leave.”

“Did he so?” said Hugh, surprised. “Then the more credit to him and to you. I have hopes of such a bishop.” He was up into the saddle with a vigorous spring, and reaching down a hand to Fortunata. His favourite raw-boned grey would never notice the slight extra weight. “Hand her up, boy... that’s it, your foot on mine. And now be wise, leave all till tomorrow. What more needs be done, I’ll do.” He had shed his coat to wrap round the girl’s shoulders, and settled her securely in his arm. “Tomorrow, Cadfael, I’ll be early with the abbot. Doubtless we shall all meet before the day’s out.”

They were gone, away at a canter up the slope of the field, turning their backs on the blaze that was already settling down into a blackened, smouldering heap of roofless timber, and the netted sheepskins weaving and swaying in the sharp current, while the water under the opposite bank lay smooth and almost still.

“And we’ll be on our way, too,” said Cadfael, gathering the pony’s rein, “for there’s nothing any man can do more here. All’s done now, and by the same token, might have been much worse done. Here, you ride and I’ll walk with you, and we’ll just make our way quietly home.”

“Would he have harmed her?” Elave asked after long silence, when they were threading the highroad through the thriving houses and shops of Frankwell and approaching the western bridge.

“How can we know, when she herself cannot be certain? God’s providence decreed that he should not. That must be enough for us. And you were his instrument.”

“I have been the death of his brother for Girard,” said Elave. “How can he but blame me? What better could I expect from him now?”

“Would it have been better for Girard if his brother had lived to be hanged?” asked Cadfael. “And his name blown about in the scandal of it? No, leave Girard to Hugh. He’s a man of sense, he’ll not hold it against you. You sent him back a daughter, he won’t grudge her to you when the time comes.”

“I never killed a man before.” Elave’s voice was weary and reflective. “In all those miles we travelled, and with dangers and fights enough along the way, I doubt if I ever drew blood.”

“You did not kill him, and must not claim more than your due. His own actions killed him.”

“Do you think he may have dragged himself ashore somewhere? Living? Could he live? After that?”

“All things are possible,” said Cadfael. But he remembered the arms in their smouldering sleeves clamped fast over the thing Jevan had snatched from the fire, the long body swept past beneath the water without struggle or sound, and he had not much doubt what would be found next day, somewhere in the circuit of the town.

Over the bridge and through the streets the pony paced placidly, and at the descent of the Wyle he snuffed the evening air and his pace grew brisker, scenting his stable and the comforts of home.

When they entered the great court the brothers had just come out from Compline. Abbot Radulfus emerged from the cloister to cross to his own lodging, with his distinguished guests one on either side. They came at the right moment to see a brother of the house leading in, on one of the abbey’s ponies, the prisoner accused of heresy, and released on his parole some three hours earlier. The rider was soiled and blackened by smoke, his hands and his hair at the temples somewhat scorched by fire, a circumstance he had not so far noticed, but which rendered the whole small procession a degree more outrageous in Canon Gerbert’s eyes. Brother Cadfael’s calm acceptance of this unseemly spectacle only redoubled the offence. He helped Elave to dismount, patted him encouragingly on the back, and ambled off to the stables with the pony, leaving the prisoner to return to his cell of his own volition, even gladly, as if he were indeed coming home. This was no way to hold an alleged heretic. Everything about the procedures here in the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul scandalized Canon Gerbert.

“Well, well!” said the bishop, unshaken, even appreciative. “Whatever else the young man may be, he’s a man of his word.”

“I marvel,” said Gerbert coldly, “that your lordship should ever have taken such a risk. If you had lost him it would have been a grave dereliction, and a great injury to the Church.”

“If I had lost him,” said the bishop, unmoved, “he would have lost more and worse. But he comes back as he went, intact!”