Chapter Nine
IT WAS ALREADY TAKEN FOR GRANTED by all of them, it seemed, that Cadfael was on their side, and wholeheartedly a party to their conspiracy. How could it be otherwise? Here was absolute proof that the boy was no murderer, proof that could be laid in Hugh Beringar’s hands with confidence in his justice, no question of that. But it could not be done without exposing Hyacinth to the very danger from which he had escaped once, and could hardly hope to escape a second time. Hugh was bound by law as fast as any man, even his gift for turning a blind eye and a deaf ear would not help Hyacinth if once Bosiet got wind of where he was and who was sheltering him.
“Between us,” said Cadfael, though somewhat dubiously, “we might be able to get you away out of the county and into Wales, clean away from pursuit…”
“No,” said Hyacinth firmly, “I won’t run. I’ll hide for as long as I must, but I won’t run any further. It’s what I meant to do, when I set off this way, but I’ve changed my mind.”
“Why?” demanded Cadfael simply.
“For two good reasons. One, because Richard’s lost, and Richard saved my skin for me by bringing warning, and I’m his debtor until I know he’s safe, and back where he should be. And two, because I want my freedom here in England, here in Shrewsbury, and I mean to get work in the town when I can with safety, and earn my living, and take a wife.” He looked up with a bright, challenging flash of his amber eyes at Eilmund, and smiled. “If Annet will have me!”
“You’d best ask my leave about that,” said Eilmund, but with such good humour that it was plain the idea was not entirely new to him, nor necessarily unwelcome.
“So I will, when the time comes, but I would not offer you or her what I am and have now. So let that wait, but don’t forget it,” warned the faun, gleaming. “But Richard I must find, I will find! That’s first!”
“What can you do,” said Eilmund practically, “more than Hugh Beringar and all his men are doing? And you a hunted man yourself, with the hounds close on your tail! You stay quiet like a sensible lad, and hide your head until Bosiet’s hunt for you starts costing him more even than his hatred’s worth. As it will, in the end. He has manors at home now to think about.” But whether Hyacinth was, by ordinary standards, a sensible lad was a matter for conjecture. He sat very still, in that taut, suggestive way he had, that promised imminent action, the soft glow of Annet’s fire glowing in the subtle planes of his cheeks and brow, turning his bronze to gold. And Annet, beside him on the cushioned bench by the wall, had something of the same quality. Her face was still, but her eyes were sapphire bright. She let them talk about her in her presence, and felt no need to add a word on her own account, nor did she so much as touch Hyacinth’s slender shoulder to confirm her secure tenure. Whoever had doubts about Annet’s claims on the future, Annet had none.
“Richard left you as soon as he’d delivered his warning?” asked Cadfael.
“He did. Hyacinth wanted to go with him to the edge of the wood,” said Annet, “but he wouldn’t have it. He wouldn’t stir unless Hyacinth went into hiding at once, so we promised. And he set off back along the track. And we came back here to Father, as he’s told you, and saw no one else along the way. Richard would not have gone anywhere near Eaton, or I’d have thought his grandmother might have taken him. But he was bent on getting back to his bed.”
“It was what we all thought,” owned Cadfael, “not least Hugh Beringar. But he was there early and turned the place wrong side out, and the boy is not there. I think John of Longwood and half the household beside would have told if he’d been seen there. Dame Dionisia is a formidable lady, but Richard is the lord of Eaton, it’s his bidding they’ll have to do in the future, not hers. If they dared not speak out before her face, they’d have done it softly behind her back. No, he is not there.”
It was long past time for Vespers. Even if he started back now he would be too late for Compline, but still he sat stubbornly going over this whole new situation in his mind, looking for the best way forward, where there seemed to be nothing to be done but wait, and continue to evade the hunt. He was grateful that Hyacinth was no murderer, that at least was a gain. But how to keep him out of the hands of Bosiet was another matter.
“For God’s sake, boy,” he said, sighing, “what was it you did to your overlord, there in Northamptonshire, to get yourself so bitterly hated? Did you indeed assault his steward?”
