Hugh was at the parlour door again. The two archers of the garrison came in on his heels, and Sulien, unbidden, rose with the alacrity of relief from the bench, and went out between them without a word or a glance behind. And Hugh closed the door.

"You heard him," said Hugh. "What he knew he answered readily. When I took him astray he knew he could not sustain it, and would not answer at all. He was there, yes, he saw her buried. But he neither killed nor buried her."

"I understood," said the abbot, "that you put to him points that would have betrayed him..."

"That did betray him," said Hugh.

"But since I do not know all the details, I cannot follow precisely what you got out of him. Certainly there is the matter of exactly where she was found. That I grasped. He set you right. That was something he knew, and it bore out his story. Yes, he was a witness."

"But not a sharer, nor even a close witness," said Cadfael. "Not close enough to see the cross that was laid on her breast, for it was not silver, but made hastily out of two sticks from the bushes. No, he did not bury her, and he did not kill her, because if he had done so, with his bent for bearing the guilt, he would have set us right about her injuries-or want of them. You know, as I know, that her skull was not broken. She had no detectable injuries. If he had known how she died, he would have told us. But he did not know, and he was too shrewd to risk guessing. He may even have realised that Hugh was setting traps for him. He chose silence. What you do not say cannot betray you. But with eyes like those in his head, even silence cannot shield him. The lad is crystal."

"I am sure it was truth," said Hugh, "that he was sick with love for the woman. He had loved her unquestioning, unthinking, like a sister or a nurse, from childhood. The very pity and anger he felt on her account when she was abandoned must have loosed all the strings of a man's pa.s.sion in him. It must be true, I think, that she did lean on him then, and gave him cause to believe himself elect, while she still thought of him as a mere boy, a child of whom she was fond, offering her a child's comfort."

"True, also," the abbot wondered, "that she gave him the ring?"

It was Cadfael who said at once: "No."

"I was still in some doubt," said Radulfus mildly, "but you say no?"

"One thing has always troubled me," said Cadfael, "and that is the manner in which he produced the ring. You'll recall, he came to ask you, Father, for leave to visit his home. He stayed there overnight, as you permitted, and on his return he gave us to understand that only from his brother, during that visit, had he learned of the finding of the woman's body, and the understandable suspicion it cast upon Ruald. And then he brought forth the ring, and told his story, which we had then no cause to doubt. But I believe that already, before he came to you to ask leave of absence, he had been told of the case. That was the very reason his visit to Longner became necessary. He had to go home because the ring was there, and he must get it before he could speak out in defence of Ruald. With lies, yes, because truth was impossible. We can be sure, now, that he knew, poor lad, who had buried Generys, and where she was laid. Why else should he take flight into the cloister, and so far distant, from a place where he could no longer endure to be?"

"There is no help for it," said Radulfus reflectively, "he is protecting someone else. Someone close and dear to him. His whole concern is for his kin and the honour of his house. Can it be his brother?"

Hugh said: "No. Eudo seems to be the one person who has escaped. Whatever happened in the Potter's Field, not a shadow of it has ever fallen upon Eudo. He is happy, apart from his mother's sickness he has no cares, he is married to a pleasant wife, and looking forward hopefully to having a son. Better still, he is wholly occupied with his manor, with the work of his hands and the fruits of his soil, and seldom looks below, for the dark things that gnaw on less simple men. No, we can forget Eudo."

"There were two," said Cadfael slowly, "who fled from Longner after Generys vanished. One into the cloister, one into the battlefield."

"His father!" said Radulfus, and pondered in silence for a moment. "A man of excellent repute, a hero who fought in the king's rearguard at Wilton, and died there. Yes, I can believe that Sulien would sacrifice his own life rather than see that record soiled and blemished. For his mother's sake, and his brother's, and the future of his brother's sons, no less than for his father's memory. But of course," he said simply, "we cannot let it lie. And now what are we to do?"

