The Potter's Field Part 7

"The elder son married in the summer," said Cadfael, "so there is a young woman in the household to give her comfort and care. But yes, certainly she will be glad to have Sulien home again."

"It is not so far," Pernel mused, half to herself. "We are almost neighbours. Do you think the lady Donata is ever well enough to want to receive visitors? If she cannot go out, she must sometimes be lonely."

Cadfael took his leave with that delicate suggestion still in his ears, in the girl's warm, purposeful, buoyant voice, and with her bright and confident face before his eyes, the ant.i.thesis of illness, loneliness and pain. Well, why not? Even if she went rather in search of the young man who had touched her generous fancy than for such benefit as her vigour and charm could confer upon a withered gentlewoman, her presence might still do wonders.

He rode back through the autumnal fields without haste, and instead of turning in at the abbey gatehouse, went on over the bridge and into the town, to look for Hugh at the castle.

It was plain, as soon as he began to climb the ramp to the castle gatehouse, that something had happened to cause a tremendous stir within. Two empty carts were creaking briskly up the slope and in under the deep archway in the tower, and within, there was such bustle between hall, stables, armoury and stores, that Cadfael sat his mule unnoticed for many minutes in the midst of the to-ings and fro-ings, weighing up what he saw, and considering its inevitable meaning. There was nothing confused or distracted about it, everything was purposeful and exact, the ordered climax of calculated and well-planned preparations. He dismounted, and Will Warden, Hugh's oldest and most seasoned sergeant, halted for an instant in directing the carters through to the inner yard, and came to enlighten him.

"We're on the march tomorrow morning. The word came only an hour past. Go in to him, Brother, he's in the gate-tower."

And he was gone, waving the teamster of the second cart through the arch to the inner ward, and vanishing after the cart to see it efficiently loaded. The supply column must be preparing to leave today, the armed company would ride after them at first light.

Cadfael abandoned his mule to a stable boy, and crossed to the deep doorway of the guardroom in the gate-tower. Hugh rose from a littered table at sight of him, shuffled his records together and pushed them aside.

"It's come, as I thought it would. The king had to move against the man, for the saving of his own face he could no longer sit and do nothing. Though he knows as well as I do," admitted Hugh, preoccupied and vehement, "that the chances of bringing Geoffrey de Mandeville to pitched battle are all too thin. What, with his Ess.e.x supply lines secure even if the time comes when he can wring no more corn or cattle out of the Fens? And all those bleak levels laced with water, and as familiar to him as the lines of his own hand? Well, we'll do him what damage we can, perhaps bolt him in if we can't flush him out. Whatever the odds, Stephen has ordered his muster to Cambridge, and demanded a company of me for a limited time, and a company he shall have, as good as any he'll get from his Flemings. And unless he has the lightning fit on him-it takes him and us by surprise sometimes-we'll be in Cambridge before him."

Having thus unburdened himself of his own immediate preoccupations, concerning which there was no particular haste, since everything had been taken care of in advance, Hugh took a more attentive look at his friend's face, and saw that King Stephen's courier had not been the only visitor with news of moment to impart.

"Well, well!" he said mildly. "I see you have things on your mind, no less than his Grace the king. And here am I about to leave you hefting the load alone. Sit down and tell me what's new. There's time, before I need stir."

Chapter Nine.

"CHANCE HAD NO PART in it," said Cadfael, leaning his folded arms upon the table. "You were right. History repeated itself for good reason, because the same hand thrust it where the same mind wanted it. Twice! It was in my mind, so I put it to the test. I took care the boy should know there was another man suspected of this death. It may even be that I painted Britric's danger blacker than it was. And behold, the lad takes to heart that true word I offered him, that the folk of the roads look round for a warm haven through the winter, and off he goes, searching here and there about these parts, to find out if one Gunnild had found a corner by some manor fire. And this time, mark you, he had no possibility of knowing whether the woman was alive or dead, knowing nothing of her beyond what I had told him. He had luck, and he found her. Now, why, never having heard her name before, never seen her face, why should he bestir himself for Britric's sake?"

