Brother Cadfael's Penance bc-19 Read online

  “My lord,” said Hugh, “from all I know of him, he is as poor a hand at deceit or stealth as ever breathed. You saw him yourself on the day we entered here, how he sprang out of the saddle and made straight for his foe, brow to brow. That is more his way of going about it. Nor had he any weapon about him. You cannot know him as we do, but for my part and Brother Cadfael’s, we are sure of him.”

  “In any case,” agreed the bishop heavily, “it can do no harm to see if there is anything, letter or sign of any kind, in the dead man’s baggage that may shed light, on his movements intended on leaving here, or any undertaking he had in hand. Very well! The saddlebags are here in the vestment room.”

  There was a horse in the stables, too, a good horse waiting to be delivered, like all the rest, to the younger de Soulis in Worcester. The bishop unbuckled the straps of the first bag with his own hands, and hoisted it to a bench. “One of the brothers packed them and brought them here from the guesthall where he lodged. You may view them.” He stayed to observe, in duty bound, being now responsible for all that was done with these relics.

  Spread out upon the bench before their eyes, handled scrupulously as another man’s property, Brien de Soulis’s equipment showed Spartan and orderly. Changes of shirt and hose, the compact means of a gentleman’s toilet, a well-furnished purse. Plainly he travelled light, and was a man of neat habit. A leather pouch in the second saddlebag yielded a compartmented box with flint and tinder, wax and a seal. A man of property, travelling far, would certainly not be without his personal seal. Hugh held it on his palm for the bishop’s inspection. The device, sharply cut, was a swan with arched neck, facing left, and framed between two wands of willow.

  “That is his,” Hugh confirmed. “We saw it on the buckle of his sword-belt when we carried in the body. But embossed and facing the other way, of course. And that is all.”

  “No,” said Cadfael, his hand groping along the seams of the empty bag. “Some other small thing is here at the bottom.” He drew it out and held it up to the light. “Also a seal! Now what would a man want with carrying two on a journey?”

  What indeed? For to risk carrying both, if two had actually been made, was to risk theft or loss of one, with all the dire possibilities of having it fall into the hands of an enemy or a sharper, and being misused in many and profitable ways, to its owner’s loss.

  “It is not the same,” said Hugh sharply, and carried it to the window to examine it more carefully. “A lizard like a little dragon, no, a salamander, for he’s in a nest of little pointed flames. No border but a single line at the rim. Engraved deep, little used. I have never seen this. Do you know it, my lord?”

  The bishop studied it, and shook his head. “No, strange to me. For what purpose could one man be carrying another man’s personal seal? Unless it had been confided to him as the owner’s proxy, for attachment to some document in absence?”

  “Certainly not here,” said Hugh wryly, “for here there have been no documents to seal, no agreement on any matter, the worse for us all. Cadfael, do you see any significance in this?”

  “Of all his possessions,” said Cadfael, “a man would be least likely to be parted from his seal. The thing carries his sanction, his honour, his reputation with it. If he did trust it to a known friend, it would be kept very securely, not dropped into the corner of a saddlebag, thus disregarded. Yes, Hugh, I should very much like to know whose device this is, and how it came into de Soulis’s possession. His recent history has not shown him as a man to be greatly trusted by his acquaintances, or lightly made proxy for another man’s honour.”

  He hesitated, turning the small artifact in his fingers. A circlet measuring as far across as the length of his first thumb joint, its handle of a dark wood polished high, fitting smoothly in the palm. The engraving was skilled and precise, the little conventional flames sharply incised. The head with its open mouth and darting tongue faced left. The positive would face right. Mirror images, the secret faces of real beings, hold terrifying significances. It seemed to Cadfael that the sharp ascending flames of the salamander’s cradling fire were searing the fingers that touched them, and crying out for recognition and understanding.

  “My lord bishop,” he said slowly, “may I, on my oath to return it to you unless I find its true owner, borrow this seal? In my deepest conscience I feel the need of it. Or, if that is not permitted, may I make a drawing of it, in every detail, for credentials in its place?”

