IN THE GENERAL RIPPLE AND STIR OF ASTONISHMENT, doubt and outrage that passed like a sudden gust of wind through the entire assembly, from Prior Robert’s indignant snort to the inquisitive and half-gleeful whisperings and shiftings among the novices, the thing that was clearest of all to Cadfael was that Fulke Astley stood utterly confounded. Never had he had the least notion what was coming, it had taken his breath away. He stood dangling his arms in curious helplessness, as though something of his own being had slipped from his grasp and left him lame and mute. When he had recovered breath enough to speak at all he said what would have been expected of him, but without the confidence of conviction, rather forcibly thrusting the very suggestion away from him in panic.
“My lord abbot, this is madness! The boy is lying. He’ll say anything to serve his turn. Of course Father Cuthred is a priest! The brothers of Savigny from Buildwas brought him to us, ask them, they have no doubts. There has never been any question. This is wickedness, so to slander a holy man.”
“Such slander would indeed be wickedness,” agreed Radulfus, fixing his deep-set eyes and lowered brows formidably upon Richard. “Think well, sir, before you repeat it. If this is a device to get your way and remain here with us, think better of it now and confess it. You shall not be punished for it. Whatever else, it would seem that you have been misused, abducted and intimidated, and that shall excuse you. I would remind Sir Fulke of these circumstances. But if you do not tell truth now, Richard, then you do incur punishment.”
“I have told truth,” said Richard stoutly, jutting his very respectable chin and meeting the awesome eyes without blinking. “I am telling truth. I swear it! I did what they demanded of me because I knew then that the hermit is not a priest, and a marriage made by him would be no marriage.”
“How did you know?” cried Fulke furiously, stirring out of his confusion. “Who told you so? My lord, this is all a childish ruse, and a spiteful one. He is lying!”
“Well? You may answer those questions,” said Radulfus, never taking his eyes from Richard’s. “How did you know? Who told you?” But these were the very questions Richard could not answer without betraying Hyacinth, and bringing the hunt on to his trail with renewed vigour. He said with wincing gallantry: “Father, I will tell you, but not here, only to you. Please believe me, I am not lying.”
“I do believe you,” said the abbot, abruptly releasing him from the scrutiny which had made him tremble. “I believe you are saying what you have been told, and what you believe to be true. But this is a more serious matter than you can understand, and it must be cleared up. A man against whom such an accusation has been made has the right to speak up for himself, and prove his good faith. I shall go myself, tomorrow early, and ask the hermit whether he is or is not a priest, and who ordained him, and where, and when. These things can be proven, and should be. You will surely have an equal interest, my lord, in finding out, once for all, whether this was indeed a marriage. Though I must warn you,” he added firmly, “that even if it is it can be annulled, seeing it cannot have been consummated.”
“Make the attempt,” retorted Astley, somewhat recovering his composure, “and it will be contested to the limit. But I acknowledge that truth must come out. We cannot have such doubts lingering.”
“Then will you not meet with me at the hermitage, as early as may be after Prime? It is fair we should both hear what Cuthred has to say. I am well sure,” he said with truth, having seen the effect of Richard’s outburst, “that you believed implicitly the man was a priest, with full rights to marry and bury. That is not in dispute. Richard has cause to hold to the contrary. Let us put it to the test.”
There was nothing Astley could object to in that, nor, thought Cadfael, had he any wish to avoid the issue. He had certainly been profoundly shocked by the suggestion of deceit, and wanted the damaging doubt removed. But he did make one more attempt to regain his hold meantime on the boy. He advanced a hand to Richard’s shoulder. “I will come to that meeting,” he said, “and see this deluded child proved wrong. But for this night I still hold he stands as my son, and should go with me.”
The hand closed on Richard’s arm, and the boy started and tore himself away. Brother Paul could no longer restrain himself, he hurried forward out of the staring ranks and drew the truant close to his side. “Richard stays here,” said Radulfus firmly. “His father entrusted him to me, and I set no limit on his stay with us. But whose son by law and whose husband the child is we must and will examine.”
Fulke was growing purple in the face again with suppressed anger. He had come so near to capturing the imp, and now to be thwarted, and the whole structure of his and Dionisia’s territorial plans put in jeopardy. He would not give up so easily.
