rattled round a sky dark as midnight, and lightnings flickered, drawing the peals ever closer after them. The horse was unhappy but well-trained, and pressed on obedient but quivering with fear.
The gates of Hugh’s courtyard stood open, there was a degree of shelter under the lee of the house, and as soon as hooves were heard on the cobbles the hall door opened, and a groom came haring across from the stables to take the horse to cover. Aline stood peering anxiously out into the murky gloom, and beckoned the traveller in.
“Before you drown, sir,” she said, all concern, as Nicholas plunged into the shelter of the doorway and let fall his streaming cloak, to avoid bringing it within. They stood looking earnestly at each other, for the light was too dim for instant recognition. Then she tilted her head, recaptured a memory, and smiled. “You are Nicholas Harnage! You came here with Hugh, when first you came to Shrewsbury. I remember now. Forgive such a slow welcome back, but I am not used to midnight in the afternoon. Come within, and let me find you some dry clothes-though I fear Hugh’s will be a tight fit for you.”
He was warmed by her candour and kindness, but it could not divert him from the black intensity of his purpose here. He looked beyond her, where Constance hovered, clutching her tyrant Giles firmly by the hand, for fear he should mistake the deluge for a new amusement, and dart out into it.
“The lord sheriff is not here? I must see him as soon as may be. I bring grim news.”
“Hugh is at the castle, but he’ll come by evening. Can it not wait? At least until this storm blows by. It cannot last long.”
No, he could not wait. He would go on the rest of the way, fair or foul. He thanked her, almost ungraciously in his preoccupation, swung the wet cloak about him again, took back his horse from the groom, and was off again at a trot towards the High Cross. Aline sighed, shrugged, and went in, closing the door on the chaos without. Grim news! What could that mean? Something to do with King Stephen and Robert of Gloucester? Had the attempts at an exchange foundered? Or was it something to do with that young man’s personal quest? Aline knew the bare bones of the story, and felt a mild, rueful interest-a girl set free by her affianced husband, a favoured squire sent to tell her so, and too modest or too sensitive to pursue at once the attraction he felt towards her on his own account. Was the girl alive or dead? Better to know, once for all, than to go on tormented by uncertainty. But surely ‘grim news’ could only mean the worst.
Nicholas reached the High Cross, spectral through the streaming rain, and turned down the slight slope towards the castle, and the broad ramp to the gatehouse. Water lay ankle-deep in the outer ward, draining off far too slowly to keep pace with the flood. A sergeant leaned out from the guard-room, and called the stranger within.
“The lord sheriff? He’s in the hall. If you bear round into the inner ward close to the wall you’ll escape the worst. I’ll have your horse stabled. Or wait a while here in the dry, if you choose, for this can’t last for ever…”
But no, he could not wait. The ring burned in his pouch, and the acid bitterness in his mind. He must get his tale at once to the ears of authority, and his teeth into the throat of Adam Heriet. He dared not stop hating, or the remaining grief became more than he could stand. He bore down on Hugh in the huge dark hall with the briefest of greetings and the most abrupt of challenges, an unkempt apparition, his wet brown hair plastered to forehead and temples, and water streaking his face.
“My lord, I’m back from Winchester, with plain proof Julian is dead and her goods made away with long ago. And we must leave all else and turn every man you have here and I can raise in the south, to hunt down Adam Heriet. It was his doing-Heriet and his hired murderer, some footpad paid for his work with the price of Julian’s jewellery. Once we lay hands on him, he won’t be able to deny it. I have proof, I have witnesses that he said himself she was dead!”
“Come, now!” said Hugh, his eyes rounding. “That’s a large enough claim. You’ve been a busy man in the south, I see, but so have we here. Come, sit, and let’s have the full story. But first, let’s have those wet clothes off you, and find you a man who matches, before you catch your death.” He shouted for the servants, and sent them running for towels and coats and hose.
“No matter for me,” protested Nicholas feverishly, catching at his arm. “What matters is the proof I have, that fits only one man, to my mind, and he going free, and God knows where…”
“Ah, but Nicholas, if it’s Adam Heriet you’re after, then you need fret no longer. Adam Heriet is safe behind a locked door here in the castle, and has been for a matter of days.”
“You have him? You found Heriet? He’s taken?” Nicholas drew deep and vengeful breath, and heaved a great sigh.
“We have him, and he’ll keep. He has a sister married to a craftsman in Brigge, and was visiting his kin like any honest man. Now he’s the sheriff’s guest, and stays so until we have the rights of it, so no more sweat for him.”
“And have you got any part of it out of him? What has he said?”
“Nothing to the purpose. Nothing an honest man might not have said in his place.”
“That shall change,” said Nicholas grimly, and allowed himself to notice his own sodden condition for the first time, and to accept the use of the small chamber provided him, and the clothes put at his disposal. But he was half into his tale before he had dried his face and his tousled hair and shrugged his way into dry garments.
“… never a trace anywhere of the church ornaments, which should be the most notable if ever they were marketed. And I was in two minds whether it was worth enquiring further, when the man’s wife came in, and I knew the ring she was wearing for Julian’s. No, that’s to press it too far, I know-say rather I saw that it fitted only too well the description we had of Julian’s. You remember? Enamelled all round with flowers in yellow and blue…”
“I have the whole register by heart,” said Hugh drily.
“Then you’ll see why I was so sure. I asked where she got it, and she said it was brought into the shop for sale along with two other pieces of jewellery, by a man about fifty years old. Three years back, on the twentieth day of August, for that was the day of her birth, and she asked the ring as a present, and got it from her husband. And the other two pieces, both sold since, they described to me as a necklace of polished stones and a silver bracelet engraved with sprays of vetch or pease. Three such, and all together! They could only be Julian’s.”
Hugh nodded emphatic agreement to that. “And the man?”
“The description the woman gave me fits what little I have been told of Adam Heriet, for till now I have not seen him. Fifty years old, tanned from living outdoor like forester or huntsman… You have seen him, you know more. Brown-bearded she said and balding, a face of oak… Is that in tune?”
