The scullion, a shock-headed young giant, his mouth firmly shut and his face equally uncommunicative under this new and untested rule, slid a glance along his shoulder at Cadfael, made an intelligent estimate of what he saw there, and uttered through motionless lips but clearly: “Best let him go, brother, if you wish him well.”
“As you do?” said Cadfael in a very similar fashion. It was a small skill, but useful on occasion.
No answer to that, but he neither expected nor needed one.
“Take heart! When the time comes, tell what you have seen.”
They reached the door of the deserted bedchamber. Cadfael opened it, the wine flask in his hand. Even in the dimming light the bed showed disordered and empty, the covers tumbled every way, the room shadowy and stark. Cadfael was tempted to drop the flask in convincing astonishment and alarm, but reflected that by and large Benedictine brothers do not respond to sudden crises by dropping things, least of all flasks of wine, and further, that he had just as good as confided in this random companion, to remove all necessity for deception. There were certainly some among Philip’s domestic household who would rejoice in his deliverance.
So neither of them exclaimed. On the contrary, they stood in mute and mutual content. The look they exchanged was eloquent, but ventured no words, in case of inconvenient ears passing too close.
“Come!” said Cadfael, springing to life. “We must report this. Bring the bucket,” he added with authority. “It’s the details that make the tale ring true.”
He led the way at a run, the wine flask still gripped in his hand, and the scullion galloping after, splashing water overboard from his bucket at every step. At the hall door Cadfael rushed almost into the arms of one of Bohun’s knights, and puffed out his news breathlessly.
“The lord marshall, is he within? I must speak to him. We’re just come from FitzRobert’s chamber. He’s not there. The bed’s empty, and the man’s gone.”
Before the marshall, the steward and half a dozen earls and barons in the great hall it made an impressive story, and engendered a satisfying uproar of fury, exasperation and suspicion; satisfying because it was also helpless. Cadfael was voluble and dismayed, and the scullion had wit enough to present a picture of idiot consternation throughout.
“My lords, I left him before noon to go out and help the chaplain with the dead. I am here only by chance, having begged some nights’ lodging, but I have some skills, and I was willing to nurse and medicine him as well as I could. When I left him he was still deep out of his senses, as he has been most of the time since he was hurt. I thought it safe to leave him. Well, my lord, you saw him yourself this morning… But when I went back to him…” He shook a disbelieving head. “But how could it happen? He was fathoms deep. I went to get wine from the buttery, and hot water to bathe him, and asked this lad to come and give me a hand to raise him. And he’s gone! Impossible he should even lift himself upright, I swear. But he’s gone! This man will tell you.”
The scullion nodded his head so long and so vigorously that his shaggy hair shook wildly over his face. “God’s truth, sirs! The bed’s empty, the room’s empty. He’s clean gone.”
“Send and see for yourself, my lord,” said Cadfael. “There’s no mistake.”
“Gone!” exploded the marshall. “How can he be gone? Was not the door locked upon him when you left him? Or someone set to keep watch?”
“My lord, I knew no reason,” said Cadfael, injured. “I tell you, he could not stir a hand or foot. And I am no servant in the household, and had no orders, my part was voluntary, and meant for healing.”
“No one doubts it, brother,” said the marshall shortly, “but there was surely something lacking in your care if he was left some hours alone. And with your skill as a physician, if you took so active a soul for mortally ill and unable to move.”
“You may ask the chaplain,” said Cadfael. “He will tell you the same. The man was out of his senses and likely to die.”
“And you believe in miracles, no doubt,” said Bohun scornfully.
“That I will not deny. And have had good cause. Your lordships might consider on that,” agreed Cadfael helpfully.
“Go question the guard on the gate,” the marshal ordered, rounding abruptly on some of his officers, “if any man resembling FitzRobert passed out among the wounded.”
“None did,” said Bohun with crisp certainty, but nevertheless waved out three of his men to confirm the strictness of the watch.
“And you, brother, come with me. Let’s view this miracle.” And he went striding out across the ward with a comet’s tail of anxious subordinates at his heels, and after them Cadfael and the scullion, with his bucket now virtually empty.
The door stood wide open as they had left it, and the room was so sparse and plain that it was scarcely necessary to step over the threshold to know that there was no one within. The heap of discarded coverings disguised the fact that the straw pallet had been removed, and no one troubled to disturb the tumbled rugs, since plainly whatever lay beneath, it was not a man’s body.
“He cannot be far,” said the marshall, whirling about as fiercely as he had flown to the proof. “He must be still within, no one can have passed the guards. We’ll have every rat out of every corner of this castle, but we’ll find him.” And in a very few minutes he had all those gathered about him dispersed in all directions. Cadfael and the scullion exchanged a glance which had its own eloquence, but did not venture on speech. The scullion, wooden- faced outwardly but gratified inwardly, departed without haste to the kitchen, and Cadfael, released from tension into the languor of relief, remembered Vespers, and refuged in the chapel.
The search for Philip was pursued with all the vigour and thoroughness the marshall had threatened, and yet at the end of it all Cadfael could not fail to wonder whether FitzGilbert was not somewhat relieved himself by the prisoner’s disappearance. Not out of sympathy for Philip, perhaps not even from disapproval of such a ferocious revenge, but because he had sense enough to realize that the act contemplated would have redoubled and prolonged the killing, and made the empress’s cause anathema even to those who had served her best. The marshall went through the motions with energy, even with apparent conviction: and after the search ended in failure, an unexpected mercy, he would have to convey the news to his imperial lady this same evening, before ever she made her ceremonial entry into La Musarderie. The worst of her venom would be spent, on those even she dared not utterly humiliate and destroy, before she came among vulnerable poor souls expendable and at her mercy.
