Chapter Five

NICHOLAS FAINTREE WAS LAID, WITH DUE honours, under a stone in the transept of the abbey church, an exceptional privilege. He was but one, after so many, and his singleness was matter for celebration, besides the fact that there was room within rather than without, and the labour involved was less. Abbot Heribert was increasingly disillusioned and depressed with all the affairs of this world, and welcomed a solitary guest who was not a symbol of civil war, but the victim of personal malice and ferocity. Against all the probabilities, in due course Nicholas might find himself a saint. He was mysterious, feloniously slain, young, to all appearances clean of heart and life, innocent of evil, the stuff of which martyrs are made.

Aline Seward was present at the funeral service, and had brought with her, intentionally or otherwise, Hugh Beringar. That young man made Cadfael increasingly uneasy. True, he was making no inimical move, nor showing any great diligence in his search for his affianced bride, if, indeed, he was in search of her at all. But there was something daunting in the very ease and impudence of his carriage, the small, sardonic turn of his lip, and the guileless clarity of the black eyes when they happened to encounter Cadfael’s. No doubt about it, thought Cadfael, I shall be happier when I’ve got the girl safely away from here, but in the meantime at least I can move her away from anywhere he’s likely to be.

The main orchards and vegetable gardens of the abbey were not within the precinct, but across the main road, stretched along the rich level beside the river, called the Gaye; and at the far end of this fertile reach there was a slightly higher field of corn. It lay almost opposite the castle, and no great distance from the king’s siege camp, and had suffered some damage during the siege; and though what remained had been ripe for cutting for almost a week, it had been too dangerous to attempt to get it in. Now that all was quiet, they were in haste to salvage a crop that could not be spared, and all hands possible were mustered to do the work in one day. The second of the abbey’s mills was at the end of the field, and because of the same dangers had been abandoned for the season, just when it was beginning to be needed, and had suffered damage which would keep it out of use until repairs could be undertaken.

“You go with the reapers,” said Cadfael to Godith. “My thumbs prick, and rightly or wrongly, I’d rather have you out of the enclave, if only for a day.”

“Without you?” said Godith, surprised.

“I must stay here and keep an eye on things. If anything threatens, I’ll be with you as fast as legs can go. But you’ll be well enough, no one is going to have leisure to look hard at you until that corn is in the barns. But stay by Brother Athanasius, he’s as blind as a mole, he wouldn’t know a stag from a hind. And take care how you swing a sickle, and don’t come back short of a foot!”

She went off quite happily among the crowd of reapers in the end, glad of an outing and a change of scene. She was not afraid. Not afraid enough, Cadfael considered censoriously, but then, she had an old fool here to do the fearing for her, just as she’d once had an old nurse, protective as a hen with one chick. He watched them out of the gate house and over the road towards the Gaye, and went back with a relieved sigh to his own labours in the inner gardens. He had not been long on his knees, weeding, when a cool, light voice behind him, almost as quiet as the steps he had not heard in the grass, said: “So this is where you spend your more peaceful hours. A far cry and a pleasant change from harvesting dead men.”

Brother Cadfael finished the last corner of the bed of mint before he turned to acknowledge the presence of Hugh Beringar. “A pleasant change, right enough. Let’s hope we’ve finished with that kind of crop, here in Shrewsbury.”

“And you found a name for your stranger in the end. How was that? No one in the town seemed to know him.”

“All questions get their answers,” said Brother Cadfael sententiously, “if you wait long enough.”

“And all searchers are bound to find? But of course,” said Beringar, smiling, “you did not say how long is long enough. If a man found at eighty what he was searching for at twenty, he might prove a shade ungrateful.”

“He might well have stopped wanting it long before that,” said Brother Cadfael drily, “which is in itself an answer to any want. Is there anything you are looking for here in the herbarium, that I can help you to, or are you curious to learn about these simples of mine?”

