A good girl, Cadfael thought, translating this for Robert’s benefit rather less than for John’s. Clever enough to step resolutely round any actual lies even when she was thus wrung by one disaster after another, and generous enough to mink for the wants and wishes of others. The someone else who would be charged with seeing Brother John decently housed and fed was standing cheek to cheek with her mistress as she spoke, fair head against dark head. A formidable pair! But they might not have found this unexpected and promising path open to them but for the innocence of celibate parish priests.
“That may be the best plan,” said Prior Robert, chilly but courteous, “and I thank you for your dutiful offer, daughter. Keep him straitly, see he has what he needs for life, but no more. He is in great peril of his soul, his body may somewhat atone. If you permit, we will go before and bestow him securely, and let your uncle know what has happened, so that he may send down to you and bring you home. I will not intrude longer on a house of mourning.”
“I will show you the way,” said Annest, stepping demurely from Sioned’s side.
“Hold him fast!” warned the prior, as they massed to follow her uphill through the woods. Though he might have seen for himself, had he looked closely, mat the culprit’s resignation had mellowed into something very like complacency, and he stepped out as briskly as his guards, a good deal more intent on keeping Annest’s slender waist and lime shoulders in sight than on any opportunity for escape.
Well, thought Cadfael, letting them go without him, and turning to meet Sioned’s steady gaze, God sort all! As doubtless he is doing, now as ever!
The men of Gwytherin cut young branches and made a green litter to carry Rhisiart’s body home. Under the corpse, when they lifted it, there was much more blood than about the frontal wound, though the point of the arrow barely broke through skin and clothing. Cadfael would have liked to examine tunic and wound more closely, but forbore because Sioned was there beside him, stiffly erect in her stony grief, and nothing, no word or act that was not hieratic and ceremonial, was permissible then in her presence. Moreover, soon all the servants of Rhisiart’s household came down in force to bring their lord home, while the steward waited at the gate with bards and mourning women to welcome him back for the last time, and this was no longer an enquiry into guilt, but the first celebration of a great funeral rite, in which probing would have been indecent. No hope of enquiring further tonight. Even Prior Robert had acknowledged that he must remove himself and his fellows reverently from a mourning community in which they had no rights.
When it was time to raise the litter and its burden, now stretched out decently with his twisted legs drawn out straight and his hands laid quietly at his sides, Sioned looked round for one more to whom she meant to confide a share in this honourable load. She did not find him.
“Where is Peredur? What became of him?”
No one had seen him go, but he was gone. No one had had attention to spare for him after Brother John had completed what Peredur had begun. He had slipped away without a word, as though he had done something to be ashamed of, something for which he might expect blame rather than thanks. Sioned was a little hurt, even in her greater hurt, at his desertion.
“I thought he would have wanted to help me bring my father home. He was a favourite with him, and fond of him. From a little boy he was in and out of our house like his own.”
“He maybe doubted his welcome,” said Cadfael, “after saying a word that displeased you concerning Engelard.”
“And doing a thing afterwards that more than wiped that out?” she said, but for his ears only. No need to say outright before everyone what she knew very well, that Peredur had contrived a way out for her lover. “No, I don’t understand why he should slink away without a word, like this.” But she said no more then, only begged him with a look to walk with her as she fell in behind the litter. They went some distance in silence. Then she asked, without looking aside at him: “Did my father yet tell you those things he had to tell?”
“Some,” said Cadfael. “Not all.”
“Is there anything I should do, or not do? I need to know. We must make him seemly tonight.” By the morrow he would be stiff, and she knew it. “If you need anything from me, tell me now.”
“Keep me the clothes he’s wearing, when you take them off him, and take note for me where they’re damp from this morning’s rain, and where they’re dry. If you notice anything strange, remember it. Tomorrow, as soon as I can, I’ll come to you.”
“I must know the truth,” she said. “You know why.”
“Yes, I know. But tonight sing him and drink to him, and never doubt but he’ll hear the singing.”
“Yes,” she said, and loosed a great, renewing sigh. “You are a good man. I’m glad you’re here. You do not believe it was Engelard.”
“I’m as good as certain it was not. First and best, it isn’t in him. Lads like Engelard hit out in passion, but with their fists, not with weapons. Second, if it had been in his scope, he’d have made a better job of it. You saw the angle of the arrow. Engelard, I judge, is the breadth of three fingers taller than your father. How could he shoot an arrow under a man’s rib-cage who is shorter than he, even from lower ground? Even if he kneeled or crouched in the undergrowth in ambush, I doubt if it could be done. And why should it ever be tried? No, this is folly. And to say that the best shot in all these parts could not put his shaft clean through his man, at any distance there where he could see him? Not more than fifty yards clear in any direction. Worse folly still, why should a good bowman choose such a blind tangled place? They have not looked at the ground, or they could not put forward such foolishness. But first and last and best, that young man of yours is too open and honest to kill by stealth, even a man he hated. And he did not hate Rhisiart. You need not tell me, I know it.”
Much of what he had said might well have been hurtful to her, but none of it was. She went with him every step of that way, and flushed and wanned into her proper, vulnerable girlhood at hearing her lover thus accepted.
“You’ve said no word in wonder,” she said, “mat I have not been more troubled over what has become of Engelard, and where he is gone to earth now.”
“No,” said Cadfael, and smiled. “You know where he is, and how to get in touch with him whenever you need. I think you two have two or three places better for secrecy than your oak tree, and in one of them Engelard is resting now, or soon will be. You seem to think he’ll be safe enough. Tell me nothing, unless you need a messenger, or help.”
“You can be my messenger, if you will, to another,” she said. They were emerging from the forest at the edge of Rhisiart’s home fields, and Prior Robert stood tall and grim and noncommittal aside from their path, his companions discreetly disposed behind him, his hands, features, and the angle of his gently bowed head all disposed to convey respect for death and compassion for the bereaved without actually owning to forgiveness of the