  The bishop gave him a long, penetrating look, and then said with deliberation: “At least in taking the copy there can be no harm. But you will have small opportunity of enquiring further into either this death, or the whereabouts of the prisoners you are seeking, if, as I suppose, you are going home to Shrewsbury now the conference is over.”

  “I am not sure, my lord,” said Cadfael, “that I shall be going home.”

  Chapter Six.

  YOU KNOW, do you not,” said Hugh very gravely, as they came from one more Compline together in the dusk, “that if you go further, I cannot go with you. I have work of my own to do. If I turn my back upon Madog ap Meredudd many more days he’ll be casting covetous eyes at Oswestry again. He’s never stopped hankering after it. God knows I’d be loth to go back without you. And you know, none better, you’ll be tearing your own life up by the roots if you fail to keep your time.”

  “And if I fail to find my son,” said Cadfael, gently and reasonably, “my life is nothing worth. No, never fret for me, Hugh, one alone on this labour can do as much as a company of armed men, and perhaps more. I have failed already to find any trace here, what remains but to go where he served, where he was betrayed and made prisoner? There someone must know what became of him. In Faringdon there will be echoes, footprints, threads to follow, and I will find them.”

  He made his drawings with care, on a leaf of vellum from the scriptorium, one to size, with careful precision, one enlarged to show every detail of the salamander seal. There was no motto nor legend, only the slender lizard in its fiery nest. Surely that, too, harked back in some way to the surrender of Faringdon, and had somewhat to say concerning the death of Brien de Soulis, if only its language could be interpreted.

  Hugh cast about, without overmuch comfort, for something to contribute to these vexed puzzles that drove his friend into unwilling exile, but there was little of help to be found. He did venture, for want of better: “Have you thought, Cadfael, that of all those who may well have hated de Soulis, there’s none with better reason than the empress? How if she prompted some besotted young man to do away with him? She has a string of raw admirers at her disposal. It could be so.”

  “To the best of my supposing,” said Cadfael soberly, “it was so. Do you remember she sent for Yves that first evening, after she had seen the lad show his paces against de Soulis? I fancy she had accepted the omen, and found him a work he could do for her, a trace more privately, perhaps, than at his first attempt.”

  “No!” gasped Hugh, stricken, and halted in mid-stride. “Are you telling me that Yves …”

  “No, no such matter!” Cadfael assured him chidingly. “Oh, he took her meaning, or I fear he did, though he surely damned himself for ever believing it was meant so. He did not do it, of course not! Even she might have had the wit to refrain, with such an innocent. But stupid he is not! He understood her!”

  “Then may she not have singled out a second choice for the work?” suggested Hugh, brightening.

  “No, you may forget that possibility. For she is convinced that Yves took the nudge, and rid her of her enemy. No, there’s no solution there.”

  “How so?” demanded Hugh, pricked. “How can you know so much?”

  “Because she rewarded him with a gold ring. No great prize, but an acknowledgement. He tried to refuse it, but he was not brave enough, small blame to the poor lad. Oh, nothing was ever openly said, and of course he would deny it, she would avoid even having to make him say as much. The child is out of his depth with such women. He’s bent on ge
tting rid of her gift as soon as he safely may. Her gratitude is short, that he knows. But no, she never hired another murderer, she is certain she needed none.”

  “That can hardly have added to his happiness,” said Hugh with a sour grimace. “And no help to us in lifting the weight from him, either.”

  They had reached the door of their lodging. Overhead the sky was clear and cold, the stars legion but infinitesimal in the early dark. The last night here, for Hugh had duties at home that could not be shelved.

  “Cadfael, think well what you are doing. I know what you stake, as well as you know it. This is not simple going and returning. Where you will be meddling a man can vanish, and no return ever. Come back with me, and I will ask Robert Bossu to follow this quest to its ending.”

  “There’s no time,” said Cadfael. “I have it in my mind, Hugh, that there are more souls than one, and more lives than my son’s, to be salvaged here, and the time is very short, and the danger very close. And if I turn back now there will be no one to be the pivot at the centre, on whom the wheel of all those fortunes turns, the demon or the angel. But yes, I’ll think well before you leave me. We shall see what the morning will bring.”