“No,” owned Beringar, his smile deepening, “I would hardly say it was any simplicity I came to study.” He pinched off a sprig of mint, crushed it between his fingers, and set it first to his nose and then closed fine white teeth upon its savour. “And what should such as I be looking for here? I may have caused a few ills in my time, I’m no hand at healing them. They tell me, Brother Cadfael, you have had a wide-ranging career before you came into the cloister. Don’t you find it unbearably dull here, after such battles, with no enemy left to fight?”

“I am not finding it at all dull, these days,” said Cadfael, plucking out willowherb from among the thyme. “And as for enemies, the devil makes his way in everywhere, even into cloister, and church, and herbarium.”

Beringar threw his head back and laughed aloud, until the short black hair danced on his forehead. “Vainly, if he comes looking for mischief where you are! But he’d hardly expect to blunt his horns against an old crusader here! I take the hint!”

But all the time, though he scarcely seemed to turn his head or pay much attention to anything round him, his black eyes were missing nothing, and his ears were at stretch while he laughed and jested. By this time he knew that the well-spoken and well-favoured boy of whom Aline had innocently spoken was not going to make his appearance, and more, that Brother Cadfael did not care if he poked his nose into every corner of the garden, sniffed at every drying herb and peered at every potion in the hut, for they would tell him nothing. The benchbed was stripped of its blanket, and laden with a large mortar and a gently bubbling jar of wine. There was no trace of Godith anywhere to be found. The boy was simply a boy like the rest, and no doubt slept in the dortoir with the rest.

“Well, I’ll leave you to your cleansing labours,” said Beringar, “and stop hampering your meditations with my prattle. Or have you work for me to do?”

“The king has none?” said Cadfael solicitously.

Another ungrudging laugh acknowledged the thrust. “Not yet, not yet, but that will come. Such talent he cannot afford to hold off suspiciously for ever. Though to be sure, he did lay one testing task upon me, and I seem to be making very little progress in that.” He plucked another tip of mint, and bruised and bit it with pleasure. “Brother Cadfael, it seems to me that you are the most practical man of hand and brain here. Supposing I should have need of your help, you would not refuse it without due thought — would you?”

Brother Cadfael straightened up, with some creaking of back muscles, to give him a long, considering look. “I hope,” he said cautiously, “I never do anything without due thought — even if the thought sometimes has to shift its feet pretty briskly to keep up with the deed.”

“So I supposed,” said Beringar, sweet-voiced and smiling. “I’ll bear that in mind as a promise.” And he made a small, graceful obeisance, and walked away at leisure to the courtyard.

The reapers came back in time for Vespers, sun-reddened, weary and sweat-stained, but with the corn all cut and stacked for carrying. After supper Godith slipped out of the refectory in haste, and came to pluck at Cadfael’s sleeve.

“Brother Cadfael, you must come! Something vital!” He felt the quivering excitement of her hand, and the quiet intensity of her whispering voice. “There’s time before Compline — come back to the field with me.”

“What is it?” he asked as softly, for they were within earshot of a dozen people if they had spoken aloud, and she was not the woman to fuss over nothing. “What has happened to you? What have you left down there that’s so urgent?”

“A man! A wounded man! He’s been in the river, he was hunted into it upstream and came down with the current. I dared not stay to question, but I knew he’s in need. And hungry! He’s been there a night and a day …”

“How did you find him? You alone? No one else knows?”

“No one else.” She gripped Cadfael’s sleeve more tightly, and her whisper grew gruff with shyness. “It was a long day … I went aside, and had to go far aside, into the bushes near the mill. Nobody saw …”

“Surely, child! I know!” Please God all the boys, her contemporaries, were kept hard at it, and never noticed such daintiness. Brother Athanasius would not have noticed a thunderclap right behind him. “He was there in the bushes? And is still?”

“Yes. I gave him the bread and meat I had with me, and told him I’d come back when I could. His clothes have dried on him — there’s blood on his sleeve … But I think he’ll do well, if you take care of him. We could hide him in the mill — no one goes there yet.” She had thought of all the essentials, she was towing him towards his hut in the herb garden, not directly towards the gate house. Medicines, linen, food, they would need all these.

