told us so. They went together as far as the cleared fields. Then your father turned to make his way down to us, and Engelard was to go a mile beyond, to the byres where the cows were in calf. We must send out and ask if any man has seen your father since he parted from Engelard. Is there any who can speak to that?”
There was a silence. The numbers gathered about them were growing steadily. Some of the slower searchers from the open ride had made their way up here without news of their own, to find the matter thus terribly resolved. Others, hearing rumours of the missing man, had followed from the village. Father Huw’s messenger came up behind with Brother Columbanus and Brother Jerome from the chapel. But no one spoke up to say he had seen Rhisiart that day. Nor did any volunteer word of having encountered Engelard.
“He must be questioned,” said Prior Robert, “and if his answers are not satisfactory, he must be held and handed over to the bailiff. For it’s clear from what has been said that this man certainly had a motive for wishing to remove Rhisiart from his path.”
“Motive?” blazed Sioned, burning up abruptly as a dark and quiet fire suddenly spurts flame. Instinctively she recoiled into Welsh, though she had already revealed how well she could follow what was said around her in English, and the chief reason for her reticence concerning her knowledge had been cruelly removed. “Not so strong a motive as you had, Father Prior! Every soul in this parish knows what store you set upon getting Saint Winifred away from us, what glory it will be to your abbey, and above all, to you. And who stood in your way but my father? Yours, not the saint’s! Show me a better reason for wanting him dead! Did any ever wish to lift hand against him, all these years! Until you came here with your quest for Winifred’s relics? Engelard’s disagreement with my father was constant and understood, yours was new and urgent. Our need could wait, we’re young. Yours could not wait. And who knew better than you at what hour my father would be coming through the forest to Gwytherin? Or that he would not change his mind?”
Father Huw spread a horrified hand to hush her long before this, but she would not be hushed. “Child, child, you must not make such dreadful accusations against the reverend prior, it is mortal sin.”
“I state facts, and let them speak,” snapped Sioned. “Where’s the offence in that? Prior Robert may point out the facts that suit him, I showed you the others, those that do not suit him. My father was the sole obstacle in his path, and my father has been removed.”
“Child, I tell you every soul in this valley knew mat your father was coming to my house, and the hour of his coming, and many would know all the possible ways, far better than any of these good brethren from Shrewsbury. The occasion might well suit another grudge. And you must know that Prior Robert has been with me, and with Brother Richard and Brother Cadfael here, ever since morning Mass.” And Father Huw turned in agitated supplication to Robert, wringing his hands. “Father Prior, I beg you, do not hold it against the girl that she speaks so wildly. She is in grief — a father lost…. You cannot wonder if she turns on us all.”
“I say no word of blame,” said the prior, though coldly. “I gather she is casting doubts upon myself and my companions, but doubtless, you have answered her. Tell the young woman, in my name, mat both you and others here can witness for my own person, for all this day I have been within your sight.”
Grateful for at least one certainty, Huw turned to repeat as much to Sioned yet again, but she blazed back with biting promptness and force, forgetting all restraints in the need to confront Robert face to face, without the tedious intervention of interpreters. “So you may have been, Father Prior,” she flashed in plain English. “In any case I don’t see you as likely to make a good bowman. But a man who would try to buy my father’s compliance would be willing and able to buy some more pliable person to do even this work for him. You still had your purse! Rhisiart spurned it!”
“Take care!” thundered Robert, galled beyond the limits of his arduous patience. “You put your soul in peril! I have borne with you thus far, making allowances for your grief, but go no further along this road!”
They were staring upon each other like adversaries in the lists before the baton falls, he very tall and rigid and chill as ice, she light and ferocious and very handsome, her coif long ago lost among the bushes, and her sheaves of black hair loose on her shoulders. And at that moment, before she could spit further fire, or he threaten more imminent damnation, they all heard voices approaching from higher up among the woods, a man’s voice and a girl’s in quick, concerned exchanges, and coming rapidly nearer with a light threshing of branches, as though they had caught the raised tones and threatening sounds of many people gathered here improbably deep in the forest, and were hurrying to discover what was happening.
The two antagonists heard them, and their concentration on each other was shaken and disrupted. Sioned knew them, and a fleeting shadow of fear and desperation passed over her face. She glanced round wildly, but there was no help. A girl’s arm parted the bushes above the oval where they stood, and Annest stepped through, and stood in astonishment, gazing round at the inexplicable gathering before her.
It was the narrowness of the track — no more than the shadow of a deer-path in the grass — and the abruptness with which she had halted that gave Sioned her one chance. She took it valiantly. “Go back home, Annest,” she said loudly. “I am coming with company. Go and prepare for guests, quickly, you’ll have little time.” Her voice was high and urgent. Annest had not yet lowered her eyes to the ground, and grass and shadows veiled Rhisiart’s body.
The effort was wasted. Another hand, large and gentle, was laid on Annest’s shoulder while she hesitated, and moved her aside. “The company sounds somewhat loud and angry,” said a man’s voice, high and clear, “so, with your leave, Sioned, we’ll all go together.”
Engelard put the girl aside between his hands, as familiarly and serenely as a brother might have done, and stepped past her into the clearing.
He had eyes for no one but Sioned, he walked towards her with the straight gait of a proprietor, and as he came he took in her stiff erectness, and fixed face of fire and ice and despair, and his own face mirrored everything he saw in her. His brows drew together, his smile, taut and formidable to begin with, vanished utterly, his eyes burned bluer than cornflowers. He passed by Prior Robert as though he had not even been there, or not alive, a stock, a dead tree by the path. He put out his hands, and Sioned laid her hands in them, and for an instant closed her eyes. There was no frowning him away now, he was here in the midst, quite without defences. The circle, not all inimical but all hampering, was closing round him.
He had her by the hands when he saw Rhisiart’s body.
The shock went into him as abruptly as the arrow must have gone into Rhisiart, stopping him instantly. Cadfael had him well in view, and saw his lips part and whisper soundlessly: “Christ aid!” What followed was most eloquent. The Saxon youth moved with loving slowness, shutting both Sioned’s hands into one of his, and with his freed right hand stroked softly over her hair, down temple and cheek and chin and throat, all with such mastered passion that she was soothed, as he meant, while he had barely stopped shaking from the shock.
He folded an arm about her, holding her close against his side, and slowly looked all round the circle of watching faces, and slowly down at the body of his lord. His face was bleakly angry.
“Who did this?”