“I did,” acknowledged Hyacinth with satisfaction, and a red reminiscent spark kindled in his eyes. “It was after the last of the harvest, and there was a girl gleaning in the poor leavings in one of the demesne fields. There never was a girl safe from him if he came on her alone. It was only by chance I was near. He had a staff, and dropped her to swing at my head with it when I came at him. I got a few bruises, but I laid him flat against the stones under the headland, clean out of his wits. So there was nothing I could do but run for it. I’d nothing to leave, no land. Drogo distrained on my father two years before, when he was in his last illness and I had all to do, our fields and Bosiet’s harvest labour, and we ended in debt. He’d been after us a long while, he said I was for ever rousing his villeins against him… Well, if I was it was for their rights. There are laws to defend life and limb even for villeins, but they meant precious little in Bosiet’s manors. He’d have had me half-killed for attacking the steward. He’d have had me hanged if I hadn’t been profitable to him. It was the chance he’d been waiting for.”
“How were you profitable to him?” asked Cadfael.
“I had a turn for fine leather-work belts, harness, pouches, and the like. When he’d made me landless he offered to leave me the toft if I’d bind myself to turn over all my work to him for my keep. I’d no choice, I was still his villein. But I began to do finer tooling and gilding. He wanted to get some favour out of the earl once, and he had me make a book cover to give him as a present. And then the prior of the Augustinian canons at Huntingdon saw it, and ordered a special binding for their great codex, and the sub-prior of Cluny at Northampton wanted his best missal rebound, and so it grew. And they paid well, but I got nothing out of it. Drogo’s done well out of me. That’s the other reason he wanted me back alive. And so will his son Aymer want me.”
“If you have a trade the like of that at your finger-ends,” said Eilmund approvingly, “you can make your way anywhere, once you’re free of these Bosiets. Our abbot might very well put some work your way, and some town merchant would be glad to have you in his employ.”
“Where and how did you meet with Cuthred?” asked Cadfael, curiously.
“That was at the Cluniac priory in Northampton. I lay up for the night there, but I dared not go into the enclave, there were one or two there who knew me. I got food by sitting with the beggars at the gate, and when I was making off before dawn, Cuthred was for starting too, having spent the night in the guest hall.” An abrupt dark smile plucked at the corners of Hyacinth’s eloquent lips. He kept his startling eyes veiled under their high-arched golden lids. “He proposed we should travel together. Out of charity, surely. Or so that I should not have to thieve for my food, and sink into a worse condition even than before.” As abruptly he looked up, unveiling the full brilliance of wide eyes fixed full and solemnly on Eilmund’s face. The smile had vanished. “It’s time you knew the worst of me, I want no lies among this company. I came this way owing the world nothing, and ripe for any mischief, and a rogue and a vagabond I could be, and a thief I have been at need. Before you shelter me another hour, you should know what cause you have to think better of it. Annet,” he said, his voice soft and assuaged on her name, “already knows what you must know too. You have that right. I told her the truth the night Brother Cadfael was here to set your bone.”
Cadfael remembered the motionless figure sitting patiently outside the cottage, the urgent whisper: “I must speak to you!” And Annet coming out into the dark, and closing the door after her.
“It was I,” said Hyacinth with steely deliberation, “who dammed the brook with bushes so that your seedlings were flooded. It was I who undercut the bank and bridged the ditch so that the deer got into the coppice. It was I who shifted a pale of the Eaton fence to let out the sheep to the ash saplings. I had my orders from Dame Dionisia to be a thorn in the flesh to the abbey until they gave her her grandson back. That was why she set up Cuthred in his hermitage, to put me there as his servant. And I knew nothing then of any of you, and cared less, and I was not going to quarrel with what provided me a comfortable living and a safe refuge until I could do better. It’s my doing, more’s the pity, that the worse thing happened, and the tree came down on you and pinned you in the brook, my doing that you’re lamed and housebound here though that slip came of itself, I didn’t touch it again. So now you know,” said Hyacinth, “and if you see fit to take the skin off my back for it, I won’t lift a hand to prevent, and if you throw me out afterwards, I’ll go.” He reached up a hand to Annet’s hand and added flatly: “But not far!”
There was a long pause while two of them sat staring at him, intently and silently, and Annet watched them no less warily, all of them withholding judgement. No one had exclaimed against him, no one had interrupted this half-defiant confession. Hyacinth’s truth was used like a dagger, and his humility came very close to arrogance. If he was ashamed, it did not show in his face. Yet it could not have been easy to strip himself thus of the consideration and kindness father and daughter had shown him. If he had not spoken, clearly Annet would have said no word. And he had not pleaded, nor attempted any extenuation. He was ready to take what was due without complaint. Doubtful if anyone, however eloquent or terrible a confessor, would ever get this elusive creature nearer to penitence than this.
