Brother Cadfael, who had gone on with a little desultory weeding between his herb-beds, at a little distance, nevertheless heard all this with stretched ears and kindling blood, and straightened his back now to stare.
“And she-the empress? They have not taken her?” An empress for a king would be fair exchange, and almost inevitable, even if it meant not an ending, but stalemate, and a new beginning over the same exhausted and exhausting ground. Had Stephen been the one to capture the implacable lady, with his mad, endearing chivalry he would probably have given her a fresh horse and an escort, and sent her safely to Gloucester, to her own stronghold, but the queen was no such magnanimous idiot, and would make better use of a captive enemy.
“No, not Maud, she’s safely away. Her brother sped her off ahead with Brian FitzCount to watch over her, and stayed to rally the rearguard and hold off the pursuit. No, it’s better than Maud! He could have gone on fighting without her, but she’ll be hard put to it without him. The Flemings caught them at Stockbridge, trying to ford the river, and rounded up all those who survived. It’s the king’s match we’ve taken, the man himself, Robert of Gloucester!”
Chapter Seven.
REGINALD CRUCE, WHETHER HE HAD, OR INDEED COULD WELL BE EXPECTED to have any deep affection for a half-sister so many years distant from him and so seldom seen, was not the man to be tolerant of any affront or injury towards any of his house. Whatever touched a Cruce reflected upon him, and roused his hackles like those of a pointing hound. He heard the story out in stoic silence but ever-growing resentment and rage, the more formidable for being under steely control.
“And all this is certain?” he said at length. “Yes, the woman would know her business, surely. The girl never came there. I was not in this matter at all, I was not here and did not witness either the going or the return, but now we will see! At least I know the names of those who rode with her, for my father spoke of the journey on his deathbed. He sent his closest, men he trusted-who would not, with his daughter? And he doted on her. Wait!”
He bellowed from the hall door for his steward, and in from the fading daylight, cooling now towards dusk, came a grey elder dried and tanned like old leather, but very agile and sinewy. He might have been older than the lord he had lost, and was in no awe of either father or son here, but plainly master of his own duties, and aware of his worth. He spoke as an equal, and easy in the relationship.
“Arnulf, you’ll remember,” said Reginald, waving him to a seat at the table with them, as free in acknowledgement of the association as his man, “when my sister went off to her convent, the lads my father sent off with her-the Saxon brothers, Wulfric and Renfred, and John Bonde, and the other, who was he? He went off with the draft, I know, soon after I came here…”
“Adam Heriet,” said the steward readily, and drew across the board the horn his lord filled for him. “Yes, what of them?”
“I want them, Arnulf, all of them-here.”
“Now, my lord?” If he was surprised, he took surprises in his stride.
“Now, or as soon as may be. But first, all these were of my father’s close household, you knew them better than ever I did. Would you count them trustworthy?”
“Out of question,” said the steward without hesitation, in a voice as dry and tough as his hide. “Bonde is a simpleton, or little better, but a hard worker and open as the day. The Saxon pair are clever and subtle, but clever enough to know when they have a good lord, and loyal enough to be grateful for him. Why?”
“And the other, Heriet? Him I hardly knew. That was when Earl Waleran demanded my service of men in arms, and I sent him whatever offered, and this Heriet put himself forward. They told me he was restless because my sister was gone from the manor. He was a favourite of hers, so I heard, and fretted for her.”
“That could be true,” said Arnulf the steward. “Certainly he was never the same after he came back from that journey. Such girl children can worm their way into a man and get at his heart. So she may have done with him. If you’ve known them from the cradle, they work deep into your marrow.”
Reginald nodded dourly. “Well, he went. Twenty men my overlord asked of me, and twenty men he got. It was about the time he had that contention of his against the bishops, and needed reinforcements. Well, wherever he may be now, Heriet is out of our reach. But the rest are all here?”
“The Saxon pair in the stable loft this minute. Bonde should be coming in about this time from the fields.”
“Bring them,” said Reginald. And to Nicholas he said, when the steward had drained his horn and departed down the stone stair into the court as nimbly and rapidly as a youth of twenty: “Wherever I look among these four, I can see no treachery. Why should they return, if they had somehow betrayed her? And why should they do so, any man of them? Arnulf says right, they knew they had the softest of beds here, my father was of the old, paternal, household kind, easier far than I, and I am not hated.” He was well aware, to judge by the sharp smile and curl of the lip, yellow-outlined in the low lamplight, of all the tensions that still bound and burned between Saxon and Norman, and was too intelligent to strain them too far. In the countryside memories were very long, and loyalties with them, hard to displace, slow to replace.
“Your steward is Saxon,” said Nicholas drily.
“So he is! And content! Or if not content,” said Reginald, at once dour and bright in the intimate light, “at least aware of worse, worse by far. I have benefited by my father’s example, I know when to bend. But where my sister is concerned, I tell you, I feel my spine stiffen.”
So did Nicholas, as stiff as if the marrow there had petrified into stone. And he viewed the three hinds, when they came marshalled sleepily up the steps into the hall, with the same blank, opaque eyes as did their master. Two long, fair fellows surely no more than thirty years old, with all the lean grace of their northern kin and eyes that caught the light in flashes of pale, blinding blue, and a softer, squat, round-faced man, perhaps a little older, bearded and brown.
It might be true enough, thought Nicholas, watching them, that they had no hate for their lord, but rather reckoned themselves lucky by comparison with many of their kind, now for the third generation subject to Norman masters. But for all that, they went in awe of Reginald, and any such summons as this, outside the common order of their labouring day, brought them to questioning alert and wary, their faces closed, like a lid shut down over a box of thoughts that might not all be acceptable to authority. But it was different when they understood the subject of their lord’s enquiry. The shut faces opened and eased. It was clear to Nicholas that none of these three felt he had any reason for uneasiness concerning that journey, rather they recalled it with pleasure, as well they might, the one carefree pilgrimage, the one holiday of their lives, when they rode instead of going afoot, and went well- provided and in the pride of arms.
Yes, of course they remembered it. No, they had had no trouble by the way. A lady accompanied by two good