“Of what age,” asked Cadfael, more easily now they were well away from listeners, “is this wounded man of yours?”

“A boy,” she said on a soft breath. “Hardly older than I am. And hunted! He thinks I am a boy, of course. I gave him the water from my bottle, and he called me Ganymede …”

Well, well, thought Cadfael, bustling before her into the hut, a young man of some learning, it seems! “Then, Ganymede,” he said, bundling a roll of linen, a blanket and a pot of salve into her arms, “stow these about you, while I fill this little vial and put some vittles together. Wait here a few minutes for me, and we’ll be off. And on the way you can tell me everything about this young fellow you’ve discovered, for once across the road no one is going to hear us.”

And on the way she did indeed pour out in her relief and eagerness what she could not have said so freely by daylight. It was not yet dark, but a fine neutral twilight in which they saw each other clear but without colours.

“The bushes there are thick. I heard him stir and groan, and I went to look. He looks like a young gentleman of family, someone’s squire. Yes, he talked to me, but — but told me nothing, it was like talking to a wilful child. So weak, and blood on his shoulder and arm, and making little jests … But he trusted me enough to know I wouldn’t betray him.” She skipped beside Cadfael through the tall stubble into which the abbey sheep would soon be turned to graze, and to fertilise the field with their droppings. “I gave him what I had, and told him to lie still, and I would bring help as soon as it grew dusk.”

“Now we’re near, do you lead the way. You he’ll know.” There was already starlight before the sun was gone, a lovely August light that would still last them, their eyes being accustomed, an hour or more, while veiling them from other eyes. Godith withdrew from Cadfael’s clasp the hand that had clung like a child’s through the stubble, and waded forward into the low, loose thicket of bushes. On their left hand, within a few yards of them, the river ran, dark and still, only the thrusting sound of its current like a low throb shaking the silence, and an occasional gleam of silver showing where its eddies swirled.

“Hush! It’s me — Ganymede! And a friend to us both!”

In the sheltered dimness a darker form stirred, and raised into sight a pale oval of face and a tangled head of hair almost as pale. A hand was braced into the grass to thrust the half-seen stranger up from the ground. No broken bones there, thought Cadfael with satisfaction. The hard-drawn breath signalled stiffness and pain, but nothing mortal. A young, muted voice said: “Good lad! Friends I surely need …”

Cadfael kneeled beside him and lent him a shoulder to lean against. “First, before we move you, where’s the damage? Nothing out of joint — by the look of you, nothing broken.” His hands were busy about the young man’s body and limbs, he grunted cautious content.

“Nothing but gashes,” muttered the boy laboriously, and gasped at a shrewd touch. “I lost enough blood to betray me, but into the river … And half-drowned … they must think wholly …” He relaxed with a great sigh, feeling how confidently he was handled.

“Food and wine will put the blood back into you, in time. Can you rise and go?”

“Yes,” said his patient grimly, and all but brought his careful supporters down with him, proving it.

“No, let be, we can do better for you than that. Hold fast by me, and turn behind me. Now, your arms round my neck …”

He was long, but a light weight. Cadfael stooped forward, hooked his thick arms round slim, muscular thighs, and shrugged the weight securely into balance on his solid back. The dank scent of the river water still hung about the young man’s clothing. “I’m too great a load,” he fretted feebly. “I could have walked …”

“You’ll do as you’re bid, and no argument. Godric, go before, and see there’s no one in sight.”

It was only a short way to the shadow of the mill. Its bulk loomed dark against the still lambent sky, the great round of the undershot wheel showing gaps here and there like breaks in a set of teeth. Godith heaved open the leaning door, and felt her way before them into gloom. Through narrow cracks in the floorboards on the left side she caught fleeting, spun gleams of the river water hurrying beneath. Even in this hot, dry season, lower than it had been for some years, the Severn flowed fast and still.

