two of my own men to accompany you.’
Fidelma’s senses were suddenly alert. How convenient for the would-be assassins to travel with them. She could not get the image of the previous night out of her mind. But then she looked at the young, enthusiastic face of Sister Gisa and wondered how the girl could be involved in a conspiracy to murder.
‘Are you well enough to undertake this journey, Brother Faro?’ she asked. It passed through her mind to use the young religieux as an excuse to delay so that she might find out more about whatever was happening. But the young man nodded vigorously.
‘The wound is healing well. I hardly feel it. And the sooner we get to Bobium, the better.’
‘I have already given orders for your horses to be ready. Alas, other matters need my attention,’ Radoald said, ‘otherwise I would gladly offer you my company on the journey.’
Magister Ado seemed content. ‘We shall be safe from here on. Bobium is not far now, Fidelma. We should be able to reach it before midday.’
Fidelma followed the others out into the courtyard and carefully scrutinised those who were to be their companions for the rest of the journey. There were two men with pack mules, and the two warriors. To her relief, none of them appeared to have any features in common with the erstwhile attackers. The two with the pack mules were small, rotund men, looking as she imagined typical farmers might look. The two warriorswere of average height. She noticed, with interest, that Lord Radoald had provided Sister Gisa with a horse, but she insisted on leading their mule. There was no sign of Suidur when they bade their farewell to the young Lord of Trebbia.
The small caravan set off without fuss. One warrior rode at the head. Magister Ado and Fidelma came next, then Brother Faro and Sister Gisa with their mule. Behind them were the two merchants and their mules. The second warrior brought up the rear.
For a while, Fidelma rode in silence, her eyes watchful on the surrounding countryside.
‘You seem pensive, Sister,’ Magister Ado finally commented after they had ridden in silence for a while.
‘Having been ambushed once, I felt that we should be constantly alert,’ she replied apologetically.
Magister Ado grimaced. ‘So you think those bandits will try again to waylay us?’
‘Why not?’ she asked innocently. She did not explain what she had witnessed in the night.
The elderly religieux shook his head. ‘I do not think we shall be in any danger in Lord Radoald’s territory so near to Bobium.’
‘I bow to your knowledge, Magister Ado,’ she replied. ‘But there is a good saying, however:
Magister Ado was amused. ‘Always prepared? It seems a good maxim, lady. But by midday, or soon after, you will see the great walls of the Abbey of Bobium and your fears will then be proved unfounded.’
Fidelma inclined her head as though in acquiescence. ‘It is hard to accept that there are those prepared to maim or kill because they disagree with the form of Christian creed another has.’
Fidelma had not meant it to sound so belligerent but Magister Ado only chuckled in good humour.
‘You believe that there is something more to it? Some dark secret that I am not telling you? Wait until you have spoken with Brother Ruadán, and you will see that the disagreement runs deep among our people here. Much blood has been scattered in this argument. From what our young friends tell me,’ he glanced briefly behind to where Sister Gisa and Brother Faro were following, ‘Brother Ruadán has suffered more than I have — suffered for his adherence to the Nicene Creed.’
She did not press the elderly religieux further but rode on in silence. Her anxious eyes wandered constantly over the thickly growing trees that rose up into the mountains on their right. To their left, the turbulent waters of the Trebbia provided a barrier which would have made attack from that quarter difficult. Now and then she glanced back to the plodding farmers behind them.
Then she saw a movement on the hill to their right. It was a man standing on a jutting rock but almost shrouded by the surrounding trees.
‘A man is watching us,’ she whispered urgently, trying not to show she had noticed. ‘To my right by those tall trees on the rock. I can’t see a weapon though.’
Magister Ado looked up quickly, suddenly tense. Then he immediately relaxed — and raised his hand as if to wave it in greeting to the figure high above them.
‘It’s old Aistulf,’ he said to her. ‘Aistulf the Hermit.’
The figure above them had turned abruptly and went scurrying off among the trees. She caught sight of a bent back and white, long hair.
‘He’s not a friendly soul,’ she commented dryly.
Magister Ado chuckled. ‘That is the nature of a hermit.Old Aistulf lives alone in a cave somewhere up in those hills. He came to our valley only a few years ago, at the end of the wars which brought Grimoald to power. He is a friend of our abbot, Abbot Servillius. I have never seen him up close. No one has, except Abbot Servillius and, I think, Sister Gisa. They sometimes go up into the hills and see him. Aistulf wanders these mountains. I know nothing more about him except that he means no harm.’
‘He is elderly,’ Fidelma observed. ‘He needs more than someone keeping check on him now and again. In Hibernia our laws about the care of the elderly are very strict.’
‘Sister Gisa often visits the old man. There is some talk that Aistulf is a member of her family. Gisa was born in this valley.’
Fidelma glanced back towards Sister Gisa. She seemed engrossed with the injured Brother Faro and had obviously not noticed the old man on the hill.
‘Tell me about Tolosa. What is it like?’ she asked, trying to find a subject to speak of rather than not talk at all.
Not for the first time she became aware of a passing look of suspicion in the elderly man’s eyes.
‘Why are you interested?’ he countered.
‘Among my people we have a saying that knowledge comes by asking questions. It is because I have never been to that city that I would know something of it.’
Magister Ado considered for a moment and then said, ‘It is a city in ruins, as Radoald observed, though not as desolate as he believed. The great basilica, the abbey, still stands with its library. However, if it were not for the want of our library, I might never have been persuaded to make the journey.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Our
‘Would your enemies know that you had travelled to Tolosa to get this book? Is it as valuable to them as it is to your abbey?’
‘I declare, you are a vexatious young lady, to keep dwelling on this question.’
‘Questions, as I have said, are a path to knowledge.’
‘And sometimes knowledge can be dangerous. Especially when there are people about with evil intent.’
‘Better is knowledge of evil than evil without knowledge,’ countered Fidelma.
Magister Ado began to frown in annoyance, and then, unexpectedly, threw back his head and burst into laughter.
‘Being away from Bobium, I had forgotten the method of argument of my Hibernian brethren. Is this truly the way that you are taught in your land?’
‘By question and answer?’
‘By taking one answer and forming another question from it?’
‘An answer always leads to another question. There is no ultimate answer, for if there was, we would never have progress.’
Magister Ado exhaled with resignation and, somewhat irritably, conceded: ‘It seems all those born in Hibernia are philosophers.’
‘Not all of us,’ Fidelma replied dryly. ‘Though all of us think we are.’
They continued on in silence for a while. Behind them, Brother Faro and Sister Gisa sometimes murmured together while the warriors and the two farmers were generally silent, guiding their pack mules. They passed along the river banks, by the swirling waters, under the shade of the tall trees that lined the track. Once or twice they
