him into complacency, you’ll find. And his horse has been rubbed down and watered and rested, while you’ve been otherwise occupied, and we’ll take him back with us unloaded, none the worse for his adventures. There are horses enough here, I’ll find you the pick of them, a steady ride fit to bear two.” He had had one eye on Emma while he had been mustering water-carriers and husbanding household effects, he knew better than to try to wrest her out of Philip’s arms, or send for a horse-litter to carry her back. There were two here so joined together that only a fool would attempt to part them even for a few hours; and Hugh was no fool.
They wrapped her gently in a brychan borrowed from the salvaged bedding, rather for comfortable padding than for warmth, for the evening was still serene and mild, though she might yet suffer the cold that comes after effort is all over.
She accepted everything with serenity, like one in a dream, though the pain of her hand must, they reasoned, be acute. She seemed to feel nothing but a supreme inner peace that made everything else of no account. They mounted Philip on a great, broad-backed, steady-paced gelding, and then lifted Emma up to him in her swathing blanket, and she settled into the cradle of his lap and arms and braced shoulder as though God had made her to fit there.
“And perhaps so he did,” said Brother Cadfael, riding behind with Hugh Beringar close beside him.
“So he did what?” wondered Hugh, starting out of very different considerations, for two officers brought a bound Turstan Fowler behind them.
“Direct all,” said Cadfael. “It is, after all, a way he has.”
Halfway back towards Shrewsbury she fell asleep in his arms, nestled on his breast. For the fall of her black, smoke-scented hair he could see only the lower part of her face, but the mouth was soft and moist and smiling, and all her weight melted and moulded into the cradle of his loving body as into a marriage-bed. In her dream she had gone somewhere beyond the pain of her burned hand. It was as if she had thrust her hand into the future, and found it worth the price. The left hand, the unmarked one, lay clasped warmly round him, inside his coat, holding him close to her in her dream.
CHAPTER 5
The summer darkness of fine nights, which is never quite dark, showed a horse-fair deserted, no trace of the past three days but the trampled patches and the marks of trestles in the grass. All over for another year. The abbey stewards had gathered in the profits of rent and toll and tax, delivered their accounts, and gone to their beds. So had the monks of the abbey, the lay servants, the novices and the pupils. A sleepy porter opened the gate for them; and mysteriously, at the sounds of their arrival, though circumspect and subdued, the great court awoke to life. Aline came running from the guest-hall with the aggrieved merchant, now remarkably complacent, at her back, Brother Mark from the dortoir, and Abbot Radulfus’s own clerk from the abbot’s lodging, with a bidding to Brother Cadfael to attend there as soon as he arrived, however late the hour.
“I sent him word what was toward,” said Hugh, “as we left. It was right he should know. He’ll be anxious to hear how it ended.”
While Aline took Emma and Philip, half awake and dazedly docile, to rest and refresh themselves in the guest- hall, and Brother Mark ran to the herbarium to collect the paste of mulberry leaves and the unguent of Our Lady’s mantle, known specifics for burns, and the men-at-arms went on to the castle with their prisoner, Brother Cadfael duly attended Radulfus in his study. Whether at midday or midnight, the abbot was equally wide-awake. By the single candle burning he surveyed Cadfael and asked simply: “Well?”
“It is well, Father. We are returned with Mistress Vernold safe and little the worse, and the murderer of her uncle is in the sheriff’s hands. One murderer?the man Turstan Fowler.”
“There is another?” asked Radulfus.
“There was another. He is dead. Not by any man’s hand, Father, none of us has killed or done violence. He is dead by fire.”
“Tell me,” said the abbot.
Cadfael told him the whole story, so far as he knew it, and briefly. How much more Emma knew was a matter for conjecture.
“And what,” the abbot wished to know, “can this communication have been, to cause any man to commit such crimes in pursuit of it?”
“That we do not know, and no man now will know, for it is burned with him. But where there are two warring factions in a land,” said Cadfael, “men without scruples can turn controversy to gain, sell men for profit, take revenge on their rivals, hope to be awarded the lands of those they betray. Whatever evil was intended, now will never come to fruit.”
“A better ending than I began to fear,” said Radulfus, and drew a thankful sigh.
“Then all danger is now over, and the guests of our house are come to no harm.”
He pondered for a moment. “This young man who did so well for us and for the girl?you say he is son to the provost?”
“He is, Father. I am going with them now, with your permission, to see them safely home and dress their burns. They are not too grave, but they should be cleansed and tended at once.”
“Go with God’s blessing!” said the abbot. “It is convenient, for I have a message to the provost, which you may deliver for me, if you will. Ask Master Corviser, with my compliments, if he will be kind enough to attend here tomorrow morning, about the end of chapter. I have some business to transact with him.”
Mistress Corviser had undoubtedly been fulminating for hours about her errant son, a good-for-nothing who was no sooner bailed out of prison than he was off in mischief somewhere else until midnight and past. Probably she had said at least a dozen times that she washed her hands of him, that he was past praying for, and she no longer cared, let him go to the devil his own way. But for all that, her husband could not get her to go to bed, and at every least sound that might be a footstep at the door or in the street, steady or staggering, she flew to look out, with her mouth full of abuse but her heart full of hope.
And then, when he did come, it was with a great-eyed girl in his arm, a thick handful of his curls singed off at one temple, the smell of smoke in his coat, his shirt in tatters, a monk of Saint Peter’s at his heels, and a look of roused authority and maturity about him that quite overcame his draggled and soiled state. And instead of either scolding or embracing him, she took both him and the girl by the hand and drew them inside together, and went about seating, feeding, tending them, with only few words, and those practical and concerned.
Tomorrow Philip might be brought to tell the whole story. Tonight it was Cadfael who told the merest skeleton of it, as he cleansed and dressed Emma’s hand, and the superficial burns on Philip’s brow and arm. Better not make
