Potter's Field bc-17 Read online

  ‘I sent for you, Brother,’ said the abbot, ‘because something has come to light, something you may recognise.’

  Hugh held out the ring in his palm. ‘Do you know this, Ruald? Take it up, examine it.’

  It was hardly necessary, he had already opened his lips to answer at the mere sight of it in Hugh’s hand. But obediently he took it, and at once turned it to bring the light sidewise upon the entwined initials cut crudely within. He had not needed it as identification, he wanted and accepted it gratefully as a sign both of remembered accord and of hope for future reconciliation and forgiveness. Cadfael saw the faint quiver of warmth and promise momentarily dissolve the patient lines of the lean face.

  ‘I know it well, my lord. It is my wife’s. I gave it to her before we married, in Wales, where the stone was found. How did it come here?’

  ‘First let me be clear—you are certain this was hers? There cannot be another such?’

  ‘Impossible. There could be other pairs having these initials, yes, but these I myself cut, and I am no engraver. I know every line, every irregularity, every fault in the work, I have seen the bright cuts dull and tarnish over the years. This I last saw on the hand of Generys. There is nothing more certain under the sun. Where is she? Has she come back? May I speak with her?’

  ‘She is not here,’ said Hugh. ‘The ring was found in the shop of a jeweller in the city of Peterborough, and the jeweller testified that he had bought it from a woman only some ten days previously. The seller was in need of money to help her to leave that town for a safer place to live, seeing the anarchy that has broken out there in the Fens. He described her. It would seem that she was indeed the same who was formerly your wife.’

  The radiance of hope had made but a slow and guarded sunrise on Ruald’s plain middle-aged face, but by this time every shred of cloud was dispersed. He turned on Abbot Radulfus with such shining eagerness that the light from the window, breaking now into somewhat pale sunrays, seemed only the reflection of his joy.

  ‘So she is not dead! She is alive and well! Father, may I question further? For this is wonderful!’

  ‘Certainly you may,’ said the abbot. ‘And wonderful it is.’

  ‘My lord sheriff, how came the ring here, if it was bought and sold in Peterborough?’

  ‘It was brought by one who recently came to this house from those parts. You see him here, Sulien Blount. You know him. He was sheltered overnight in his journey by the jeweller, and saw and knew the ring there in his shop. For old kindness,’ said Hugh with deliberation, ‘he wished to bring it with him, and so he has, and there you hold it in your hand.’

  Ruald had turned to look steadily and long at the young man standing mute and still, a little apart, as though he wished to withdraw himself from sight, and being unable to vanish in so small a room, at least hoped to escape too close observance by being motionless, and closing the shutters over his too transparent face and candid eyes. A strange and searching look it was that passed between them, and no one moved or spoke to break its intensity. Cadfael heard within his own mind the questions that were not being asked: Why did you not show me the ring? If, for reasons I guess at, you were unwilling to do that, could you not at least have told me that you had had recent word of her, that she was alive and well? But all Ruald said, without turning away his eyes from Sulien’s face, was: ‘I cannot keep it. I have forsworn property. I thank God that I have seen it, and that he has pleased to keep Generys safe. I pray that he may have her in his care hereafter.’

  ‘Amen!’ said Sulien, barely audibly. The sound was a mere sigh, but Cadfael saw his taut lips quiver and move.

  ‘It is yours to give, Brother, if not to keep,’ said the abbot, watching the pair of them with shrewd eyes that weighed and considered, but refrained from judging. The boy had already confessed to him why he had obtained the ring, and why it was his intent to keep it. A small thing in itself, great in what it could accomplish, it had played its part, and was of no further significance. Unless, perhaps, in its disposal? ‘You may bestow it where you think fit,’ said Radulfus.

  ‘If the lord sheriff has no further need of it,’ said Ruald, ‘I give it back to Sulien, who reclaimed it. He has brought me the best news I could have received, and that morsel of my peace of mind that even this house could not restore.’ He smiled suddenly, the plain, long face lighting up, and held out the ring to Sulien. The boy advanced a hand very slowly, almost reluctantly, to receive it. As they touched, the vivid colour rose in his cheeks in a fiery flush, and he turned his face haughtily away from the light to temper the betrayal.