"Why," agreed Hugh, eye to eye with him across the board, "unless he knew, whatever else he did not know, that our dead woman was not and could not be this Gunnild? And how could he know that, unless he knows all too well who she really is? And what happened to her?"

"Or believes he knows," said Cadfael cautiously.

"Cadfael, I begin to find your failed brother interesting. Let us see just what we have here. Here is this youngster who suddenly, so short a while after Ruald's wife vanished from her home, chooses most unexpectedly to desert his own home and take the cowl, not close here where he's known, with you, or at Haughmond, the house and the order his family has always favoured, but far away at Ramsey. Removing himself from a scene now haunting and painful to him? Perhaps even dangerous? He comes home, perforce, when Ramsey becomes a robber's nest, and it may well be true that he comes now in doubt of his own wisdom in turning to the cloister. And what does he find here? That the body of a woman has been found, buried on lands that once pertained to his family demesne, and that the common and reasonable thought is that this is Ruald's lost wife, and Ruald her murderer. So what does he do? He tells a story to prove that Generys is alive and well. Distant too far to be easily found and answer for herself, seeing the state of that country now, but he has proof. He has a ring which was hers, a ring she sold in Peterborough, long after she was gone from here. Therefore this body cannot be hers."

"The ring," said Cadfael reasonably, "was unquestionably hers, and genuine. Ruald knew it at once, and was glad and grateful beyond measure to be rea.s.sured that she's alive and well, and seemingly faring well enough without him. You saw him, as I did. I am sure there was no guile in him, and no falsity."

"So I believe, too. I do not think we are back to Ruald, though G.o.d knows we may be back with Generys. But see what follows! Next, a search throws up another man who may by all the signs be guilty of killing another vanished woman in that very place. And yet again Sulien Blount, when he hears of it so helpfully from you, continues to interest himself in the matter, voluntarily setting out to trace this woman also, and show that she is alive. And, by G.o.d, is lucky enough to find her! Thus delivering Britric as he delivered Ruald. And now tell me, Cadfael, tell me truly, what does all that say to you?"

"It says," admitted Cadfael honestly, "that whoever the woman may be, Sulien himself is guilty, and means to battle it out for his life, yes, but not at the expense of Ruald or Britric or any innocent man. And that, I think, would be in character for him. He might kill. He would not let another man hang for it."

"That is how you read the omens?" Hugh was studying him closely, black brows obliquely tilted, and a wry smile curling one corner of his expressive mouth.

"That is how I read the omens."

"But you do not believe it!"

It was a statement rather than a question, and voiced without surprise. Hugh was well enough versed in Cadfael by now to discern in him tendencies of which he himself was still unaware. Cadfael considered the implications very seriously for a few moments of silence. Then he said judicially: "On the face of it, it is logical, it is possible, it is even likely. If, after all, this is Generys, as now again seems all too likely, by common consent she was a very beautiful woman. Nearly old enough to be the boy's mother, true, and he had known her from infancy, but he himself as good as said that he fled to Ramsey because he found himself guiltily and painfully in love with her. It happens to many a green boy, to suffer his first disastrous experience of love for a woman long familiarly known, and loved in another fashion, a woman out of his generation and out of his reach. But how if there was more to it than mere flight to escape from insoluble problems and incurable pain? Consider the situation, when a husband she had loved and trusted was wrenching himself away from her as it were in blood, her blood, and yet leaving her bound and lonely! In her rage and bitterness at such a desertion a pa.s.sionate woman might well have set herself to take revenge on all men, even the vulnerable young. Taken him up, comforted herself in his worshipping dog's eyes, and then cast him off. Such affronts the young in their first throes feel mortally. But the death may have been hers. Reason enough to fly from the scene and from the world into a distant cloister, out of sight even of the trees that sheltered her home."

"It is logical," said Hugh, echoing Cadfael's own words, "it is possible, it is credible."

"My only objection," agreed Cadfael, "is that I find I do not credit it. Nor cannot, for good sound reasons-simply do not."

