It was on the morning of the second day after his arrival that Sulien encountered Brother Ruald face to face at close quarters and with no one else by except Cadfael. At every service in church he had seen him among all the other brothers, once or twice had caught his eye, and smiled across the dim s.p.a.ce of the choir, but received no more acknowledgement than a brief, lingering glance of abstracted sweetness, as if the older man saw him through a veil of wonder and rapture in which old a.s.sociations had no place. Now they emerged at the same moment into the great court, converging upon the south door of the cloister, Sulien from the garden, with Cadfael ambling a yard or two behind him, Ruald from the direction of the infirmary. Sulien had a young man's thrusting, impetuous gait, now that his blistered feet were healed, and he rounded the corner of the tall box hedge so precipitately that the two almost collided, their sleeves brushing, and both halted abruptly and drew back a step in hasty apology. Here in the open, under a wide sky still streaked with trailers of primrose gold from a bright sunrise, they met like humble mortal men, with no veil of glory between them.

"Sulien!" Ruald opened his arms with a warm, delighted smile, and embraced the young man briefly cheek to cheek. "I saw you in church the first day. How glad I am that you are here, and safe!"

Sulien stood mute for a moment, looking the older man over earnestly from head to foot, captivated by the serenity of his thin face, and the curious air he had of having found his way home, and being settled and content here as he had never been before, in his craft, in his cottage, in his marriage, in his community. Cadfael, holding aloof at the turn of the box hedge, with a shrewd eye on the pair of them, saw Ruald briefly as Sulien was seeing him, a man secure in the rightness of his choice, and radiating his unblemished joy upon all who drew near him. To one ignorant of any threat or shadow hanging over this man, he must seem the possessor of perfect happiness. The true revelation was that, indeed, so he was. A marvel!

"And you?" said Sulien, still gazing and remembering. "How is it with you? You are well? And content? But I see that you are!"

"All is well with me," said Ruald. "All is very well, better than I deserve." He took the young man by the sleeve, and the pair of them turned together towards the church. Cadfael followed more slowly, letting them pa.s.s out of earshot. From the look of them, as they went, Ruald was talking cheerfully of ordinary things, as brother to brother. The occasion of Sulien's flight from Ramsey he knew, as the whole household knew it, but clearly he knew nothing as yet of the boy's shaken faith in his vocation. And just as clearly, he did not intend to say a word of the suspicion and possible danger that hung over his own head. The rear view of them, springy youth and patient, plodding middle age jauntily shoulder to shoulder, was like father and son in one craft on their way to work, and, fatherly, the elder wanted no part of his shadowed destiny to cloud the bright horizons of faith that beckoned his son.

"Ramsey will be recovered," said Ruald with certainty. "Evil will be driven out of it, though we may need long patience. I have been praying for your abbot and brothers."

"So have I," said Sulien ruefully, "all along the way. I'm lucky to be out of that terror. But it's worse for the poor folk there in the villages, who have nowhere to run for shelter."

"We are praying for them also. There will be a return, and a reckoning."

The shadow of the south porch closed over them, and they halted irresolutely on the edge of separating, Ruald to his stall in the choir, Sulien to his obscure place among the novices, before Ruald spoke. His voice was still level and soft, but from some deeper well of feeling within him it had taken on a distant, plangent tone like a faraway bell.

"Did you ever hear word from Generys, after she left? Or do you know if any other did?"

"No, never a word," said Sulien, startled and quivering.

"No, nor I. I deserved none, but they would have told me, in kindness, if anything was known of her. She was fond of you from a babe, I thought perhaps... I should dearly like to know that all is well with her."

Sulien stood with lowered eyes, silent for a long moment. Then he said in a very low voice: "And so should I, G.o.d knows how dearly!"

Chapter Five.

IT DID NOT PLEASE BROTHER JEROME that anything should be going on within the precinct of which he was even marginally kept in ignorance, and he felt that in the matter of the refugee novice from Ramsey not quite everything had been openly declared. True, Abbot Radulfus had made a clear statement in chapter concerning the fate of Ramsey and the terror in the Fens, and expressed the hope that young Brother Sulien, who had brought the news and sought refuge here, should be allowed a while of quietness and peace to recover from his experiences. There was reason and kindness in that, certainly. But everyone in the household, by now, knew who Sulien was, and could not help connecting his return with the matter of the dead woman found in the Potter's Field, and the growing shadow hanging over Brother Ruald's head, and wondering if he had yet been let into all the details of that tragedy, and what effect it would have on him if he had. What must he be thinking concerning his family's former tenant? Was that why the abbot had made a point of asking for peace and quietness for him, and seeing to it that his daily work should be somewhat set apart from too much company? And what would be said, what would be noted in the bearing of the two, when Sulien and Ruald met?