  So that is how the case goes, Cadfael thought, enlightened. No questions asked because none are needed. Ruald must have watched his lord’s younger son running in and out of his workshop and house almost since the boy was born, and seen him grow into the awkward pains of adolescence and the foreshadowing of manhood, and always close about the person of this mysterious and formidable woman, the stranger, who was no stranger to him, the one who kept her distance, but not from him, the being of whom every man said that she was very beautiful, but not for everyone was she also close and kind. Children make their way by right where others are not admitted. It touched her not at all, Sulien maintained, she never knew of it. But Ruald had known. No need now for the boy to labour his motives, or ask pardon for the means by which he defended what was precious to him.

  ‘Very well,’ said Hugh briskly, ‘be it so. I have nothing further to ask. I am glad, Ruald, to see your mind set at rest. You, at least, need trouble no further over this matter, there remains no shadow of a threat to you or to this house, and I must look elsewhere. As I hear, Sulien, you have chosen to leave the Order. You will be at Longner for the present, should I need a word with you hereafter?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sulien, still a little stiff and defensive of his own dignity. ‘I shall be there when you want me.’

  Now I wonder, thought Cadfael, as the abbot dismissed both Ruald and Sulien with a brief motion of benediction, and they went out together, what trick of the mind caused the boy to use the word ‘when’? I should rather have expected ‘if you want me’. Has he a premonition that some day, for some reason, more will be demanded of him?

  ‘It’s plain he was in love with the woman,’ said Hugh, when the three of them were left alone. ‘It happens! Never forget his own mother has been ill some eight years, gradually wasting into the frail thing she is now. How old would this lad be when that began? Barely ten years. Though he was fond and welcome at Ruald’s croft long before that. A child dotes on a kind and handsome woman many innocent years, and suddenly finds he has a man’s stirrings in his body, and in his mind too. Then the one or the other wins the day. This boy, I fancy, would give his mind the mastery, set his love up on a pedestal—an altar, rather, if you’ll allow me the word, Father—and worship her in silence.’

  ‘So, he says, he did,’ agreed Radulfus drily. ‘She never knew of it. His words.’

  ‘I am inclined to believe it. You saw how he coloured like a peony when he realised Ruald could see clean through him. Was he never jealous of his prize, this Ruald? The world seems to be agreed she was a great beauty. Or is it simply that he was used to having the boy about the place, and knew him harmless?’

  ‘Rather, from all accounts,’ Cadfael suggested seriously, ‘he knew his wife immovably loyal.’

  ‘Yet rumour says she told him she had a lover, at the last, when he was set on leaving her.’

  ‘Not only rumour says so,’ the abbot reminded them firmly. ‘He says so himself. On the last visit he made to her, with Brother Paul to confirm it, she told him she had a lover better worth loving, and all the tenderness she had ever had for him, her husband, he himself had destroyed.’

  ‘She said it,’ agreed Cadfael. ‘But was it true? Yet I recall she also spoke to the jeweller of herself and her man.’

  ‘Who’s to know?’ Hugh threw up his hands. ‘She might well strike out at her husband with whatever came to hand, true or f
alse, but she had no reason to lie to the silversmith. The one thing certain is that our dead woman is not Generys. And I can forget Ruald, and any other who might have had ado with Generys. I am looking for another woman, and another reason for murder.’

  ‘Yet it sticks in my craw,’ said Hugh, as he walked back towards the gatehouse with Cadfael at his side,’that he did not blurt it out the second they met that the woman was alive and well. Who had a better right to know it, even if he had turned monk, than her husband? And what news could be more urgent to tell, the instant the boy clapped eyes on him?’

  ‘He did not then know anything about a dead woman, nor that Ruald was suspected of anything,’ Cadfael suggested helpfully, and was himself surprised at the tentative sound it had, even in his own ears.