“You take much upon yourself, my lord abbot,” he began, “in denying rights to his kin, you who have no blood claim upon him. And I think you are not without designs upon his lands and goods in keeping him here. You want no marriage for the boy, but rather to school him here until he knows no other world, and will enter tamely into his novitiate, and your house into his inheritance…” He was so intent on his accusations, and all those about him so stricken into wonder at his daring, that no one had yet observed the new arrival at the gatehouse. All eyes were on Astley, and all mouths agape in amazement, and Hugh had tethered his horse at the gate and entered on foot, making no noise. He had taken but ten paces into the court when his eye fell first on the grey horse and the black pony, crusted with the drying lather of their hasty ride, and held now by a groom, who stood gaping at the group framed in the archway of the cloister. Hugh followed the man’s fascinated stare, and took in at a glance the same arresting spectacle, the abbot and Fulke Astley face to face in obvious confrontation, and Brother Paul with an arm protectively about the shoulders of a small, wiry, grubby and dishevelled boy, who lifted to the evening light the wide-eyed face, half-frightened, half-defiant, of Richard Ludel. Radulfus, standing disdainfully silent under abuse, was the first to notice the new arrival on the scene. Looking clean over his adversary’s head, as with his height he could very well do, he said distinctly: “No doubt the lord sheriff will pay the attention due to your charges. As he may also be interested in how Richard came to be in your care at Leighton as late as last night. You should address your complaints to him.” Fulke span upon one heel so precipitately that he all but lost his balance; and there was Hugh coming briskly down the court to join them, one quirky eyebrow tilted into his black hair, and the eye beneath it bright and sharply knowing, and levelled upon Fulke. “Well, well, my lord!” said Hugh amiably. “I see you have made shift to discover and restore the truant I have just failed to find in your manor of Leighton. Here am I newly come from there to report failure to the lord abbot as Richard’s guardian, and here I find you have been doing my work for me while I was wild-goose chasing. I take that very kindly of you. I’ll bear it in mind when it comes to considering the little matter of abduction and forcible imprisonment. It seems the woodland bird that whispered in my ear Richard was at Leighton told simple truth, for all I found no trace of him when I put it to the proof, and no one to admit he’d ever been there. You can have been out of the house barely half an hour by some other path when I reached it by the road.” His observant eye roved over Richard’s taut figure and wary face, and came to rest on the abbot. “Do you find him in good heart, and none the worse for being caged, my lord? He’s come to no harm?”
“None to his body, certainly,” said Radulfus. “But there is another matter unresolved. It seems a form of marriage took place last night at Leighton between Richard and Sir Fulke’s daughter. To that Richard agrees, but he says that it was no real marriage, since the hermit Cuthred, who conducted it, is not a priest.”
“Do you tell me so?” Hugh pursed his lips in a soundless whistle, and swung round upon Fulke, who stood mute but watchful, all too aware of the need to step warily, and think now before he spoke. “And what do you say to that, my lord?”
“I say it is an absurd charge that will never stand. He came to us with the good will of the brothers of Buildwas. I never heard word against him, and do not believe it now. We have dealt with him in good faith.”
“That, I am sure, is true,” said the abbot fairly. “If there is anything in this charge, those who desired this marriage did not know of it.”
“But Richard, I think, did not desire it,” said Hugh, with a somewhat grim smile. “This cannot rest so, we must have out the truth.”
“So we are all agreed,” said Radulfus, “and Sir Fulke has contracted to meet with me tomorrow after Prime at the hermitage, and hear what the man himself has to say. I was about to send to you, my lord sheriff, and tell you how this thing stands, and ask you to ride with me tomorrow. This scene,” he said, casting an authoritative glance round at his all too attentive flock, “need not be prolonged, I think. If you will sup with me, Hugh, you shall hear all that has happened. Robert, have the brothers proceed. I am sorry our evening should have been so rudely disrupted. And, Paul…” He looked down at Richard, who had one fist tightly clenched on a fold of Paul’s habit, ready to hold fast had his tenure been threatened. “Take him away, Paul, clean him up, feed him, and bring him to me after supper. He has a great deal to tell us that has not been told yet. There, you may disperse, all, there is no more here to see.” The brothers edged aside obediently, and moved away somewhat raggedly to resume the interrupted order of the evening, though there would be furtive whispering even in the frater, and a great deal of excited talk afterwards in the leisured hour before Collations. Brother Paul marched his restored lamb away to be washed and made presentable before abbot and sheriff after supper. Aymer Bosiet, who had looked on with a certain malevolent satisfaction at someone else’s crisis and confusion as a relief from his own, detached himself moodily and went across the court to the guest hall. But Cadfael, suddenly moved to look back, missed the one figure he was seeking. Rafe of Coventry was no where to be seen, and now that Cadfael came to think of it, he must have taken himself off quietly some time before the intriguing scene ended. Because he had no interest in it, and was quite capable of detaching himself from a spectacle which held most men spellbound? Or because he had found something in it that interested him deeply and urgently?
