Master John Hinde, when he followed his assistant in from his private quarters, was plainly a man of substance in the town, one who might well be a good patron to his favoured religious house, and on excellent terms with abbots. He was perhaps fifty, a lean, active, upright figure in a rich furred gown. Quick dark eyes in a thin, decisive face summed up Hugh in a glance.
‘I am John Hinde. How can I help you?’ The marks of the wearisome lurking in wet, windswept ambushes, and occasional hard riding in the open, were there to be seen in Hugh’s clothes and harness. ‘You come from the king’s muster? We have heard he’s withdrawing his host. Not to leave the field clear for de Mandeville, I hope?’
‘No such matter,’ Hugh assured him,’though I’m sent back to take care of my own field. No, you’ll be none the worse for our leaving, the Flemings will be between you and danger, with at least one strongpoint well placed to pen them into their island. There’s little more or better he could do now, with the winter coming.’
‘Well, we live as candles in the breath of God,’ said the silversmith philosophically, ‘wherever we are. I’ve known it too long to be easily frightened off. And what’s your need, sir, before you head for home?’
‘Do you remember,’ said Hugh, ‘about the first or second day of October, a young monk sheltering here with you overnight? It was just after the sack of Ramsey, the boy came from there, commended to you, he said, by his abbot. Abbot Walker was sending him home to the brother house at Shrewsbury, to take the news of Ramsey with him along the way. You remember the man?’
‘Clearly,’ said John Hinde, without hesitation. ‘He was just at the end of his novitiate. The brothers were scattering for safety. None of us is likely to forget that time. I would have lent the lad a horse for the first few miles, but he said he would do better afoot, for they were all about the open countryside like bees in swarm then. What of him? I hope he reached Shrewsbury safely?’
‘He did, and brought the news wherever he passed. Yes, he’s well, though he’s left the Order since, and returned to his brother’s manor.’
‘He told me then he was in doubts if he was on the right way,’ agreed the silversmith. ‘Walter was not the man to hold on to a youngster against his inclination. So what is it I can add, concerning this youth?’
‘Did he,’ asked Hugh deliberately, ‘notice a particular ring in your shop? And did he remark upon it, and ask after the woman from whom you had bought it, only ten days or so earlier? A plain silver ring set with a small yellow stone, and bearing initials engraved within it? And did he beg it of you, because he had known the woman well from his childhood, and kept a kindness for her? Is any part of this truth?’
There was a long moment of silence while the silversmith looked back at him, eye to eye, with intelligent speculation sharpening the lean lines of his face. It is possible that he was considering retreat from any further confidence, for want of knowing what might result from his answers for a young man perhaps innocently en- trammelled in some misfortune no fault of his own. Men of business learn to be chary of trusting too many too soon. But if so, he discarded the impulse of denial, after studying Hugh with close attention and arriving, it seemed, at a judgement.
‘Come within!’ he said then, with equal deliberation and equal certainty. And he turned towards the door from which he had emerged, inviting Hugh with a gesture of his hand. ‘Come! Let me hear more. Now we have gone so far, we may as well go further together.’
Chapter Eleven
SULIEN HAD PUT off the habit, but the hourly order that went with it was not so easy to discard. He found himself waking at midnight for Matins and Lauds, and listening for the bell, and was shaken and daunted by the silence and isolation where there should have been the sense of many brothers stirring and sighing, a soft murmur of voices urging the heavy sleepers, and in the dimness at the head of the night stairs the glow of the little lamp to light them down safely to the church. Even the freedom of his own clothes sat uneasily on him still, after a year of the skirted gown. He had put away one life without being able to take up the old where he had abandoned it, and making a new beginning was unexpected effort and pain. Moreover, things at Longner had changed since his departure to Ramsey. His brother was married to a young wife, settled in his lordship, and happy in the prospect of an heir, for Jehane was pregnant. The Longner lands were a very fair holding, but not great enough to support two families, even if such sharing had ever promised well, and a younger son would have to work out an independent life for himself, as younger sons had always had to do. The cloister he had sampled and abandoned. His family bore with him tolerantly and patiently until he should find his way. Eudo was the most open and amiable of young men, and fond of his brother. Sulien was welcome to all the time he needed, and until he made up his mind Longner was his home, and glad to have him back.
But no one could quite be sure that Sulien was glad. He filled his days with whatever work offered, in the stables and byres, exercising hawk and hound, lending a hand with sheep and cattle in the fields, carting timber for fence repairs and fuel, whatever was needed he was willing and anxious to do, as though he had stored within him such a tension of energy that he must at all costs grind it out of his body or sicken with it.
Withindoors he was quiet company, but then he had always been the quiet one. He was gentle and attentive to his mother, and endured stoically hours of her anguished presence, which Eudo tended to avoid when he could. The steely control with which she put aside every sign of pain was admirable, but almost harder to bear than open distress. Sulien marvelled and endured with her, since there was nothing more he could do for her. And she was gracious and dignified, but whether she was glad of his company or whether it added one more dimension to her burden, there was no telling. He had always supposed that Eudo was her favourite and had the lion’s share of her love. That was the usual order of things, and Sulien had no fault to find with it.
His abstraction and quietness were hardly noticed by Eudo and Jehane. They were breeding, they were happy, they found life full and pleasant, and took it for granted that a youth who had mistakenly wasted a year of his life on a vocation of which he had thought better only just in time, should spend these first weeks of freedom doing a great deal of hard thinking about his future. So they left him to his thoughts, accommodated him with the hard labour he seemed to need, and waited with easy affection for him to emerge into the open in his own good time.
He rode out one day in mid-November with orders to Eudo’s herdsman in the outlying fields of Longner land to eastward, along the River Tern, almost as far afield as Upton, and having discharged his errand, turned to ride back, and then instead wheeled the horse again and rode on very slowly, leaving the village of Upton on his left hand, hardly knowing what it was he had in mind. There was no haste, all his own industry could not convince him that he was needed at home, and the day, though cloudy, was dry, and the air mild. He rode on, gradually drawing a little further from the river bank, and only when he topped the slight ridge which offered the highest point in these flat, open fields did he realise where he was heading. Before him, at no great distance, the roofs of Withington showed through a frail filigree of naked branches, and the squat, square tower of the church just rose above the grove of low trees.
He had not realised how constantly she had been in his mind since his visit here, lodged deep in his memory, unobtrusive but always present. He had only to close his eyes now, and he could see her face as clearly as when she had first caught the sound of his horse’s hooves on the hard soil of the courtyard, and turned to see who was riding in. The very way she halted and turned to him was like a flower swaying in the lightest of winds, and the face
