‘Yes, true! And they don’t, they can’t hate her or want to harm her
‘ But still he heard the extreme anger and pain of those two voices crying defiance, and knew, as Cadfael knew, that two so driven might do terrible things even against their own natures. More, he understood their suffering, and was wrung with it as though it matched his own.
‘No comfort for you,’ shouted Iestyn from his lair. ‘We have her still. Now I offer you another choice. Take back the girl and the gold and silver, give us the two horses and this night free of pursuit, together.’
Walter Aurifaber broke free with a whimper of half-eager, half-doubtful hope and approval, and darted some yards into the open. ‘My lord! My lord, that might be acceptable. If they restore my treasury
” Even his lawful revenge did not count for much by comparison.
‘There is a life they cannot restore,’ said Hugh curtly, and motioned him back so sternly that the goldsmith recoiled, chastened.
‘Are you listening, Iestyn?’ called Hugh, raising his eyes once again to the dark hatch. ‘You mistake my office. I stand here for the king’s law. I am willing to stand here all night long. Take thought again, and better, and come down with unbloodied hands. There is no better thing you can do.’
‘I am here. I am listening. I have not changed,’ Iestyn responded grimly from above. ‘If you want my woman and me, come and fetch us forth, and fetch away first this little carcase?your prey, not ours.’
‘Have I raised a hand?’ said Hugh reasonably. ‘Or loosened my sword in the scabbard? You see me, clearer than I can see you. We have the night before us. Whenever you have ought to say, speak up, I shall be here.’
The night dragged with fearful slowness over besiegers and besieged, for the most part in mourn silence, though if silence continued too long Hugh would deliberately break it, to test whether Iestyn remained awake and watchful, though with care not to alarm him, for fear he should be driven to panic action in expectation of an attack. There was no remedy but to outwait and out endure the enemy. In all likelihood they had very little food or water with them. They could as easily be deprived of rest. Even in such tactics there was the danger of sudden and utter despair, which might bring on a massacre, but if all was done very gradually and softly that might yet be avoided. Weariness has sometimes broken down spirits braced implacably to defy torture, and inaction sucked away all the resolution armed for action.
‘Try if you can do better,’ said Hugh softly to Cadfael, some time well past midnight. ‘They cannot know you’re here, not yet, you may find a chink in their mail that’s proof against me.’
In those small hours when the heart is low, the least surprise may prick home as it could not do by day, in the noon of the body’s vigour. Cadfael’s very voice, deeper and rougher than Hugh’s, startled Iestyn into leaning out from his watch-tower for one incautious stare at this new visitant.
‘Who’s that? What trick are you playing now?’
‘No trick, Iestyn. I am Brother Cadfael of the abbey, who came sometimes to the house with medicines. You know me, I dare not say well enough to trust me. Let me speak with Susanna, who knows me better.’
He had thought that she might refuse either to speak or to hear him. When she had set her mind upon one course, she might well be stone to any who sought to divert her or stand in her way. But she did come to the hatch, and she did listen. At least that was a further respite. Those two lovers changed places in the loft. Cadfael felt them pass, and now they passed without touching or caressing, for there was no need. They were two halves of one whole, living or dead. One of them, it was clear from the earlier outcry, must keep an eye on their prisoner. They could not bind her, then, or else they had not thought it needful. Perhaps they had not the means. They were trapped in the instant of flight. Was it unpardonable to wish they had ridden away half an hour earlier?
‘Susanna, it is not too late to make restitution. I know your wrongs, my voice shall speak for you. But murder is murder. Never think there is any escape. Though you elude the judgement here, there is another you cannot avoid. Better far to make what amends can be made and be at peace.’
‘What peace?’ she said, bitter and chill. ‘There is none for me. I am a stunted tree, denied the ground to grow, and now, when I am in fruit, in despite of this world, do you think I will abate one particle of my hate or love? Leave me be, Brother Cadfael,’ she said more gently. ‘Your concern is with my soul, mine is all with my body, the only heaven I’ve ever known or ever hope to know.’
‘Come down and bring Iestyn with you,’ said Cadfael simply, ‘and I take it upon myself to promise you, as I must answer to God, that your child and his shall be born and cared for as befits every human soul brought innocent into the world. I will invoke the lord abbot to ensure it.’
She laughed. It was a fresh, wild and yet desolate sound. ‘This is not Holy Church’s child, Brother Cadfael. It belongs to me, and to Iestyn my man, and there is none other shall ever cradle or care for it. Yet I do thank you for your goodwill to my son. And after all,’ she said, with bitter derision in her voice, ‘how do we know the creature would ever be brought forth living and whole? I am old, Brother Cadfael, old for childbirth. The thing may be dead before me.’
‘Make the assay,’ said Cadfael stoutly. ‘He is not wholly yours, he is his own, your maybe child. Do him justice! Why should he pay for your sins? It was not he trampled Baldwin Peche into the gravel of Severn.’
She made a dreadful, muted sound, as if she had choked upon her own rage and grief, and then she was calm and resolved again, and immovable. ‘Three are here together and made one,’ she said, ‘the only trinity I acknowledge now. No fourth has any part in us. What do we owe to any man living?’
‘You forget there is a fourth,’ said Cadfael strongly, ‘and you are making shameful use of her. One who is none of yours and has never done you wrong. She also loves?I think you know it. Why destroy another pair as little blessed as you?’
‘Why not?’ said Susanna. ‘I am all destruction. What else is left to me now?’
Cadfael persisted, but after a while, talking away doggedly there past the mid of the night, he knew that she had risen and left him, unconvinced, unreconciled, and that it was Iestyn who now leaned in the hatch. He waited a considering while, and then took up his pleading for this perhaps more vulnerable ear. A Welshman, less aggrieved than the woman, for all his hardships; and all Welsh are kin, even if they slit one another’s throats now and then, and manure their sparse and stony fields with fratricidal dead in tribal wars. But he knew he had little hope. He had already spoken with the domina of that pair. There was no appeal to this one now that she could not wipe out with a gesture of her hand.
He was eased, if not verily glad, when Hugh came back to relieve him of his watch.
