One Corpse Too Many bc-2 Page 11

  The silence and stillness lasted long. It was a full minute before they so much as tilted cautious heads and looked sidewise at each other. Her profile, warily emerging from anger into guilty sympathy, was delicate and pert and utterly feminine, he must have been weak and sick indeed, or he would surely have known. The soft, gruff voice was only an ambiguous charm, a natural deceit. Torold scrubbed thoughtfully at his stinging ear, and asked at last, very carefully: “Why didn’t you tell me? I never meant to offend you, but how was I to know?”

  “There was no need for you to know,” snapped Godith, still ruffled, “if you’d had the sense to do as you’re bid, or the courtesy to treat your friends gently.”

  “But you goaded me! Good God,” protested Torold, “it was only the rough play I’d have used on a younger brother of my own, and you asked for it.” He demanded suddenly:

  “Does Brother Cadfael know?”

  “Of course he does! Brother Cadfael at least can tell a hart from a hind.”

  There fell a second and longer silence, full of resentment, curiosity and caution, while they continued to study each other through lowered lashes, she furtively eyeing the sleeve that covered his wound, in case a telltale smear of blood should break through, he surveying again the delicate curves of her face, the jut of lip and lowering of brows that warned him she was still offended.

  Two small, wary voices uttered together, grudgingly:

  “Did I hurt you?”

  They began to laugh at the same instant, suddenly aware of their own absurdity. The illusion of estrangement vanished utterly; they fell into each other’s arms helpless with laughter, and nothing was left to complicate their relationship but the slightly exaggerated gentleness with which they touched each other.

  “But you shouldn’t have used that arm so,” she reproached at last, as they disentangled themselves and sat back, eased and content. “You could have started it open again, it’s a bad gash.”

  “Oh, no, there’s no damage. But you — I wouldn’t for the world have vexed you.” And he asked, quite simply, and certain of his right to be told: “Who are you? And how did you ever come into such a coil as this?”

  She turned her head and looked at him long and earnestly; there would never again be anything with which she would hesitate to mist him.

  “They left it too late,” she said, “to send me away out of Shrewsbury before the town fell. This was a desperate throw, turning me into an abbey servant, but I was sure I could carry it off. And I did, with everyone but Brother Cadfael. You were taken in, weren’t you? I’m a fugitive of your party, Torold, we’re two of a kind. I’m Godith Adeney.”

  “Truly?” He beamed at her, round-eyed with wonder and delight. “You’re Fulke Adeney’s daughter? Praise God! We were anxious for you! Nick especially, for he knew you … I never saw you till now, but I, too …” He stooped his fair head and lightly kissed the small, none too clean hand that had just picked up the last of the plums. “Mistress Godith, I am your servant to command! This is splendid! If I’d known, I’d have told you better than half a tale.”

  “Tell me now,” said Godith, and generously split the plum in half, and sent the stone whirling down into the Severn. The riper half she presented to his open mouth, effectively closing it for a moment. “And then,” she said, “I’ll tell you my side of it, and we shall have a useful whole.”

  Brother Cadfael did not go straight to the mill on his return, but halted to check that his workshop was in order, and to pound up his goose-grass in a mortar, and prepare a smooth green salve from it. Then he went to join his young charges, careful to circle into the shadow of the mill from the opposite direction, and to keep an eye open for any observer. Time was marching all too swiftly, within an hour he and Godith would have to go back for Vespers.

  They had both known his step; when he entered they were sitting side by side with backs propped against the wall, watching the doorway with rapt, expectant smiles. They had a certain serene, aloof air about them, as though they inhabited a world immune from common contacts or, common cares, but generously accessible to him. He had only to look at them, and he knew they had no more secrets; they were so rashly and candidly man and woman together that there was no need even to ask anything. Though they were both waiting expectantly to tell him!

  “Brother Cadfael …” Godith began, distantly radiant.