  What the morning brought, just as the household emerged from Mass, was a dust-stained rider on a lathered horse, cantering wearily in from the street and sliding stiffly and untidily to a clattering stop on the cobbles of the court. The horse stood with drooping head and heaving sides, steaming into the air sharpened with frost, and dripping foam between rolled-back lips into the stones. The rider doubled cramped fists on the pommel, and half clambered, half fell out of the saddle to stiffen collapsing knees and hold himself upright by his mount.

  “My lord bishop, pardon…” He could not release his hold to make due reverence, but clung to his prop, bending his head as deep and respectfully as he might. “My mistress sends me to bring you word, the empress, she is safe in Gloucester with all her company, all but one. My lord, there was foul work along the road…”

  “Take breath, even evil news can wait,” said Roger de Clinton, and waved an order at whoever chose to obey it. “Bring drink, have wine mulled for him, but bring a draught now. And some of you, help him within, and see to his poor beast, before he founders.”

  There was a hand at the dangling bridle in an instant. Someone ran for wine. The bishop himself lent a solid shoulder under the messenger’s right arm, and braced him erect. “Come, let’s have you within, and at rest.”

  In the nearest carrel of the cloister the courier leaned back against the wall and drew in breath long and gratefully. Hugh, lissome and young, and mindful of some long, hard rides of his own after Lincoln, dropped to his knees and braced experienced hands to ease off the heavy riding boots.

  “My lord, we had remounts at Evesham, and made good time until fairly close to Gloucester, riding well into the dusk to be there by nightfall. Near Deerhurst, in woodland, with the length of our company past, for I was with the rearguard, an armed band rode out at our tail, and cut out one man from among us before ever we were aware, and off with him at speed into the dark.”

  “What man was that?” demanded Cadfael, stiffening. “Name him!”

  “One of her squires, Yves Hugonin. He that had hard words with de Soulis, who is dead. My lord, there’s nothing surer than some of FitzRobert’s men have seized him, for suspicion of killing de Soulis. They hold him guilty, for all the empress would have him away untouched.”

  “And you did not pursue?” asked the bishop, frowning.

  “Some little way we did, but they were fresh, and in forest they knew well. We saw no more of them. And when we sent ahead to let our lady know, she would have one of us ride back to bring you word. We were under safe conduct, this was foul work, after such a meeting.”

  “We’ll send to the king,” said the bishop firmly. “He will order this man’s release as he did before when FitzRobert seized the Earl of Cornwall. He obeyed then, he will obey again, whatever his own grudge.”

  But would he, Cadfael wondered? Would Stephen lift a finger in this case, for a man as to whose guilt he had said neither yea nor nay, but only allowed him to leave under safe conduct at the empress’s insistence. No valuable ally, but an untried boy of the opposing side. No, Yves would be left for the empress to retrieve. He had left here under her wing, it was for her to protect him. And how far would she go on Yves’ behalf? Not so far as to inconvenience herself by the loss of time or advantage. His supposed infamous service to her had been acknowledged and rewarded, she owed him nothing. And he had withdrawn deliberately to the tail end of her cortege, to be out of sight and out of mind.

  “I think they had a rider alongside us for some way, in cover,” said the courier, “making sure of their man, before they struck. It was all over in a moment, at a bend in the path where the trees grow close.”

  “And close to Deerhurst?” said Cadfael. “Is that already in FitzRobert’s own country? How close are his castles? He left here early, in time to have his ambush ready. He had this in mind from the first, if he was thwarted here.”

  “It might be twenty miles or so to Cricklade, more to Faringdon. But closer still there’s his new castle at Greenhamsted, the one he took from Robert Musard a few weeks back. Not ten miles from Gloucester.”

  “You are sure,” said Hugh, a little hesitantly and with an anxious eye on Cadfael, “that they did carry him off prisoner?”