“There’ll be dry sacks in plenty piled somewhere by the landward wall,” puffed Cadfael at her back. “Feel your way along and find them.” There was also a dusty, rustling layer of last harvest’s chaff under their feet, sending up fine powder to tickle their noses. Godith groped her way to the corner, and spread sacks there in a thick, comfortable mattress, with two folded close for a pillow. “Now take this long-legged heron of yours under the armpits, and help me ease him down … There, as good a bed as mine in the dortoir! Now close the door, before I make a light to see him by.”

He had brought a good end of candle with him, and a handful of the dry chaff spread on a millstone made excellent tinder for the spark he struck. When his candle was burning steadily he ground it into place on the flickering chaff, quenching the fire that might have blown and spread, and anchoring his light on a safe candlestick, as the wax first softened and then congealed again. “Now let’s look at you!”

The young man lay back gratefully and heaved a huge sigh, meekly abandoning the responsibility for himself. Out of a soiled and weary face, eyes irrepressibly lively gazed up at them, of some light, bright colour not then identifiable. He had a large, generous mouth, drawn with exhaustion but wryly smiling, and the tangle of hair matted and stained from the river would be as fair as corn-stalks when it was clean. “One of them ripped your shoulder for you, I see,” said Cadfael, hands busy unfastening and drawing off the dark cotte encrusted down one sleeve with dried blood. “Now the shirt — you’ll be needing new clothes, my friend, before you leave this hostelry.”

“I’ll have trouble paying my shot,” said the boy, valiantly grinning, and ended the grin with a sharp indrawn breath as the sleeve was detached painfully from his wound.

“Our charges are low. For a straight story you can buy such hospitality as we’re offering. Godric, lad, I need water, and river water’s better than none. See if you can find anything in this place to carry it in.”

She found the sound half of a large pitcher among the debris under the wheel, left by some customer after its handle and lip had got broken, scrubbed it out industriously with the skirt of her cotte, and went obediently to bring water, he hoped safely. The flow of the river here would be fresher than the leat, and occupy her longer on the journey, while Cadfael undid the boy’s belt, and stripped off his shoes and hose, shaking out the blanket to spread over his nakedness. There was a long but not deep gash, he judged from a sword-cut, down the right thigh, a variety of bruises showing bluish on his fair skin, and most strangely, a thin, broken graze on the left side of his neck, and another curiously like it on the outer side of his right wrist. More healed, dark lines, these, older by a day or two than his wounds. “No question,” mused Cadfael aloud, “but you’ve been living an interesting life lately.”

“Lucky to keep it,” murmured the boy, half-asleep in his new ease.

“Who was hunting you?”

“The king’s men — who else?”

“And still will be?”

“Surely. But in a few days I’ll be fit to relieve you of the burden of me …”

“Never mind that now. Turn a little to me — so! Let’s get this thigh bound up, it’s clean enough, it’s knitting already. This will sting.” It did, the youth stiffened and gasped a little, but made no complaint. Cadfael had the wound bound and under the blanket by the time Godith came with the pitcher of water. For want of a handle she had to use two hands to carry it.

“Now we’ll see to this shoulder. This is where you lost so much blood. An arrow did this!” It was an oblique cut sliced through the outer part of his left arm just below the shoulder, bone-deep, leaving an ugly flap of flesh gaping. Cadfael began to sponge away the encrustations of blood from it, and press it firmly together beneath a pad of linen soaked in one of his herbal salves. “This will need help to knit clean,” he said, busy rolling his bandage tightly round the arm. “There, now you should eat, but not too much, you’re over-weary to make the best use of it. Here’s meat and cheese and bread, and keep some by you for morning, you may well be ravenous when you wake.”

“If there’s water left,” besought the young man meekly, “I should like to wash my hands and face. I’m foul!”

Godith kneeled beside him, moistened a piece of linen in the pitcher, and instead of putting it into his hand, very earnestly and thoroughly did it for, him, putting back the matted hair from his forehead, which was wide and candid, even teasing out some of the knots with solicitous fingers. After the first surprise he lay quietly and submissively under her ministering touch, but his eyes, cleansed of the soiled shadows, watched her face as she bent over him, and grew larger and larger in respectful wonder. And all this while she had hardly said a word.