"Your reservations," said Hugh philosophically, "always have me reining in and treading very carefully. Now as ever! But I have another thought: How if Sulien had the ring in his possession all along, ever since he parted with Generys-living or dead? How if she herself had given it to him? Tossed away her husband's love gift in bitterness at his desertion upon the most innocent and piteous lover she could ever have had. And she did say that she had a lover."

"If he had killed her," said Cadfael, "would he have kept her token?"

"He might! Oh, yes, he very well might. Such things have been known, when love at its most devilish raises hate as another devil, to fight it out between them. Yes, I think he would keep her ring, even through a year of concealing it from abbot and confessor and all, in Ramsey."

"As he swore to Radulfus," remarked Cadfael, suddenly reminded, "that he did not. He could lie, I think, but would not lie wantonly, for no good reason."

"Have we not attributed to him good reason enough for lying? Then, if all along he had the ring, the time came when it was urgent, for Ruald's sake, to produce it in evidence, with this false story of how he came by it. If indeed it is false. If I had proof it is not," said Hugh, fretting at the frustration of chance, "I could put Sulien almost-almost-out of my mind."

"There is also," said Cadfael slowly, "the question of why he did not tell Ruald at once, when they met, that he had heard news of Generys in Peterborough, and she was alive and well. Even if, as he says, his intent was to keep the ring for himself, still he could have told the man what he must have known would come as great ease and relief to him. But he did not."

"The boy did not know, then," Hugh objected fairly, "that we had found a dead woman, nor that any shadow lay over Ruald. He knew of no very urgent need to give him news of his wife, not until he heard the whole story at Longner. Indeed, he might well have thought it better to leave well alone, since the man is blessedly happy where he is."

"I am not altogether sure," Cadfael said slowly, peering back into the brief while he had spent with Sulien as helper in the herbarium, "that he did not know of the case until he went home. The same day that he asked leave to visit Longner and see his family again, Jerome had been with him in the garden, for I met him as he left, and he was at once in haste, and a shade more civil and brotherly than usual. And I wonder now if something had not been said of a woman's bones discovered, and a man's reputation under threat. That same evening Sulien went to the lord abbot, and was given leave to ride to Longner. When he came back next day, it was to declare his intent to leave the Order, and to bring forth the ring and the story of how he got it."

Hugh was drumming his fingers softly on the table, his eyes narrowed in thought. "Which first?" he demanded.

"First he asked and obtained his dismissal."

"Would it, you think, be easier, to a man usually truthful, to lie to the abbot after that than before?"

"You have thoughts not unlike mine," said Cadfael glumly.

"Well," said Hugh, shaking off present concerns from his shoulders, "two things are certain. The first, that whatever the truth about Sulien himself, this second deliverance is proven absolutely. We have seen and spoken with Gunnild. She is alive, and thriving, and very sensibly has no intent in the world to go on her travels again. And since we have no cause to connect Britric with any other woman, away he goes in safety, and good luck to them both. And the second certainty, Cadfael, is that the very fact of this second deliverance casts great doubt upon the first. Generys we have not seen. Ring or no ring, I am in two minds now whether we ever shall see her again. And yet, and yet-Cadfael does not credit it! Not as it stands, not as we see it now."

There is one more certainty," Cadfael reminded him seriously, "that you are bound away from here tomorrow morning, and the king's business will not wait, so our business here must. What, if anything, do you want done until you can take the reins again? Which, G.o.d willing, may not be too long."

They had both risen at the sound of the loaded carts moving briskly out under the archway, the hollow sound of the wheels beneath the stone echoing back to them as from a cavern. A detachment of archers on foot went with the supplies on this first stage of their journey, to pick up fresh horses at Coventry, where the lances would overtake them.

"Say no word to Sulien or any," said Hugh, "but watch whatever follows. Let Radulfus know as much as you please, he knows how to keep a close mouth if any man does. Let young Sulien rest, if rest he can. I doubt if he'll sleep too easily, even though he has cleared the field of murderers for me, or hopes, believes, prays he has. Should I want him, when time serves, he'll be here."

