“My lord, he says you’ve been up there … where my home was. God knows how grateful I am for the kindness here, that won’t let us starve when all our goods and gear are gone, but what’s to become of us poor souls that work hard to make a living, if it’s to be clawed away in a night, and the roof burned over us? It’s hard to live solitary in the hills,” he said roundly, “at best. But outlawry the like of this we never thought to see.”
“Friend,” said Beringar ruefully, “you may take it I never looked for it, either. Reparation for your losses I cannot offer, but some of what was yours may still be recovered, if we can trace the raiders who took it from you. The boy, here, lodged with you several nights since, and his sister with him …”
“And vanished from us in the night,” said John, and gave Yves a disapproving frown.
“That we know, he has told us, and he, at least, had sound reasons, and took his own grave risks. But what we need from you is some account of this attack that fell upon you … when?”
“Two nights after the lady and the lad fled us. The night of the fourth of the month, it was, but very late, towards dawn. We woke to hear the dogs going mad, and rushed out thinking there might be wolves, in such hard weather. For the dogs were chained, d’you see??and wolves they were, but of the two-legged kind! Once out, we could hear the sheep bellowing up the hill and see torches up there. Then they begin to come bounding down the slope, knowing the dogs had given the alarm. I don’t know how many men, there might have been a dozen or more. We could not stand, we could only run. From the ridge there we saw the barn take fire. The wind was wild, we knew it must all burn out. And here we are, master, bereft, to make a new start from villeinry, if there’s a yardland to be had under any lord. But with our lives, thanks be to God!”
“So they came first to your sheep-fold,” said Hugh. “From which direction along that slope?”
“From the south,” said John at once, “but not from the road?higher on the hill. They came down at us.”
“And you have no notion who they may be, or from where? You’ve had no rumor beforehand of outlaws setting up anywhere near?”
No, there had been no warning until then. It had come out of the blue, between midnight of the fourth, and pre-dawn of the fifth.
“One more question,” said Hugh. “Since you brought off your family with their lives, what became of the nun of Worcester who lodged with you the night of the second, along with this young man and his sister? That they left you that night we know. What of the nun?”
“Why, she was well out of it,” said Druel thankfully. “I had not her on my heart that night of the burning. She was gone, the afternoon before. Rather late it was for the daylight, but not too far gone. And a safe escort along the way, I reckoned she would do well enough. In a sad, distracted way she’d been, the poor girl, when she found she’d been left alone, but she did not know where to look for her chicks, and neither did we, and what was she to do?”
“Someone came for her?” asked Hugh.
“A Benedictine brother. She knew him, he had walked a part of the way with them before, and urged them to go with him to Bromfield, she said. So he urged then, and when she told him how she was forsaken, he said all the more she should put herself and her trouble into the hands of others, who would search for her charges for her, and keep her safe until they were found. He’d had to make his way here from Foxwood, asking after her,” said John, making allowance for the waning of the day when he had reached them. “I never saw woman so thankful to have a friend take her in care. She went with him, and I make no doubt she came safe to Bromfield.”
Yves stood dumb. “She came,” said Hugh drily, rather to himself than to any other. Safe? Yes, take it as large as words will hold, yes, she came safe. Sinless, conscientious, brave, who at this moment was safer than Sister Hilaria, an innocent gone straight to God?
“A strange thing followed, though,” said Druel, “for the next day, while we were here telling our tale, and the good folk making room for us in their homes, like Christians as they are, there came a young man afoot, up from the road by the proper way, and asked after just such a party as we had housed. Had any here news, he said, of a young nun of Worcester, in company with two young gentlefolk, brother and sister, making towards Shrewsbury. We were full of our own troubles, but we told him all we knew, and how they were all gone from us before ever this evil befell. And he listened and went away. Up to the wreck of my holding, first, but after that I cannot tell where.”
“A stranger to all here?” asked Hugh, looking round the circle that had gathered, for by then the women had come forth, and hung attentive on the outskirts.
“Never seen before,” said the reeve emphatically.
“What manner of man, then?”
“Why, by his dress husbandman or shepherd like any of us here, a brown homespun man. Not so much as thirty years old, nearer five or six and twenty. Bigger than your lordship, but built like you, light and long. And dark, a black-rimmed eye on him with a yellow glint, like a hawk. And black hair under his hood.”
The women had drawn closer in silence, quiet-eyed and prick-eared. Their interest in the stranger was all the plainer because not one of them voiced it, or volunteered any detail concerning him. Whoever he was, he had made an impression upon the women of Cleeton, and they did not mean to miss anything they could glean about him, or surrender anything they had already gleaned.
“Dark-skinned,” said Druel, “and beaked like a hawk, too. A very comely man.” Yes, so the attentive eyes of the women said. “There was something a thought slow about his speech, now I come to recall …”
Hugh took him up alertly on that. “As though he were not at home in the common English?”
John had not thought of that for himself; he considered it stolidly. “It might be that. Or as if he had a small stumble of the tongue, like.”
Well, if English was not his proper tongue, what was? Welsh? Easily possible here along the borders, but what would a Welshman be doing asking after the fugitives from Worcester? Angevin, then? Ah, that was another matter.
“If ever you should hear or see more of him,” said Hugh, “send me word into Ludlow or Bromfield, and you shall not be losers. And for you, friend, let’s own honestly there’s little chance of recovering all or most of your losses, but some of your stock we may yet win back for you if we can trace these outlaws to their lair. We’ll do our best to that end, be sure.”
He wheeled his horse, and led the way towards the downward track, the others following, but he did not hurry, for one of the young women had drawn off in that direction, and was eyeing him meaningly over her shoulder. As Hugh came by she closed alongside, and laid a hand to his stirrup-leather. She knew what she was about, she had