  “First things first,” said Cadfael briskly. “Help him out of cotte and shirt, and start unwinding the bandage until it sticks — as it will, my friend, you’re not out of the wood yet. Then wait, and I’ll ease it off.”

  There was no disconcerting or chastening them. The girl was up in a moment, easing the seam of the cotte away from Torold’s wound, loosening the ties of his shirt to slip it down from his shoulder, gently freeing the end of the linen bandage and beginning to roll it up. The boy inclined this way and that to help, and never took his eyes from Godith’s face, as she seldom took hers from his absorbed countenance, and only to concentrate upon his needs.

  “Well, well!” thought Cadfael philosophically. “It seems Hugh Beringar will seek his promised bride to little purpose — if, indeed, he really is seeking her?”

  “Well, youngster,” he said aloud, “you’re a credit to me and to yourself, as clean-healing flesh as ever I saw. This slice of you that somebody tried to sever will stay with you lifelong, after all, and the arm will even serve you to hold a bow in a month or so. But you’ll have the scar as long as you live. Now hold steady, this may burn, but mist me, it’s the best salve you could have for green wounds. Torn muscles hurt as they knit, but knit they will.”

  “It doesn’t hurt,” said Torold in a dream. “Brother Cadfael …”

  “Hold your tongue until we have you all bound up trim. Then you can talk your hearts out, the both of you.”

  And talk they did, as soon as Torold was helped back into his shirt, and the cotte draped over his shoulders. Each of them took up the thread from the other, as though handed it in a fixed and formal ceremony, like a favour in a dance; Even their voices had grown somehow alike, as if they matched tones without understanding that they did it. They had not the least idea, as yet, that they were in love. The innocents believed they were involved in a partisan comradeship, which was but the lesser half of what had happened to them in his absence.

  “So I have told Torold all about myself,” said Godith, “and he has told me the only thing he did not tell us before. And now he wants to tell you.”

  Torold picked up the tendered thread willingly. “I have FitzAlan’s treasury safely hidden,” he said simply. “I had it in two pairs of linked saddlebags, and I kept it afloat, too, all down the river, though I had to shed sword and swordbelt and dagger and all to lighten the load. I fetched up under the first arch of the stone bridge. You’ll know it as well as I. That first pier spreads, there used to be a boat-mill moored under it, some time ago, and the mooring chain is still there, bolted to a ring in the stone. A man can hold on there and get his breath, and so I did. And I hauled up the chain and hooked my saddlebags on to it, and let them down under the water, out of sight. Then I left them there, and drifted on down here just about alive, to where Godith found me.” He found no difficulty in speaking of her as Godith; the name had a jubilant sound in his mouth. “And there all that gold is dangling in the Severn still, I hope and believe, until I can reclaim it and get it away to its rightful owner. Thank God he’s alive to benefit by it.” A last qualm shook him suddenly and severely. “There’s been no word of anyone finding it?” he questioned anxiously. “We should know if they had?”

  “We should know, never doubt it! No, no one’s hooked any such fish. Why should anyone look for it there? But getting it out again undetected may not be so easy. We three must put our wits together,” said Cadfael, “and see what we can do between us. And while you two have been swearing your alliance, let me tell you what I’ve been doing.”

  He made it brief enough. “I found all as you told it. The traces
of your horses are there, and of your enemy’s, too. One horse only. This was a thief bent on his own enrichment, no zealot trying to fill the king’s coffers. He had seeded the path for you liberally with caltrops, your kinsman collected several of them next day, for the sake of his own cattle. The signs of your struggle within the hut are plain enough. And pressed into the earth floor I found this.” He produced it from his scrip, a lump of deep yellow roughly faceted, and clenched in the broken silver-gilt claw. Torold took it from him and examined it curiously, but without apparent recognition.

  “Broken off from a hilt, would you think?”

  “Not from yours, then?”

  “Mine?” Torold laughed. “Where would a poor squire with his way to make get hold of so fine a weapon as this must have been? No, mine was a plain old sword my grandsire wore before me, and a dagger to match, in a heavy hide sheath. If it had been light as this, I’d have tried to keep it. No, this is none of mine.”