Cadfael had been wondering the same thing, ever since Hugh's springes had caused even obstinate silences to speak with such eloquence, and confirmed with certainty what had always been persistent in a corner of Cadfael's mind. Sulien had knowledge that oppressed him like guilt, but he carried no guilt of his own. He knew only what he had seen. But how much had he seen? Not the death, or he would have seized on every confirming detail, and offered it as evidence against himself. Only the burial. A boy in the throes of his first impossible love, embraced and welcomed into an all-consuming grief and rage, then put aside, perhaps for no worse reason than that Generys had cared for him deeply, and willed him not to be scorched and maimed by her fire more incurably than he already was, or else because another had taken his place, drawn irresistibly into the same furnace, one deprivation fused inextricably with another. For Donata was already, for several years, all too well acquainted with her interminable death, and Eudo Blount in his pa.s.sionate and spirited prime as many years forced to be celibate as ever was priest or monk. Two starving creatures were fed. And one tormented boy spied upon them, perhaps only once, perhaps several times, but in any event once too often, feeding his own anguish with his jealousy of a rival he could not even hate, because he worshipped him.

It was conceivable. It was probable. Then how successful had father and son been in dissembling their mutual and mutually destructive obsession? And how much had any other in that house divined of the danger?

Yes, it could be so. For she had been, as everyone said, a very beautiful woman.

"I think," Cadfael, "that with your leave, Father, I must go back to Longner."

"No need," said Hugh abstractedly. "We could not leave the lady waiting all night without word, certainly, but I have sent a man from the garrison."

"To tell her no more than that he stays here overnight? Hugh, the great error has been, throughout, telling her no more than some innocuous half-truth to keep her content and incurious. Or, worse, telling her nothing at all. Such follies are committed in the name of compa.s.sion! We must not let her get word of this! We must keep this trouble from her! Starving her courage and strength and will into a feeble shadow, as disease has eaten away her body. When if they had known and respected her as they should she could have lifted half the load from them. If she is not afraid of the monster thing with which she shares her life, there is nothing of which she can be afraid. It is natural enough," he said ruefully, "for the manchild to feel he must be his mother's shield and defence, but he does her no service. I said so to him as we came. She would far rather have scope to fulfil her own will and purpose and be shield and defence to him, whether he understand it or not. Better, indeed, if he never understands it."

"You think," said Radulfus, eyeing him sombrely, "that she should be told?"

"I think she should have been told long ago everything there was to tell about this matter. I think she should be told, even now. But I cannot do it, or let it be done if I can prevent. Too easily, as we came, I promised him that if the truth could still be kept from her, I would see it done. Well, if you have put off the hour for tonight, so be it. True, it is too late now to trouble them. But, Father, if you permit, I will ride back there early in the morning."

"If you think it necessary," said the abbot, "by all means go. If it is possible now to restore her her son with the least damage, and salve her husband's memory for her without publishing any dishonour, so much the better."

"One night," said Hugh mildly, rising as Cadfael rose, "cannot alter things, surely. If she has been left in happy ignorance all this time, and goes to bed this night supposing Sulien to have been detained here by the lord abbot without a shade of ill, you may leave her to her rest. There will be time to consider how much she must know when we have reasoned the truth out of Sulien. It need not be mortal. What sense would it make now to darken a dead man's name?"

Which was good sense enough, yet Cadfael shook his head doubtfully even over these few hours of delay. "Still, go I must. I have a promise to keep. And I have realised, somewhat late, that I have left someone there who has made no promises."

Chapter Thirteen.

CADFAEL SET OUT WITH THE DAWN, and took his time over the ride, since there was no point in arriving at Longner before the household was up and about. Moreover, he was glad to go slowly, and find time for thought, even if thought did not get him very far. He hardly knew whether to hope to find all as he had left it when he rode away with Sulien, or to discover this morning that he was already forsworn, and all secrecy had been blown away overnight. At the worst, Sulien was in no danger. They were agreed that he was guilty of nothing but suppressing the truth, and if the guilt in fact belonged to a man already dead, what need could there be to publish his blemish to the world? It was out of Hugh's writ or King Stephen's now, and no advocates were needed where next his case must be brought to the bar. All that could be said in accusation or extenuation was known to the judge already.

So all we need, Cadfael thought, is a little ingenuity in dealing with Sulien's conscience, and a little manipulating of truth in gradually laying the case to rest, and the lady need never know more or worse than she knew yesterday. Given time, gossip will tire of the affair, and turn to the next small crisis or scandal around the town, and they will forget at last that their curiosity was never satisfied, and no murderer ever brought to book.