Eilmund stirred, settling his broad shoulders more easily against the wall, and blew out a great, gusty breath. “Well, if you brought the tree down on me, you also hoisted it off me. And if you think I’d give up a runaway villein to slavery again because he’d played a few foul tricks on me, you’re not well acquainted with my simple sort. I fancy the fright I gave you that day was all the thrashing you needed. And since then you’ve done me no more injury, for from all I hear there’s been quiet in the woods from that day. I doubt if the lady’s satisfied with her bargain. You show sense, and stay where you are.”
“I told him,” said Annet, confidently smiling, “you would not pay back injury for injury. I never said a word, I knew he would out with it himself. And Brother Cadfael knows now Hyacinth’s no murderer, and has owned to the worst he knows about himself. There’s not one of us here will betray him.”
No, not one! But Cadfael sat somewhat anxiously pondering what could best be done now. Betrayal was impossible, certainly, but the hunt would go on, and might well drag all these woods over again, and in the meantime Hugh, in his natural concentration on this most likely quarry, might be losing all likelihood of finding the real murderer. Even Drogo Bosiet was entitled to justice, however he infringed the rights of others. Withholding from Hugh the certainty and proof of Hyacinth’s innocence might be delaying the reassessment that would set in motion the pursuit of the guilty.
“Will you trust me, and let me tell Hugh Beringar what you have told me? Give me leave,” urged Cadfael hastily, seeing their faces stiffen in consternation, “to deal with him privately—”
“No!” Annet laid her hand possessively on Hyacinth’s shoulder, burning up like a stirred fire. “No, you can’t give him up! We have trusted you, you can’t fail us.”
“No, no, no, not that! I know Hugh well, he would not willingly give up a villein to mistreatment, he is for justice even before law. Let me tell him only that Hyacinth is innocent, and show him the proof. I need say nothing as to how I know or where he is, Hugh will take my word. Then he can hold off this search and leave you alone until it’s safe for you to come forth and speak openly.”
“No!” cried Hyacinth, on his feet in one wild, smooth movement, his eyes two yellow flames of alarm and rejection. “Not a word to him, never a word! If we’d thought you’d go to him we’d never have let you in to us. He’s the sheriff, he must take Bosiet’s part—he has manors, he has villeins of his own, do you think he’d ever side with me against my legal lord? I should be dragged back at Aymer’s heels, and buried alive in his prison.”
Cadfael turned to Eilmund for help. “I swear to you I can lift this suspicion from the lad by speaking with Hugh. He’ll take my word and hold off from the hunt—withdraw his men, or send them elsewhere. He has still Richard to find. Eilmund, you know Hugh Beringar better than to doubt his fairness.”
But no, Eilmund did not know him, not as Cadfael knew him. The forester was shaking his head doubtfully. A sheriff is a sheriff, pledged to law, and law is rigid and weighted, all in all, against the peasant and the serf and the landless man. “He’s a decent, fair-minded man, sure enough,” said Eilmund, “but I dare not stake this boy’s life on any king’s officer. No, leave us keep as we are, Cadfael. Say nothing to any man, not until Bosiet’s come and gone.”
They were all linked against him. He did his best, arguing quietly what ease it would be to know that the hunt would not be pressed home against Hyacinth, that his innocence, once communicated privily to Hugh, would set free the forces of law to look elsewhere for Drogo’s murderer, and also allow them to press their search for Richard more thoroughly, and with more resources, through these forests where the child had vanished. But they had their arguments, too, and there was matter in them.
“If you told the sheriff, even secretly,” urged Annet, “and if he did believe you, he would still have Bosiet to deal with. His father’s man will tell him it’s as good as certain his runaway is somewhere here in hiding, murderer or no. He’ll go the length of using hounds, if the sheriff draws his men off. No, say nothing to anyone, not yet. Wait until they give up and go home. Then we’ll come forth. Promise! Promise us silence until then!” There was nothing to be done about it. He promised. They had trusted him, and against their absolute prohibition he could not hold out. He sighed and promised.