They went out together in the outer ward, and there halted to take leave. "If I'm gone long," said Hugh, "you'll visit Aline?" There had been no mention, and would be none, of such small matters as that men get killed even in untidy regional skirmishes, such as the Fens were likely to provide. As Eudo Blount the elder had died in the rearguard after the messy ambush of Wilton, not quite a year ago. No doubt Geoffrey de Mandeville, expert at turning his coat and still making himself valuable and to be courted, would prefer to keep his devious options open by evading battle with the king's forces if he could, and killing none of baronial status, but he might not always be able to dictate the terms of engagement, even on his own watery ground. And Hugh was not a man to lead from behind.

"I will," said Cadfael heartily. "And G.o.d keep the both of you, yes, and the lads who're going with you."

Hugh went with him to the gate, a hand on his friend's shoulder. They were much of a height, and could match paces evenly. Under the shadow of the archway they halted.

"One more thought has entered my mind," said Hugh, "one that has surely been in yours all this while, spoken or not. It's no very great distance from Cambridge to Peterborough."

"So it has come!" said Abbot Radulfus sombrely, when Cadfael gave him the full report of his day's activities, after Vespers. "The first time Hugh has been called on to join the king's muster since Lincoln. I hope it may be to better success. G.o.d grant they need not be absent about this business very long.

Cadfael could not imagine that this confrontation would be over easily or quickly. He had never seen Ramsey, but Sulien's description of it, an island with its own natural and formidable moat, spanned by only one narrow causeway, defensible by a mere handful of men, held out little hope of an easy conquest. And though de Mandeville's marauders must sally forth from their fortress to do their plundering, they had the advantage of being local men, used to all the watery fastnesses in that bleak and open countryside, and able to withdraw into the marshes at any hostile approach.

"With November already here," he said, "and winter on the way, I doubt if more can be done than penning these outlaws into their own Fens, and at least limiting the harm they can do. By all accounts it's already more than enough for the poor souls who live in those parts. But, with the Earl of Chester our neighbour here, and so dubious in his loyalty, I fancy King Stephen will want to send Hugh and his men home again, to secure the shire and the border, as soon as they can be spared. He may well be hoping for a quick stroke and a quick death. I see no other end to de Mandeville now, however nimbly he may have learned to turn his coat. This time he has gone too far for any recovery."

"Bleak necessity," said Radulfus grimly, "to be forced to wish for any man's death, but this one has been the death of so many others, souls humble and defenceless, and by such abominable means, I could find it in me to offer prayers for his ending, as a needful mercy to his neighbours. How else can there ever be peace and good husbandry in those desolated lands? In the meantime, Cadfael, we are left for a while unable to move in the matter of this death nearer home. Hugh has left Alan Herbard as castellan in his absence?"

Hugh's deputy was young and ardent, and promised well. He had little experience as yet in managing a garrison, but he had hardened sergeants of the older generation at his back, to strengthen his hand if their experience should be needed.

"He has. And Will Warden will be keeping an ear open for any word that may furnish a new lead, though his orders, like mine, are to keep a still tongue and a placid face, and let sleeping dogs lie as long as they will. But you see, Father, how the very fact of this woman coming forward at Sulien's prompting, as she has, casts doubts on the story he first told us. Once, we said, yes, that's wholly credible, why question it? But twice, by the same hand, the same deliverance? No, that is not chance at work, nor can it be easily believed. No! Sulien will not suffer either Ruald or Britric to be branded as a murderer, and goes to great pains to prove it impossible. How can he be so certain of their innocence, unless he knows who is really guilty? Or at least, believes he knows?"

Radulfus looked back at him with an impenetrable countenance, and said outright what as yet neither Cadfael nor Hugh had put into words: "Or is himself the man!"

"It is the first and logical thought that came to me," Cadfael owned. "But I found I could not admit it. The farthest I dare go as yet is to acknowledge that his behaviour casts great doubts on his ignorance, if not his innocence, of this death. In the case of Britric there is no question. This time it is not a matter of any man's bare word, the woman came forward in the flesh and spoke for herself. Living she is, fortunate and thankful she is, no one need look for her in the grave. It's at the first deliverance we must turn and look again. That Generys is still in this world alive, for that we have only Sulien's word. She has not come forward. She has not spoken. Thus far, all we have is hearsay. One man's word for the woman, the ring, and all."