The young man was almost too worn out to eat at all, and flagged very soon. He lay for a few moments with lids drooping, peering at his rescuers in silent thought. Then he said, his tongue stumbling sleepily: “I owe you a name, after all you’ve done for me …”

“Tomorrow,” said Cadfael firmly. “You’re in the best case to sleep sound, and here I believe you may. Now drink this down — it helps keep wounds from festering, and eases the heart.” It was a strong cordial of his own brewing, he tucked away the empty vial in his gown. “And here’s a little flask of wine to bear you company if you wake. In the morning I’ll be with you early.”

“We!” said Godith, low but firmly.

“Wait, one more thing!” Cadfael had remembered it at the last moment. “You’ve no weapon on you — yet I think you did wear a sword.”

“I shed it,” mumbled the boy drowsily, “in the river. I had too much weight to keep afloat — and they were shooting. It was in the water I got this clout … I had the wit to go down, I hope they believe I stayed down … God knows it was touch and go!”

“Yes, well, tomorrow will do. And we must find you a weapon. Now, good night!”

He was asleep before ever they put out the candle, and drew the door closed. They walked wordlessly through the rustling stubble for some minutes, the sky over them an arch of dark and vivid blue paling at the edges into a fringe of sea-green. Godith asked abruptly: “Brother Cadfael, who was Ganymede?”

“A beautiful youth who was cup-bearer to Jove, and much loved by him.”

“Oh!” said Godith, uncertain whether to be delighted or rueful, this success being wholly due to her boyishness.

“But some say that it’s also another name for Hebe,” said Cadfael.

“Oh! And who is Hebe?”

“Cup-bearer to Jove, and much loved by him — but a beautiful maiden.”

“Ah!” said Godith profoundly. And as they reached the road and crossed towards the abbey, she said seriously:

“You know who he must be, don’t you?”

“Jove? The most god-like of all the pagan gods …”

“He!” she said severely, and caught and shook Brother Cadfael’s arm in her solemnity. “A Saxon name, and Saxon hair, and on the run from the king’s men … He’s Torold Blund, who set out with Nicholas to save FitzAlan’s treasury for the empress. And of course he had nothing to do with poor Nicholas’s death. I don’t believe he ever did a shabby thing in his whole life!”

“That,” said Cadfael, “I hesitate to say of any man, least of all myself. But I give you my word, child, this one most shabby thing he certainly did not do. You may sleep in peace!”

It was nothing out of the ordinary for Brother Cadfael, that devoted gardener and apothecary, to rise long before it was necessary for Prime, and have an hour’s work done before he joined his brothers at the first service; so no one thought anything of it when he dressed and went out early on that particular morning, and no one even knew that he also roused his boy, as he had promised. They went out with more medicaments and food, and a cotte and hose that Brother Cadfael had filched from the charity offerings that came in to the almoner. Godith had taken away with her the young man’s bloodstained shirt, which was of fine linen and not to be wasted, had washed it before she slept, and mended it on rising, where the arrow-head had sliced the threads asunder. On such a warm August night, spread out carefully on the bushes in the garden, it had dried well.

Their patient was sitting up in his bed of sacks, munching bread with appetite, and seemed to have total trust in them, for he made no move to seek cover when the door began to open. He had draped his torn and stained cotte round his shoulders, but for the rest was naked under his blanket, and the bared, smooth chest and narrow flanks were elegantly formed. Body and eyes still showed blue bruises, but he was certainly much restored alter one long night of rest.

“Now,” said Cadfael with satisfaction, “you may talk as much as you like, my friend, while I dress this wound of yours. The leg will do very well until we have more time, but this shoulder is a tricky thing. Godric, see to him on the other side while I uncover it, it may well stick. You steady bandage and arm while I unbind. Now, sir …” And he added, for fair exchange: “They call me Brother Cadfael, I’m as Welsh as Dewi Sant, and I’ve been about the world, as you may have guessed. And this boy of mine is Godric, as you’ve heard, and brought me to you. Trust us both, or neither.”

