tribunal waiting for his entry did shake his serenity on the threshold of the parlour, there was no sign of it in his bearing or countenance. He made his reverence placidly, and waited to be addressed. Behind him, Cadfael closed the door.
‘I sent for you, Brother,’ said the abbot, ‘because something has come to light, something you may recognise.’
Hugh held out the ring in his palm. ‘Do you know this, Ruald? Take it up, examine it.’
It was hardly necessary, he had already opened his lips to answer at the mere sight of it in Hugh’s hand. But obediently he took it, and at once turned it to bring the light sidewise upon the entwined initials cut crudely within. He had not needed it as identification, he wanted and accepted it gratefully as a sign both of remembered accord and of hope for future reconciliation and forgiveness. Cadfael saw the faint quiver of warmth and promise momentarily dissolve the patient lines of the lean face.
‘I know it well, my lord. It is my wife’s. I gave it to her before we married, in Wales, where the stone was found. How did it come here?’
‘First let me be clear?you are certain this was hers? There cannot be another such?’
‘Impossible. There could be other pairs having these initials, yes, but these I myself cut, and I am no engraver. I know every line, every irregularity, every fault in the work, I have seen the bright cuts dull and tarnish over the years. This I last saw on the hand of Generys. There is nothing more certain under the sun. Where is she? Has she come back? May I speak with her?’
‘She is not here,’ said Hugh. ‘The ring was found in the shop of a jeweller in the city of Peterborough, and the jeweller testified that he had bought it from a woman only some ten days previously. The seller was in need of money to help her to leave that town for a safer place to live, seeing the anarchy that has broken out there in the Fens. He described her. It would seem that she was indeed the same who was formerly your wife.’
The radiance of hope had made but a slow and guarded sunrise on Ruald’s plain middle-aged face, but by this time every shred of cloud was dispersed. He turned on Abbot Radulfus with such shining eagerness that the light from the window, breaking now into somewhat pale sunrays, seemed only the reflection of his joy.
‘So she is not dead! She is alive and well! Father, may I question further? For this is wonderful!’
‘Certainly you may,’ said the abbot. ‘And wonderful it is.’
‘My lord sheriff, how came the ring here, if it was bought and sold in Peterborough?’
‘It was brought by one who recently came to this house from those parts. You see him here, Sulien Blount. You know him. He was sheltered overnight in his journey by the jeweller, and saw and knew the ring there in his shop. For old kindness,’ said Hugh with deliberation, ‘he wished to bring it with him, and so he has, and there you hold it in your hand.’
Ruald had turned to look steadily and long at the young man standing mute and still, a little apart, as though he wished to withdraw himself from sight, and being unable to vanish in so small a room, at least hoped to escape too close observance by being motionless, and closing the shutters over his too transparent face and candid eyes. A strange and searching look it was that passed between them, and no one moved or spoke to break its intensity. Cadfael heard within his own mind the questions that were not being asked: Why did you not show me the ring? If, for reasons I guess at, you were unwilling to do that, could you not at least have told me that you had had recent word of her, that she was alive and well? But all Ruald said, without turning away his eyes from Sulien’s face, was: ‘I cannot keep it. I have forsworn property. I thank God that I have seen it, and that he has pleased to keep Generys safe. I pray that he may have her in his care hereafter.’
‘Amen!’ said Sulien, barely audibly. The sound was a mere sigh, but Cadfael saw his taut lips quiver and move.
‘It is yours to give, Brother, if not to keep,’ said the abbot, watching the pair of them with shrewd eyes that weighed and considered, but refrained from judging. The boy had already confessed to him why he had obtained the ring, and why it was his intent to keep it. A small thing in itself, great in what it could accomplish, it had played its part, and was of no further significance. Unless, perhaps, in its disposal? ‘You may bestow it where you think fit,’ said Radulfus.
‘If the lord sheriff has no further need of it,’ said Ruald, ‘I give it back to Sulien, who reclaimed it. He has brought me the best news I could have received, and that morsel of my peace of mind that even this house could not restore.’ He smiled suddenly, the plain, long face lighting up, and held out the ring to Sulien. The boy advanced a hand very slowly, almost reluctantly, to receive it. As they touched, the vivid colour rose in his cheeks in a fiery flush, and he turned his face haughtily away from the light to temper the betrayal.
So that is how the case goes, Cadfael thought, enlightened. No questions asked because none are needed. Ruald must have watched his lord’s younger son running in and out of his workshop and house almost since the boy was born, and seen him grow into the awkward pains of adolescence and the foreshadowing of manhood, and always close about the person of this mysterious and formidable woman, the stranger, who was no stranger to him, the one who kept her distance, but not from him, the being of whom every man said that she was very beautiful, but not for everyone was she also close and kind. Children make their way by right where others are not admitted. It touched her not at all, Sulien maintained, she never knew of it. But Ruald had known. No need now for the boy to labour his motives, or ask pardon for the means by which he defended what was precious to him.
‘Very well,’ said Hugh briskly, ‘be it so. I have nothing further to ask. I am glad, Ruald, to see your mind set at rest. You, at least, need trouble no further over this matter, there remains no shadow of a threat to you or to this house, and I must look elsewhere. As I hear, Sulien, you have chosen to leave the Order. You will be at Longner for the present, should I need a word with you hereafter?’
‘Yes,’ said Sulien, still a little stiff and defensive of his own dignity. ‘I shall be there when you want me.’
Now I wonder, thought Cadfael, as the abbot dismissed both Ruald and Sulien with a brief motion of benediction, and they went out together, what trick of the mind caused the boy to use the word ‘when’? I should rather have expected ‘if you want me’. Has he a premonition that some day, for some reason, more will be demanded of him?
‘It’s plain he was in love with the woman,’ said Hugh, when the three of them were left alone. ‘It happens! Never forget his own mother has been ill some eight years, gradually wasting into the frail thing she is now. How old would this lad be when that began? Barely ten years. Though he was fond and welcome at Ruald’s croft long before that. A child dotes on a kind and handsome woman many innocent years, and suddenly finds he has a man’s stirrings in his body, and in his mind too. Then the one or the other wins the day. This boy, I fancy, would give his mind the mastery, set his love up on a pedestal?an altar, rather, if you’ll allow me the word, Father?and worship her in silence.’
