‘So, he says, he did,’ agreed Radulfus drily. ‘She never knew of it. His words.’
‘I am inclined to believe it. You saw how he coloured like a peony when he realised Ruald could see clean through him. Was he never jealous of his prize, this Ruald? The world seems to be agreed she was a great beauty. Or is it simply that he was used to having the boy about the place, and knew him harmless?’
‘Rather, from all accounts,’ Cadfael suggested seriously, ‘he knew his wife immovably loyal.’
‘Yet rumour says she told him she had a lover, at the last, when he was set on leaving her.’
‘Not only rumour says so,’ the abbot reminded them firmly. ‘He says so himself. On the last visit he made to her, with Brother Paul to confirm it, she told him she had a lover better worth loving, and all the tenderness she had ever had for him, her husband, he himself had destroyed.’
‘She said it,’ agreed Cadfael. ‘But was it true? Yet I recall she also spoke to the jeweller of herself and her man.’
‘Who’s to know?’ Hugh threw up his hands. ‘She might well strike out at her husband with whatever came to hand, true or false, but she had no reason to lie to the silversmith. The one thing certain is that our dead woman is not Generys. And I can forget Ruald, and any other who might have had ado with Generys. I am looking for another woman, and another reason for murder.’
‘Yet it sticks in my craw,’ said Hugh, as he walked back towards the gatehouse with Cadfael at his side,’that he did not blurt it out the second they met that the woman was alive and well. Who had a better right to know it, even if he had turned monk, than her husband? And what news could be more urgent to tell, the instant the boy clapped eyes on him?’
‘He did not then know anything about a dead woman, nor that Ruald was suspected of anything,’ Cadfael suggested helpfully, and was himself surprised at the tentative sound it had, even in his own ears.
‘I grant it. But he did know, none better, that Ruald must have her always in his mind, wondering how she does, whether she lives or dies. The natural thing would have been to cry it out on sight: “No need to fret about Generys, she’s well enough.” It was all he needed to know, and his contentment would have been complete.’
‘The boy was in love with her himself,’ Cadfael hazarded, no less experimentally. ‘Perhaps when it came to the point he grudged Ruald that satisfaction.’
‘Does he seem to you a grudging person?’ demanded Hugh.
‘Let’s say, then, his mind was still taken up with the sack of Ramsey and his escape from it. That was enough to put all lesser matters out of his mind.’
‘The reminder of the ring came after Ramsey,’ Hugh reminded him, ‘and was weighty enough to fill his mind then.’
‘True. And to tell the truth, I wonder about it myself. Who’s to account for any man’s reasoning under stress? What matters is the ring itself. She owned it; Ruald, who gave it to her, knew it instantly for hers. She sold it for her present needs. Whatever irregularities there may be in young Sulien’s nature and actions, he did bring the proof. Generys is alive, and Ruald is free of all possible blame. What more do we need to know?’
‘Where to turn next,’ said Hugh ruefully.
‘You have nothing more? What of the widow woman set up by Haughmond as tenant after Eudo made his gift to them?’
‘I have seen her. She lives with her daughter in the town now, not far from the western bridge. She was there only a short while, for she had a fall, and her daughter’s man fetched her away and left the place empty. But she left all in good order, and never saw nor heard anything amiss while she was there, or any strangers drifting that way. It’s off the highways. But there have been tales of travelling folk bedding there at times, mainly during the fair. Eudo at Longner promised to ask all his people if ever they’d noticed things going on up there without leave, but I’ve heard nothing to the purpose from him yet.’
‘Had there been any rumours come to light there,’ said Cadfael reasonably, ‘Sulien would have brought them back with him, along with his own story.’
‘Then I must look further afield.’ He had had agents doing precisely that ever since the matter began, even though his own attention had certainly been, to some extent, distracted by the sudden alarming complication in the king’s affairs.
‘We can at least set a limit to the time,’ Cadfael said consideringly. ‘While the widow was living there it seems highly unlikely others would be up to mischief about the place. They could not use it as a cheap lodging overnight, it is well off any highway, so a chance passerby is improbable, and a couple looking for a quiet place for a roll in the grass would hardly choose the one inhabited spot in a whole range of fields. Once the tenant was out of the place it was solitary enough for any furtive purpose, and before ever she was installed by the canons
What was the exact day when Generys walked away and left the cottage door wide and the ashes on the hearth?’
‘The exact day, within three,’ said Hugh, halting at the open wicket in the gate, ‘no one knows. A cowman from Longner passed along the river bank on the twenty-seventh day of June, and saw her in the garden. On the last day of June a neighbour from over the north side of the ridge?the nearest neighbours they had, and those best part of a mile away?came round on her way to the ferry. None too direct a way, for that matter, but I fancy she had a nose for gossip, and was after the latest news on a tasty scandal. She found the door open and the place empty and the hearth cold. After that no one saw Ruald’s wife again in these parts.’
‘And the charter that gave the field to Haughmond was drawn up and witnessed early in October. Which day? You were a witness.’
‘The seventh,’ said Hugh. ‘And the old smith’s widow moved in to take care of the place three days later. There was work to be done before it was fit, there’d been a bit of looting done by then. A cooking pot or so, and a brychan from the bed, and the doorlatch broken to let the thieves in. Oh, yes, there had been visitors in and out of there, but no great damage up to then. It was later they scoured the place clean of everything worth removing.’
‘So from the thirtieth of June to the tenth of October,’ Cadfael reckoned, pondering, ‘murder could well have been done up there, and the dead buried, and no one any the wiser. And when was it the old woman went away to her daughter in the town?’
‘It was the winter drove her away,’ said Hugh. ‘About Christmas, in the frost, she had a fall. Lucky for her, she has a good fellow married to her girl, and when the hard weather began he kept a close eye on how she did, and