  ‘I grant it. But he did know, none better, that Ruald must have her always in his mind, wondering how she does, whether she lives or dies. The natural thing would have been to cry it out on sight: “No need to fret about Generys, she’s well enough.” It was all he needed to know, and his contentment would have been complete.’

  ‘The boy was in love with her himself,’ Cadfael hazarded, no less experimentally. ‘Perhaps when it came to the point he grudged Ruald that satisfaction.’

  ‘Does he seem to you a grudging person?’ demanded Hugh.

  ‘Let’s say, then, his mind was still taken up with the sack of Ramsey and his escape from it. That was enough to put all lesser matters out of his mind.’

  ‘The reminder of the ring came after Ramsey,’ Hugh reminded him, ‘and was weighty enough to fill his mind then.’

  ‘True. And to tell the truth, I wonder about it myself. Who’s to account for any man’s reasoning under stress? What matters is the ring itself. She owned it; Ruald, who gave it to her, knew it instantly for hers. She sold it for her present needs. Whatever irregularities there may be in young Sulien’s nature and actions, he did bring the proof. Generys is alive, and Ruald is free of all possible blame. What more do we need to know?’

  ‘Where to turn next,’ said Hugh ruefully.

  ‘You have nothing more? What of the widow woman set up by Haughmond as tenant after Eudo made his gift to them?’

  ‘I have seen her. She lives with her daughter in the town now, not far from the western bridge. She was there only a short while, for she had a fall, and her daughter’s man fetched her away and left the place empty. But she left all in good order, and never saw nor heard anything amiss while she was there, or any strangers drifting that way. It’s off the highways. But there have been tales of travelling folk bedding there at times, mainly during the fair. Eudo at Longner promised to ask all his people if ever they’d noticed things going on up there without leave, but I’ve heard nothing to the purpose from him yet.’

  ‘Had there been any rumours come to light there,’ said Cadfael reasonably, ‘Sulien would have brought them back with him, along with his own story.’

  ‘Then I must look further afield.’ He had had agents doing precisely that ever since the matter began, even though his own attention had certainly been, to some extent, distracted by the sudden alarming complication in the king’s affairs.

  ‘We can at least set a limit to the time,’ Cadfael said consideringly. ‘While the widow was living there it seems highly unlikely others would be up to mischief about the place. They could not use it as a cheap lodging overnight, it is well off any highway, so a chance passerby is improbable, and a couple looking for a quiet place for a roll in the grass would hardly choose the one inhabited spot in a whole range of fields. Once the tenant was out of the place it was solitary enough for any furtive purpose, and before ever she was installed by the canons

  What was the exact day when Generys walked away and left the cottage door wide and the ashes on the hearth?’

  ‘The exact day, within three,’ said Hugh, halting at the open wicket in the gate, ‘no one knows. A cowman from Longner passed along the river bank on the twenty-seventh day of June, and saw her in the garden. On the last day of June a neighbour from over the north side of the ridge—the nearest neighbours they had, and those best part of a mile away—came round on her way to the ferry. None too direct a way, for that matter, but I fancy she had a nose for gossip, and was after the latest news on a tasty scandal. She found the door open and the place empty and the hearth cold. After that no one saw Ruald’s wife again in these parts.’

  ‘And the charter that gave the field to Haughmond was drawn up and witnessed early in October. Which day? You were a witness.’

  ‘The seventh,’ said Hugh. ‘And the old smith’s widow moved in to take care of the place three days later. There was work to be done before it was fit, there’d been a bit of looting done by then. A cooking pot or so, and a brychan from the bed, and the doorlatch broken to let the thieves in. Oh, yes, there had been visitors in and out of there, but no great damage up to then. It was later they scoured the place clean of everything worth removing.’

  ‘So from the thirtieth of June to the tenth of October,’ Cadfael reckoned, pondering, ‘murder could well have been done up there, and the dead buried, and no one any the wiser. And when was it the old woman went away to her daughter in the town?’

  ‘It was the winter drove her away,’ said Hugh. ‘About Christmas, in the frost, she had a fall. Lucky for her, she has a good fellow married to her girl, and when the hard weather began he kept a close eye on how she did, and when she was laid up helpless he fetched her away to the town to live with them. From that time the croft was left empty.’

