slowly, obeying orders trustfully, and melted into the dark corner to flatten himself against the wall, while Cadfael climbed the steps to lean into an embrasure between the merlons of the wall and peer out towards the scattered sparkle of fires, out there among the trees. The watchman, reaching this end of his patrol, lingered to lean beside him and share his speculations for a moment, and when he resumed his march back to the distant tower, Cadfael went with him. Yves, listening below, heard their two low voices recede gradually. As soon as he felt they should be sufficiently distant, he crept hastily up the steps and flung himself through the embrasure, to flatten himself on the floor of the brattice under a merlon. He was at the end of the gallery, the gnarled black branches and twisted tendrils of the vine leaned inward over him, but he did not dare to rise and haul himself in among them until the guard had made one more turn, and again departed, leaving Cadfael to descend to the ward and seek his bed for what remained of the night.
Above Yves’ head the familiar voice said very softly: “He’s away. Go now!”
Yves rose and heaved himself over the parapet and into the sinewy coils of the vine, and began to let himself down cautiously towards the ground far below. And Cadfael, when the boy had vanished, and the first shaking and rustling of the branches had subsided, descended the steps to the ward, and went to look for Philip.
Philip had made the rounds of his defences alone, and found them as complete as he had the means to make them. This assault came early, young Hugonin must have been uncommonly persuasive, and the empress unusually well provided with men and arms, or he would have had more time to prepare. No matter, it would be decided the sooner.
He was on the walk above the gate when Cadfael found him, looking down upon the open causeway by which, in the early morning, the first challenger would approach under flag of truce.
“You, brother?” he said, turning a mildly surprised face. “I thought you would have been sleeping hours ago.”
“This is no night for sleeping,” said Cadfael, “until all’s done that needs to be done. And there is yet something needed, and I am here to see it done. My lord Philip, I have to tell you, and take it in earnest, for so it is, that the empress’s mind against you is deadly. Yves Hugonin has brought all this host down upon you to deliver his friend and kinsman. But not she! She is here, not even to take a castle, though she must do that first. She is here to take a man. And when she has you, she means to hang you.”
There was a silence. Philip stood gazing eastward, where the first grey blanching of the day would come, before dawn. At length he said quietly: “Her mind I never doubted. Tell me, if you know so much, brother, is that also my father’s mind towards me?”
“Your father,” said Cadfael, “is not here in arms. He does not know her army has moved, and she will take good care he does not find out, not until all is over. Your father is in Hereford with Earl Roger. For once she has moved without him. For good reason. She sees her chief enemy within her grasp. She is here to destroy you. And since she goes to such pains to keep this from him,” said Cadfael, his voice detached and mild, “it would seem that she, at any rate, is by no means certain of his mind towards you.”
A second silence fell between them. Then Philip said, without turning his head: “I knew her well enough to be out of reach now of surprise. I looked for nothing better, should it ever come to this. I made her of none account when I turned to the king, that is true, though less true, or only partial truth, that I turned against her. She was of none effect, that was the heart of it. And here, if not in Normandy, Stephen was and is in the ascendant. If he can win, as she could not, and put an end to this chaos and waste, let as many coats turn as may be needed to bring it about. Any end that will let men live, and till their fields, and ride the roads and ply their trades in safety, is to be desired above any monarch’s right and triumph. My father,” he said, “determined the way I went. As lief Stephen as Maud, to me, if he can enforce order. But I understand her rage. I grant her every fibre of her grudge against me. She has a right to hate me, and I’ll abide her hate.”
It was the first time he had spoken thus freely, temperately, without regret or penitence.
“If you have believed me,” said Cadfael, “that she means your shameful death, that is my mission done. If you know the whole truth, you can dispose yourself to meet it. She has an eye to gain, as well as to revenge. If you choose, you could bargain.”
“There are things I will not trade,” said Philip, and turned his head, and smiled.
“Then hear me yet a moment,” said Cadfael. “You have spoken of the empress. Now speak to me of Olivier.”
The dark head turned sharply away again. Philip stood mute, staring eastward, where there was nothing to see, unless his own mind peopled the darkness.
“Then I will speak of him,” said Cadfael. “I know my son. He is of a simpler mode than you, you asked too much of him. I think you had shared many dangerous moments with him, that you had come to rely on each other and value each other. And when you changed course, and he could not go with you, the severance was doubly bitter, for each of you felt that the other had failed him. All he saw was treason, and what you saw was a failure of understanding that was equally a betrayal.”
“It is your story, brother,” said Philip with recovered serenity, “not mine.”
“There is as sharp a point to it as to a dagger,” said Cadfael. “You do not grudge the empress her resentment. Why can you not extend the same justice to my son?”
He got no answer from Philip, but he needed none; he already knew. Olivier had been dearly loved. The empress never had.
Chapter Twelve.
THE EXPECTED embassage came with the dawn, and it was the marshall who brought it. The party appeared out of the woods, taking to the open causeway to be seen as soon as they left cover: a knight with a white pennant before, then FitzGilbert with three attendant officers at his back, not in mail or showing weapons, to indicate clearly that at this moment they intended no threat and expected none. Philip, roused from his brief sleep as soon as they were sighted, came out to the guardwalk over the gate, between the two towers, to receive them.
Cadfael, below in the ward, listened to the exchange from the doorway of the hall. The stillness within the walls was like the hush before storm, as every man halted and froze to hear the more clearly; not from fear, rather with a piercing tremor of excitement, many times experienced and by now customary and almost welcome.
“FitzRobert,” called the marshall, halted some yards from the closed gates, the better to look up at the man he challenged, “open your gates to her Grace the empress, and receive her envoy.”
“Do your errand from there,” said Philip. “I hear you very well.”