“I trust both,” said the boy. He had more colour this morning, or it was the flush of dawn reflected, his eyes were bright and hazel, more green than brown. “I owe you more than trust can pay, but show me more I can do, and I’ll do it. My name is Torold Blund, I come from a hamlet by Oswestry, and I’m FitzAlan’s man from head to foot.” The bandage stuck then, and Godith felt him flinch, and locked the fold until she could ease it free, by delicate touches. “If that puts you in peril,” said Torold, suppressing the pain, “I do believe I’m fit to go, and go I will. I would not for the world shrug off my danger upon you.”

“You’ll go when you’re let,” said Godith, and for revenge snatched off the last fold of bandage, but very circumspectly, and holding the anointed pad in place. “And it won’t be today.”

“Hush, let him talk, time’s short,” said Cadfael. “Go to it, lad. We’re not in the business of selling Maud’s men to Stephen, or Stephen’s men to Maud. How did you come here in this pass?”

Torold took a deep breath, and talked to some purpose. “I came to the castle here with Nicholas Faintree, who was also FitzAlan’s man, from the next manor to my father’s, we joined the garrison only a week before it fell. The evening before the assault there was a council — we were not there, we were small fry — and they resolved to get the FitzAlan treasury away the very next day for the use of the empress, not knowing then it would be the last day. Nicholas and I were told off to be the messengers because we were new to Shrewsbury, and not known, and might get through well enough where others senior to us might be known and cut down at sight. The goods — they were not too bulky, thank God, not much plate, more coin, and most of all in jewellery — were hidden somewhere no one knew but our lord and his agent who had them in guard. We had to ride to him when the word was given, take them from where he would show us, and get clear by night for Wales. FitzAlan had an accord with Owain Gwynedd — not that he’s for either party here, he’s for Wales, but civil war here suits him well, and he and FitzAlan are friends. Before it was well dawn they attacked, and it was plain we could not hold. So we were sent off on our errand — it was to a shop in the town …” He wavered, uneasy at giving any clue.

“I know,” said Cadfael, wiping away the exudation of the night from the shoulder wound, and anointing a new pad. “It was Edric Flesher, who himself has told me his part in it. You were taken out to his barn in Frankwell, and the treasury laid up with you to wait for the cover of night. Go on!”

The young man, watching the dressing of his own hurts without emotion, went on obediently: “We rode as soon as it was dark. From there clear of the suburb and into trees is only a short way. There’s a herdsman’s hut there in the piece where the track is in woodland, though only along the edge, the fields still close. We were on this stretch when Nick’s horse fell lame. I lit down to see, for he went very badly, and he had picked up a caltrop, and was cut to the bone.”

“Caltrops?” said Brother Cadfael, startled. “On such a forest path, away from any field of battle?” For those unobtrusive martial cruelties, made in such a shape as to be scattered under the hooves of cavalry, and leaving always one crippling spike upturned, surely had no part to play on a narrow forest ride.

“Caltrops,” said Torold positively. “I don’t speak simply from the wound, the thing was there embedded, I know, I wrenched it out. But the poor beast was foundered, he could go, but not far, and not loaded. There’s a farm I know of very close there, I thought I could get a fresh horse in exchange for Nick’s, a poor exchange but what could we do? We did not even unload, but Nick lighted down, to ease the poor creature of his weight, and said he would wait there in the hut for me. And I went, and I got a mount from the farm — it’s off to the right, heading west as we were, the man’s name is Ulf, he’s distant kin to me on my mother’s side — and rode back, with Nick’s half the load on this new nag.

“I came up towards the hut,” he said, stiffening at the recollection, “and I thought he would be looking out for me, ready to mount, and he was not. I don’t know why that made me so uneasy. Not a breath stirring, and for all I was cautious, I knew I could be heard by any man truly listening. And he never showed face or called out word. So I never went too near. I drew off, and reined forward a little way, and made a single tether of the horses, to be off as fast as might be. One knot to undo, and with a single pluck. And then I went to the hut.”