And now everyone knew that they had met. Everyone had seen them enter the church for Ma.s.s side by side, in quiet conversation, and watched them separate to their places without any noticeable change of countenance on either part, and go about their separate business afterwards with even step and unshaken faces. Brother Jerome had watched avidly, and was no wiser. That aggrieved him. He took pride in knowing everything that went on within and around the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and his reputation would suffer if he allowed this particular obscurity to go unprobed. Moreover, his status with Prior Robert might feel the draught no less. Robert's dignity forbade him to point his own aristocratic nose into every shadowy corner, but he expected to be informed of what went on there, just the same. His thin silver brows might rise, with unpleasant implications, if he found his trusted source, after all, fallible.

So when Brother Cadfael sallied forth with a full scrip to visit a new inmate at the hospital of Saint Giles, that same afternoon, and to replenish the medicine cupboard there, leaving the herb garden to his two a.s.sistants, of whom Brother Winfrid was plainly visible digging over the depleted vegetable beds ready for the winter, Brother Jerome seized his opportunity and went visiting on his own account.

He did not go without an errand. Brother Petrus wanted onions for the abbot's table, and they were newly lifted and drying out in trays in Cadfael's store-shed. In the ordinary way Jerome would have delegated this task to someone else, but this day he went himself.

In the workshop in the herb garden the young man Sulien was diligently sorting beans dried for next year's seed, discarding those flawed or suspect, and collecting the best into a pottery jar almost certainly made by Brother Ruald in his former life. Jerome looked him over cautiously from the doorway before entering to interrupt his work. The sight only deepened his suspicion that things were going on of which he, Jerome, was insufficiently informed. For one thing, Sulien's crown still bore its new crop of light brown curls, growing more luxuriant every day, and presenting an incongruous image grossly offensive to Jerome's sense of decorum. Why was he not again shaven-headed and seemly, like all the brothers? Again, he went about his simple task with the most untroubled serenity and a steady hand, apparently quite unmoved by what he must have learned by now from Ruald's own lips. Jerome could not conceive that the two of them had walked together from the great court into the church before Ma.s.s, without one word being said about the murdered woman, found in the field once owned by the boy's father and tenanted by Ruald himself. It was the chief subject of gossip, scandal and speculation, how could it be avoided? And this boy and his family might be a considerable protection to a man threatened with the charge of murder, if they chose to stand by him. Jerome, in Ruald's place, would most heartily have enlisted that support, would have poured out the story as soon as the chance offered. He took it for granted that Ruald had done the same. Yet here this unfathomable youth stood earnestly sorting his seed, apparently without anything else on his mind, even the tension and stress of Ramsey already mastered.

Sulien turned as the visitor's shadow fell within, and looked up into Jerome's face, and waited in dutiful silence to hear what was required of him. One brother was like another to him here as yet, and with this meagre little man he had not so far exchanged a word. The narrow, grey face and stooped shoulders made Jerome look older than he was, and it was the duty of young brothers to be serviceable and submissive to their elders.

Jerome requested onions, and Sulien went into the store-shed and brought what was wanted, choosing the soundest and roundest, since these were for the abbot's own kitchen. Jerome opened benevolently: "How are you faring now, here among us, after all your trials elsewhere? Have you settled well here with Brother Cadfael?"

"Very well, I thank you," said Sulien carefully, unsure yet of this solicitous visitor whose appearance was not precisely rea.s.suring, nor his voice, even speaking sympathy, particularly sympathetic. "I am fortunate to be here, I thank G.o.d for my deliverance."

"In a very proper spirit," said Jerome wooingly. "Though I fear that even here there are matters that must trouble you. I wish that you could have come back to us in happier circ.u.mstances."

"Indeed, so do I!" agreed Sulien warmly, still harking back in his own mind to the upheaval of Ramsey.

Jerome was encouraged. It seemed the young man might, after all, be in a mood to confide, if sympathetically prompted. "I feel for you," he said mellifluously. "A shocking thing it must be, after such terrible blows, to come home to yet more ill news here. This death that has come to light, and worse, to know that it casts so black a shadow of suspicion upon a brother among us, and one well known to all your family-"

He was weaving his way so confidently into his theme that he had not even noticed the stiffening of Sulien's body, and the sudden blank stillness of his face.