"From such small knowledge of him as I have," said Radulfus, "I do not think that Sulien is by nature a liar."

"Neither do I. But all men, even those not by nature liars, may be forced to lie where they see overwhelming need. As I fear he did, to deliver Ruald from the burden of suspicion. Moreover," said Cadfael confidently, harking back to old experience with fallible men outside this enclave, "if they lie only for such desperate cause they will do it well, better than those who do it lightly."

"You argue," said Radulfus drily, but with the flicker of a private smile, "as one who speaks from knowledge. Well, if one man's word is no longer acceptable without proof, I do not see how we can advance our enquiries beyond your "thus far". As well we should let well alone while Hugh is absent. Say nothing to any man from Longner, nothing to Brother Ruald. In stillness and quietness whispers are heard clearly, and the rustle of a leaf has meaning."

"And I have been reminded," said Cadfael, rising with a gusty sigh to make his way to the refectory, "by the last thing Hugh said to me, that it is not too far from Cambridge to Peterborough."

The next day was sacred to Saint Winifred, and therefore an important feast in the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, though the day of her translation and installation on her present altar in the church, the twenty-second of June, was accorded greater ceremonial. A midsummer holiday provides better weather and longer daylight for processions and festivities than the third of November, with the days closing in and winter approaching.

Cadfael rose very early in the morning, long before Prime, took his sandals and scapular; and stole out from the dark dortoir by the night stairs, where the little lamp burned all night long to light stumbling feet uncertain from sleep down into the church for Matins and Lauds. The long room, lined with its low part.i.tions that separated cell from cell, was full of small human sounds, like a vault peopled with gentle ghosts, soft, sighing breath, the involuntary catch in the throat, close to a sob, that saluted a nostalgic dream, the uneasy stirring of someone half awake, the solid, contented snoring of a big body sleeping without dreams, and at the end of the long room the deep, silent sleeping of Prior Robert, worshipfully satisfied with all his deeds and words, untroubled by doubts, unintimidated by dreams. The prior habitually slept so soundly that it was easy to rise and slip away without fear of disturbing him. In his time, Cadfael had done it for less approved reasons than on this particular morning. So, possibly, had several of these innocent sleepers around him.

He went silently down the stairs and into the body of the church, dark, empty and vast, lit only by the glowworm lamps on the altars, minute stars in a vaulted night. His first destination, whenever he rose thus with ample time in hand, was always the altar of Saint Winifred, with its silver reliquary, where he stopped to exchange a little respectful and affectionate conversation with his countrywoman. He always spoke Welsh to her, the accents of his childhood and hers brought them into a welcome intimacy, in which he could ask her anything and never feel rebuffed. Even without his advocacy, he felt, her favour and protection would go with Hugh to Cambridge, but there was no harm in mentioning the need. It did not matter that Winifred's slender Welsh bones were still in the soil of Gwytherin, many miles away in North Wales, where her ministry had been spent. Saints are not corporeal, but presences, they can reach and touch wherever their grace and generosity desire.

It came into Cadfael's mind, on this particular morning, to say a word also for Generys, the stranger, the dark woman who was also Welsh, and whose beautiful, disturbing shadow haunted the imaginations of many others besides the husband who had abandoned her. Whether she lived out the remnant of her life somewhere far distant from her own country, in lands she had never thought to visit, among people she had never desired to know, or was lying now in that quiet corner of the cemetery here, removed from abbey land to lie in abbey land, the thought of her touched him nearly, and must surely stir the warmth and tenderness of the saint who had escaped a like exile. Cadfael put forward her case with confidence, on his knees on the lowest step of Winifred's altar, where Brother Rhun, when she had led him by the hand and healed his lameness, had laid his discarded crutches.

When he rose, the first faint pre-dawn softening of the darkness had grown into a pallid, pearly hint of light, drawing in the tall shapes of the nave windows clearly, and conjuring pillar and vault and altar out of the gloom. Cadfael pa.s.sed down the nave to the west door, which was never fastened but in time of war or danger, and went out to the steps to look along the Foregate towards the bridge and the town.

