time from Coventry on, where the roads were open and good, and word of their safety had gone before them.
Riding at the head of the column, Hugh had discarded his mail to ride at ease in his own coat and cloak. He looked alert and stimulated, faintly flushed with pleasure from the hum and babel of relief and joy that accompanied him along the Foregate, and would certainly be continued through the town. Hugh would always make a wry mock of praise and plaudits, well aware of how narrowly they were separated from the rumblings of reproach that might have greeted him had he lost men, in however desperate an encounter. But it was human to take pleasure in knowing he had lost none. The return from Lincoln, almost three years ago, had not been like this; he could afford to enjoy his welcome.
At the abbey gatehouse he looked for Cadfael among the bevy of shaven crowns, and found him on the steps of the west door. Hugh said a word into his captain’s ear, and drew his grey horse out of the line to rein in alongside, though he did not dismount. Cadfael reached up to the bridle in high content.
‘Well, lad, this is a welcome sight if ever there was. Barely a scratch on you, and not a man missing! Who would want more?’
‘What I wanted,’ said Hugh feelingly, ‘was de Mandeville’s hide, but he wears it still, and devil a thing can Stephen do about it until we can flush the rat out of his hole. You’ve seen Aline? All’s well there?’
‘All’s well enough, and will be better far when she sees your face in the doorway. Are you coming in to Radulfus?’
‘Not yet! Not now! I must get the men home and paid, and then slip home myself. Cadfael, do something for me!’
‘Gladly,’ said Cadfael heartily.
‘I want young Blount, and want him anywhere but at Longner, for I fancy his mother knows nothing about this business he’s tangled in. She goes nowhere out to hear the talk, and the family would go out of their way to keep every added trouble from her. If they’ve said no word to her about the body you found, God forbid I should shoot the bolt at her now, out of the blue. She has grief enough. Will you get leave from the abbot, and find some means to bring the boy to the castle?’
‘You’ve news, then!’ But he did not ask what. ‘An easier matter to bring him here, and Radulfus will have to hear, now or later, whatever it may be. He was one of us, he’ll come if he’s called. Radulfus can find a pretext. Concern for a sometime son. And no lie!’
‘Good!’ said Hugh. ‘It will do! Bring him, and keep him until I come.’
He dug his heels into the grey, dappled hide, and Cadfael released the bridle. Hugh was away at a canter after his troop, towards the bridge and the town. Their progress could be followed by the diminishing sound of their welcome, a wave rolling into the distance, while the contented and grateful hum of voices here along the Foregate had levelled into a murmur like bees in a flowering meadow, Cadfael turned back into the great court, and went to ask audience with the abbot.
It was not so difficult to think of a plausible reason for paying a visit to Longner. There was a sick woman there who at one time had made use of his skills at least to dull her pain, and there was the younger son newly returned, who had consented to take a supply of the same syrup, and try to persuade her to employ it again, after a long while of refusing all solace. To enquire after the mother’s condition, while extending the abbot’s fatherly invitation to the son, so recently in his care, should not strain belief. Cadfael had seen Donata Blount only once, in the days when she was still strong enough to go out and about and willing, then, to ask and take advice. Just once she had come to consult Brother Edmund, the infirmarer, and been led by him to Cadfael’s workshop. He had not thought of that visit for some years, and during that time she had grown frailer by infinitely slow and wasting degrees, and was no longer seen beyond the courtyard of Longner, and seldom even there of late. Hugh was right, her menfolk had surely kept from her every ill thing that could add another care to the all-too-grievous burden she already bore. If she must learn of evil in the end, at least let it be only after proof and certainty, when there was no escape.
He remembered how she had looked, that sole time that ever he had set eyes on her, a woman a little taller than his own modest height, slender as a willow even then, her black hair already touched with some strands of grey, her eyes of a deep,-lustrous blue. By Hugh’s account she was now shrunk to a dry wand, her every movement effort, her every moment pain. At least the poppies of Lethe could procure for her some interludes of sleep, if only she would use them. And somewhere deep within his mind Cadfael could not help wondering if she abstained in order to invite her death the sooner and be free.
But what he was concerned with now, as he saddled the brown cob and set out eastward along the Foregate, was her son, who was neither old nor ailing, and whose pains were of the mind, perhaps even of the soul.
It was early afternoon, and a heavy day. Clouds had gathered since morning, sagging low and blotting out distances, but there was no wind and no sign of rain, and once out of the town and heading for the ferry he was aware of a weighty silence, oppressive and still, in which not even a leaf or a blade of grass moved to disturb the leaden air. He looked up towards the ridge of trees above the Potter’s Field as he passed along the meadows. The rich dark ploughland was beginning to show the first faint green shadow of growth, elusive and fragile as a veil. Even the cattle along the river levels were motionless, as if they slept.
He came through the belt of tidy, well-managed woodland beyond the meadows, and up the slight slope of the clearing into the open gates of Longner. A stable boy came running to the cob’s bridle, and a maidservant, crossing the yard from the dairy, turned back to enquire his business here, with some surprise and curiosity, as though unexpected visitors were very rare here. As perhaps they were, for the manor was off the main highways where travellers might have need of a roof for the night, or shelter in inclement weather. Those who came visiting here came with a purpose, not by chance.
Cadfael asked for Sulien, in the abbot’s name, and she nodded acceptance and understanding, her civility relaxing into a somewhat knowing smile. Naturally the monastic orders do not much like letting go of a young man, once he has been in their hands, and it might be worth a solicitous visit, so soon after his escape, while judgement is still awkward and doubtful, to see if persuasion can coax him back again. Something of the sort she was thinking, but indulgently. It would do very well. Let her say as much to the other servants of the household, and Sulien’s departure at the abbot’s summons would only confirm the story, perhaps even put the issue in doubt.
‘Go in, sir, you’ll find them in the solar. Go through, freely, you’ll be welcome.’
She watched him climb the first steps to the hall door, before she herself made for the undercroft, where the wide cart-doors stood open and someone was rolling and stacking barrels within. Cadfael entered the hall, dim after the open courtyard, even dimmer by reason of the overcast day, and paused to let his eyes adjust to the change. At this hour the fire was amply supplied and well alight, but turfed down to keep it burning slowly until evening, when the entire household would be gathered within here and glad of both warmth and light. At present everyone was out at work, or busy in the kitchen and store, and the hall was empty, but the heavy curtain was drawn back from a doorway in the far comer of the room, and the door it shielded stood half open. Cadfael could hear voices from within the room, one a man’s young and pleasantly low. Eudo or Sulien? He could not be certain. And the