  ‘So from the beginning of this year it is also true that things mortal could have been done up there, and no witness. And yet,’ said Cadfael, ‘I think, truly I think, she had been in the ground a year and more, and put there when the soil was workable quickly and easily, not in the frosts. From spring of this year? No, it is too short a time. Look further back, Hugh. Some time between the end of June and the tenth of October of last year, I think, this thing was done. Long enough ago for the soil to have settled, and the root growth to have thickened and matted through the seasons. And if there were vagabonds making use of the cottage in passing, who was to go probing under the headland among the broom bushes? I have been thinking that whoever put her there foresaw that some day that ground might be broken for tillage, and laid her where her sleep should not be disturbed. A pace or two more cautious in the turn, and we should never have found her.’

  ‘I am tempted,’ admitted Hugh wryly,’to wish you never had. But yes, you found her. She lived, and she is dead, and there’s no escaping her, whoever she may be. And why it should be of so great import to restore her her name, and demand an account from whoever put her there in your field, I scarcely know, but there’ll be small rest for you or me until it’s done.’

  It was a well-known fact that all the gossip from the countryside around, in contrast to that which seethed merrily within the town itself, came first into the hospital of Saint Giles, the better half of a mile away along the Foregate, at the eastern rim of the suburb. Those who habitually frequented that benevolent shelter were the rootless population of the roads: beggars, wandering labourers hoping for work, pickpockets and petty thieves and tricksters determined, on the contrary, to avoid work, cripples and sick men dependent on charity, lepers in need of treatment. The single crop they gathered on their travels was news, and they used it as currency to enlist interest. Brother Oswin, in charge of the hospice under the nominal direction of an appointed layman who rarely came to visit from his own house in the Foregate, had grown used to the common traffic in and out, and could distinguish between the genuine poor and unfortunate and the small, pathetic rogues. The occasional able-bodied fake feigning some crippling disability was a rarity, but Oswin was developing an eye even for that source of trouble. He had been Cadfael’s helper in the herbarium for some time before graduating to his present service, and learned from him more skills than the mere mixing of lotions and ointments.

  It was three days after Sulien’s re
velation when Cadfael put together the medicaments Brother Oswin had sent to ask for, and set off with a full scrip along the Foregate to replenish the medicine cupboard at Saint Giles, a regular task which he undertook every second or third week, according to the need. With autumn now well advanced, the people of the roads would be thinking ahead to the winter weather and considering where they could find patronage and shelter through the worst of it. The number of derelicts had not yet risen, but all those on the move would be making their plans to survive. Cadfael went without haste along the highway, exchanging greetings at open house doors, and taking some abstracted pleasure in the contemplation of children playing in the fitful sunshine, accompanied by their constant camp-followers, the dogs of the Foregate. His mood was contemplative, in keeping with the autumnal air and the falling leaves. He had put away from him for the moment all thoughts of Hugh’s problem, and returned with slightly guilty zeal and devotion to the horarium of the monastic day and his own duties therein. Those small, gnawing doubts that inhabited the back of his mind were asleep, even if their sleep might be tenuous.

  He reached the place where the road forked, and the long, low roof of the hospital rose beside the highway, beyond a gentle slope of grass and wattle fence, with the squat tower of its little church peering over all. Brother Oswin came out into the porch to meet him, as large, cheerful and exuberant as ever, the wiry curls of his tonsure bristling from the low branches of the orchard trees, and a basket of the late, hard little pears on his arm, the kind that would keep until Christmas. He had learned to control his own vigorous body and lively mind since he had first come to assist Cadfael in the herb-garden, no longer broke what he handled or fell over his own feet in his haste and ardour to do good. Indeed, since coming here to the hospital he had quite exceeded all Cadfael’s hopes. His big hands and strong arms were better adapted to lifting the sick and infirm and controlling the belligerent than to fashioning little tablets and rolling pills, but he was competent enough in administering the medicines Cadfael brought for him and had proved a sensible and cheerful nurse, never out of temper even with the most difficult and ungrateful of his patients.