looked sidewise at each other. Her profile, warily emerging from anger into guilty sympathy, was delicate and pert and utterly feminine, he must have been weak and sick indeed, or he would surely have known. The soft, gruff voice was only an ambiguous charm, a natural deceit. Torold scrubbed thoughtfully at his stinging ear, and asked at last, very carefully: “Why didn’t you tell me? I never meant to offend you, but how was I to know?”
“There was no need for you to know,” snapped Godith, still ruffled, “if you’d had the sense to do as you’re bid, or the courtesy to treat your friends gently.”
“But you goaded me! Good God,” protested Torold, “it was only the rough play I’d have used on a younger brother of my own, and you asked for it.” He demanded suddenly:
“Does Brother Cadfael know?”
“Of course he does! Brother Cadfael at least can tell a hart from a hind.”
There fell a second and longer silence, full of resentment, curiosity and caution, while they continued to study each other through lowered lashes, she furtively eyeing the sleeve that covered his wound, in case a telltale smear of blood should break through, he surveying again the delicate curves of her face, the jut of lip and lowering of brows that warned him she was still offended.
Two small, wary voices uttered together, grudgingly:
“Did I hurt you?”
They began to laugh at the same instant, suddenly aware of their own absurdity. The illusion of estrangement vanished utterly; they fell into each other’s arms helpless with laughter, and nothing was left to complicate their relationship but the slightly exaggerated gentleness with which they touched each other.
“But you shouldn’t have used that arm so,” she reproached at last, as they disentangled themselves and sat back, eased and content. “You could have started it open again, it’s a bad gash.”
“Oh, no, there’s no damage. But you — I wouldn’t for the world have vexed you.” And he asked, quite simply, and certain of his right to be told: “Who are you? And how did you ever come into such a coil as this?”
She turned her head and looked at him long and earnestly; there would never again be anything with which she would hesitate to mist him.
“They left it too late,” she said, “to send me away out of Shrewsbury before the town fell. This was a desperate throw, turning me into an abbey servant, but I was sure I could carry it off. And I did, with everyone but Brother Cadfael. You were taken in, weren’t you? I’m a fugitive of your party, Torold, we’re two of a kind. I’m Godith Adeney.”
“Truly?” He beamed at her, round-eyed with wonder and delight. “You’re Fulke Adeney’s daughter? Praise God! We were anxious for you! Nick especially, for he knew you … I never saw you till now, but I, too …” He stooped his fair head and lightly kissed the small, none too clean hand that had just picked up the last of the plums. “Mistress Godith, I am your servant to command! This is splendid! If I’d known, I’d have told you better than half a tale.”
“Tell me now,” said Godith, and generously split the plum in half, and sent the stone whirling down into the Severn. The riper half she presented to his open mouth, effectively closing it for a moment. “And then,” she said, “I’ll tell you my side of it, and we shall have a useful whole.”
Brother Cadfael did not go straight to the mill on his return, but halted to check that his workshop was in order, and to pound up his goose- grass in a mortar, and prepare a smooth green salve from it. Then he went to join his young charges, careful to circle into the shadow of the mill from the opposite direction, and to keep an eye open for any observer. Time was marching all too swiftly, within an hour he and Godith would have to go back for Vespers.
They had both known his step; when he entered they were sitting side by side with backs propped against the wall, watching the doorway with rapt, expectant smiles. They had a certain serene, aloof air about them, as though they inhabited a world immune from common contacts or, common cares, but generously accessible to him. He had only to look at them, and he knew they had no more secrets; they were so rashly and candidly man and woman together that there was no need even to ask anything. Though they were both waiting expectantly to tell him!
“Brother Cadfael …” Godith began, distantly radiant.
“First things first,” said Cadfael briskly. “Help him out of cotte and shirt, and start unwinding the bandage until it sticks — as it will, my friend, you’re not out of the wood yet. Then wait, and I’ll ease it off.”
There was no disconcerting or chastening them. The girl was up in a moment, easing the seam of the cotte away from Torold’s wound, loosening the ties of his shirt to slip it down from his shoulder, gently freeing the end of the linen bandage and beginning to roll it up. The boy inclined this way and that to help, and never took his eyes from Godith’s face, as she seldom took hers from his absorbed countenance, and only to concentrate upon his needs.
“Well, well!” thought Cadfael philosophically. “It seems Hugh Beringar will seek his promised bride to little purpose — if, indeed, he really is seeking her?”
“Well, youngster,” he said aloud, “you’re a credit to me and to yourself, as clean-healing flesh as ever I saw. This slice of you that somebody tried to sever will stay with you lifelong, after all, and the arm will even serve you to hold a bow in a month or so. But you’ll have the scar as long as you live. Now hold steady, this may burn, but mist me, it’s the best salve you could have for green wounds. Torn muscles hurt as they knit, but knit they will.”
“It doesn’t hurt,” said Torold in a dream. “Brother Cadfael …”
“Hold your tongue until we have you all bound up trim. Then you can talk your hearts out, the both of you.”
And talk they did, as soon as Torold was helped back into his shirt, and the cotte draped over his shoulders. Each of them took up the thread from the other, as though handed it in a fixed and formal ceremony, like a favour in a dance; Even their voices had grown somehow alike, as if they matched tones without understanding that they did it. They had not the least idea, as yet, that they were in love. The innocents believed they were involved in a partisan comradeship, which was but the lesser half of what had happened to them in his absence.
“So I have told Torold all about myself,” said Godith, “and he has told me the only thing he did not tell us before. And now he wants to tell you.”
Torold picked up the tendered thread willingly. “I have FitzAlan’s treasury safely hidden,” he said simply. “I had it in two pairs of linked saddlebags, and I kept it afloat, too, all down the river, though I had to shed sword and swordbelt and dagger and all to lighten the load. I fetched up under the first arch of the stone bridge. You’ll know it as well as I. That first pier spreads, there used to be a boat-mill moored under it, some time ago, and the mooring