"Death?" said the boy abruptly. "What death?"

Thus sharply cut off in full flow, Jerome blinked and gaped, and leaned to peer more intently into the young, frowning face before him, suspecting deception. But the blue eyes confronted him with a wide stare of such crystal clarity that not even Jerome, himself adept at dissembling and a cause of defensive evasion in others, could doubt the young man's honest bewilderment.

"Do you mean," demanded Jerome incredulously, "that Ruald has not told you?"

"Told me of what? Nothing of a death, certainly! I don't know what you mean, Brother!"

"But you walked with him to Ma.s.s this morning," protested Jerome, reluctant to relinquish his certainty. "I saw you come, you had some talk together..."

"Yes, so we did, but nothing of ill news, nothing of a death. I have known Ruald since I could first run," said Sulien. "I was glad to meet with him, and see him so secure in his faith, and so happy. But what is this you are telling me of a death? I beg you, let me understand you!"

Jerome had thought to be eliciting information, but found himself instead imparting it. "I thought you must surely know it already. Our plough-team turned up a woman's body, the first day they broke the soil of the Potter's Field. Buried there unlawfully, without rites-the sheriff believes killed unlawfully. The first thought that came to mind was that it must be the woman who was Brother Ruald's wife when he was in the world. I thought you knew from him. Did he never say a word to you?"

"No, never a word," said Sulien. His voice was level and almost distant, as though all his thoughts had already grappled with the grim truth of it, and withdrawn deep into his being, to contain and conceal any immediate consideration of its full meaning. His blue, opaque stare held Jerome at gaze, unwavering. "That it must be you said. Then it is not known! Neither he nor any can name the woman?"

"It would not be possible to name her. There is nothing left that could be known to any man. Mere naked bones is what they found." Jerome's faded flesh shrank at the mere thought of contemplating so stark a reminder of mortality. "Dead at least a year, so they judge. Maybe more, even as much as five years. Earth deals in many different ways with the body."

Sulien stood stiff and silent for a moment, digesting this knowledge with a face still as a mask. At last he said: "Did I understand you to say also that this death casts a black shadow of suspicion upon a brother of this house? You mean by that, on Ruald?"

"How could it be avoided?" said Jerome reasonably. "If this is indeed she, where else would the law look first? We know of no other woman who frequented that place, we know that this one disappeared from there without a word to any. But whether living or dead, who can be certain?"

"It is impossible," said Sulien very firmly. "Ruald had been a month and more here in the abbey before she vanished. Hugh Beringar knows that."

"And acknowledges it, but that does not make it impossible. Twice he visited her afterwards, in company with Brother Paul, to settle matters about such possessions as he left. Who can be sure that he never visited her alone? He was not a prisoner within the enclave, he went out with others to work at the Gaye, and elsewhere on our lands. Who can say he never left the sight of his fellows? At least," said Jerome, with mildly malicious satisfaction in his own superior reasoning, "the sheriff is busy tracing every errand Brother Ruald has had outside the gates during those early days of his novitiate. If he satisfies himself they never did meet and come to conflict, well. If not, he knows that Ruald is here, and will be here, waiting. He cannot evade."

"It is foolishness," said the boy with sudden quiet violence. "If there were proof from many witnesses, I would not believe he ever harmed her. I should know them liars, because I know him. Such a thing he could not do. He did not do!" repeated Sulien, staring blue challenge-like daggers into Jerome's face.

"Brother, you presume!" Jerome drew his inadequate length to its tallest, though he was still topped by almost a head. "It is sin to be swayed by human affection to defend a brother. Truth and justice are preferred before mere fallible inclination. In chapter sixty-nine of the Rule that is set down. If you know the Rule as you should, you know such partiality is an offence."

It cannot be said that Sulien lowered his embattled stare or bent his head to this reproof, and he would certainly have been in for a much longer lecture if his superior's sharp ear had not caught, at that moment, the distant sound of Cadfael's voice, some yards away along the path, halting to exchange a few cheerful words with Brother Winfrid, who was just cleaning his spade and putting away his tools. Jerome had no wish to see this unsatisfactory colloquy complicated by a third party, least of all Cadfael, who, upon consideration, might have been entrusted with this ill-disciplined a.s.sistant precisely in order to withdraw him from too much knowledge too soon. As well leave things as they stood.