It was very late when he rose at last, his word given, to begin the night ride back to the abbey. He had given a promise also to Hugh, never thinking how hard it might be to keep. He had said that if he had anything to tell, Hugh should hear it before any other. A subtle, if guileless, arrangement of words, through which a devious mind could find several loopholes, but what he meant had been as clear to Hugh as it was to Cadfael. And now he could not make it good. Not yet, not until Aymer Bosiet should grow restive, count the costs of his vengeance, and think it better to go home and enjoy his new inheritance instead. In the doorway he turned back to ask of Hyacinth one last question, a sudden afterthought. “What of Cuthred? With you two living so close—did he have any part in all this mischief of yours in Eilmund’s forest?”
Hyacinth stared at him gravely, in mild surprise, his amber eyes wide and candid. “How could he?” he said simply. “He never leaves his own pale.”
Aymer Bosiet rode into the great court of the abbey about noon of the next day, with a young groom at his back. Brother Denis the hospitaller had orders to bring him to Abbot Radulfus as soon as he arrived, for the abbot was unwilling to delegate to anyone else the task of breaking to him the news of his father’s death. It was achieved with a delicacy for which, it seemed, there was little need. The bereaved son sat silently revolving the news and all its implications at length, and having apparently digested and come to terms with it, expressed his filial grief very suitably, but with his mind still engaged on side issues, a shrewdly calculating mind behind a face less powerful and brutal than his father’s, but showing little evidence of sorrow. He did frown over the event, for it involved troublesome duties, such as commissioning coffin and cart and extra help for the journey home, and making the best possible use of such time as he could afford here. Radulfus had already had Martin Bellecote, the master carpenter in the town, make a plain inner coffin for the body, which was not yet covered, since doubtless Aymer would want to look upon his father’s face for a last time and take his farewells.
The bereaved son revolved the matter in his mind, and asked point-blank and with sharp intent: “He had not found our runaway villein?”
“No,” said Radulfus, and if he was shaken he contrived to contain the shock. “There was a suggestion that the young man was in the neighbourhood, but no certainty that the youth in question was really the one sought. And I believe now no one knows where he is gone.”
“My father’s murderer is being sought?”
“Very assiduously, with all the sheriffs men.”
“My villein also, I trust. Whether or not,” said Aymer grimly, “the two turn out to be the same. The law is bound to do all it can to recover my property for me. The rogue is a nuisance, but valuable. For no price would I be willing to let him go free.” He bit off the words with a vicious snap of large, strong teeth. He was as tall and long-boned as his father, but carried less flesh, and was leaner in the face; but he had the same shallowly-set eyes of an indeterminate, opaque colour, that seemed all surface and no depth. Thirty years old, perhaps, and pleasurably aware of his new status. Proprietorial satisfaction had begun to vibrate beneath the hard level of his voice. Already he spoke of “my property’. That was one aspect of his bereavement which certainly had not escaped him. “I shall want to see the sheriff concerning this fellow who calls himself Hyacinth. If he has run, does not that make it more likely he is indeed Brand? And that he had a hand in my father’s death? There’s a heavy score against him already. I don’t intend to let such a debt go unpaid.”
“That is a matter for the secular law, not for me,” said Radulfus with chill civility. “There is no proof of who killed the lord Drogo, the thing is quite open. But the man is being sought. If you will come with me, I’ll take you to the chapel where your father lies.”
Aymer stood beside the open coffin on its draped bier, and the light of the tall candles burning at Drogo’s head and feet showed no great change in his son’s face. He gazed down with drawn brows, but it was the frown of busy thought rather than grief or anger at such a death.
“I feel it bitterly,” said the abbot, “that a guest in our house should come to so evil an end. We have said Masses for his soul, but other amends are out of my scope. I trust we may yet see justice done.”
“Indeed!” agreed Aymer, but so absently that it was plain his mind was on other things. “I have no choice but to take him home for burial. But I cannot go yet. This search cannot be so soon abandoned. I must ride into the town this afternoon and see this master carpenter of yours, and have him make an outer coffin and line it with lead, and seal it. A pity, he could have lain just as properly here, but the men of our house are all buried at Bosiet. My mother would not be content else.”
He said it with a note of vexation in his musings. But for the necessity of taking home a corpse he could have lingered here for days to pursue his hunt for the escaped villein. Even as things stood he meant to make the fullest use of his time, and Radulfus could not help feeling that it was the villein he wanted most vindictively, not his father’s murderer.