And there, he realised, was where he came into headlong collision with his own unsatisfied desire to have truth, if not set out before the public eye, at least unearthed, recognised and acknowledged. How, otherwise, could there be real reconciliation with life and death and the ordinances of G.o.d?

Meantime, Cadfael rode through an early morning like any other November morning, dull, windless and still, all the greens of the fields grown somewhat blanched and dried, the filigree of the trees stripped of half their leaves, the surface of the river leaden rather than silver, and stirred by only rare quivers where the currents ran faster. But the birds were up and singing, busy and loud, lords of their own tiny manors, crying their rights and privileges in defiance of intruders.

He left the highroad at Saint Giles, and rode by the gentle, upland track, part meadow, part heath and scattered trees, that crossed the rising ground towards the ferry. All the bustle of the awaking Foregate, the creaking of carts, the barking of dogs and interlacing of many voices fell away behind him, and the breeze which had been imperceptible among the houses here freshened into a brisk little wind. He crested the ridge, between the fringing trees, and looked down towards the sinuous curve of the river and the sharp rise of the sh.o.r.e and the meadows beyond. And there he halted sharply and sat gazing down in astonishment and some consternation at the ferryman's raft in mid-pa.s.sage below him. The distance was not so great that he could not distinguish clearly the freight it was carrying towards the near sh.o.r.e.

A narrow litter, made to stand on four short, solid legs, stood squarely placed in the middle of the raft to ride as steadily as possible. A linen awning sheltered the head of it from wind and weather, and it was attended on one side by a stockily built groom, and on the other by a young woman in a brown cloak, her head uncovered, her russet hair ruffled by the breeze. At the rear of the raft, where the ferryman poled his load through placid waters, the second porter held by a bridle a dappled cob that swam imperturbably behind. Indeed, he had to swim only in mid-stream, for the water here was still fairly low. The porters might have been servants from any local household, but the girl there was no mistaking. And who would be carried in litters over a mere few miles and in decent weather but the sick, the old, the disabled or the dead?

Early as it was, he had set out on this journey too late. The Lady Donata had left her solar, left her hall, left, G.o.d alone knew on what terms, her careful and solicitous son, and come forth to discover for herself what business abbot and sheriff in Shrewsbury had with her second son, Sulien.

Cadfael nudged his mule out through the crest of trees, and started down the long slope of the track to meet them, as the ferryman brought his raft sliding smoothly in to the sandy level below.

Pernel left the porters leading the horse ash.o.r.e and lifting the litter safely to land, and came flying to meet Cadfael as he dismounted. She was flushed with the air and her own haste and the improbable excitement of this most improbable expedition. She caught him anxiously but resolutely by the sleeve, looking up earnestly into his face.

"She wills it! She knows what she is doing! Why could they never understand? Did you know she has never been told anything of all this business? The whole household... Eudo would have her kept in the dark, sheltered and wrapped in down. All of them, they did what he wanted. All out of tenderness, but what does she want with tenderness? Cadfael, there has been no one free to tell her the truth, except for you and me."

"I was not free," said Cadfael shortly. "I promised the boy to respect his silence, as they have all done."

"Respect!" breathed Pernel, marvelling. "Where has been the respect for her? I met her only yesterday, and it seems to me I know her better than all these who move all day and every day under the same roof. You have seen her! Nothing but a handful of slender bones covered with pain for flesh and courage for skin. How dare any man look at her, and say of any matter, however daunting: We mustn't let this come to her ears, she could not bear it!"

"I have understood you," said Cadfael, making for the strip of sand where the porters had lifted the litter ash.o.r.e. "You were still free, the only one."

"One is enough! Yes, I have told her, everything I know, but there's more that I don't know, and she will have all. She has a purpose now, a reason for living, a reason for venturing out like this, mad as you may think it-better than sitting waiting for her death."

A thin hand drew back the linen curtain as Cadfael stooped to the head of the litter. The sh.e.l.l was plaited from hemp, to be light of weight and give with the movement, and within it Donata reclined in folded rugs and pillows. Thus she must have travelled a year and more ago, when she had made her last excursions into the world outside Longner. What prodigies of endurance it cost her now could hardly be guessed. Under the linen awning her wasted face showed livid and drawn, her lips blue-grey and set hard, so that she had to unlock them with an effort to speak. But her voice was still clear, and still possessed its courteous but steely authority.