"But you may be indulged," he said, with hasty magnanimity, "seeing this comes so suddenly on you, and at a time when you have already been sorely tried. I say no more!"

And forthwith he took a somewhat abrupt but still dignified leave, and was in time to be a dozen paces outside the door when Cadfael met him. They exchanged a brief word in pa.s.sing, somewhat to Cadfael's surprise. Such brotherly civility in Jerome argued a slight embarra.s.sment, if not a guilty conscience.

Sulien was collecting his rejected beans into a bowl, to be added to the compost, when Cadfael came into the workshop. He did not look round as his mentor came in. He had known the voice, as he knew the step.

"What did Jerome want?" Cadfael asked, with only mild interest.

"Onions. Brother Petrus sent him."

No one below Prior Robert's status sent Brother Jerome anywhere. He kept his services for where they might reflect favour and benefit upon himself, and the abbot's cook, a red-haired and belligerent northerner, had nothing profitable to bestow, even if he had been well-disposed towards Jerome, which he certainly was not.

"I can believe Brother Petrus wanted onions. But what did Jerome want?"

"He wanted to know how I was faring, here with you," said Sulien with deliberation. "At least, that's what he asked me. And, Cadfael, you know how things are with me. I am not quite sure yet how I am faring, or what I ought to do, but before I commit myself either to going or staying, I think it is time I went to see Father Abbot again. He said I might, when I felt the need."

"Go now, if you wish," said Cadfael simply, eyeing with close attention the steady hands that swept the bench clear of fragments, and the head so sedulously inclined to keep the young, austere face in shadow. "There's time before Vespers."

Abbot Radulfus examined his pet.i.tioner with a detached and tolerant eye. In three days the boy had changed in understandable ways, his exhaustion cured, his step now firm and vigorous, the lines of his face eased of their tiredness and strain, the reflection of danger and horror gone from his eyes. Whether the rest had resolved his problem for him was not yet clear, but there was certainly nothing indecisive in his manner, or in the clean jut of a very respectable jaw.

"Father," he said directly. "I am here to ask your leave to go and visit my family and my home. It is only fair that I should be equally open to influences from within and without."

"I thought," said Radulfus mildly, "that you might be here to tell me that your trouble is resolved, and your mind made up. You have that look about you. It seems I am previous."

"No, Father, I am not yet sure. And I would not offer myself afresh until I am sure."

"So you want to breathe the air at Longner before you stake your life, and allow household and kin and kind to speak to you, as our life here has spoken. I would not have it otherwise," said the abbot. "Certainly you may visit. Go freely. Better, sleep again at Longner, think well upon all you stand to gain there, and all you stand to lose. You may need even more time. When you are ready, when you are certain, then come and tell me which way you have chosen."

"I will, Father," said Sulien. The tone was the one he had learned to take for granted in the year and more of his novitiate in Ramsey, submissive, dutiful and reverent, but the disconcerting eyes were fixed on some distant aim visible only to himself, or so it seemed to the abbot, who was as well versed in reading the monastic face as Sulien was in withdrawing behind it.

"Go then, at once if you wish." He considered how long a journey afoot this young man had recently had to make, and added a concession. "Take a mule from the stable, if you intend to leave now. The daylight will see you there if you ride. And tell Brother Cadfael you have leave to stay until tomorrow."

"I will, Father!" Sulien made his reverence and departed with a purposeful alacrity which Radulfus observed with some amus.e.m.e.nt and some regret. The boy would have been well worth keeping, if that had truly been his bent, but Radulfus was beginning to judge that he had already lost him. He had been home once before, since electing for the cloister, to bring home his father's body for burial after the rout of Wilton, had stayed several days on that occasion, and still chosen to return to his vocation. He had had seven months since then to reconsider, and this sudden urge now to visit Longner, with no unavoidable filial duty this time to reinforce it, seemed to the abbot significant evidence of a decision as good as made.

Cadfael was crossing the court to enter the church for Vespers when Sulien accosted him with the news.

"Very natural," said Cadfael heartily, "that you should want to see your mother and your brother, too. Go with all our goodwill and, whatever you decide, G.o.d bless the choice."

His expectation, however, as he watched the boy ride out at the gatehouse, was the same that Radulfus had in mind. Sulien Blount was not, on the face of it, cut out for the monastic life, however hard he had tried to believe in his misguided choice. A night at home now, in his own bed and with his kin around him, would settle the matter.