By chance Cadfael happened to be crossing the court when the newcomer took horse again, early in the afternoon. It was his first glimpse of Drogo’s son, and he stopped and drew aside to study him with interest. His identity was never in doubt, for the likeness was there, though somewhat tempered in this younger man. The curiously shallow eyes, so meanly diminished by their lack of the shadow and form deep sockets provide, had the same flat malevolence, and his handling of horseflesh as he mounted was more considerate by far than his manner towards his groom. The hand that held his stirrup was clouted aside by the butt of his whip as soon as he was in the saddle, and when Warin started back from the blow so sharply that the horse took fright and clattered backwards on the cobbles, tossing up his head and snorting, the rider swung the whip at the groom’s shoulders so readily and with so little apparent anger or exasperation that it was plain this was the common currency of his dealings with his underlings. He took only the younger groom with him into the town, himself riding his father’s horse, which was fresh and spoiling for exercise. No doubt Warin was only too glad to be left behind here in peace for a few hours. Cadfael overtook the groom and fell into step beside him as he turned back towards the stables. Warin looked round to show him a bruise rapidly fading, but still yellow as old parchment, and a mouth still elongated by the healing scar at one corner.
“I’ve not seen you these two days,” said Cadfael, eyeing the traces of old violence and alert for new. “Come round with me into the herb garden, and let me dress that gash again for you. He’s safely away for an hour or two, I take it, you can breathe easily. And it would do with another treatment, though I see it’s clean now.”
Warin hesitated only for a moment. “They’ve taken the two fresh horses, and left me the others to groom. But they can wait a while.” And he went willingly at Cadfael’s side, his lean person, a little withered before its time, seeming to expand in his lord’s absence. In the pleasant aromatic coolness of the workshop, under the faintly stirring herbs that rustled overhead, he sat eased and content to let his injury be bathed and anointed, and was in no hurry to get back to his horses even when Cadfael had done with him.
“He’s hotter even than the old one was on Brand’s heels,” he said, shaking a helpless but sympathetic head over his former neighbour’s fortunes. “Torn two ways, between wanting to hang him and wanting to work him to death for greed, and it isn’t whether or not Brand killed the old lord that will determine which way the cat jumps, for there was no great love lost there, neither. Not much love in all that household to be gained or lost. But good haters, every one.”
“There are more of them?” Cadfael asked with interest, “Drogo has left a widow?”
“A poor pale lady, all the juice crushed out of her,” answered Warin, “but better born than the Bosiets, and has powerful kin, so they have to use her better than they use anyone else. And Aymer has a younger brother. Not so loud nor so violent, but sharper witted and better able to twist and turn. That’s all of them, but it’s enough.”
“Neither one of them married?”
“Aymer’s had one wife, but she was a sickly thing and died young. There’s an heiress not far from Bosiet they both fancy now—though by rights it’s her lands they fancy. And if Aymer is the heir, Roger’s far the better at making himself agreeable. Not that it lasts beyond when he gets his way.” It sounded a poor outlook for the girl, whichever of the two got the better of the contest, but it also sounded one possible reason why Aymer should not loiter here too long, or he might lose his advantages at home. Cadfael felt encouraged. Absence from a newly-inherited honour might even be dangerous, if there was a clever and treacherous younger brother left behind there to make calculated use of his opportunities. Aymer would be bearing that in mind, even while he grudged giving up his vindictive pursuit of Hyacinth. Cadfael still could not think of the boy as Brand, the name he had chosen for himself fitted him so much better. “I wonder,” said Warin, unexpectedly harking back to the same elusive person, “where Brand really got to? Lucky for him we did give him some grace—not that my lord intended it so!—for at first they thought that a man with the skill he had at his finger-ends would surely make for London, and we wasted a week or more searching all the roads south. We got beyond Thame before one of his men came riding after us, saying Brand had been seen in Northampton. If he’d started off northwards, Drogo reckoned he’d continue so, and likely to bear west as he went, and make for Wales. I wonder has he reached it. Even Aymer won’t follow him over the border.”
“And you picked up no more sightings of him along the way?” asked Cadfael.
