“My lord,” said Nicholas earnestly, “you’ll remember all I told you of the men of my lord Cruce’s household who escorted his sister to Wherwell. Three of the four we have questioned at Lai, and I am sure they have told us truth. But the fourth… and he the only one who accompanied her on the last day of her journey, the last few miles-he is no longer there, and him we must find.”
They told the whole story between them, at times in chorus, very vehemently.
“He left with her from Andover early in the morning, and the other three, who had orders to remain there, watched them away.”
“And he did not return until late evening, too late to set out for home that night. Yet Wherwell is but three or four miles from Andover.” “And he alone of those four” said Cruce fiercely, “was so deep in her confidence from old familiarity that he may well have known, must have known, the dowry she carried with her.”
“And that was?” demanded Hugh sharply. His memory was excellent. There was nothing he needed to be told twice.
“Three hundred marks in coin, and certain valuables for church use. My lord, we have had my clerk, who keeps good accounts, write a list of what she took, and here we have two copies. The one we hold you should circulate in these parts, where the man is native, and so was my sister, and the other Hamage here will carry to make known round Winchester, Wherwell and Andover, where she vanished.”
“Good!” said Hugh heartily. “The coins can never be certainly traced, but the pieces of church ornaments may.” He took the scroll Nicholas held out to him, and read with lowered and frowning brows: “Item, a pair of candlesticks of silver, made in the form of tall sconces entwined with the vine, with snuffers attached by silver chains, also ornamented with grape leaves. Item, a standing cross a man’s hand-length in height, on a silver pedestal of three steps, and studded with semi-precious stones of yellow pebble, amethyst and agate, together with a similar cross of the same metal and stones, a little finger’s length, on a thin silver neck-chain for a priest’s wear. Item, a silver pyx, small, engraved with ferns. Also certain pieces of jewellery to her belonging, as, a necklet of polished stones from the hills above Pontesbury, a bracelet of silver engraved with tendrils of vetch, and a curious ring of silver set with enamels all round, in the form of yellow and blue flowers.” He looked up. “Surely identifiable if they can be found, almost any of these. Your clerk did well. Yes, I’ll have this made known to all officers and tenants of mine here in the shire, but it seems to me that in the south they’re more likely to be traced. As for the man, if he’s native here he has kin, and may well keep in touch with them. You say he went to do fighting service?”
“Only a matter of weeks after he returned to my father’s household, yes. My father was newly dead, and the Earl of Worcester, my overlord, demanded a draft of men, and this Adam Heriet offered himself.”
“How old?” asked Hugh.
“A year or so past fifty. A strong man with sword or bow. He had been forester and huntsman to my father, Waleran would think himself lucky to get him. The rest were younger, but raw.”
“And where did this Heriet hail from? Your father’s man must belong to one of your own manors.”
“Born at Harpecote, a younger son of a free man who farmed a yardland there. His elder brother farmed it after him. A nephew has it now. They were not on good terms, or so my father said. But for all that there may be some trace of him to be picked up there.”
“Had they any other kin? And the fellow never took a wife?”
“No, he never did. I know of no others of his family, but there well may be some around Harpecote.”
“Let them be,” said Hugh decidedly. “It had best be left to me to probe there. Though I doubt if a man with no ties here will have come back to the shire, once having taken to the fighting life. More likely to be found where you’re bound for, Nicholas. Do your best!”
“I mean to,” said Nicholas grimly, and rose to be off about the work without delay. The scroll of Julian’s possessions he rolled and thrust into the breast of his coat. “I must say a word first to my lord Godfrid, and let him know I’ll not abandon this hunt while there’s a grain of hope left. Then I’m on the road!” And he was away at a fast stride that became a light, long-paced run before he was out of sight. Cruce rose in his turn, eyeing Hugh somewhat grudgingly, as if he doubted to find in him a sufficient force of vengeful fury for the undertaking.
“Then I may leave this with you, my lord? And you will pursue it vigorously?”
“I will,” said Hugh drily. “And you will be at Lai? That I may know where to find you, at need?”
Cruce went away silenced, for the time being, but none too content, and looked back from the turn of the hedge dubiously, as if he felt that the lord sheriff should already have been on horseback, or at least shaping for it, in the cause of Cruce vengeance. Hugh stared him out coolly, and watched him round the thick screen of box and disappear.
“Though I had best move speedily,” he said then, wryly smiling, “for if that one found the fellow first I would not give much for his chances of escaping a few broken bones, if not a stretched neck. And even if it may come to that in the end, it shall not be at Reginald Cruce’s hands, nor without a fair trial.” He clapped Cadfael heartily on the back, and turned to go. “Well, if it’s close season for kings and empresses, at least it gives us time to hunt the smaller creatures.”
Cadfael went to Vespers with an unquiet mind, troubled by imaginings of a girl on horseback, with silver and rough gems and coin in her saddlebags, parting from her last known companions only a few miles from her goal, and then vanishing like morning mist in the summer sun, as if she had never been. A wisp of vapour over the meadow, and then gone. If those who agonised after her, the old and the young, had known her dead and with God, they, too, could have been at peace. Now there was no peace for any man drawn into this elaborate web of uncertainty.
Among the novices and schoolboys and the child oblates, last of their kind, for Abbot Radulfus would accept no more infants into a cloistered life decreed for them by others, Rhun stood rapt and radiant, smiling as he sang. A virgin by nature and aptitude, as well as by years, untroubled by the bodily agonies that tore most men, but miraculously aware of them and tender towards them, as few are to pains that leave their own flesh unwrung.
Vespers at this time of year shone with filtered summer light, that showed Rhun’s flaxen beauty in crystalline pallor, and flashed across into the ranks of the brothers to burn in the sullen, smouldering darkness of Brother Urien, and the dilated brilliance of his black eyes, and cool into discreet shade where Brother Fidelis stood withdrawn into the shadows of the wall, alert at his lord’s elbow, with no eyes and no thought for what went on around him, as he had no voice to join in the chant. His shadowed eyes looked nowhere but at Humilis, his slight body stood braced to receive and support at any moment the even frailer form that stood lance-straight beside him.
Well, worship has its own priorities, and a duty once assumed is a duty to the end. God and Saint Benedict