“It was full dark then?” asked Cadfael, rolling bandage.

“Full dark, but I could see, having been out in it. Inside it was black as pitch. The door stood half open to the wall. I went inside stretching my ears, and not a murmur. But in the middle of the hut I fell over him. Over Nick! If I hadn’t I might not be here to tell as much,” said Torold grimly, and cast a sudden uneasy glance at his Ganymede, so plainly some years his junior, and attending him with such sedulous devotion. “This is not good hearing.” His eyes appealed eloquently to Cadfael over Godith’s shoulder.

“You’d best go on freely,” said Cadfael with sympathy. “He’s deeper in this than you think, and will have your blood and mine if we dare try to banish him. No part of this matter of Shrewsbury has been good hearing, but something may be saved. Tell your part, we’ll tell ours.”

Godith, all eyes, ears and serviceable hands, wisely said nothing at all.

“He was dead,” said Torold starkly. “I fell on him, mouth to mouth, there was no breath in him. I held him, reaching forward to save myself as I fell, I had him in my arms and he was like an armful of rags. And then I heard the dry fodder rustle behind me, and started round, because there was no wind to stir it, and I was frightened …”

“Small blame!” said Cadfael, smoothing a fresh pad soaked in his herbal salve against the moist wound. “You had good reason. Trouble no more for your friend, he is with God surely. We buried him yesterday within the abbey. He has a prince’s tomb. You, I think, escaped the like very narrowly, when his murderer lunged from behind the door.”

“So I think, too,” said the boy, and drew in hissing breath at the bite of Cadfael’s dressing. “There he must have been. The grass warned me when he made his assay. I don’t know how it is, every man throws up his right arm to ward off blows from his head, and so did I. His cord went round my wrist as well as my throat. I was not clever or a hero, I lashed out in fright and jerked it out of his hands. It brought him down on top of me in the dark. I know only too well,” he said, defensively, “that you may not believe me.”

“There are things that go to confirm you. Spare to be so wary of your friends. So you were man to man, at least, better odds than before. How did you escape him?”

“More by luck than valour,” said Torold ruefully. “We were rolling about in the hay, wrestling and trying for each other’s throat, everything by feel and nothing by sight, and neither of us could get space or time to draw, for I don’t know how long, but I suppose it was no more than minutes. What ended it was that there must have been an old manger there against the wall, half fallen to pieces, and I banged my head against one of the boards lying loose in the hay. I hit him with it, two-handed, and he dropped. I doubt I did him any lasting damage, but it knocked him witless long enough for me to run, and run I did, and loosed both the horses, and made off westward like a hunted hare. I still had work to do, and there was no one but me left to do it, or I might have stayed to try and even the account for Nick. Or I might not,” owned Torold with scowling honesty. “I doubt I was even thinking about FitzAlan’s errand then, though I’m thinking of it now, and have been ever since. I ran for my life. I was afraid he might have had others lying in ambush to come to his aid. All I wanted was out of there as fast as my legs would go.”

“No need to make a penance of it,” said Cadfael mildly, securing his bandage. “Sound sense is something to be glad of, not ashamed. But, my friend, it’s taken you two full days, by your own account, to get to much the same spot you started from. I take it, by that, the king has allies pretty thick between here and Wales, at least by the roads.”