“No, never a trace. But we’re far out of the country where anyone would know him, and not everybody wants to get tangled into such a business. And he’ll have taken another name, for sure.” Warin rose, refreshed but reluctant, to go back to his duties. “I hope it may stand him in good stead. No matter what the Bosiets say, he was a decent lad.”
Brother Winfrid was busy sweeping up leaves under the orchard trees, for the moist autumn had caused them to fall before they took their bright seasonal colouring, in a soft green rain that rotted gently into the turf. Cadfael found himself alone and without occupation after Warin had left him. The more reason to sit down quietly and think, and a prayer or two wouldn’t come amiss, either, for the boy who had gone rushing off on his black pony, on his self-appointed, mad and generous mission, for the rash young man he had set out to save, even for the hard, malignant lordling cut off without time for penitence or absolution, and bitterly in need of grace.
The bell for Vespers called him out of his musings, and he went gladly to answer it, out through the gardens and across the court to the cloister and the south door of the church, to be early in his place. In the past few days he had missed all too many services, he was in need of the reassurance of brotherhood. There were always a few of the people of the Foregate at Vespers, the devout old women who inhabited some of the abbey’s grace houses, elderly couples retired and happy to fill up their leisure and meet their friends at church, and often guests of the house coming back from the activities of the day. Cadfael heard them stirring beyond the parish altar, in the vast spaces of the nave. Rafe of Coventry, he noted, had come in from the cloister and chosen a place from which he could see within, past the parish altar and into the choir. Kneeling at prayer, he had still that quiet composure about him, a man secure and at peace with his own body, and wearing his inscrutable face rather as a shield than as a mask. So he had not yet moved on to contact those suppliers of his in Wales. He was the only worshipper from the guest hall. Aymer Bosiet must be still about his funereal business in the town, or else beating the coverts in field and forest somewhere after his runaway.
The brothers came in and took their places, the novices and schoolboys followed. There was a bitter reminder there, for their numbers were still one short. There was no forgetting about Richard. Until he was recovered there would be no peace of mind, no lightness of heart, for any of those children. At the end of Vespers Cadfael lingered in his stall, letting the procession of brothers and novices file out into the cloister without him. The office had its beauty and consolation, but the solitude afterwards was also salutary in its silence, after the echoes of the music had all died away, and to be here alone in this evening hour had a special beneficence, whether because of the soft, dove-coloured light or the sense of enlargement that seemed to swell the soul to inhabit and fill the last arches of the vault, as a single drop of water becomes the ocean into which it falls. There was no better time for profound prayer, and Cadfael felt the need of it. For the boy in particular, equally solitary somewhere, perhaps afraid. It was to Saint Winifred Cadfael addressed his plea, a Welshman invoking a Welsh saint, and one to whom he felt very close, and for whom he had an almost family affection. Herself hardly more than a child at her martyrdom, she would not let harm come to another threatened child. Brother Rhun, whom she had healed, was carefully trimming the scented candles he made for her shrine when Cadfael approached, but he turned his fair young head towards the petitioner, gave him one glance of his aquamarine eyes, that seemed to have their own innate light, and smiled and went away. Not to linger and complete his work when the prayers ended, not to hide in the shadows and watch, but clean away out of knowledge, on swift, agile, silent feet that had once gone lamely and in pain, to leave the whole listening vault ready to receive the appeal in its folded hands, and channel it aloft. Cadfael arose from his knees comforted, without knowing or asking why. Outside, the light was fading rapidly, and here within, the altar lamp and Saint Winifred’s perfumed candles made small islands of pure radiance in a great enfolding gloom, like a warm cloak against the frost of the outside world. The grace that had just touched Cadfael had a long enough reach to find Richard, wherever he was, deliver him if he was a prisoner, console him if he was frightened, heal him if he was hurt. Cadfael went out from the choir, round the parish altar and into the nave, sensible of having done what was most needful, and content to wait patiently and passively until grace should be manifested. It seemed that Rafe of Coventry had also had solemn and personal prayers to offer, for he was just rising from his knees in the empty and silent nave as Cadfael came through. He recognised his acquaintance of the stable yard with a shadowed but friendly smile, that came and went briefly on his lips but lingered amiably in his eyes.
“Good even, Brother!” Matched in height and pace, they fell naturally into step together as they turned towards the south porch. “I hope to be held excused,” said Rafe, “for coming to church booted and spurred and dusty from riding, but I came late, and had no time to make myself seemly.”