They were coming. An hour and more yet to Prime, and only the first dim light by which to ride out, but he could already hear the hooves, crisp and rapid and faintly hollow on the bridge. He heard the change in their tread as they emerged upon the solid ground of the Foregate, and saw as it were an agitation of the darkness, movement without form, even before faint glints of lambent light on steel gave shape to their harness and brought them human out of the obscurity. No panoply, only the lance-pennants, two slung trumpets for very practical use, and the workmanlike light arms in which they rode. Thirty lances and five mounted archers. The remainder of the archers had gone ahead with the supplies. Hugh had done well by King Stephen, they made a very presentable company and numbered, probably, more than had been demanded.

Cadfael watched them pa.s.s, Hugh at the head on his favourite raw-boned grey. There were faces he knew among them, seasoned soldiers of the garrison, sons of merchant families from the town, expert archers from practice at the b.u.t.ts under the castle wall, young squires from the manors of the shire. In normal times the common service due from a crown manor would have been perhaps one esquire and his harness, and a barded horse, for forty days' service against the Welsh near Oswestry. Emergencies such as the present anarchy in East Anglia upset all normalities, but some length of service must have been stipulated even now. Cadfael had not asked for how many days these men might be at risk. There went Nigel Apsley among the lances, well-mounted and comely. That lad had made one tentative a.s.say into treason, Cadfael remembered, only three years back, and no doubt was intent upon putting that memory well behind him by diligent service now. Well, if Hugh saw fit to make use of him, he had probably learned his lesson well, and was not likely to stray again. And he was a good man of his hands, athletic and strong, worth his place.

They pa.s.sed, the drumming of their hooves dull on the packed, dry soil of the roadway, and the sound ebbed into distance along the wall of the enclave. Cadfael watched them until they almost faded from sight in the gloom, and then at the turn of the highway vanished altogether round the high precinct wall. The light came grudgingly, for the sky hung low in heavy cloud. This was going to be a dark and overcast day, possibly later a day of rain. Rain was the last thing King Stephen would want in the Fens, to reduce all land approaches and complicate all marshland paths. It costs much money to keep an army in the field, and though the king summoned numbers of men to give duty service this time, he would still be paying a large company of Flemish mercenaries, feared and hated by the civilian population, and disliked even by the English who fought alongside them. Both rivals in the unending dispute for the crown made use of Flemings. To them the right side was the side that paid them, and could as easily change to the opposing party if they offered more; yet Cadfael in his time had known many mercenaries who held fast faithfully to their bargains, once struck, while barons and earls like de Mandeville changed direction as nimbly as weatherc.o.c.ks for their own advantage.

They were gone, Hugh's compact and competent little company, even the last fading quiver and reverberation of earth under them stilled. Cadfael turned and went back through the great west door into the church.

There was another figure moving softly round the parish altar, a silent shadow in the dimness still lit only by the constant lamps. Cadfael followed him into the choir, and watched him light a twisted straw taper at the small red glow, and kindle the altar candles ready for Prime. It was a duty that was undertaken in a rota, and Cadfael had no idea at this moment whose turn this day might be, until he had advanced almost within touch of the man standing quietly, with head raised, gazing at the altar. An erect figure, lean but sinewy and strong, with big, shapely hands folded at his waist, and deepset eyes wide and fixed in a rapt dream. Brother Ruald heard the steady steps drawing near to him, but felt no need to turn his head or in any other way acknowledge a second presence. Sometimes he seemed almost unaware that there were others sharing this chosen life and this place of refuge with him. Only when Cadfael stood close beside him, sleeve to sleeve, and the movement made the candles flicker briefly, did Ruald look round with a sharp sigh, disturbed out of his dream.

"You are early up, Brother," he said mildly. "Could you not sleep?"

"I rose to see the sheriff and his company set out," said Cadfael.