Which conclusion left a very pertinent question twitching all through Vespers in Cadfael's mind. What could possibly have driven the boy to make for the cloister in the first place?

Sulien came back next day in time for Ma.s.s, very solemn of countenance and resolute of bearing, for some reason looking years nearer to a man's full maturity than when he had arrived from horrors and hardships, endured with all a man's force and determination. A youth, resilient but vulnerable, had spent two days in Cadfael's company; a man, serious and purposeful, returned from Longner to approach him after Ma.s.s. He was still wearing the habit, but his absurd tonsure, the crest of dark gold curls within the overgrown ring of darker brown hair, created an incongruous appearance of mockery, just when his face was at its gravest. High time, thought Cadfael, observing him with the beginning of affection, for this one to go back where he belongs.

"I am going to see Father Abbot," said Sulien directly.

"So I supposed," agreed Cadfael.

"Will you come with me?"

"Is that needful? What I feel sure you have to say is between you and your superior, but I do not think," Cadfael allowed, "that he will be surprised."

"There is something more I have to tell him," said Sulien, unsmiling. "You were there when first I came, and you were the messenger he sent to repeat all the news I brought to the lord sheriff. I know from my brother that you have always access to Hugh Beringar's ear, and I know now what earlier I did not know. I know what happened when the ploughing began, I know what was found in the Potter's Field. I know what everyone is thinking and saying, but I know it cannot be true. Come with me to Abbot Radulfus. I would like you to be by as a witness still. And I think he may need a messenger, as he did before."

His manner was so urgent and his demand so incisive that Cadfael shrugged off immediate enquiry. "As you and he wish, then. Come!"

They were admitted to the abbot's parlour without question. No doubt Radulfus had been expecting Sulien to seek an audience as soon as Ma.s.s was over. If it surprised him to find the boy bringing a sponsor with him, whether as advocate to defend his decision, or in mere meticulous duty as the mentor to whom he had been a.s.signed in his probation, he did not allow it to show in face or voice.

"Well, my son? I hope you found all well at Longner? Has it helped you to find your way?"

"Yes, Father." Sulien stood before him a little stiffly, his direct stare very bright and solemn in a pale face. "I come to ask your permission to leave the Order and go back to the world."

"That is your considered choice?" said the abbot in the same mild voice. "This time you are in no doubt?"

"No doubt, Father. I was at fault when I asked admission. I know that now. I left duties behind, to go in search of my own peace. You said, Father, that this must be my own decision."

"I say it still," said the abbot. "You will hear no reproach from me. You are still young, but a good year older than when you sought refuge within the cloister, and I think wiser. It is far better to do whole-hearted service in another field than remain half-hearted and doubting within the Order. I see you did not yet put off the habit," he said, and smiled.

"No, Father!" Sulien's stiff young dignity was a little affronted at the suggestion. "How could I, until I have your leave? Until you release me I am not free."

"I do release you. I would have been glad of you, if you had chosen to stay, but I believe that for you it is better as it is, and the world may yet be glad of you. Go, with my leave and blessing, and serve where your heart is."

He had turned a little towards his desk, where more mundane matters waited for his attention, conceiving that the audience was over, though without any sign of haste or dismissal: but Sulien held his ground, and the intensity of his gaze checked the abbot's movement, and made him look again, and more sharply, at the son he had just set free.

"There is something more you have to ask of us? Our prayers you shall certainly have."

"Father," said Sulien, the old address coming naturally to his lips, "now that my own trouble is over, I find I have blundered into a great web of other men's troubles. At Longner my brother has told me what was spared me here, whether by chance or design. I have learned that when ploughing began on the field my father granted to Haughmond last year, and Haughmond exchanged for more convenient land with this house two months ago now, the coulter turned up a woman's body, buried there some while since. But not so long since that the manner, the time, the cause of her death can go unquestioned. They are saying everywhere that this was Brother Ruald's wife, whom he left to enter the Order."

"It may be said everywhere," the abbot agreed, fronting the young man with a grave face and drawn brows, "but it is not known anywhere. There is no man can say who she was, no way of knowing, as yet, how she came by her death."

