and strongly banded, the few valuable ornaments of the altar and the house. At least it should be made as difficult as possible to pillage this modest church.
‘You have not looked out to see how the men progress?’ said Sister Magdalen mildly. ‘It seems we have one ally more than we knew. There’s a young Welshman of your acquaintance and mine hard at work out there with John Miller. A change of allegiance for him, but by the look of him he relishes this cause more than when he came the last time.’ Melicent turned to stare, her eyes very wide and solemn. ‘He?’ she said, in a voice brittle and low. ‘He was prisoner in the castle. How can he be here?’ ‘Plainly he has slipped his collar. And been through a bog or two on his way here,’ said Sister Magdalen placidly, ‘by the state of his boots and hose, and I fancy fallen in at least one by his dirty face.’ ‘But why make this way? If he broke loose… what is he doing here?’ demanded Melicent feverishly.
‘By all the signs he’s making ready to do battle with his own countrymen. And since I doubt if he remembers me warmly enough to break out of prison in order to fight for me,’ said Sister Magdalen with a small, reminiscent smile, ‘I take it he’s concerned with your safety. But you may ask him by leaning over the fence.’ ‘No!’ said Melicent in sharp recoil, and closed down the lid of the coffer with a clash. ‘I have nothing to say to him.’ And she folded her arms and hugged herself tightly as if cold, as if some traitor part of her might break away and scuttle furtively into the garden.
‘Then if you’ll give me leave,’ said Sister Magdalen serenely, ‘I think I have.’ And out she went, between newly, dug beds and first salad sowings in the enclosed garden, to mount the stone block that made her tall enough to look over the fence. And suddenly there was Elis ap Cynan almost nose to nose with her, stretching up to peer anxiously within. Soiled and strung and desperately in earnest, he looked so young that she, who had never borne children, felt herself grandmotherly rather than merely maternal. The boy recoiled, startled, and blinked as he recognised her. He flushed beneath the greenish smear the marsh had left across his cheek and brow, and reached a pleading hand to the crest of the fence between them.
‘Sister, is she, is Melicent within there?’ ‘She is, safe and well,’ said Sister Magdalen, ‘and with God’s help and yours, and the help of all the other stout souls busy on our account like you, safe she’ll remain. How you got here I won’t enquire, boy, but whether let out or broken out you’re very welcome.’ ‘I wish to God,’ said Elis fervently,’that she was back in Shrewsbury this minute.’ ‘So do I, but better here than astray in between. And besides, she won’t go.’ ‘Does she know,’ he asked humbly,’that I am here?’ ‘She does, and what you’re about, too.’ ‘Would she not, could you not persuade her?, to speak to me?’ ‘That she refuses to do. But she may think the more,’ said Sister Magdalen encouragingly. ‘If I were you, I’d let her alone to think the while. She knows you’re here to fight for us, there’s matter for thought there. Now you’d best go to ground soon and keep in cover. Go and sharpen whatever blade they’ve found for you and keep yourself whole. These flurries never take long,’ she said, resigned and tolerant, ‘but what comes after lasts a lifetime, yours and hers. You take care of Elis ap Cynan, and I’ll take care of Melicent.’ Hugh and his twenty men had skirted the Breidden hills before the hour of Prime, and left those great, hunched outcrops on the right as they drove on towards Westbury. A few remounts they got there, not enough to relieve all the tired beasts. Hugh had held back to a bearable pace for that very reason, and allowed a halt to give men and horses time to breathe. It was the first opportunity there had been even to speak a word, and now that it came no man had much to say. Not until the business on which they rode was tackled and done would tongues move freely again. Even Hugh, lying flat on his back for ease beside Cadfael under the budding trees, did not question him concerning his business in Wales.
‘I’ll ride with you, if I can finish my business here,’ Cadfael had said. Hugh had asked him nothing then, and did not ask him now. Perhaps because his mind was wholly engrossed in what had to be done to drive the Welsh of Powys back into Caus and beyond. Perhaps because he considered this other matter to be very much Cadfael’s business, and was willing to wait for enlightenment until it was offered, as at the right time it would be.