  “No question,” said the messenger with weary bluntness, “they wanted him whole, it was done very briskly. No, they’re more wary what blood they spill, these days. Men on one side have kin on the other who could still take offence and make trouble. No, be easy for that, there was no killing.”

  The courier was gone into the prior’s lodging to eat and rest, the bishop to his own palace to prepare letters to carry the news, notably to Oxford and Malmesbury, in the region where this raid had taken place. Whether Stephen would bestir himself to intervene in this case was doubtful, but someone would surely pass the news on to the boy’s uncle in Devizes, who carried some weight with the empress. At least everything must be tried.

  “Now,” said Cadfael, left contemplating Hugh’s bleak and frustrated face through a long silence, “I have two hostages to buy back. If I asked for a sign, I have it. And now there is no doubt in my mind what I must do.”

  “And I cannot come with you,” said Hugh.

  “You have a shire to keep. Enough for one of us to break faith. But may I keep your good horse, Hugh?”

  “If you’ll pledge me to bring him safely back, and yourself in the saddle,” said Hugh.

  They said their farewells just within the priory gate, Hugh to return northwest along the same roads by which they had come, with his three men-at-arms at his back, Cadfael bearing south. They embraced briefly before mounting, but when they issued from the gate into the street, and separated, they went briskly, and did not look back. With every yard the fine thread that held them together stretched and thinned, attenuated to breaking point, became a fibre, a hair, a cobweb filament, but did not break.

  For the first stages of that journey Cadfael rode steadily, hardly aware of his surroundings, fully absorbed in the effort to come to terms with the breaking of another cord, which had parted as soon as he turned south instead of towards home. It was like the breaking of a tight constriction which had bound his life safely within him, though at the cost of pain; and the abrupt removal of the restriction was mingled relief and terror, both intense. The ease of being loose in the world came first, and only gradually did the horror of the release enter and overwhelm him. For he was recreant, he had exiled himself, knowing well what he was doing. And now his only justification must be the redemption of both Yves and Olivier. If he failed in that he had squandered even his apostasy. Your own man, Radulfus had said, no longer any man of mine. Vows abandoned, brothers forsaken, heaven discarded.

  The first need was to recognize that it had happened, the second to accept it. After that he could ride on
composedly, and be his own man, as for the former half of his life he had been, and only rarely felt a need beyond, until he found community and completion in surrendering himself. Life could and must be lived on those same terms for this while, perhaps for all the while remaining.

  So by that time he could look about him again, pay attention to the way, and turn his mind to the task that lay before him.

  Close to Deerhurst they had closed in and cut out Yves from his fellows. And strictly speaking, there was no proof as to who had so abducted him; but Philip FitzRobert, who alone was known to bear a great grudge against the boy, and who was patently a man bent on revenge, had three castles and a strong following in those parts, and could venture such a raid with impunity, secure of his power. Then they would not risk being abroad with their captive, even by night, longer than they must, but have him away into hold in one of the castles, out of sight and out of mind, as quickly and privately as possible. Greenhamsted, said the empress’s courier, was the nearest. Cadfael did not know the region well, but he had questioned the messenger concerning the lie of the land. Deerhurst, a few miles north of Gloucester, Greenhamsted about as far to the southeast. La Musarderie, the courier had called the castle, after the family that had held it since Domesday. At Deerhurst there was an alien priory belonging to St Denis in Paris, and if he lodged there overnight he might be able to elicit some local information. Country people keep a sharp eye on the devious doings of their local lords, especially in time of civil war. For their own preservation they must.

  By all accounts there had been a castle there at La Musarderie ever since King William gave the village to Hascoit Musard some time before the Domesday survey was taken. That argued enough time to have built in stone, after the first hurried timber erection to secure a foothold. Faringdon had been thrown up in a few weeks of the summer, and laid under siege almost before it was finished. Earthwork and wood, no other possibility in the time, though evidently care had been taken to make it as strong as possible. And Cricklade, whatever its defensive state might be, was not as close as Greenhamsted to the spot where Yves had been abducted. Well, he could see if anyone at Deerhurst could enlighten him on any of these matters.