  “Nor Faintree’s, either?”

  Torold shook his head decidedly. “If he had any such, I should have known. Nick and I are of the same condition, and friends three years and more.” He looked up intently into Brother Cadfael’s face. “Now I remember a very small thing that may have meaning, after all. When I broke free and left the other fellow dazed, I trod on something under the hay where we’d been struggling, a small, hard thing that almost threw me. I think it could well have been this. It was his? Yes, it must have been his! Snapped off against the ground as we rolled.”

  “His, almost certainly, and the only thing we have to lead us to him,” said Cadfael, taking back the stone and hiding it again from view in his pouch. “No man would willingly discard so fine a thing because one stone was broken from it. Whoever owned it still has it, and will get it repaired when he dare. If we can find the dagger, we shall have found the murderer.”

  “I wish,” said Torold fiercely, “I could both go and stay! I should be glad to be the one to avenge Nick, he was a good friend to me. But my part is to obey my orders, and get FitzAlan’s goods safely over to him in France. And,” he said, regarding Cadfael steadily, “to take with me also Fulke Adeney’s daughter, and deliver her safe to her father. If you will trust her to me.”

  “And help us,” added Godith with immense confidence.

  “Trust her to you — I might,” said Cadfael mildly. “And help you both I surely will, as best I can. A very simple matter! All I have to do — and mark you, she has the assurance to demand it of me! — is to conjure you two good horses out of the empty air, where even poor hacks are gold, retrieve your hidden treasure for you, and see you well clear of the town, westward into Wales. Just a trifle! Harder things are done daily by the saints …”

  He had reached this point when he stiffened suddenly, and spread a warning hand to enjoin silence. Listening with ears stretched, he caught for a second time the soft sound of a foot moving warily in the edge of the rustling stubble, close to the open door.

  “What is it?” asked Godith in a soundless whisper, her eyes immense in alarm.

  “Nothing!” said Cadfael as softly. “My ears playing tricks.” And aloud he said: “Well, you and I must be getting back for Vespers. Come! It wouldn’t do to be late.”

  Torold accepted his silent orders, and let them go without a word from him. If someone had indeed been listening … But he had heard nothing, and it seemed to him that even Cadfael was not sure. Why alarm Godith? Brother Cadfael was her best protector here, and once within the abbey walls she would again be in sanctuary. As for Torold, he was his own responsibility, though he would have been happier if he had had a sword!

  Brother Cadfael reached down into the capacious waist of his habit, and drew out a long poniard in a rubbed and worn leather scabbard. Silently he put it into Torold’s hands. The young man took it, marvelling, staring as reverently as at a first small miracle, so apt was the answer to his thought. He had it by the sheath, the cross of the hilt before his face, and was still gazing in wonder as they went out from him into the evening, and drew the door closed after them. Cadfael took the memory of that look with him into the fresh, saffron air of sunset. He himself must once have worn the same rapt expression, contemplating the same uplifted hilt. When he had taken the Cross, long ago, his vow had been made on that hilt, and the dagger had gone with him to Jerusalem, and roved the eastern seas with him for ten years. Even when he gave up his’ sword along with the things of this world, and surrendered all pride of possessions, he had kept the poniard. Just as well to part with it at last, to someone who had need of it and would not disgrace it

  He looked about him very cautiously as they rounded the corner of the mill and crossed the race. His hearing was sharp as a wild creature’s, and he had heard no whisper or rustle from outside until the last few moments of their talk together, nor could he now be certain that what he had heard was a human foot, it might well have been a small animal slipping through the stubble. All the same, he must take thought for what might happen if they really had been spied upon. Surely, at the worst, only the last few exchanges could have been overheard, though those were revealing enough. Had the treasure been mentioned? Yes, he himself had said that all that was required of him was to obtain two horses, retrieve the treasure, and see them safely headed for Wales. Had anything been said then of where the treasure was hidden? No, that had been much earlier. But the listener, if listener there had been, could well have learned that a hunted fugitive of FitzAlan’s party was in hiding there, and worse, that Adeney’s daughter was being sheltered in the abbey.