Fulke Astley was left hesitant, eye to eye with Hugh, and unsure whether it would serve him better to attempt explanations and justification, or to withdraw—if he was allowed to withdraw—in dignified silence, or at least with as few words as possible, and no concessions.
“Tomorrow, then, my lord,” he said, settling upon brevity, “I shall be at Cuthred’s hermitage as I have promised.”
“Good! And you might do well,” said Hugh, “to acquaint the hermit’s patroness with what’s mooted against him. She may wish to be present herself. As at this time, my lord, I have no more immediate need of you. And should I have need in the future, I know where to find you. You may have good reason to be glad that Richard slipped his collar. Mischief undone is best forgotten. Provided, of course, there’s no further mischief in contemplation.” Of that Fulke made the best he could. With a curt reverence to the abbot he turned to reclaim his horse, mounted, and rode out at the gatehouse at a deliberate and stately walking pace.
Brother Cadfael, summoned to join the colloquy in the abbot’s lodging after supper, turned aside on his way, on a sudden impulse, and went into the stable yard. Richard’s black pony was contented and easy in his stall after his strenuous ride, groomed and watered and placidly feeding. But the big chestnut with the white blaze down his forehead was gone from his place, saddle and harness and all. Whatever the occasion for his silent departure, Rafe of Coventry had ridden forth on some local errand of his own. Richard sat on a low stool at the abbot’s knee, washed and brushed and meekly grateful to be home, and told his story, or as much of it as he felt justified in telling. He had an interested audience. There were present, besides the abbot, Hugh Beringar, Brother Cadfael at Hugh’s accepted request, and Brother Paul, still reluctant to let the returned prodigal out of his sight. Richard had tolerated, even enjoyed, being shaken, slapped, scrubbed and made much of, the whole chaotic process which had produced this neat, shining schoolboy for the abbot’s inspection. There were gaps in his story, and he knew they would be questioned, but Radulfus was of noble family, and would understand that a nobleman cannot betray those who have helped him, or even certain underlings who at the instance of their masters have injured him. “Would you know them again, the two who captured you and took you into Wroxeter?” asked Hugh.
Richard considered the tempting prospect of revenge on the strapping young fellow who had laughed at his struggles and hindered him at the ford, but rejected it reluctantly as unworthy of his nobility. “I couldn’t be sure of them. It was getting dark.” They did not press him. Instead, the abbot asked: “Had you help in escaping from Leighton? You could hardly have broken out on your own, or you would have done it earlier.”
Answering that presented something of a problem. If he told the truth it would certainly do Hiltrude no harm here among his friends, but if ever it reached her father it could do her harm enough. Better stick to the story as she must have told it, that the door had been mistakenly left unbolted, and he had made his own way out. Cadfael observed the slight flush that mantled in the boy’s well-scrubbed cheeks as he recounted that part of his adventures, with notable brevity and modesty. If it had been true he would have been exulting in it. “He should have known what a slippery fish he had caught,” said Hugh, smiling. “But you still have not told us why you rode out from the abbey in the first place, nor who told you that the hermit is not the priest he purports to be.” This was the crux, and Richard had been thinking about it with unaccustomed labour and pain while he submitted to Brother Paul’s affectionate homily on obedience and order, and the evil consequences to be expected from transgressing their rules. He looked up warily into the abbot’s face, shot an uneasy glance at Hugh, whose reactions as the secular authority were less calculable, and said earnestly: “Father, I said I would tell you, but I did not say I would tell any other. There is someone who might be harmed if I told what I know of him, and I know he has not deserved it. I can’t bring him into danger.”
“I would not wish to make you break faith with any man,” said Radulfus gravely. “Tomorrow I’ll hear your confession myself, and you shall tell me then, and rest happy that you’ve done right, and your confidence is sacred. Now you’d best get to your bed, for I fancy you need it. Take him away, Paul!” Richard made his ceremonial reverences, glad to have got off so lightly; but as he passed where Hugh sat he hesitated and stopped, plainly with something still on his mind.
