‘Yes, we heard. I did grasp,’ said Sulien, wryly smiling, ‘whose voice it was summoning me. But it was well done to let the abbot stand for him. Where are we really bound? The abbey or the castle?’
‘The abbey. So much was truth. Tell me, how much does she know?’
‘My mother? Nothing. Nothing of murder, nothing of Gunnild, or Britric, or Ruald’s purgatory. She does not know your plough team ever turned up a woman’s body, on what was once our land. Eudo never said a word to her, nor has any other. You have seen her,’ said Sulien simply. “There is not a soul about her who would let one more grief, however small, be added to her load. I should thank you for observing the same care.’
‘If that can be sustained,’ said Cadfael, ‘it shall. But to tell the truth, I am not sure that you have done her any service. Have you ever considered that she may be stronger than any one of you? And that in the end, to worse sorrow, she may have to know?’
Sulien rode beside him in silence for a while, his head was raised, his eyes fixed steadily ahead, and his profile, seen clearly against the open sky with its heavy clouds, pale and set with the rigidity of a mask. Another stoic, with much of his mother in him.
What I most regret,’ he said at last, with deliberation, ‘is that I ever approached Pernel. I had no right. Hugh Beringar would have found Gunnild in the end, she would have come forward when she heard of the need, without any meddling. And now see what mischief I have done!’
‘I think,’ said Cadfael, with respectful care,’that the lady played as full a part as you. And I doubt if she regrets it.’
Sulien splashed ahead of his companion into the ford. His voice came back to Cadfael’s ears clear and resolute. ‘Something may be done to undo what we have done. And as to my mother, yes, I have considered the ending. Even for that I have made provision.’
Chapter Twelve
IN THE ABBOT’S parlour the four of them were gathered after Vespers, with the window shuttered and the door fast closed against the world. They had had to wait for Hugh. He had a garrison to review, levies newly dismissed from feudal service to pay and discharge home to their families, a few wounded to see properly tended, before he could even dismount stiffly in his own courtyard, embrace wife and son, shed his soiled travelling clothes and draw breath at his own table. The further examination of a doubtful witness, however low his credit stood now, could wait another hour or two without disadvantage.
But after Vespers he came, eased and refreshed but weary. He shed his cloak at the door, and made his reverence to the abbot. Radulfus closed the door, and there was a silence, brief but deep. Sulien sat still and mute on the bench built against the panelled wall. Cadfael had drawn aside into the corner by the shuttered window.
‘I must thank you, Father,’ said Hugh, ‘for providing us this meeting place. I should have been sorry to impose upon the family at Longner, and by all counts you have also an interest in this matter, as valid as mine.’
‘We have all an interest in truth and justice, I trust,’ said the abbot. ‘Nor can I discard all responsibility for a son because he has gone forth into the world. As Sulien knows. Proceed as you choose, Hugh.’
He had made room for Hugh beside him behind his desk, cleared now of its parchments and the business of the day. Hugh accepted the place and sat down with a great sigh. He was still cramped from the saddle and had stiffening grazes newly healed, but he had brought back his company intact from the Fens, and that was achievement enough. What else he had brought back with him he was about to sift, and these three in company with him here were about to learn.
‘Sulien, I need not remind you, or these who were witnesses, of the testimony you gave concerning Ruald’s wife’s ring, and how you came by it at the shop of John Hinde, in Priestgate, in Peterborough. Name and place I asked, and you told me. From Cambridge, when we were discharged from service, I went to Peterborough. Priestgate I found. The shop I found. John Hinde I found. I have talked to him, Sulien, and I report his testimony as I heard it from him. Yes,’ said Hugh with deliberation, his eyes on Sulien’s blanched but composed face, ‘Hinde remembers you well. You did come to him with the name of Abbot Walter to commend you, and he took you in for a single night, and set you on your way home next day. That is truth. That he confirms.’
Recalling how readily Sulien had supplied the jeweller’s name and the place where his shop was to be found, Cadfael had had little doubt of the truth of that part of the story. It had not seemed likely, then, that the rest of it would ever be tested. But Sulien’s face continued as marble-blank as resolution could make it, and his eyes never left Hugh’s face.
‘But when I asked him of the ring, he asked, what ring was that? And when I pictured it to him, he was absolute that he had never seen such a ring, never bought that or anything else from such a woman as I described. So recent a transaction he could not possibly forget, even if he did not keep good records, as he does. He never gave you the ring, for he never had the ring. What you told us was a fabric of lies.’
The new silence fell like a stone, and seemed to be arrested in Sulien’s braced stillness. He neither spoke nor lowered his eyes. Only the small, spasmodic movement of Radulfus’s muscular hand upon the desk broke the tension within the room. What Cadfael had foreseen from the moment he had conveyed the abbot’s summons, and observed the set of Sulien’s face as he received it, came as a shock to Radulfus. There was not much of human behaviour he had not encountered in his life. Liars he had known and dealt with, without surprise, but this one he had not expected.
‘Yet you produced the ring,’ Hugh continued steadily, ‘and Ruald recognised and verified the ring. Since you did not get it from the silversmith, how did you come by it? One story you told is shown to be false. Now you have your chance to tell another and a truer. Not all liars have that grace. Now say what you have to say.’
Sulien opened his lips with a creaking effort, like one turning a key in a lock unwilling to respond.
‘I already had the ring,’ he said. ‘Generys gave it to me. I have told the lord abbot, I tell you now, all my life long I held her in affection, deeper than I knew. Even as I grew a man, I never understood how that affection was changing, until Ruald deserted her. Her rage and grief made me to know. What moved her I hardly know. It may be she was avenging herself upon all men, even me. She did receive and make use of me. And she gave me the ring. It did not last long,’ he said, without bitterness. ‘I could not satisfy, green as I was. I was not Ruald, nor of sufficient weight to pierce Ruald to the heart.’
There was something strange, Cadfael thought, in his choice of words, as though at times the blood of passion did run in them, and at others they came with detached care, measured and contrived. Perhaps Radulfus had felt the same unease, for this time he did speak, impatient for plainer telling.
‘Are you saying, my son, that you were this woman’s lover?’