"Were you coming to me, Brother Cadfael? Pernel supposed your errand might be to Longner. Be content, I am bound for the abbey. I understand that my son has involved himself in matters of moment both to the lord abbot and the sheriff. I believe I may be able to set the record straight, and see an account settled."

"I will gladly ride back with you," said Cadfael, "and serve you in whatever way I can."

No point now in urging caution and good sense upon her, none in trying to turn her back, none in questioning how she had eluded the anxious care of Eudo and his wife to undertake this journey. The fierce control of her face spoke for her. She knew what she was doing, no pain, no risk could have daunted her. Brittle energy had burned up in her as in a stirred fire. And a stirred fire was what she was, too long damped down into resignation.

"Then ride before, Brother," she said, "if you will be so good, and ask Hugh Beringar if he will come and join us at the abbot's lodging. We shall be slower on the road, you and he may be there before us. But not my son!" she added, with a lift of her head and a brief, deep spark in her eyes. "Let him be! It is better, is it not, that the dead should carry their own sins, and not leave them for the living to bear?"

"It is better," said Cadfael. "An inheritance comes more kindly clear of debts."

"Good!" she said. "What is between my son and me may remain as it is until the right time comes. I will deal. No one else need trouble."

One of her porters was busy rubbing down the cob's saddle and streaming hide for Pernel to remount. At foot pace they would be an hour yet on the way. Donata had sunk back in her pillows braced and still, all the fleshless lines of her face composed into stoic endurance. On her deathbed she might look so, and still never let one groan escape her. Dead, all the tension would have been wiped away, as surely as the pa.s.sage of a hand closes the eyes for the last time.

Cadfael mounted his mule, and set off back up the slope, heading for the Foregate and the town.

"She knows?" said Hugh in blank astonishment. "The one thing Eudo insisted on, from the very day I went to him first, the one person he would not have drawn into so grim a business! The last thing you said yourself, when we parted last night, was that you were sworn to keep the whole tangle from her. And now you have told her?"

"Not I," said Cadfael. "But yes, she knows. Woman to woman she heard it. And she is making her way now to the abbot's lodging, to say what she has to say to authority both sacred and secular, and have to say it but once."

"In G.o.d's name," demanded Hugh, gaping, "how did she contrive the journey? I saw her, not so long since, every movement of a hand tired her. She had not been out of the house for months."

"She had not compelling reason," said Cadfael. "Now she has. She had no cause to fight against the care and anxiety they pressed upon her. Now she has. There is no weakness in her will. They have brought her these few miles in a litter, at cost to her, I know it, but it is what she would have, and I, for one, would not care to deny her."

"And she may well have brought on her death," Hugh said, "in such an effort."

"And if that proved so, would it be so ill an ending?"

Hugh gave him a long, thoughtful look, and did not deny it.

"What has she said, then, to you, to justify such a wager?"

"Nothing, as yet, except that the dead should carry their own sins, and not leave them a legacy to the living."

"It is more than we have got out of the boy," said Hugh. "Well, let him sit and think a while longer. He had his father to deliver, she has her son. And all of this while sons and household and all have been so busy and benevolent delivering her. If she's calling the tune now, we may hear a different song. Wait, Cadfael, and make my excuses to Aline, while I go and saddle up."

They had reached the bridge, and were riding so slowly that they seemed to be eking out time for some urgent thinking before coming to this conference, when Hugh said: "And she would not have Sulien brought in to hear?"

"No. Very firmly she said: Not my son! What is between them, she said, let it rest until the right time. Eudo she knows she can manipulate, lifelong, if you say no word. And what point is there in publishing the offences of a dead man? He cannot be made to pay, and the living should not."

"But Sulien she cannot deceive. He witnessed the burial. He knows. What can she do but tell him the truth? The whole of it, to add to the half he knows already."

Not until then had it entered Cadfael's mind to wonder if indeed they knew, or Sulien knew, even the half of it. They were being very sure, because they thought they had discounted every other possibility, that what they had left was truth. Now the doubt that had waited aside presented itself suddenly as a world of unconsidered possibilities, and no amount of thought could rule out all. How much even of what Sulien knew was not knowledge at all, but a.s.sumption? How much of what he believed he had seen was not vision, but illusion?

They dismounted in the stable yard at the abbey, and presented themselves at the abbot's door.