“Thick as bees in swarm! I got well forward by the more northerly road, and all but ran my head into a patrol where there was no passing. They were stopping everything that moved, what chance had I with two horses and a load of valuables? I had to draw off into the woods, and by that time it was getting light, there was nothing to be done but lie up until dark again and try the southerly road. And that was no better, they had loose companies ranging the countryside by then. I thought I might make my way through by keeping off the roads and close to the curve of the river, but it was another night lost. I lay up in a copse on the hill all day Thursday, and tried again by night, and that was when they winded me, four or five of them, and I had to run for it, with only one way to run, down towards the river. They had me penned, I couldn’t get out of the trap. I took the saddle-bags from both horses, and turned the beasts loose, and started them off at a panic gallop, hoping they’d crash through and lead the pursuit away from me, but there was one of the fellows too near, he saw the trick, and made for me instead. He gave me this slash in the thigh, and his yell brought the others running. There was only one thing to do. I took to the water, saddle-bags and all. I’m a strong swimmer, but with that weight it was hard work to stay afloat, and let the current bring me downstream. That’s when they started shooting. Dark as it was, they’d been out in it long enough to have fair vision, and there’s always light from the water when there’s something moving in it. So I got this shoulder wound, and had the sense to go under and stay under as long as I had breath. Severn’s fast, even in summer water it carried me down well. They followed along the bank for a while, and loosed one or two more arrows, but then I think they were sure I was under for good. I worked my way towards the bank as soon as it seemed safe, to get a foot to ground and draw breath here and there, but I stayed in the water. I knew the bridge would be manned, I dared not drag myself ashore until I was well past. It was high time by then. I remember crawling into the bushes, but not much else, except rousing just enough to be afraid to stir when your people came reaping. And then Godric here found me. And that’s the truth of it,” he ended firmly, and looked Cadfael unblinkingly in the eye.

“But not the whole truth,” said Cadfael, placidly enough. “Godric found no saddle-bags along with you.” He eyed the young face that fronted him steadily, lips firmly closed, and smiled. “No, never fret, we won’t question you. You are the sole custodian of FitzAlan’s treasury, and what you’ve done with it, and how, God knows, you ever managed to do anything sensible with it in your condition, that’s your affair. You haven’t the air of a courier who has failed in his mission, I’ll say that for you. And for your better peace, all the talk in the town is that FitzAlan and Adeney were not taken, but broke out of the ring and are got clean away. Now we have to leave you alone here until afternoon, we have duties, too. But one of us, or both, will come and see how you’re faring then. And here’s food and drink, and clothes I hope will fit you well enough to pass. But lie quiet for today, you’re not your own man yet however wholeheartedly you may be FitzAlan’s.”

Godith laid the washed and mended shirt on top of the folded garments, and was following Cadfael to the door when the look on Torold’s face halted her, half uneasy, half triumphant. His eyes grew round with amazement as he stared at the crisp, clean linen, and the fine stitches of the long mend where the blood-stained gash had been. A soft whistle of admiration saluted the wonder.

“Holy Mary! Who did this? Do you keep an expert seamstress within the abbey walls? Or did you pray for a miracle?”

“That? That’s Godric’s work,” said Cadfael, not altogether innocently, and walked out into the early sunshine, leaving Godith flushed to the ears. “We learn more skills in the cloister than merely cutting wheat and brewing cordials,” she said loftily, and fled alter Cadfael.

But she was grave enough on the way back, going over in her mind Torold’s story, and reflecting how easily he might have died before ever she met him; not merely once, in the murderer’s cord, nor the second time from King Stephen’s roaming companies, but in the river, or from his wounds in the bushes. It seemed to her that divine grace was taking care of him, and had provided her as the instrument. There remained lingering anxieties.

“Brother Cadfael, you do believe him?”

“I believe him. What he could not tell truth about, he would not lie about, either. Why, what’s on your mind still?”

“Only that the night before I saw him I said — I was afraid the companion who rode with Nicholas was far the most likely to be tempted to kill him. How simple it would have been! But you said yesterday, you did say, he did not do it. Are you quite sure? How do you know?”

“Nothing simpler, girl dear! The mark of the strangler’s cord is on his neck and on his wrist. Did you not understand those thin scars? He was meant to go after his friend out of this world. No, you need have no fear on that score, what he told us is truth. But there may be things he could not tell us, things we ought to discover, for Nicholas Faintree’s sake. Godith, this afternoon, when you’ve seen to the lotions and wines, you may leave the garden and go and keep him company if you please, and I’ll come there as soon as I can. There are things I must look into, over there on the Frankwell side of Shrewsbury.”