“Most welcome, however you come,” said Cadfael. “Not everyone who lodges with us shows his face in the church. I’ve had small chance to see you these two days, I’ve been out and about myself. Have you had successful dealing in these parts?”
“Better, at least, than one of your guests,” said Rafe, casting a side glance at the narrow door that led towards the mortuary chapel. “But no, I would not say I’ve found quite what I needed. Not yet!”
“His son is here now,” said Cadfael, following the glance. “This morning he came.”
“I have seen him,” said Rafe. “He came back from the town just before Vespers. By the look and the sound of him he’s done none too well, either, with whatever he’s about. I suppose it’s a man he’s after?”
“It is. The young man I told you of,” said Cadfael drily, and studied his companion sidelong as they crossed the lighted parish altar. “Yes, I remember. Then he’s come back empty-handed, no poor wretch tethered to his stirrup leather.” But Rafe remained tolerantly indifferent to young men, and indeed to the Bosiet clan. His thoughts were somewhere else. At the alms box beside the altar he stopped, on impulse, and dug a hand into the pouch slung at his waist, to draw out a handful of coins. One of them slipped through his fingers, but he did not immediately stoop to pick it up, but dropped three of its fellows into the box before he turned to look for the stray. By which time Cadfael had lifted it from the tiled floor, and had it in his open palm. If they had not been standing where the altar candles gave a clear light he would have noticed nothing strange about it. A silver penny like other silver pennies, the universal coin. Yet not quite like any he had seen before in the alms boxes. It was bright and untarnished, but indifferently struck, and it felt light in the hand. Clumsily arrayed round the short cross on the reverse, the moneyer’s name appeared to be Sigebert, a minter Cadfael never remembered to have heard of in the midlands. And when he turned it, the crude head was not Stephen’s familiar profile, nor dead King Henry’s, but unmistakably a woman’s, coifed and coroneted. It hardly needed the name sprawled round the rim: “Matilda Dom. Ang.” The empress’s formal name and title. It seemed her mintage was short-weight.
He looked up to find Rafe watching him steadily, and with a small private smile that held more irony than simple amusement. There was a moment of silence while they eyed each other. Then: “Yes,” said Rafe, “you are right. It would have been noted after I was gone. But it has a value, even here. Your beggars will not reject it because it was struck in Oxford.”
“And no long time ago,” said Cadfael.
“No long time ago.”
“My besetting sin,” said Cadfael ruefully, “is curiosity.” He held out the coin, and Rafe took it as gravely, and with deliberation dropped it after its fellows into the alms box. “But I am not loose-mouthed. Nor do I hold any honest man’s allegiance against him. A pity there should have to be factions, and decent men fighting one another, and all of them convinced they have the right of it. Come and go freely for me.”
“And does your curiosity not extend,” wondered Rafe softly, the wry smile perceptible in his voice, “to wondering what such a man is doing here, so far from the battle? Come, I am sure you have guessed at what I am. Perhaps you think I felt it the wiser part to get out of Oxford before it was too late?”
“No,” said Cadfael positively, “that never did and never would enter my mind. Not of you! And why should so discreet a man as that venture north into king’s country?”
“No, granted that argues very little wisdom,” agreed Rafe. “What would you guess then?”
“I can think of one possibility,” said Cadfael gravely and quietly. “We heard here of one man who did not take flight of his own will out of Oxford, while there was time, but was sent. On his lady’s business, and with that about him well worth stealing. And that he did not get far, for his horse was found straying and blood-stained, all that he had carried gone, and the man himself vanished from the face of the earth.” Rafe was watching him attentively, his face unreadable as ever, the lingering smile sombre but untroubled. “Such a man as you seem to me,” said Cadfael, “might well have come so far north from Oxford looking for Renaud Bourchier’s murderer.”
Their eyes held, mutually accepting, even approving, what they saw. Slowly and with absolute finality Rafe of Coventry said: “No.” He stirred and sighed, breaking the spell of the brief but profound silence that followed. “I am sorry, Brother, but no, you have not read me right. I am not looking for Bourchier’s murderer. It was a good thought, almost I wish it had been true. But it is not.”
And with that he moved on towards the south door, and out into the early twilight in the cloister, and Brother Cadfael followed in silence, asking and offering nothing more. He knew truth when he heard it.