“My lord, you said everyone at Leighton said I had never been there, of course they’d be afraid to say anything else. But did Hiltrude say so?” Hugh could make connections perhaps faster than most men, but if he instantly made this one he gave no sign of it. With respectful gravity and a blank countenance he said: “That’s Astley’s daughter? I never spoke with her, she was not in the house.”
Not there! So she did not have to lie. She must have slipped out discreetly as soon as her father was gone. Richard said a relieved and grateful goodnight, and went away to his bed with a lightened heart.
“She let him out, of course,” said Hugh as soon as the door had closed after the boy. “She was a victim no less than he. Now I begin to see a pattern. Richard is seized as he rides back through Eyton forest, and what is there in Eyton forest and along that path but Eilmund’s cottage and the hermitage? And to the hermitage we know he did not go. And who should walk into Shrewsbury about noon this day and send me off hotfoot to Leighton, which otherwise I should not have reached before tomorrow, but Eilmund’s girl? And where she got the news she never clearly said, but some passing villager had said he’d seen a boy there who might well be Richard. And Richard, more forthrightly, will not say why he went off there alone, nor who told him the hermit is no true priest. Father, it seems to me that someone—let’s not go so far as to name him!—has very good friends among our acquaintance. I hope they are as good judges! Well, tomorrow, at any rate, there’ll be no hunting. Richard is safely home with you. And to tell truth, I doubt the other quarry will ever be flushed out of cover. Tomorrow our morning business is laid down for us. Let’s first see that resolved.”
As soon as Prime was over they mounted and rode, Abbot Radulfus, Hugh Beringar and Brother Cadfael, who in any case was bound for Eilmund’s cottage that day, to see how the forester was progressing. It was by no means the first time he had adjusted his legitimate visits to accommodate his reasoned curiosity. That he could count on Hugh to abet his plans was an added advantage, and an additional witness with a sharp eye for the infinitesimal changes by which the human countenance betrays itself might be invaluable in this encounter. The morning was clearer of mist than in recent days, there had arisen a steady, drying wind that was crisping the fallen leaves in the forest rides, and colouring in muted gold those that still hung on the trees. The first frost would set the crowns of the forest blazing in russets and browns and flame. Another week or two, thought Cadfael, and there’d be no shelter for Hyacinth in the trees when inconvenient visitors came to the cottage, even the oaks would be half-naked. But in a few more days, God willing, Aymer would have abandoned his revenge, cut his losses, and made off in haste to secure his gains at home. His father’s body was safely coffined, and though he had only two grooms with him, there was also Drogo’s good horse as a remount for a new master in a hurry, and he would find no difficulty in hiring litter bearers at every way-stage on his journey. He had already scoured the whole region without success, and showed distinct signs of fretting between two desired ends, of which surely the more profitable would win in the end. Hyacinth’s freedom might be nearer than he knew. And he had already served and deserved well, for who else could have got word to Richard that the hermit was not all he claimed to be? Hyacinth had travelled with him, known him well before he ever set foot in Buildwas. Hyacinth might well know things about his reverend master that were known to no one else.
The thick woodland hid the hermitage from them until they were very near. The sudden parting of the trees before them came always as a mild surprise, unveiling in an instant the small green clearing, the low pales that made a mere token fence about the garden, and the squat cell of grey stone, patched with the newer and paler grey of its recent repairs. The door of the house was open, as Cuthred had said it always was, to all who came. There was no one at work in the half-cleared garden, no sound from the interior of the cell, as they dismounted at the gateless gateway and tethered their horses. Cuthred must be within, by the silence perhaps at his prayers.
“Go first, Father,” said Hugh. “This is more within your writ than mine.” The abbot had to stoop his head to pass through the stone doorway, and stood motionless for a moment within, until his eyes grew accustomed to the dimness. The single narrow window let in a subdued light at this hour by reason of the overhanging trees, and the shapes within the bare room took on substance only gradually, the narrow pallet against the wall, the small table and bench, the few vessels, plate and cup and pottery bowl. The doorless opening into the chapel revealed the stone block of the altar by the tiny glow of the lamp on it, but left all below in obscurity. The lamp had burned very low, was no more than a spark.