It was the middle of the morning when they a.s.sembled at last in the abbot's parlour. Hugh had waited for her at the gatehouse, to ensure that she should be carried at once the length of the great court to the very door of Radulfus's lodging. His solicitude, perhaps, reminded her of Eudo, for when he handed her out among the tattered autumnal beds of the abbot's garden she permitted all with a small, tight but tolerant smile, bearing the too-anxious a.s.siduities of youth and health with the hard-learned patience of age and sickness. She accepted the support of his arm through the ante-room where normally Brother Vitalis, chaplain and secretary, might have been working at this hour, and Abbot Radulfus took her hand upon the other side, and led her within, to a cushioned place prepared for her, with the support of the panelled wall at her back.

Cadfael, watching this ceremonious installation without attempting to take any part in it, thought that it had something of the enthronement of a sovereign lady about it. That might even amuse her, privately. The privileges of mortal sickness had almost been forced upon her, what she thought of them might never be told. Certainly she had an imperishable dignity, and a large and tolerant understanding of the concern and even unease she caused in others and must endure graciously. She had also, thus carefully dressed for an ordeal and a social visit, a fragile and admirable elegance. Her gown was deep blue like her eyes, and like her eyes a little faded, and the bliaut she wore over it, sleeveless and cut down to either hip, was the same blue, embroidered in rose and silver at the hems. "The whiteness of her linen wimple turned her drawn cheeks to a translucent grey in the light almost of noon.

Pernel had followed silently into the ante-room, but did not enter the parlour. She stood waiting in the doorway, her golden-russet eyes round and grave.

Pernel Otmere has been kind enough to bear me company all this way," said Donata, "and I am grateful to her for more than that, but she need not be put to the weariness of listening to the long conference I fear I may be forcing upon you, my lords. If I may ask, first... where is my son now?"

"He is in the castle," said Hugh simply.

"Locked up?" she asked pointblank, but without reproach or excitement. "Or on his parole?"

"He has the freedom of the wards," said Hugh, and added no further enlightenment.

"Then, Hugh, if you would be kind enough to provide Pernel with some token that would let her in to him, I think they might spend the time more pleasantly together than apart, while we confer? Without prejudice," she said gently, "to any proceedings you may have in mind later."

Cadfael saw Hugh's black, betraying brows twitch, and lift into oblique appreciation, and thanked G.o.d devoutly for an understanding rare between two so different.

"I will give her my glove," said Hugh, and cast one sharp, enjoying glance aside at the mute girl in the doorway. "No one will question it, no need for more." And he turned and took Pernel by the hand, and went out with her.

Their plans had been made, of course, last night or this morning, in the solar at Longner where the truth came forth so far as truth was known, or on the journey at dawn, before they ever reached the ferry over Severn, where Cadfael had met them. A conspiracy of women had been hatched in Eudo's hall, that kept due consideration of Eudo's rights and needs, of his wife's contented pregnancy, even as it nurtured and advanced Pernel Otmere's determined pursuit of a truth that would set Sulien Blount free from every haunted and chivalrous burden that weighed him down. The young one and the old one-old not in years, only in the rapidity of her advance upon death-they had come together like lodestone and metal, to compound their own justice.

Hugh came back into the room smiling, though the smile was invisible to all but Cadfael. A burdened smile, none the less, for he, too, was in pursuit of a truth which might not be Pernel's truth. He closed the door firmly on the world without.

"Now, madam, in what particular can we be of service to you?"

She had composed herself into a settled stillness which could be sustained through a long conference. Without her cloak she made so slight a figure, it seemed a man could have spanned her body with his hands.

"I must thank you, my lords," she said, "for granting me this audience. I should have asked for it earlier, but only yesterday did I hear of this matter which has been troubling you both. My family are too careful of me, and their intent was to spare me any knowledge that might be distressing. A mistake! There is nothing more distressing than to find out, very late, that those who rearrange circ.u.mstances around you to spare you pain have themselves been agonising day and night. And needlessly, to no purpose. It is an indignity, would not you think, to be protected by people you know, in your own mind, to be more in need of protection than you have ever been, or ever will be? Still, it is an error of affection. I cannot complain of it. But I need no longer suffer it. Pernel has had the good sense to tell me what no one else would. But there are still things I do not know, since she did not yet know them herself. May I ask?"

