sheriff ordered, with a motion of his hand: “Take him away!”
Philip was slow to move, until the butt of a lance prodded him none too gently in the side. Even then he kept his chin on his shoulder for some paces, and his eyes desperately fixed upon Emma’s distressed and doubting face. “I did not touch him,” he said, plucked forcibly away towards the door through which his guards had brought him. “I pray you, believe me!” Then he was gone, and the hearing was over.
Out in the great court they paused to draw grateful breath, released from the shadowy oppression of the hall. Roger Dod hovered, with hungry eyes upon Emma.
“Mistress, shall I attend you back to the barge? Or will you have me go straight back to the booth? I had Gregory go there to help Warin, while I had to be absent, but trade was brisking up nicely, they’ll be hard pushed by now. If that’s what you want? To work the fair as he’d have worked it?”
“That is what I want,” she said firmly. “To do all as he would have done. You go straight back to the horse-fair, Roger. I shall be staying with Lady Beringar at the abbey for this while, and Brother Cadfael will escort me.”
The journeyman louted, and left them, without a backward glance. But the very rear view of him, sturdy, stiff and aware, brought back to mind the intensity of his dark face and burning, embittered eyes. Emma watched him go, and heaved a helpless sigh.
“I am sure he is a good man, I know he is a good servant, and has stood loyally by my uncle many years. So he would by me, after his fashion. And I do respect him, I must! I think I could like him, if only he would not want me to love him!”
“It’s no new problem,” said Cadfael sympathetically. “The lightning strikes where it will. One flames, and the other remains cold. Distance is the only cure.”
“So I think,” said Emma fervently. “Brother Cadfael, I must go to the barge, to bring away some more clothes and things I need. Will you go with me?”
He understood at once that this was an opportune time. Both Warin and Gregory were coping with customers at the booth, and Roger was on his way to join them.
The barge would be riding innocently beside the jetty, and no man aboard to trouble her peace. Only a monk of the abbey, who did not trouble it at all.
“Whatever you wish,” he said. “I have leave to assist you in all your needs.”
He had rather expected that Ivo Corbicre would come to join her once they were out of the hall, but he did not. It was in Cadfael’s mind that she had expected it, too. But perhaps the young man had decided that it was hardly worthwhile making a threesome with the desired lady and a monastic attendant, who clearly had his mandate, and would not consent to be dislodged. Cadfael could sympathise with that view, and admire his discretion and patience. There were two days of the fair left yet, and the great court of the abbey was not so great but guests could meet a dozen times a day. By chance or by rendezvous!
Emma was very silent on the way back through the town. She had nothing to say until they emerged from the shadow of the gate into full sunlight again, above the glittering bow of the river. Then she said suddenly: “It was good of Ivo to speak so reasonably for the young man.” And on the instant, as Cadfael flashed a glance to glimpse whatever lay behind the words, she flushed almost as deeply as the unlucky lad Philip had blushed on beholding her a witness to his shame.
“It was very sound sense,” said Cadfael, amiably blind. “Suspicion there may be, but proof there’s none, not yet. And you set him a pace in generosity he could not but admire.”
The flush did not deepen, but it was already bright as a rose. On her ivory, silken face, so young and unused, it was touching and becoming.
“Oh, no,” she said, “I only told simple truth. I could do no other.” Which again was simple truth, for nothing in her life thus far had corrupted her valiant purity. Cadfael had begun to feel a strong fondness for this orphan girl who shouldered her load without timidity or complaint, and still had an open heart for the burdens of others. “I was sorry for his father,” she said. “So decent and respected a man, to be denied so. And he spoke of his wife … she will be out of her wits with worry.”
They were over the bridge, they turned down the green path, trodden almost bare at this busy, hot time, that led to the riverside and the long gardens and orchards of the Gaye. Master Thomas’s deserted barge nestled into the green bank at the far end of the jetty, close-moored. One or two porters laboured along the boards with fresh stocks from the boats, shouldered them, and tramped away up the path to replenish busy stalls. The riverside lay sunlit, radiantly green and blue, and almost silent, but for the summer sounds of bees drunkenly busy among the late summer flowers in the grass. Almost deserted, but for a solitary fisherman in a small boat close under the shadow of the bridge; a comfortable, squarely-built fisherman stripped to shirt and hose, and bristling thornily with black curls and black bush of beard. Rhodri ap Huw clearly trusted his servant to deal profitably with his English customers, or else he had already sold out all the stock he had brought with him. He looked somnolent, happy, almost eternal, trailing his bait along the current under the archway, with an occasional flick of a wrist to correct the drift. Though most likely the sharp eyes under the sleepy eyelids were missing nothing that went on about him. He had the gift, it seemed, of being everywhere, but everywhere disinterested and benevolent.
“I will be quick,” said Emma, with a foot on the side of the barge. “Last night Constance lent me all that I needed, but I must not continue a beggar. Will you step aboard, brother? You are welcome! I’m sorry to be so poor a hostess.” Her lips quivered. He knew the instant when her mind returned to her uncle, lying naked and dead in the castle, a man she had revered and relied on, and perhaps felt to be eternal in his solidity and self-confidence. “He would have wished me to offer you wine, the wine you refused last night.”
“For want of time only,” said Cadfael placidly, and hopped nimbly over on to the barge’s low deck. “You go get what you need, child, I’ll wait for you.”
The space aboard was well organised, the cabin aft rode low, but the full width of the hull, and though Emma had to stoop her neat head to enter, stepping down to the lower level within, she and her uncle would have had room within for sleeping. Little to spare, yet enough, where no alien or suspect thing might come. But taut, indeed, when she was short of her natural protector, with three other men closely present on deck outside. And one of them deeply, hopelessly, in love. Uncles may not notice such glances as his, where their own underlings are concerned.
She was back, springing suddenly to view in the low doorway. Her eyes had again that look of shock and alarm, but now contained and schooled. Her voice was level and low as she said: “Someone has been here! Someone strange! Someone has handled everything we left here on board, pawed through my linen and my uncle’s, too, turned every board or cover. I do not dream, Brother Cadfael! It is title!
Our boat has been ransacked while it was left empty. Come and see!”
