‘How could I know, my lord? I never heard of the place until the eve of the fair, last year. I know nothing about the neighbourhood that side of the river. All I wanted was a place to sleep snug.’ He had himself well in hand now, knowing that no name could ever be confidently given to a mere parcel of female bones, however black the hair on her skull. That might not save him, but it gave him some fragile armour against guilt and death, and he would cling to it and repeat his denials as often and as tirelessly as he must. ‘I never hurt Gunnild. I left her alive and well.’
‘What did you know of her?’ Cadfael asked suddenly, going off at so abrupt a tangent that for a moment Britric was thrown off-balance, and lost his settled concentration on simple denial. ‘If you kept company for a while, surely you learned something of the girl, where she came from, where she had kin, the usual pattern of her travelling year. You say she is alive, or at least that you left her alive. Where should she be looked for, to prove as much?’
‘Why, she never told much.’ He was hesitant and uncertain, and plainly knew little about her, or he would have poured it out readily, as proof of his good intent towards the law. Nor had he had time to put together a neat package of lies to divert attention to some distant region where she might well be pursuing her vagabond living. ‘I met her in Coventry. We came from there together, but she was close-mouthed. I doubt she went further south than that, but she never said where she was from, nor a word of any kinsfolk.’
‘You said she was going east, after you left her. But how can you know that? She had not said so, and agreed to part there, or you need not have stolen away early to avoid her.’
‘I spoke too loosely,’ owned Britric, writhing. ‘I own it. I believed?I believe?she would turn eastward, when she found me gone. Small use taking her singing and tumbling into Wales, not alone. But I tell you truly, I never harmed her. I left her alive.’
And that was his simple, stubborn answer to all further questions, that and the one plea he advanced between obstinate denials.
‘My lord, deal fairly with me. Make it known that she is sought, have it cried in the town, ask travellers to carry the word wherever they go, that she should send word to you, and show she is still living. I have not lied to you. If she hears I am charged with her death she will come forward. I never harmed her. She will tell you so.’
‘And so we will have her name put about, and see if she appears,’ agreed Hugh, when they had locked Britric in his stone ceil and left him to his uneasy repose, and were walking back towards the castle gatehouse. ‘But I doubt if a lady who lives Gunnild’s style of life will be too eager to come near the law, even to save Britric’s neck. What do you think of him? Denials are denials, worth very little by themselves. And he has something on his conscience, and something to do with that place and that woman, too. First thing he cries when we pin him to the place is: “I never stole anything. I left all as I found it.” So I take it he did steal. When it came to the mention of Gunnild dead, then he took fright, until he realised I, like a fool, had let it out that she was mere bones. Then he knew how best to deal, and only then did he begin to plead that we seek her out. It looks and sounds well, but I think he knows she will never be found. Rather, he knows all too well that she is found, a thing he hoped would never happen.’
‘And you’ll keep him in hold?’ asked Cadfael.
‘Very surely! And go on following his traces wherever he’s been since that time, and picking the brains of every innkeeper or potman or village customer who’s had to deal with him. There must be someone somewhere who can fill in an hour or two of his life?and hers. Now I have him I’ll keep him until I know truth, one way or the other. Why? Have you a thing to add that has passed me by? I would not refuse any detail you may have in mind.’
‘A mere thought,’ said Cadfael abstractedly. ‘Let it grow a day or two. Who knows, you may not have to wait too long for the truth.’
On the following morning, which was Sunday, Sulien Blount came riding in from Longner to attend Mass in the abbey church, and brought with him, shaken and brushed and carefully folded, the habit in which he had made his way home after the abbot dismissed him. In his own cotte and hose, linen shirt and good leather shoes, he looked, if anything, slightly less at ease than in the habit, so new was his release after more than a year of the novitiate. He had not yet regained the freedom of a young man’s easy stride, unhampered by monastic skirts. Nor, strangely, did he look any the happier or more carefree for having made up his mind. There was a solemn set to his admirable jaw, and a silent crease of serious thought between his straight brows. The ring of hair that had grown over-long on his journey from Ramsey had been trimmed into tidiness, and the down of dark gold curls within it had grown into a respectable length to blend with the brown. He attended Mass with the same grave concentration he had shown when within the Order, delivered up the clothing he had abandoned, paid his reverences to Abbot Radulfus and Prior Robert, and went to find Brother Cadfael in the herb garden.
‘Well, well!’ said Cadfael. ‘I thought you might be looking in on us soon. And how do you find things out in the world? You’ve seen no reason to change your mind?’
‘No,’ said the boy starkly, and for the moment had nothing more to say. He looked round the high-walled garden, its neat, patterned beds now growing a little leggy and bare with the loss of leaves, the bushy stems of thyme dark as wire. ‘I liked it here, with you. But no, I wouldn’t turn back. I was wrong to run away. I shall not make the same mistake again.’
‘How is your mother faring?’ asked Cadfael, divining that she might well be the insoluble grief from which Sulien had attempted flight. For the young man to live with the inescapable contemplation of perpetual pain and the infinitely and cruelly slow approach of lingering death might well be unendurable. For Hugh had reported her present condition very clearly. If that was the heart of it, the boy had braced himself now to make reparation, and carry his part of the load in the house, thereby surely lightening hers.
‘Poorly,’ said Sulien bluntly. ‘Never anything else. But she never complains. It’s as if she had some hungry beast for ever gnawing at her body from within. Some days are a little better than others.’
‘I have herbs that might do something against the pain,’ said Cadfael. ‘Some time ago she did use them for a while.’
‘I know. We have all told her so, but she refuses them now. She says she doesn’t need them. All the same,’ he said, warming, ‘give me some, perhaps I may persuade her.’
He followed Cadfael into the workshop, under the rustling bunches of dried herbs hanging from the roof beams, and sat down on the wooden bench within while Cadfael filled a flask from his supply of the syrup he made from his eastern poppies, calmer of pain and inducer of sleep.
‘You may not have heard yet,’ said Cadfael, with his back turned,’that the sheriff has a man in prison for the murder of the woman we thought was Generys, until you showed us that was impossible. A fellow named Britric, a pedlar who works the border villages, and bedded down in Ruald’s croft last year, through Saint Peter’s Fair.’
He heard a soft stir of movement at his back, as Sulien’s shoulders shifted against the timber wall. But no word was said.
‘He had a woman there with him, it seems, one Gunnild, a tumbler and singer entertaining at the fairground.
