hopefully, not if she had already sent word of her coming ahead to Wherwell. Surely a girl intending to take the veil must advance her plea and be sure of acceptance before venturing on the journey south. But if she had done so, then there would have been wonder at her failure to arrive, and rapid enquiry, and the prioress, had there ever been letters or a courier from Julian Cruce, would have known and remembered the name. No, she could not have bargained beforehand. She had taken her dowry and simply gone to knock on the door and ask admittance. He had not the experience in such matters to know if that was very unusual, nor the cynicism to reflect that it would hardly be refused if the portion brought was large enough.
“This man Heriet will have to be found,” said Nicholas, making up his mind. “If he’s still serving with Waleran of Meulan, then I may be able to find him. Waleran is the king’s man. If not, he’ll be far to seek, but what other choice have we? He’s native in this shire, is he? If he has kin, they’ll be here?”
“He’s second son to a free tenant at Harpecote. Why, what are you thinking?”
“That you’d best have your clerk make two copies of the list of what your sister took with her when she left. The money can’t be traced and known, but it may be the valuables can. Have him describe them fully if he can. Plate meant for church use may turn up on sale or be noted somewhere, so may gems. I’ll have the list circulated round Winchester-if the bishop’s well rid of his empress he may know now where his interest lies!-and try to find Adam Heriet among Meulan’s companies, or get word when and how he left them. You do as much here, where if he has kin he may some day visit. Can you think of anything better? Or anything more we can undertake?”
Reginald heaved himself up from the table, making the flame of the lamp gutter. A big, black-avised, affronted man, with a face grimly set. “That’s well reasoned, and we’ll do it. Tomorrow I’ll have him copy the items-he’s a finicky little fellow who has everything at his finger-ends-and I’ll ride with you to Shrewsbury and see Hugh Beringar, and have this matter in train before the day’s out. If this or any villain has done murder and robbery against my house, I want justice and I want restitution.”
Nicholas rose with his host, and went to the bed prepared for him so weary that he could not fail to sleep. So did he want justice. But what was justice in this matter? He planned and thought as one following a trail, he must pursue it with all his powers, having nothing else left to attempt, but he could not and would not believe in it. What he wanted above everything else in the world was a breath of some fresh breeze, blowing from another quarter, suggesting that she was not dead, that all this coil of suspicion and cupidity and treachery was false, a mere appearance, to be blown away when the morning came. But the morning came, and nothing was new, and nothing changed.
Thus two who had only one quest in common, and nothing besides to make them allies, rode together back into Shrewsbury, armed with two well-scripted copies of the valuables and money Julian Cruce had carried with her as her dowry on entering the cloister.
Hugh had come down from the town to dine with Abbot Radulfus, and acquaint him with the latest developments in the political tangle that was England. The flight of the empress back into her western stronghold, the scattering of a great part of her forces, and the capture of Earl Robert of Gloucester, without whom she was impotent, must transform the whole pattern of events, though its first effect was to freeze them from any action at all. The abbot might not have any interest in factional strife, but he was entitled to the mitre and a place in the great council of the country, and the welfare of people and church was very much his business. They had conferred a long time over the abbot’s well-furnished table, and it was mid-afternoon when Hugh came looking for Cadfael in the herb-garden.
“You’ll have heard? The word that Nicholas Harnage brought me yesterday? He said he had come here first, to his lord. Robert of Gloucester is penned up in Rochester a prisoner, and everything has halted while both sides think on what comes next-we, how best to make use of him, they, how to survive without him.” Hugh sat down on the stone bench in the shade, and spread his booted feet comfortably. “Now comes the argument. And she had better order the king loosed from his chains, or Robert may find himself tethered, too.”
“I doubt if she’ll see it so,” said Cadfael, pausing to lean on his hoe and pluck out a wisp of weed from between his neat, aromatic beds. “More than ever, Stephen is her only weapon now. She’ll try to exact the highest possible price for him, her brother will scarcely be enough to satisfy her.”
Hugh laughed. “Robert himself takes the same line, by young Hamage’s account. He refuses to consider an exchange for the king, says he’s no fair match for a monarch, and to balance it fitly we must turn loose all the rearguard that were taken with him, to make up Stephen’s weight in the scale. But wait a while! If the empress argues in the same way now, within a month wiser men will have shown her she can do nothing, nothing at all, without Robert. London will never let her enter again, much less get within reach of the crown, and for all she has Stephen in a dungeon, he is still king.”
“It’s Robert they’ll have trouble persuading,” Cadfael reasoned.
“Even he will have to see the truth in the end. If she is to continue her fight, it can only be with Robert beside her. They’ll convince him. Reluctant as they all may be to loose their hold on him, we shall have Stephen back before the year’s end.”
They were still there together in the garden when Nicholas and Reginald Cruce, having enquired in vain for Hugh at the castle, as they entered the town, and again at Hugh’s house by Saint Mary’s church, as they passed through, followed the directions given by his porter, and came purposefully hunting for him at the abbey. At the sound of their boots on the gravel, and the sight of them rounding the box hedge, Hugh rose alertly to meet them.
“You’re back in good time. What news?” And to the second man he said, eyeing him with interest: “I have not enjoyed your acquaintance until now, sir, but you are surely the lord of Lai. Nicholas here has told me how things stood at Wherwell. You’re welcome to whatever service I can offer. And what now?”
“My lord sheriff,” said Cruce loudly and firmly, as one accustomed to setting the pace for others to follow, “in the matter of my sister there’s ground for suspicion of robbery and murder, and I want justice.”
“So do all decent men, and so do I. Sit down here, and let me hear what grounds you have for such suspicions, and where the finger points. I grant you the matter looks ugly enough. Let me know what you’ve found at home to add to it.”
It was over-hot in the afternoon sun, and even in shirtsleeves Cruce was sweating freely. They moved back into the shade, and there sat down together, and Cadfael, hospitable in his own domain, and by no means inclined to be ousted from it in the middle of his work, went instead to bring a pitcher of wine from his workshop, and beakers for their use. He served them and went aside, but not so far that he did not hear what passed. All that had gone before he already knew, and on certain points his curiosity was already pricked into wakefulness, and foresaw circumstances in which he might yet be needed. His patient fretted over the girl, and could not afford further fraying away of what little flesh he had. Cadfael clove to his fellow-crusader in a solidarity of shared experience and mutual respect. One of those few, like Guimar de Massard, who came clean and chivalrous out of a very deformed and marred holy war. And however gradually, dying of it. Whatever concerned his welfare, body or soul, Cadfael wanted to know.