"But that is not what is being said and believed outside these walls," Sulien maintained st.u.r.dily. "And once so terrible a find was made known, how could any man's mind escape the immediate thought? A woman found where formerly a woman vanished, leaving no word behind! What else was any man to think but that this was one and the same? True, they may all be in error. Indeed, they surely are! But as I heard it, that is the thought even in Hugh Beringar's mind, and who is to blame him? Father, that means that the finger points at Ruald. Already, so they have told me, the common talk has him guilty of murder, even in danger of his own life."

"Gossip does not necessarily speak with any authority," said the abbot patiently. "Certainly it cannot speak for the lord sheriff. If he examines the movements and actions of Brother Ruald, he is but doing his duty, and will do as much by others, as the need arises. I take it that Brother Ruald himself has said no word of this to you, or you would not have had to hear it for the first time at home in Longner. If he is untroubled, need you trouble for him?"

"But, Father, that is what I have to tell!" Sulien flushed into ardour and eagerness. "No one need be troubled for him. Truly, as you said, there is no man can say who this woman is, but here is one who can say with absolute certainty who she is not. For I have proof that Ruald's wife Generys is alive and well-or was so, at least, some three weeks ago."

"You have seen her?" demanded Radulfus, reflecting back half-incredulously the burning glow of the boy's vehemence.

"No, not that! But I can do better than that." Sulien plunged a hand deep inside the throat of his habit, and drew out something small that he had been wearing hidden on a string about his neck. He drew it over his head, and held it out to be examined in the palm of his open hand, still warm from his flesh, a plain silver ring set with a small yellow stone such as were sometimes found in the mountains of Wales and the border. Of small value in itself, marvellous for what he claimed for it. "Father, I know I have kept this unlawfully, but I promise you I never had it in Ramsey. Take it up, look within it!"

Radulfus gave him a long, searching stare before he extended a hand and took up the ring, turning it to catch the light on its inner surface. His straight black brows drew together. He had found what Sulien wanted him to find.

"G and R twined together. Crude, but clear-and old work. The edges are blunted and dulled, but whoever engraved it cut deep." He looked up into Sulien's ardent face. "Where did you get this?"

"From a jeweller in Peterborough, after we fled from Ramsey, and Abbot Walter charged me to come here to you. It was mere chance. There were some tradesmen in the town who feared to stay, when they heard how near de Mandeville was, and what force he had about him. They were selling and moving out. But others were stouthearted, and meant to stay. It was night when I reached the town, and I was commended to this silversmith in Priestgate who would shelter me overnight. He was a stout man, who would not budge for outlaws or robbers, and he had been a good patron to Ramsey. His valuables he had hidden away, but among the lesser things in his shop I saw this ring."

"And knew it?" said the abbot.

"From old times, long ago when I was a child. I could not mistake it, even before I looked for this sign. I asked him where and when it came into his hands, and he said a woman had brought it in only some ten days earlier, to sell, because, she said, she and her man thought well to move further away from the danger of de Mandeville's marauders, and were turning what they could into money to resettle them in safety elsewhere. So were many people doing, those who had no great stake in the town. I asked him what manner of woman she was, and he described her to me, beyond mistaking. Father, barely three weeks ago Generys was alive and well in Peterborough."

"And how did you acquire the ring?" asked Radulfus mildly, but with a sharp and daunting eye upon the boy's face. "And why? You had then no possible reason to know that it might be of the highest significance here."

"No, none." The faintest flush of colour had crept upward in Sulien's cheeks, Cadfael noted, but the steady blue gaze was as wide and clear as always, even challenging question or reproof. "You have returned me to the world, I can and will speak as one already outside these walls. Ruald and his wife were the close friends of my childhood, and when I was no longer a child that fondness grew and came to ripeness with my flesh. They will have told you, Generys was beautiful. What I felt for her touched her not at all, she never knew of it. But it was after she was gone that I thought and hoped, I admit vainly, that the cloister and the cowl might restore me my peace. I meant to pay the price faithfully, but you have remitted the debt. But when I saw and handled the ring I knew for hers, I wanted it. So simple it is."

"But you had no money to buy it," Radulfus said, in the same placid tone, withholding censure.

"He gave it to me. I told him what I have now told you. Perhaps more," said Sulien, with a sudden glittering smile that lasted only an instant in eyes otherwise pa.s.sionately solemn. "We were but one night companions. I should never see him again, nor he me. Such a pair encountering confide more than ever they did to their own mothers. And he gave me the ring."

"And why," enquired the abbot as directly, "did you not restore it, or at least show it, to Ruald and tell him that news, as soon as you met with him here?"