“You’ve heard from Leicester?” Cadfael eyed him thoughtfully from the threshold. “Earl Robert Bossu keeps in touch? He views you as one of his hopefuls, Hugh, if he’s keeping that road open. What’s he about now?”
“Not he, so much, though he’ll be in it to the throat, whether he quite believes in it or not. No, it’s certain of the bishops have made the first move, but there’ll be some voices on either side, like Leicester’s, to back their efforts.”
Hugh sat down with him under the dangling bunches of drying herbs, stirring fragrantly along the beams in the draught from the open door, and told him of the proposed meeting at Coventry, of the safe conducts already being issued on either part, and of such prospects as existed of at any rate partial success.
“God he knows if either of them will so much as shift a foot. Stephen is exalted at having got Chester on his side, and Gloucester’s own son into the bargain, but Maud knows her menfolk have made very sure of Normandy, and that will sway some of our barons who have lands over there to safeguard, as well as here. I can see more and more of the wiser sort paying mouth allegiance still, but making as little move in the martial kind as they can contrive. But by all means let’s make the attempt. Roger de Clinton can be a powerful persuader when he’s in good earnest, and he’s in good earnest now, for his real quarry is the Atabeg Zenghi in Mosul, and his aim the recovery of Edessa. And Henry of Winchester will surely add his weight to the scale. Who knows? I’ve primed the abbot,” said Hugh dubiously, “but I doubt if the bishops will call on the monastic arm, they’d rather keep the reins in their own hands.”
“And how does this, however welcome and however dubious, concern me closely?” Cadfael wondered.
“Wait, there’s more.” He was carrying it carefully, for such news is brittle. He watched Cadfael’s face anxiously as he asked: “You’ll recall what happened in the summer at Robert of Gloucester’s newly built castle of Faringdon? When Gloucester’s younger son turned his coat, and his castellan gave over the castle to the king?”
“I remember,” said Cadfael. “The men-at-arms had no choice but to change sides with him, their captains having sealed the surrender. And Cricklade went over with Philip, intact to a man.”
“But many of the knights in Faringdon,” said Hugh with deliberation, “refused the treason, and were overpowered and disarmed. Stephen handed them out to various of his allies, new and old, but I suspect the new did best out of it, and got the fattest prizes, to fix them gratefully in their new loyalty. Well, Leicester has been employing his agents round Oxford and Malmesbury to good effect, to ferret out the list of those made prisoner, and discover to whom they were given. Some have been bought out already, briskly enough. Some are on offer, and for prices high enough to sell very profitably. But there’s one name, known to have been there, listed with no word of who holds him, and has not been seen or heard of since Faringdon fell. I doubt if the name means anything to Robert Bossu, more than the rest. But it does to me, Cadfael.” He had his friend’s full and wary attention; the tone of his voice, carefully moderate, was a warning rather than a reassurance. “And will to you.”
“Not offered for ransom,” said Cadfael, reckoning the odds with careful moderation in return, “and held very privately. It argues a more than ordinary animosity. That will be a price that comes high. Even if he will take a price.”
“And in order to pay what may be asked,” said Hugh ruefully, “Laurence d’Angers, so Leicester’s agent says, has been enquiring for him everywhere without result. That name would be known to the earl, though not the names of the young men of his following. I am sorry to bring such news. Olivier de Bretagne was in Faringdon. And now Olivier de Bretagne is prisoner, and God knows where.”
After the silence, a shared pause for breath and thought, and the mutual rearrangement of the immediate concerns that troubled them both, Cadfael said simply: “He is a young man like other young men. He knows the risks. He takes them with open eyes. What is there to be said for one more than the rest?”
“But this was a risk, I fancy, that he could not foresee. That Gloucester’s own son should turn against him! And a risk Olivier was least armed to deal with, having so little conception of treachery. I don’t know, Cadfael, how long he had been among the garrison, or what the feeling was among the young knights there. It seems many of them were with Olivier. The castle was barely completed, Philip filled it and wanted it defended well, and when it lay under siege Robert failed to lift a finger to save it. There’s bitterness there. But Leicester will go on trying to find them all, to the last man. And if we’re all to meet soon at Coventry, at least there may be agreement on a release of prisoners on both sides. We shall all be pressing for it, men of goodwill from both factions.”
“Olivier ploughs his own furrow, and cuts his own swathe,” said Cadfael, staring eastward through the timber wall before him, far eastward into drought and sand and sun, and the glittering sea along the shores of the Frankish kingdom of Jerusalem, now menaced and in arms. The fabled world of Outremer, once familiar to him, where Olivier de Bretagne had grown up to choose, in young manhood, the faith of his unknown father. “I doubt,” said Cadfael slowly, “any prison can hold him long. I am glad you have told me, Hugh. Bring me word if you get any further news.”
But the voice, Hugh thought when he left his friend, was not that of a man fully confident of a good ending, nor the set of the face indicative of one absolute in faith and prepared to sit back and leave all either to Olivier or to God.
When Hugh was gone, with his own cares to keep him fully occupied, and his errand in friendship faithfully discharged, Cadfael damped down his brazier with turves, closed his workshop, and went away to the church. There was an hour yet to Vespers. Brother Winfrid was still methodically digging over a bed cleared of beans, to leave it to the frosts of the coming winter to crumble and refine. A thin veil of yellowed leaves still clung to the trees, and the roses were grown tall and leggy, small, cold buds forming at the tips, buds that would never open. In the vast, dim quiet of the church Cadfael made amicable obeisance to the altar of Saint Winifred, as to an intimate but revered friend, but for once hesitated to burden her with a charge for another man, and one even she might find hard to understand. True, Olivier was half Welsh, but that, hand in hand with all that was passionately Syrian in his looks and thoughts and principles, might prove even more confusing to her. So the only prayer he made to her was made without words, in the heart, offering affection in a gush of tenderness like the smoke of incense. She had forgiven him so much, and never shut him out. And this same year she had suffered flood and peril and contention, and come back safely to a deserved rest. Why disturb its sweetness with a trouble which belonged all to himself?
So he took his problem rather to the high altar, directly to the source of all strength, all power, all faithfulness, and for once he was not content to kneel, but prostrated himself in a cross on the cold flags, like an offender presenting his propitiatory body at the end of penance, though the offence he contemplated was not yet committed, and with great mercy and understanding on his superior’s part might not be necessary. Nevertheless, he professed his intent now, in stark honesty, and besought rather comprehension than forgiveness. With his forehead chill against the stone he discarded words to present his compulsion, and let thoughts express the need that found him lucid but inarticulate. This I must do, whether with a blessing or a ban. For whether I am blessed or banned is of no consequence, provided what I have to do is done well.
At the end of Vespers he asked audience of Abbot Radulfus, and was admitted. In the private parlour they sat down together.
“Father, I believe Hugh Beringar has acquainted you with all that he has learned in letters from the Earl of
