would soon be forgotten. The grey, soft day made for melancholy. It was pleasure and relief to turn in at the gate of Hugh’s yard, and be met and embraced about the thighs by a small, boisterous boy yelling delighted greetings. Another month or so, and Giles would be four years old. He took a first grip on a fistful of Cadfael’s habit, and towed him gleefully into the house. With Hugh absent, Giles was the man of the house, and well aware of all his duties and privileges. He made Cadfael free of the amenities of his manor with solemn dignity, seated him ceremoniously, and himself made off to the buttery to fetch a beaker of ale, bearing it back cautiously in both still-rounded, infantile hands, overfilled and in danger of spilling, with his primrose hair erect and rumpled, and the tip of his tongue braced in the corner of his mouth. His mother followed him into the hall at a discreet distance, to avoid upsetting either his balance or his dignity. She was smiling at Cadfael over her son’s fair head, and suddenly the radiant likeness between them shone on Cadfael like the sun bursting out of clouds. The round, earnest face with its full childish cheeks, and the pure oval with its wide brow and tapered chin, so different and yet so similar, shared the pale, lustrous colouring and the lily-smooth skin, the refinement of feature and steadiness of gaze. Hugh is indeed a lucky man, Cadfael thought, and then drew in cautious breath on a superstitious prayer that such luck should stand by him still, wherever he might be at this moment.
If Aline had any misgivings, they were not allowed to show themselves. She sat down with him cheerfully as always, and talked of the matters of the household and the affairs at the castle under Alan Herbard, with her usual practical good sense; and Giles, instead of clambering into his godfather’s lap as he might well have done some weeks previously, climbed up to sit beside him on the bench like a man and a contemporary.
‘Yes,’ said Aline,’there is a bowman of the company has ridden in only this afternoon, the first word we’ve had. He got a graze in one skirmish they had, and Hugh sent him home, seeing he was fit to ride, and they had left changes of horses along the way. He will heal well, Alan says, but it weakens his drawing arm.’
‘And how are they faring?’ Cadfael asked. ‘Have they managed to bring Geoffrey into the open?’
She shook her head decisively. ‘Very little chance of it. The waters are up everywhere, and it’s still raining. All they can do is lie in wait for the raiding parties when they venture out to plunder the villages. Even there the king is at a disadvantage, seeing Geoffrey’s men know every usable path, and can bog them down in the marshes only too easily. But they have picked off a few such small parties. It isn’t what Stephen wants, but it’s all he can get. Ramsey is quite cut off, no one can hope to fetch them out of there.’
‘And this tedious business of ambush and waiting,’ said Cadfael, ‘wastes too much time. Stephen cannot afford to keep it up too long. Costly and ineffective as it is, he’ll have to withdraw to try some other measure. If Geoffrey’s numbers have grown so great, he must be getting supplies now from beyond the Fen villages. His supply lines might be vulnerable. And Hugh? He is well?’
‘Wet and muddy and cold, I daresay,’ said Aline, ruefully smiling, ‘and probably cursing heartily, but he’s whole and well, or was when his archer left him. That’s one thing to be said for this tedious business, as you called it, such losses as there are have been de Mandeville’s. But too few to do him much harm.’
‘Not enough,’ Cadfael said consideringly,’to be worth the king’s while for much longer. I think, Aline, you may not have to wait long to have Hugh home again.’
Giles pressed a little closer and more snugly into his godfather’s side, but said nothing. ‘And you, my lord,’ said Cadfael, ‘will have to hand over your manor again, and give account of your stewardship. I hope you have not let things get out of hand while the lord sheriff’s been away.’
Hugh’s deputy made a brief sound indicative of scorn at the very idea that his strict rule should ever be challenged. ‘I am good at it,’ he stated firmly. ‘My father says so. He says I keep a tighter rein than he does. And use the spur more.’
‘Your father,’ said Cadfael gravely, ‘is always fair and ungrudging even to those who excel him.’ He was aware, through some alchemy of proximity and affection, of the smile Aline was not allowing to show in her face.
‘Especially with the women,’ said Giles complacently.
‘Now that,’ said Cadfael, ‘I can well believe.’
King Stephen’s tenacity, in any undertaking, had always been precarious. Not want of courage, certainly, not even want of determination, caused him to abandon sieges after a mere few days and rush away to some more promising assault. It was rather impatience, frustrated optimism and detestation of being inactive that made him quit one undertaking for another. On occasion, as at Oxford, he could steel himself to persist, if the situation offered a reasonable hope of final triumph, but where stalemate was obvious he soon wearied and went off to fresh fields. In the wintry rains of the Fens anger and personal hatred kept him constant longer than usual, but his successes were meagre, and it was borne in upon him by the last week of November that he could not hope to finish the work. Floundering in the quagmires of those bleak levels, his forces had certainly closed in with enough method and strength to compress de Mandeville’s territory, and had picked off a fair number of his rogue troops when they ventured out on to drier ground, but it was obvious that the enemy had ample supplies, and could hold off for a while even from raiding. There was no hope of digging them out of their hole. Stephen turned to changed policies with the instant vigour he could find at need. He wanted his feudal levies, especially any from potentially vulnerable regions, such as those neighbour to the Welsh, or to dubious friends like the Earl of Chester, back where they were most useful. Here in the Fens he proposed to marshal an army rather of builders than soldiers, throw up a ring of hasty but well-placed strongpoints to contain the outlaw territory, compress it still further wherever they could, and menace Geoffrey’s outside supply lines when his stores ran low. Manned by the experienced Flemish mercenaries, familiar with fighting in flat lands and among complex waterways, such a ring of forts could hold what had been gained through the winter, until conditions were more favourable to open manoeuvring.
It was nearing the end of November when Hugh found himself and his levy briskly thanked and dismissed. He had lost no men killed, and had only a few minor wounds and grazes to show, and was heartily glad to withdraw his men from wallowing in the quagmires round Cambridge and set out with them north-westward towards Huntingdon, where the royal castle had kept the town relatively secure and the roads open. From there he sent them on due west for Kettering, while he rode north, heading for Peterborough.
He had not paused to consider, until he rode over the bridge of the Nene and up into the town, what he expected to find there. Better, perhaps, to approach thus without expectations of any kind. The road from the bridge brought him up into the marketplace, which was alive and busy. The burgesses who had elected to stay were justified, the town had so far proved too formidable to be a temptation to de Mandeville while there were more isolated and defenceless victims to be found. Hugh found stabling for his horse, and went afoot to look for Priestgate.
The shop was there, or at least a flourishing silversmith’s shop was there, open for business and showing a prosperous front to the world. That was the first confirmation. Hugh went in, and enquired of the young fellow sitting at work in the back of the shop, under a window that lit his workbench, for Master John Hinde. The name was received blithely, and the young man laid down his tools and went out by a rear door to call his master. No question of any discrepancy here, the shop and the man were here to be found, just as Sulien had left them when he made his way west from Ramsey.