"Ask whatever you wish," said the abbot. "In your own time, and tell us if you need to rest."

"True," said Donata, "there is no haste now. Those who are dead are safe enough, and those still living and wound into this coil, I trust, are also safe. I have learned that my son Sulien has given you some cause to believe him guilty of this death which is come to judgement here. Is he still suspect?"

"No," said Hugh without hesitation. "Certainly not of murder. Though he has said, and maintains, and will not be persuaded to depart from it, that he is willing to confess to murder. And if need be, to die for it."

She nodded her head slowly, unsurprised. The stiff folds of linen rustled softly against her cheeks. "I thought it might be so. When Brother Cadfael here came for him yesterday, I knew nothing to make me wonder or question. I thought all was as it seemed, and that you, Father, had still some doubts whether he had not made a wrong decision, and should not be advised to think more deeply about abandoning his vocation. But when Pernel told me how Generys had been found, and how my son had set himself to prove Ruald blameless, by proving this could not in fact be Generys... And then how he exerted himself, once again, to find the woman Gunnild alive... Then I understood that he had brought in evitable suspicion upon himself, as one knowing far too much. So much wasted exertion, if only I had known! And he was willing to take that load upon him? Well, but it seems you have already seen through that pretence, with no aid from me. May I take it, Hugh, that you have been in Peterborough? We heard that you were newly back from the Fen country, and since Sulien was sent for so promptly after your return, I could not fail to conclude the two were connected."

"Yes," said Hugh, "I went to Peterborough."

"And you found that he had lied?"

"Yes, he had lied. The silversmith lodged him overnight, true. But he never gave him the ring, never saw the ring, never bought anything from Generys. Yes, Sulien lied."

"And yesterday? Being found out in his lies, what did he tell you yesterday?"

"He said that he had the ring all along, that Generys had given it to him."

"One lie leads to another," she said with a deep sigh. "He felt he had good cause, but there is never cause good enough. Always lies come to grief. I can tell you where he got the ring. He took it from a small box I keep in my press. There are a few other things in it, a pin for fastening a cloak, a plain silver torque, a ribbon... All trifles, but they could have been recognised, and given her a name, even after years."

"Are you saying," asked Radulfus, listening incredulously to the quiet, detached tone of the voice that uttered such things, "that these things were taken from the dead woman? That she is indeed Generys, Ruald's wife?"

"Yes, she is indeed Generys. I could have named her at once, if anyone had asked me. I would have named her. I do not deal in lies. And yes, the trinkets were all hers."

"It is a terrible sin," said the abbot heavily, "to steal from the dead."

"There was no such intent," she said with unshakable calm. "But without them, after no very long time, no one would be able to name her. As you found, no one was. But it was not my choice, I would not have gone to such lengths. I think it must have been when Sulien brought my lord's body back from Salisbury, after Wilton, and we buried him and set all his affairs and debts in order, that Sulien found the box. He would know the ring. When he needed his proof, to show that she still lived, then he came home and took it. Her possessions no one has ever worn or touched, otherwise. Simply, they are in safe keeping. I will readily deliver them up to you, or to anyone who has a claim. Until last night I had not opened the box since first it was laid there. I did not know what he had done. Neither did Eudo. He knows nothing about this. Nor never shall."

From his preferred corner, where he could observe without involvement, Cadfael spoke for the first time. "I think, also, you may not yet know all you would wish to know about your son Sulien. Look back to the time when Ruald entered this house, abandoning his wife. How much did you know of what went on in Sulien's mind then? Did you know how deeply he was affected to Generys? A first love, the most desperate always. Did you know that in her desolation she gave him cause for a time to think there might be a cure for his? When in truth there was none?"

She had turned her head and fixed her gaunt dark eyes earnestly on Cadfael's face. And steadily she said: "No, I did not know it. I knew he frequented their croft. So he had from a small child, they were fond of him. But if there was so extreme a change, no, he never said word or gave sign. He was a secret child, Sulien. Whatever ailed Eudo I always knew, he is open as the day. Not Sulien!"

"He has told us that it was so. And did you know that because of this attachment he still went there, even when she had thought fit to put an end to his illusion? And that he was there in the dark," said Cadfael with rueful gentleness, "when Generys was buried?"