Cadfael braced his aching back against the bole of an oak just forming its tight leaf, buds, eased his chafed feet in his boots, and felt his sixty, one years. He felt all the older because all these troubled creatures pulled here and there through this tangle of love and guilt and anguish were so young and vulnerable. All but the victim, Gilbert Prestcote, dead in his helpless weakness, for whom Hugh would, because he must, take vengeance. There could be no clemency, there was no room for it. Hugh’s lord had been done to death, and Hugh would exact payment. In iron duty, he had no choice.
‘Up!’ said Hugh, standing over him, smiling the abstracted but affectionate smile that flashed like a reflection from the surface of his mind when his entire concern was elsewhere. ‘Get your eyes open! We’re off again.’ And he reached a hand to grip Cadfael’s wrist and hoist him to his feet, so smoothly and carefully that Cadfael was minded to take offence. He was not so old as all that, nor so stiff! But he forgot his mild grievance when Hugh said: !A shepherd from Pontesbury brought word. They’re up from their night camp and making ready to move.’ Cadfael was wide awake instantly. ‘What will you do?’ ‘Hit the road between them and Shrewsbury and turn them back. Alan will be up and alert, we may meet him along the way.’ ‘Dare they attempt the town?’ wondered Cadfael, astonished.
‘Who knows? They’re blown up with success, and I’m thought to be far off. And our man says they’ve avoided Minsterley but brought men round it by night. It seems they may mean a foray into the suburbs, at least, even if they draw off after. Town pickings would please them. But we’ll be faster, we’ll make for Hanwood or thereabouts and be between.’ Hugh made a gentle joke of hoisting Cadfael into the saddle, but for all that, Cadfael set the pace for the next mile, ruffled at being humoured and considered like an old man. Sixty, one was not old, only perhaps a little past a man’s prime. He had, after all, done a great deal of hard riding these last few days, he had a right to be stiff and sore.
They came over a hillock into view of the Shrewsbury road, and beheld, thin and languid in the air above the distant trees beyond, a faint column of smoke rising. ‘From their douted fires,’ said Hugh, reining in to gaze. ‘And I smell older burning than that. Somewhere near the rim of the forest, someone’s barns have gone up in flames.’ ‘More than a day old and the smoke gone,’ said Cadfael, sniffing the air. ‘Better make straight for them, while we know where they are, for there’s no telling which way they’ll strike next.’ Hugh led his party down to the road and across it, where they could deploy in the fringes of woodland, going fast but quietly in thick turf. For a while they kept within view of the road, but saw no sign of the Welsh raiders. It began to seem that their present thrust was not aimed at the town after all, or even the suburbs, and Hugh led his force deeper into the woodland, striking straight at the deserted night camp. Beyond that trampled spot there were traces enough for eyes accustomed to reading the bushes and grass. A considerable number of men had passed through here on foot, and not so long ago, with a few ponies among them to leave droppings and brush off budding twigs from the tender branches. The ashen, blackened ruin of a cottage and its clustering sheds showed where their last victim had lost home, living and all, if not his life, and there was blood dried into the soil where a pig had been slaughtered. They spurred fast along the trail the Welsh had left, sure now where they were bound, for the way led deeper into the northern uplands of the Long Forest, and it could not be two miles now to the cell at Godric’s Ford.
That ignominious rout at the hands of Sister Magdalen and her rustic army had indeed rankled. The men of Caus were not averse to driving off a few cattle and burning a farm or two by the way, but what they wanted above all, what they had come out to get, was revenge.
Hugh set spurs to his horse and began to thread the open woodland at a gallop, and after him his company spurred in haste. They had gone perhaps a mile more when they heard before them, distant and elusive, a voice raised high and bellowing defiance.
It was almost the hour of High Mass when Alan Herbard got his muster moving out of the castle wards. He was