“Cuthred!” called Radulfus into the silence. “Are you within? The abbot of Shrewsbury greets you in the name and grace of God!” There was no answer but the small, stony echo. Hugh stepped past and advanced into the chapel doorway, and there halted abruptly, drawing in hissing breath. Cuthred was indeed within, but not at his prayers. He lay sprawled on his back beneath the altar, head and shoulders propped against the stone, as though he had fallen or been hurled backwards while facing the doorway. His habit billowed in dark folds round him, exposing sinewy feet and ankles, and the breast of the gown was matted and blackened by a long stain, where he had bled from the stab that killed him. His face, between the tangled dark fell of hair and beard, was contorted in a grimace which might have been of agony or of rage, the lips drawn back from strong teeth, the eyes glaring half-open. His arms were flung wide, and beside his right hand, as though released in the moment of falling, a long dagger lay spilled on the stone floor.
Priest or no, Cuthred was never going to testify in his own defence. There was no need to question or touch to see that he was some hours dead, and dead by violence.
“Christ aid!” said the abbot in a harsh whisper, and stood like stone over the body. “God have mercy on a murdered man! Who can have done this thing?” Hugh was on his knees beside the dead man, touching flesh already grown chill and waxen in texture. There was nothing to be demanded now of the hermit Cuthred, and nothing to be done for him in this world, short of the final balance of justice.
“Dead some hours at least. A second man struck down within my shire, and no requital yet for the first! For God’s sake, what is it let loose in these woods to such devilish effect?”
“Can this possibly have any bearing,” wondered the abbot heavily, “on what the boy has told us? Has someone struck first to prevent him ever answering in his own defence? To bury the proof with the man? There has been such resolute plotting over this marriage, all for greed of land, but surely it could not be carried so far as murder?”
“If this is murder,” said Brother Cadfael, rather to himself than to any other, but aloud. He had remained still and silent in the doorway all this time, looking round him intently at the room he remembered well from a single visit, a room so sparsely furnished that every detail was memorable. The chapel was larger than the living room of the cell, there was room here for free movement, even for a struggle. Only the eastern wall was built up beneath its tiny square window with the great fashioned stone of the altar, and atop that the small carved reliquary on which stood the silver cross, and on either side a silver candlestick holding a tall candle, unlighted. On the stone before the reliquary, the lamp, and laid neatly in front of it—But there was nothing laid in front of it. Strange to have the man thrown down in disordered and disregarded death, but the altar so trim and undisturbed. And only one thing missing from the picture Cadfael carried in his mind’s eye. The breviary in the leather binding fit for a prince, tooled in intricate scrolls and leaves and gilded ornament, was gone.
Hugh rose from his knees and stood back to view the room as Cadfael was viewing it. They had seen it together, by rights their memories should match. He shot a sharp glance at Cadfael. “You see cause to doubt it?”
“I see that he was armed.”
Hugh was already looking down at the long dagger that lay so close to Cuthred’s half-open hand. He had not touched it. He stood back and touched nothing, now that he knew the discarded flesh before him was cold. “He loosed his hold as he fell. That dagger is his. It was used. There is blood on it—not his blood. Whatever happened here, it was no furtive stabbing in the back.”
That was certain. The wound was over his heart, the stiffening patch of blood from it had reached his middle. The dagger that killed this man had been withdrawn and let out his lifeblood. Its fellow here on the floor was stained for only a thumb’s length from its tip, and had barely shed one drop upon the stone where it lay.
“You are saying,” said the abbot, stirring out of his horrified stillness, “that this was a fight? But how should a holy hermit keep sword or dagger about him? Even for his own defence against thieves and vagabonds such a man should not resort to arms, but put his trust in God.”
“And if this was a thief,” said Cadfael, “he was a most strange one. Here are cross and candlesticks of silver, and they are not taken, not even shaken from their places in the struggle. Or else they were set right afterwards.”
“That is truth,” said the abbot, and shook his head over so inexplicable a mystery. “This was not done for robbery. But what, then? Why should any man attack a solitary religious, one without possessions by choice, one whose only valuables are the furnishings of his altar? He has lived unmolested and serviceable among us, by all accounts open and accessible to all who came with their needs and troubles. Why should anyone wish to harm him? Can this be the same hand that killed the lord of Bosiet, Hugh? Or must we fear we have two murderers loose among us?”