"They are gone already?" Ruald drew breath wonderingly, contemplating a life and a discipline utterly alien to his former or his present commitment. Half the life he could expect had been spent as a humble craftsman, for some obscure reason the least regarded among craftsmen, though why honest potters should be accorded such low status was a mystery to Cadfael. Now all the life yet remaining to him would be spent here in the devoted service of G.o.d. He had never so much as shot at the b.u.t.ts for sport, as the young bloods of Shrewsbury's merchant families regularly did, or done combat with singlesticks or blunt swords at the common exercise-ground. "Father Abbot will have prayers said daily for their safe and early return," he said. "And so will Father Boniface at the parish services." He said it as one offering rea.s.surance and comfort to a soul gravely concerned, but by something which touched him not at all. A narrow life his had been, Cadfael reflected, and looked back with grat.i.tude at the width and depth of his own. And suddenly it began to seem to him as though all the pa.s.sion there had been even in this man's marriage, all the blood that had burned in its veins, must have come from the woman.

"It is to be hoped," he said shortly, "that they come back as many as they have set out today."

"So it is," agreed Ruald meekly, "yet they who take the sword, so it's written, will perish by the sword."

"You will not find a good honest swordsman quarrelling with that," said Cadfael. "There are far worse ways."

"That may well be true," said Ruald very seriously. "I do know that I have things to repent, things for which to do penance, fully as dreadful as the shedding of blood. Even in seeking to do what G.o.d required of me, did not I kill? Even if she is still living, there in the east, I took as it were the breath of life from her. I did not know it then. I could not even see her face clearly, to understand how I tore her. And here am I, unsure now whether I did well at all in following what I thought was a sacred beckoning, or whether I should not have forgone even this, for her sake. It may be G.o.d was putting me to the test. Tell me, Cadfael, you have lived in the world, travelled the world, known the extremes to which men can be driven, for good or ill. Do you think there was ever any man ready to forgo even heaven, to stay with another soul who loved him, in purgatory?"

To Cadfael, standing close beside him, this lean and limited man seemed to have grown taller and more substantial; or it might have been simply the growing strength and clarity of the light now gleaming in at every window, paling the candles on the altar. Certainly the mild and modest voice had never been so eloquent.

"Surely the range is so wide," he said with slow and careful deliberation, "that even that is possible. Yet I doubt if such a marvel was demanded of you."

"In three days more," said Ruald more gently, watching the flames he had lit burn tall and steady and golden, "it will be Saint Illtud's day. You are Welsh, you will know what is told of him. He had a wife, a n.o.ble lady, willing to live simply with him in a reed hut by the River Nadafan. An angel told him to leave his wife, and he rose up early in the morning, and drove her out into the world alone, thrusting her off, so we are told, very roughly, and went to receive the tonsure of a monk from Saint Dyfrig. I was not rough, yet that is my own case, for so I parted from Generys. Cadfael, what I would ask is, was that an angel who commanded it, or a devil?"

"You are posing a question," said Cadfael, "to which only G.o.d can know the answer, and with that we must be content. Certainly others before you have received the same call that came to you, and obeyed it. The great earl who founded this house and sleeps there between the altars, he, too, left his lady and put on the habit before he died." Only three days before he died, actually, and with his wife's consent, but no need at this moment to say any word of that.

Never before had Ruald opened up the sealed places within him where his wife was hidden, even from his own sight, first by the intensity of his desire for holiness, then by the human fallibility of memory and feeling which had made it hard even to recall the lines of her face. Conversion had fallen on him like a stunning blow that had numbed all sensation, and now in due time he was coming back to life, remembrance filling his being with sharp and biting pain. Perhaps he never could have wrenched his heart open and spoken about her, except in this timeless and impersonal solitude, with no witness but one.

For he spoke as if to himself, clearly and simply, rather recalling than recounting. "I had no intent to hurt her-Generys... I could not choose but go, yet there are ways and ways of taking leave. I was not wise. I had no skills, I did not do it well. And I had taken her from her own people, and she content all these years with little reward but the man I am, and wanting nothing more. I can never have given her a tenth part, not a mere t.i.the, of all that she gave me."

Cadfael was motionless, listening, as the quiet voice continued its threnody. "Dark, she was, very dark, very beautiful. Everyone would call her so, but now I see that none ever knew how beautiful, for to the world outside it was as if she went vetted, and only I ever saw her uncover her face. Or perhaps, to children-to them she might show herself unconcealed. We never had children, we were not so blessed. That made her tender and loving to those her neighbours bore. She is not yet past all hope of bearing children of her own. Who knows but with another man, she might yet conceive."