  This was getting too warm for comfort. Best get them away as soon as the boy was fit to ride. But if this evening passed, and the night, and no move was made to betray them, he would suspect he had been fretting over nothing. There was no one in sight here but a solitary boy fishing, absorbed and distant on the river bank.

  “What was it?” asked Godith, meek and attentive beside him. “Something made you uneasy, I know.”

  “Nothing to worry your head about,” said Cadfael. “I was mistaken. Everything is as it should be.”

  From the corner of his eye, at that moment, he caught the sudden movement down towards the river, beyond the clump of bushes where she had found Torold. Out of the meagre cover a slight, agile body unfolded and stood erect, stretching lazily, and drifted at an oblique angle towards the path on which they walked, his course converging with theirs. Hugh Beringar, his stride nicely calculated to look accidental and yet bring him athwart their path at the right moment, showed them a placid and amiable face, recognising Cadfael with pleasure, accepting his attendant boy with benevolence.

  “A very fair evening, brother! You’re bound for Vespers? So am I. We may walk together?”

  “Very gladly,” said Cadfael heartily. He tapped Godith on the shoulder, and handed her the small sacking bundle that held his herbs and dressings. “Run ahead, Godric, and put these away for me, and come down to Vespers with the rest of the boys. You’ll save my legs, and have time to give a stir to that lotion I have been brewing. Go on, child, run!”

  And Godith clasped the bundle and ran, taking good care to run like an athletic boy, rattling one hand along the tall stubble, and whistling as she went, glad enough to put herself out of that young man’s sight. Her own eyes and mind were full of another young man.

  “A most biddable lad you have,” said Hugh Beringar benignly, watching her race ahead.

  “A good boy,” said Cadfael placidly, matching him step for step across the field blanched to the colour of cream. “He has a year’s endowment with us, but I doubt if he’ll take the cowl. But he’ll have learned his letters, and figuring, and a good deal about herbs and medicines, it will stand him in good stead. You’re at leisure today, my lord?”

  “Not so much at leisure,” said Hugh Beringar with equal serenity, “as in need of your skills and knowledge. I tried your garden first, and not finding you there, thought you might have business today over here in the main gardens and orchard. But f
or want of a sight of you anywhere, I sat down to enjoy the evening sunshine, here by the river. I knew you’d come to Vespers, but never realised you had fields beyond here. Js all the corn brought in now?”

  “All that we have here. The sheep will be grazing the stubble very shortly. What was it you wanted of me, my lord? If I may serve you in accord with my duty, be sure I will.”

  “Yesterday morning, Brother Cadfael, I asked you if you would give any request of mine fair consideration, and you told me you give fair consideration to all that you do. And I believe it. I had in mind what was then no more than a rumoured threat, now it’s a real one. I have reason to know that King Stephen is already making plans to move on, and means to make sure of his supplies and his mounts. The siege of Shrewsbury has cost him plenty, and he now has more mouths to feed and more men to mount. It’s not generally known, or too many would be taking thought to evade it, as I am,” owned Beringar blithely, “but he’s about to issue orders to have every homestead in the town searched, and a tithe of all fodder and provisions in store commandeered for the army’s use. And all — mark that, all — the good horses to be found, no matter who owns them, that are not already in army or garrison service. The abbey stables will not be exempt.”

  This Cadfael did not like at all. It came far too pat, a shrewd thrust at his own need of horses, and most ominous indication that Hugh Beringar, who had this information in advance of the general citizens, might also be as well informed of what went on in other quarters. Nothing this young man said or did would ever be quite what it seemed, but whatever game he played would always be his own game. The less said in reply, at this stage, the better. Two could play their own games, and both, possibly, benefit. Let him first say out what he wanted, even if what he said would have to be scrutinised from all angles, and subjected to every known test.