“There is still this lad of his,” said Hugh, frowning over the thought but unable quite to discard it. “We have not found him, and I had begun to think that he had made off westward and got clean away into Wales. But it’s still possible that he has remained close here. There may well be those who are sheltering him and believe in him. We have grounds for thinking so. If he is indeed the villein who ran from Bosiet, he had some cause to rid himself of his master. And say that Cuthred, who disowned him on hearing he had been deceived in him, found out his hiding place now—yes, then he might also have cause to kill Cuthred. All of which is mere matter for conjecture. And yet cannot be quite rejected.”
No, thought Cadfael, not until Aymer Bosiet has gone his way back to Northamptonshire, and Hyacinth can come out of hiding and speak for himself, and Eilmund and Annet, yes, and Richard, can speak for him. For between the three of them I’m sure it can be proved exactly where Hyacinth has been at all times, and he has not been here. No, we need not trouble about Hyacinth. But I wish, he thought regretfully, I wish they had let me confide in Hugh long ago.
The sun was higher in the sky by now, and found a better angle through the leafage of the trees, to shed more light upon the distorted and lamentable body. The skirts of the rusty black habit were gathered together at one side, as if a large fist had drawn them into its grasp, and there the woollen cloth was clotted with a sticky dark stain. Cadfael kneeled and drew the folds apart, and they separated with a faint, rustling reluctance. “Here he wiped his dagger,” said Cadfael, “before sheathing it again.”
“Twice,” said Hugh, peering, for there was a second such smear, barely perceptible. Coolly and efficiently, a methodical man cleaning his tools after finishing his work! “And see here, this casket on the altar.” He had stepped carefully round the body to look closely at the carved wooden box, and draw a finger along the edge of the lid, above the lock. The flaw was no longer than a thumbnail, but showed where the point of a dagger had been thrust in to prise the box open. He lifted down the cross and raised the lid, which gave readily. The lock was sprung and broken, and the casket was empty. Only the faint aromatic scent of the wood stirred upon the air. There was not even a filming of dust within; the box had been well made.
“So something was taken, after all,” said Cadfael. He did not mention the breviary, though he could not doubt that Hugh had noticed its absence as readily as he.
“But not the silver. What could a hermit have about him of greater value than Dame Dionisia’s silver? He came to Buildwas on foot, carrying only a scrip like any other pilgrim, though to be sure his boy Hyacinth also carried a pack for him. Now I wonder,” said Hugh, “whether this casket was also the lady’s gift, or whether he brought it with him?”
They had been so intent on what they were observing within that they had failed to pay attention to what was happening without, and there had been no sound to warn them. And in the shock of what they had discovered they had almost forgotten that at least one more witness was expected at this meeting. But it was a woman’s voice, not Fulke’s, that suddenly spoke in the doorway behind them, high and confidently, and with arrogant disapproval in its tone. “No need to wonder, my lord. It would be simple and civil to ask me.” All three of them swung round in dismayed alarm to stare at Dame Dionisia, tall and erect and defiant between them and the brightening daylight from which she had come, and which left her half-blind at stepping into this relative obscurity. They were between her and the body, and there was nothing else to startle or alarm her but the very fact that Hugh stood with his hand on the open casket, and the cross had been lifted down. This she saw clearly, while the dying lamp lit nothing else so well. And she was outraged. “My lord, what is this? What are you doing with these sacred things? And where is Cuthred? Have you dared to meddle in his absence?” The abbot moved to place himself more solidly between her and the dead man, and advanced to persuade her out of the chapel.
“Madam, you shall know all, but I beg you, come out into the other room and be seated, and wait but a moment until we set all in order here. Here is no irreverence, I promise you.”
The light from without was still further darkened by the bulk of Astley looming at her shoulder, blocking the retreat the abbot was urging. She stood her ground, imperious and indignant.
“Where is Cuthred? Does he know you are here? How is it he has left his cell? He never does so—” The lie ended on her lips in a sharp indrawn breath. Beyond the abbot’s robe she had seen one small pallor jutting from the huddle of dark skirts, a foot that had shaken loose its sandal. Her vision was clearer now. She evaded the abbot’s restraining hand and thrust strongly past him. All her questions were answered in one shattering glance. Cuthred was indeed there, and on this occasion at least had not left his cell. The long, patrician composure of her face turned waxen grey and seemed to disintegrate, its sharp lines fallen slack. She uttered a great wail, rather of terror than of grief, and half-sprang, half-fell backwards into the arms of Fulke Astley.