“I’ll overtake him,” said Aldwin with unaccustomed resolution. “I’ll tell him I’m sorry for it. I’ll go with him to the monks, and see if I can undo what I’ve done?any part of what I’ve done. I’ll own why I did it. I’ll withdraw the charge I made.”
“Don’t be a fool!” urged Conan roughly. “What difference will that make? The charge is laid now; the priests won’t let it be dropped, not they. It’s no small matter to accuse a man of heresy and then go back on it; you’ll only end in as bad case as he. And they have my witness, and Fortunata’s; what use is it taking back yours? Let be, and show some sense!”
But Aldwin’s courage was up, and his conscience stricken too deeply for sense. He dragged himself free from the detaining hand. “I can but try! I will! That at least.” And he was out at the door, and halfway across the yard towards the street. Conan would have gone after him, but Jevan called him back sharply.
“Let him alone! At the very least, if he owns to his own fear and malice, he must surely shake the case against the lad. Words, words, I don’t doubt they were spoken, but words can be interpreted many ways, and even a small doubt cast can alter the image. You get back to work, and let the poor devil go and ease his mind the best way he can. If he falls foul of the priests, we’ll put in a word for him and get him out of it.”
Conan gave up reluctantly, shrugging off his misgivings about the whole affair. “Then I’d best get out to the folds until nightfall. God knows how he’ll fare, but by then, one way or another, I suppose we shall find out.” And he went out still shaking his head disapprovingly over Aldwin’s foolishness, and they heard his solid footsteps cross the yard to the passage into the street.
“What a coil!” said Jevan with a gusty sigh. “And I must be off, too, and fetch some more skins from the workshop. There’s a canon of Haughmond coming tomorrow, and I’ve no notion yet what size of book he has in mind. Don’t take things too much to heart, girl,” he said, and embraced Fortunata warmly in a long arm. “If it comes to the worst we’ll get the prior of Haughmond to say a word to Gerbert for any man of ours?one Augustinian must surely listen to another, and the prior owes me a favor or two.”
He released her and was off towards the door in his turn, when she demanded abruptly: “Uncle?does Elave count as a man of ours?”
Jevan swung about to stare at her, his thin black brows raised, and the dark, observant eyes beneath them flashed into the smile that came seldom but brilliantly, a little teasing, a little intimidating, but for her always reassuring. “If you want him,” he said, “he shall.”
Elave had gone but a few yards back towards the abbey gatehouse when he saw half a dozen men come boiling out of the open gate, and split two ways along the Foregate. The suddenness of the eruption and the distant clamor of their raised voices as they emerged and separated made him draw back hastily into the cover of the trees, to consider what this hubbub might have to do with him. They were certainly sent forth in a body, and carrying staves, which boded no good if they were indeed hunting for him. He worked his way cautiously along the grove to get a closer view, for they were sweeping the open road first before enlarging their field, and two were away on the run along the farther length of the enclave wall, to reach the corner and get a view along the next stretch of the road. Someone or something was certainly being hunted. Not by any of the brothers. Here were no black habits, but sober workaday homespun and hard-wearing leather, on sturdy laymen. Three of them he knew for the grooms attendant on Canon Gerbert, a fourth was his body servant, for Elave had seen the man about the guest hall, busy and pompous, jack in office by virtue of his master’s status. The others must surely have been recruited from among those pilgrims ablest in body and readiest for zealous mischief. It was not the abbot who had set the dogs on him, but Gerbert.
He drew back deeper into cover, and stood scowling at the intent hunters quartering the Foregate. He had no mind to show himself, however boldly, and risk being set upon and dragged back like a felon, when he had not, in his reading of his commitment, ever broken his parole. Maybe Canon Gerbert read the terms differently, and considered his going outside the gate, even without his gear, as proof of a guilty mind and instant flight. Well, he should not have the satisfaction of being able to sustain that view. Elave was going back through that gate on his own two feet, of his own obstinate will, true to his bond and staking his liberty and perhaps his life. The peril in which he could not bring himself to believe looked more real and sinister now.
They had left a single groom, the brawniest of Gerbert’s three, sentinel before the gatehouse, prowling up and down as though neither time nor force could shift him. Small hope of slipping past that great sinewy hulk! And a couple of the hounds, having beaten the road, the gardens, and the cottages along the Foregate for a hundred paces either way, were crossing the road purposefully towards the trees. Better remove himself from here to a safe distance until they either abandoned the hunt or pursued it into more remote coverts, and allowed him safe passage back into the fold. Elave drew off hastily through the trees, and followed their dwindling course northeastward until he came round into the orchards beyond the Gaye, and the belt of bushes that clothed the riverside. They were more likely to search for him westward. Along the border, English fugitives made for Wales, Welsh fugitives for England. The two laws balked and held off at the dyke, though trade crossed back and forth merrily enough.
There was still a matter of three hours or so before Vespers, when he could hope that everyone would be in church again, and he might be able to slip in either through the gatehouse, if the burly guard had departed, or into the church by the west door among the local parishioners. No point in going back, meantime, to risk running his head into a snare. He found himself a comfortable nest among the tall grass above the river, screened by bushes and islanded in a silence that would give him due warning of any foot rustling the grass or shoulders brushing through the branches of alder and willow for a hundred yards around, and sat thinking of Fortunata. He could not credit that he was in the kind of danger she envisaged, and yet he could not quite put the shadow away from him.
Across the swift and sinuous currents of the Severn, sparkling in sunlight, the hill of the town rose sharply, its long, enfolding wall terminating here opposite his hiding place in the thick sandstone towers of the castle, and giving place to the highroad launching away to the north from the Castle Foregate towards Whitchurch and Wem. And even now he could have forded the river only a little way downstream and made off at speed by that road, but he was damned if he would! He had committed no crime; he had said only what he held to be right, and there was nothing in it of blasphemy or disrespect to the Church, and he would not take back a word of it, or run away from his own utterances and afford his accusers a cheap triumph.
He had no way of knowing the time, but when he thought it must be drawing near to Vespers he left his nest, and made his way cautiously back by the same route, keeping in cover, until he could see between the trees the dusty whiteness of the road, the people passing along it, and the lively bustle about the gatehouse. He had a while to wait before the Vesper bell rang, and he spent it moving warily from one cover to another, to see whether any of his pursuers were to be noted among the people gathering outside the west door of the church. He recognized none, but in the constant movement it was difficult to be sure. The big man who had been left to guard the gate was nowhere within view. Elave’s best moment would come when the little bell was heard, and the gossips passing the time of day there in the early evening sunshine would gather and move into the church.
The moment was on him as fast as the thought. The bell chimed, and the worshippers gathered their families, saluted their friends, and began to move in by the west door. Elave darted out in time to mingle with them and hide himself in the middle of the procession, and there was no outcry, no rough hand grasping him by the shoulder. Now he had a choice between continuing left with the good people of the Foregate into the church, or slipping through
