Chapter Six
HUGH WAS AT THE castle, where Cadfael found him in the armoury, telling over the stores of steel, with the likelihood of a foray against the anarchy in Essex very much in mind. He had taken the omen seriously, and was bent on being ready at a day’s notice if the king should call. But Hugh’s provision for action was seldom wanting, and on the whole he was content with his preparations. He could have a respectable body of picked men on the road within hours when the summons came. There was no certainty that it would, to the sheriff of a shire so far removed from the devastated Fen country, but the possibility remained. Hugh’s sense of order and sanity was affronted by the very existence of Geoffrey de Mandeville and his like.
He greeted Cadfael with somewhat abstracted attention, and went on critically watching his armourer beating a sword into shape. He was giving only the fringes of his mind to the abbot’s pressing invitation, until Cadfael nudged him into sharp alertness by adding: ‘It has to do with the body we found in the Potter’s Field. You’ll find the case is changed.’
That brought Hugh’s head round sharply enough. ‘How changed?’
‘Come and hear it from the lad who changed it. It seems young Sulien Blount brought more than bad news back from the Fens with him. The abbot wants to hear him tell it again to you. If there’s a thread of significance in it he’s missed, he’s certain you’ll find it, and you can put your heads together afterwards, for it looks as if one road is closed to you. Get to horse and let’s be off.’
But on the way back through the town and over the bridge into the Foregate he did impart one preliminary piece of news, by way of introduction to what was to follow. ‘Brother Sulien, it seems, has made up his mind to return to the world. You were right in your judgement, he was never suited to be a monk. He has come to the same conclusion, without wasting too much of his youth.’
‘And Radulfus agrees with him?’ wondered Hugh.
‘I think he was ahead of him. A good boy, and he did try his best, but he says himself he came into the Order for the wrong reasons. He’ll go back to the life he was meant for, now. You may have him in your garrison before all’s done, for if he’s quitting one vocation he’ll need another. He’s not the lad to lie idle on his brother’s lands.’
‘All the more,’ said Hugh, ‘as Eudo is not long married, so in a year or two there may be sons. No place there for a younger brother, with the line secured. I might do worse. He looks a likely youngster. Well made, and a good long reach, and he always shaped well on a horse.’
‘His mother will be glad to have him back, surely,’ Cadfael reflected. ‘She has small joy in her life, from what you told me; a son come home may do much for her.’
The likely youngster was still closeted with the abbot when Hugh entered the parlour with Cadfael at his heels. The two seemed to be very easy together, but for a slight sense of tension in the way Sulien sat, very erect and braced, his shoulders flattened against the panelling of the wall. His part here was still only half done; he waited, alert and wide-eyed, to complete it.
‘Sulien here,’ said the abbot, ‘has something of importance to tell you, I thought best you should hear it directly from him, for you may have questions which have not occurred to me.’
That I doubt,’ said Hugh, seating himself where he could have the young man clear in the light from the window. It was a little past noon, and the brightest hour of an overcast day. ‘It was good of you to send for me so quickly. For I gather this has to do with the matter of the dead woman. Cadfael has said nothing beyond that. I am listening, Sulien. What is it you have to tell?’
Sulien told his story over again, more briefly than before, but in much the same words where the facts were concerned. There were no discrepancies, but neither was it phrased so exactly to pattern as to seem studied. He had a warm, brisk way with him, and words came readily. When it was done he sat back again with a sharp sigh, and ended: ‘So there can be no suspicion now against Brother Ruald. When did he ever have ado with any other woman but Generys? And Generys is alive and well. Whoever it is you have found, it cannot be she.’
Hugh had the ring in his palm, the scored initials clear in the light. He sat looking down at it with a thoughtful frown. ‘It was your abbot commended you to take shelter with this silversmith?’
‘It was. He was known for a good friend to the Benedictines of Ramsey.’
‘And his name? And where does his shop lie in the town?’
‘His name is John Hinde, and the shop is in Priestgate, not far from the minster.’ The answers came readily, even eagerly.
‘Well, Sulien, it seems you have delivered Ruald from all concern with this mystery and death, and robbed me of one suspect, if ever the man really became suspect in earnest. He was never a very likely malefactor, to tell the truth, but men are men?even monks are men?and there are very few of us who could not kill, given the occasion, the need, the anger and the solitude. It was possible! I am not sorry to see it demolished. It seems we must look elsewhere for a woman lost. And has Ruald yet been told of this?’ he asked, looking up at the abbot.
‘Not yet.’
‘Send for him now,’ said Hugh.
‘Brother,’ said the abbot, turning to Cadfael, ‘will you find Ruald and ask him to come?’
Cadfael went on his errand with a thoughtful mind. For Hugh this deliverance meant a setback to the beginning, and a distraction from the king’s affairs at a time when he would much have preferred to be able to concentrate upon them. No doubt he had been pursuing a search for any other possible identities for the dead woman, but there was no denying that the vanished Generys was the most obvious possibility. But now with this unexpected check, at least the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul could rest the more tranquilly. As for Ruald himself, he would be glad and grateful for the woman’s sake rather than his own. The wholeness of his entranced peace, so far in excess of what most fallible human brothers could achieve, was a perpetual marvel. For him whatever God decreed and did, for him or to him, even to his grief and humiliation, even to his life, was done well. Martyrdom would not have changed his mind.
Cadfael found him in the vaulted undercroft of the refectory, where Brother Matthew the cellarer had his most commodious stores. To him Ruald had been allotted, as a practical man whose skills were manual rather than scholarly or artistic. Summoned to the abbot’s parlour, he dusted his hands, abandoned his inventory, reported his errand and destination to Brother Matthew in his little office at the end of the south range, and followed Cadfael in simple, unquestioning obedience. It was not for him to ask or to wonder, though in his present circumstances, Cadfael reflected, he might well feel his heart sink a little at the sight of the secular authority closeted side by side with the monastic, and both with austerely grave faces, and their eyes fixed upon him. If the vision of this double
