did for me. As I do, with all my heart. There were some who bore witness there who had known me most of my life, and surely had no grudge against me, and yet testified that I had been the first to strike, and done all manner of things I knew I had not done. But you, who had suffered through my act, though God knows I never willed it, you spoke absolute truth for me. It took a generous heart and a fair mind to do so much for an unknown whom you had no cause to love.” He had not chosen that word, it had come naturally in the commonplace phrase, but when he heard it, it raised a blush like fire in his own face, faintly reflected the next moment in hers.
“All I did was to tell the truth of what I had seen,” she said. “So should we all have done, it’s no virtue, but an obligation. It was shame that they did not. People do not think what it is they are saying, or trouble to be clear about what they have seen. But that’s all by now. I’m very glad they’ve let you go. I was glad when Hugh Beringar said they must, taking into account what has been happening, for which you certainly can bear no blame. But perhaps you have not heard …”
“Yes, I have heard. My father has told me.” Philip sat down beside her in the place Aline had vacated, and leaned towards her earnestly. “There is some very evil purpose against you and yours, surely, how else to account for so many outrages? Emma, I am afraid for you … I fear danger threatening even you.
I’m grieved for your loss, and all the distress you’ve suffered. I wish there might be some way in which I could serve you.”
“Oh, but you need not be troubled for me,” she said. “You see I am in the best and kindest hands possible, and tomorrow the fair will all be over, and Hugh Beringar and Aline will help me to find a safe way to go home.”
“Tomorrow?” he said, dismayed.
“It may not be tomorrow. Roger Dod will take the barge downriver tomorrow, but it may be that I must stay a day or two more. We have to find a party going south by Gloucester, for safe-conduct, and with some other women for company. It may take a day or two.”
Even a day or two would be gold; but after that she would be gone, and he might never see her again. And still, confronted by this cause for unhappiness on his own part, he could only think of her. He could not rid himself of the feeling that she was threatened.
“In only two days, see how many ill things have happened, and always close to you, and what may not still happen in a day or two more? I wish you were safe home this moment,” he said passionately, “though God knows I’d rather lose my right hand than the sight of you.” He was not even aware that that same right hand had taken possession of her left one, and was clasping it hard. “At least find me some way of serving you before you go. If nothing more, tell me you know that I never did harm to your uncle …”
“Oh, yes,” she said warmly, “that I can, most willingly. I never did truly believe it. You are no such person, to strike a man dead by stealth. I never thought it. But still we don’t know who did it! Oh, don’t doubt me, I’m sure of you. But I wish it could be shown clear to the world, for your sake.”
It was said very prettily and sincerely, and he took it to his heart gratefully, but it was said out of generous fellow-feeling, and nothing deeper, and he was gallingly sure of it while he hugged at least the kindness to him.
“For mine, too,” she said honestly, “and for the sake of justice. It is not right that a mean murderer should escape his due, and it does aggrieve me that my uncle’s death should go unpaid for.”
Find me some way of serving you, he had said; and perhaps she had. There was nothing he would not have undertaken for her; he would have lain over the threshold of any room in which she was, like a dog on guard, if she had needed it, but she did not, she was cared for by the sheriff’s own deputy and his lady, and they would watch over her until they saw her safely on her way home. But when she spoke of the unknown who had slipped a dagger in her uncle’s back, her great eyes flared with the angry blue of sapphires, and her face grew marble-clear and taut. Her complaint was his commission. He would achieve something for her yet.
“Emma,” he began in a whisper, and drew breath to commit himself deep as the sea.
The door opened, though neither of them had heard the knock; Constance put her head into the room.
“Messire Corbicre waits to see you, when you are free,” she said, and withdrew, but left the door ajar. Evidently Messire Corbicre ought not to be kept waiting long.
Philip was on his feet. Emma’s eyes had kindled at the name like distant stars, forgetting him. “You may remember him,” she said, still sparing a morsel of her attention for Philip, “the young gentleman who came to help us on the jetty, along with Brother Cadfael. He has been very kind to me.”
Philip did remember, though his bludgeoned senses at the time had seen everything distorted; a slender, elegant, assured lordling who leaped a rolling cask to catch her in his arm at the water’s edge, and further, to be just to him, had appeared in the sheriff’s court and borne out Emma’s honest story? even if he had also produced his falconer to testify to the silly threats Philip had been indulging in, drunk as he was, later that evening. Testimony Philip did not dispute, since he knew he had been incapable of clear thought or positive recollection. He recalled his disgusting self, and smarted at the thought. And the young lord with the bright gold crest and athlete’s prowess had showed so admirable by contrast.
“I’ll take my leave,” said Philip, and allowed her hand to slip out of his, though with reluctance and pain. “For the journey, and always, I wish you well.”
“So do I you,” she said, and with unconscious cruelty added: “Will you ask Messire Corbicre to come in?”
Never in his life until then had Philip been required to draw himself to his full stature, body and mind. His departure was made with a dignity he had not dreamed he could achieve, and meeting Corbicre face to face in the hall, he did indeed bid him within, at Mistress Emma’s invitation, very civilly and amiably, while he burned with jealousy inwardly. Ivo thanked him pleasantly, and if he looked him over, did so with interest and respect, and with no apparent recollection of ever having seen him in less acceptable circumstances.
No one would have guessed, thought Philip, marching out into the sunshine of the great court, that a working shoemaker and a landed lord rubbed shoulders there.
Well, he may have several manors in Cheshire and one in Shropshire, and be distant kin of Earl Ranulf, and welcome at his court; but I have something I can try to do for her, and I have a craft as honourable as his noble blood, and if I succeed, whether she comes my way or no, she’ll never forget me.
Brother Cadfael came in at the gatehouse after some hours of fruitless prowling about the fair and the riverside. Among hundreds of men busy about their own concerns, the quest of a gashed sleeve, or one recently and hastily mended, is much the same as hunting one straw in a completed stack. His trouble was that he knew no other way to set about it. Moreover, the hot and settled weather continued unbroken, and most of those about the streets and the stalls were in their shirt-sleeves. There was a point there, he reflected. The glover’s dagger had drawn blood, therefore it had reached the skin, but never a thread of white or unbleached linen had it brought away with the
