arms and bringing him down gently, it took some time to bring him round afterwards. They’ve carried him to the infirmary. Brother Cadfael is there with him now.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” said Hugh, checking in dismayed concern. “Then I can hardly trouble him now…” And yet, if this was one more step towards the end which Cadfael said was inevitable and daily drawing nearer, Hugh could not afford to delay any enquiry which might shed light on the fate of Julian Cruce. Humilis himself most urgently desired knowledge.
“Oh, he’s come to himself now,” said the porter, “and as much his own master-under God, the master of us all!-as ever he was. He wants to come back to his own cell in the dortoir, and says he can still fulfil all his duties a while longer here, but they’ll keep him where he is. He’s in his full wits, and has all his will. If you have word for him of any import, I would at least go and see if they’ll let you in to him.”
“They”, when it came to authority in the infirmary, meant Brother Edmund and Brother Cadfael, and their judgement would be decisive.
“Wait here!” said Hugh, making up his mind, and swung down from the saddle to stride across the court to its northwestern corner, where the infirmary stood withdrawn into the angle of the precinct wall. The two sergeants also dismounted, and stood in close and watchful attendance on their charge, though it seemed that Adam was quite prepared to brazen out whatever there was to be answered, for he sat his horse stolidly for a few moments, and then lit down and freely surrendered his bridle to the groom who had come to see to Hugh’s mount. They waited in silence, while Adam looked about the clustered buildings round the court with wary interest.
Hugh encountered Brother Edmund just emerging from the doorway of the infirmary, and put his question to him briskly. “I hear you have Brother Humilis within. Is he fit to have visitors? I have the one missing man here under guard, with luck we may start something out of him between us, before he has too much time to think out his cover and make it impregnable.”
Edmund blinked at him for a moment, hard put to it to leave his own preoccupations for another man’s. Then he said, after some hesitation: “He grows daily feebler, but he’s resting well now, and he has been fretting over this matter of the girl, feeling his own acts brought her to this. His mind is strong and determined. I think he would certainly wish to see you. Cadfael is there with him-his wound broke again when he fell, where it was newly healed, but it’s clean. Yes, go in to him.” His face said, though his lips did not utter it: “Who knows how long his time may be? An easy mind could lengthen it.”
Hugh went back to his men. “Come, we may go in.” And to the two sergeants he said: “Wait outside the door.”
He heard the familiar tones of Cadfael’s voice as soon as he entered the infirmary with Adam docile at his heels. They had not taken Brother Humilis into the open ward, but into one of the small, quiet cells apart, and the door stood open between. A cot, a stool and a small desk to support book or candle were all the furnishings, and wide-open door and small, unshuttered window let in light and air. Brother Fidelis was on his knees by the bed, supporting the sick man in his arm while Cadfael completed the bandaging of hip and groin where the frail new scar tissue had split slightly when Humilis fell. They had stripped him naked, and the cover was drawn back, but Cadfael’s solid body blocked the view of the bed from the doorway, and at the sound of feet entering Fidelis quickly drew up the sheet to the patient’s waist. So emaciated was the long body that the young man could lift it briefly on one arm, but the gaunt face showed clear and firm as ever, and the hollow eyes were bright. He submitted to being handled with a wry and patient smile, as to a salutary discipline. It was the boy who so jealously reached to conceal the ruined body from uninitiated eyes. Having drawn up the sheet, he turned to take up and shake out the clean linen shirt that lay ready, lifted it over Humilis’s head, and very adroitly helped his thin arms into the sleeves, and lifted him to smooth the folds comfortably under him. Only then did he turn and look towards the doorway.
Hugh was known and accepted, even welcomed. Humilis and Fidelis as one looked beyond him to see who followed.
From behind Hugh’s shoulder the taller stranger looked quickly from face to face, the mere flicker of a sharp glance that touched and took flight, a lightning assessment by way of taking stock of what he might have to deal with. Brother Cadfael, clearly, belonged here and was no threat, the sick man in the bed was known by repute, but the third brother, who stood close by the cot utterly still, wide eyes gleaming within the shadow of the cowl, was perhaps not so easily placed. Adam Heriet looked last and longest at Fidelis, before he lowered his eyes and composed his face into a closed book.
“Brother Edmund said we might come in,” said Hugh, “but if we tire you, turn us out. I am sorry to hear you are not so well.”
“It will be the best of medicines,” said Humilis, “if you have any better news for me. Brother Cadfael will not grudge another doctor having a say. I am not so sick, it was only a faintness-the heat gets ever more oppressive.” His voice was a little less steady than usual, and slower in utterance, but he breathed evenly, and his eyes were clear and calm. “Who is this you have brought with you?”
“Nicholas will have told you, before he left,” said Hugh,”that we have already questioned three of the four who rode as escort to the lady Julian when she left for Wherwell. This is the fourth-Adam Heriet, who went the last part of the way with her, leaving his fellows in Andover to wait for his return.”
Brother Humilis stiffened his frail body and sat upright to gaze, and Brother Fidelis kneeled and braced an arm about him, behind the supporting pillow, stooping his head into shadow behind his lord’s lean shoulder.
“Is it so? Then we know all those who guarded her now. So you,” said Humilis, urgently studying the stalwart figure and blunt, brow-bent face that stooped a sunburned forehead to him, like a challenged bull, “you must be that one they said loved her from a child.”
“So I did,” said Adam Heriet firmly.
“Tell him,” said Hugh, “how and when you last parted from the lady. Speak up, it is your story.”
Heriet drew breath long and deeply, but without any evidence of fear or stress, and told it again as he had told it to Hugh at Brigge. “She bade me go and leave her. And so I did. She was my lady, to command me as she chose. What she asked of me, that I did.”
“And returned to Andover?” asked Hugh mildly.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Scarcely in haste,” said Hugh with the same deceptive gentleness. “From Andover to Wherwell is but a few short miles, and you say you were dismissed a mile short of that. Yet you returned to Andover in the dusk, many hours later. Where were you all that time?”
There was no mistaking the icy shock that went through Adam, stopping his breath for an instant. His carefully hooded eyes rolled wide and flashed one wild glance at Hugh, then were again lowered. It took him a brief and