"And you would be glad for her?" said Cadfael, so softly as not to break this thread.

"I would be glad. I would be wholly glad. Why should she continue barren, because I am fulfilled? Or bound, where I am free? I never thought of that when the longing came on me."

"And do you believe she told you truth, the last time, saying that she had a lover?"

"Yes," said Ruald, simply and without hesitation, "I do believe. Not that she might not lie to me then, for I was cra.s.s and did her bitter offence, as now I understand, even by visiting her then I offended. I believe because of the ring. You remember it? The ring that Sulien brought back with him when he came from Ramsey."

"I remember it," said Cadfael.

The dormitory bell was just ringing to rouse the brothers for Prime. In some remote corner of their consciousness it sounded very faintly and distantly, and neither of them heeded it.

"It never left her finger, from the time I put it there. I would not have thought it could be eased over her knuckle, after so long. The first time that I visited her with Brother Paul I know she was wearing it as she always did. But the second time... I had forgotten, but now I understand. It was not on her finger when I saw her the last time. She had stripped her marriage to me from her finger with the ring, and given it to someone else, as she stripped me from her life, and offered it to him. Yes, I believe Generys had a lover. One worth the loving, she said. With all my heart I hope he has proved so to her."

Chapter Ten.

THROUGHOUT THE CEREMONIES and services and readings of Saint Winifred's day a morsel of Cadfael's mind, persistent and unrepentant, occupied itself, much against his will, with matters which had nothing to do with the genuine adoration he had for his own special saint, whom he thought of always as she had been when her first brief life was so brutally ended: a girl of about seventeen, fresh, beautiful and radiant, br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with kindness and sweetness as the waters of her well brimmed always sparkling and pure, defying frost, radiating health of body and soul. He would have liked his mind to be wholly filled with her all this day, but obstinately it turned to Ruald's ring, and the pale circle on the finger from which Generys had ripped it, abandoning him as he had abandoned her.

It became ever more clear that there had indeed been another man. With him she had departed, to settle, it seemed in Peterborough, or somewhere in that region, perhaps a place even more exposed to the atrocities of de Mandeville's barbarians. And when the reign of murder and terror began, she and her man had taken up their new, shallow roots, turned what valuables they had into money, and removed further from the threat, leaving the ring for young Sulien to find, and bring home with him for Ruald's deliverance. That, at least, was surely what Ruald believed. Every word he had spoken before the altar that morning bore the stamp of sincerity. So now much depended on the matter of forty miles or so between Cambridge and Peterborough. Not such a short distance, after all, but if all went well with the king's business, and he thought fit soon to dispense with a force that could be better employed keeping an eye on the Earl of Chester, a pa.s.sage by way of Peterborough would not greatly lengthen the way home.

And if the answer was yes, confirming every word of Sulien's story, then Generys was indeed still living, and not abandoned to loneliness, and the dead woman of the Potter's Field was still left adrift and without a name. But in that case, why should Sulien have stirred himself so resolutely to prove Britric, who was nothing to him, as innocent as Ruald? How could he have known, and why should he even have conceived the possibility, that the pedlar was innocent? Or that the woman Gunnild was alive, or even might be alive?

And if the answer was no, and Sulien had never spent the night with the silversmith in Peterborough, never begged the ring of him, but made up his story in defence of Ruald out of whole cloth, and backed it with a ring he had had in his possession all along, then surely he had been weaving a rope for his own neck while he was so busy unpicking someone else's bonds.

But as yet there was no answer, and no way of hastening it, and Cadfael did his best to pay proper attention to the office, but Saint Winifred's feast pa.s.sed in distracted thought. In the days that followed he went about his work in the herbarium conscientiously but without his usual hearty concentration, and was taciturn and slightly absent-minded with Brother Winfrid, whose placidity of temperament and boyish appet.i.te for work fortunately enabled him to ride serenely through other men's changes of mood without losing his own equilibrium.