swifts wheeled and screamed in ecstasy.
They had arrived at the wooden shed, its oiled timbers radiated warmth towards them. Cadfael opened the door. “This is your sleeping-place, Godric.”
There was a low benchbed neatly arrayed at the end of the room. The boy stared, and quaked under Cadfael’s hand.
“I have all these medicines brewing here, and some of them need tending regularly, some very early, they’d spoil if no one minded them. I’ll show you all you have to do, it’s not so heavy a task. And here you have your bed, and here a grid you may open for fresh air.” The boy had stopped shaking, the dark blue eyes were large and measuring, and fixed implacably upon Cadfael. There seemed to be a smile pending, but there was also a certain aura of offended pride. Cadfael turned to the door, and showed the heavy bar that guarded it within, and the impossibility of opening it from without, once that was dropped into its socket. “You may shut out the world and me until you’re ready to come out to us.”
The boy Godric, who was not a boy at all, was staring now in direct accusation, half-offended, half-radiant, wholly relieved.
“How did you know?” she demanded, jutting a belligerent chin.
“How were you going to manage in the dortoir?” responded Brother Cadfael mildly.
“I would have managed. Boys are not so clever, I could have cozened them. Under a wall like this,” she said, hoisting handfuls of her ample tunic, “all bodies look the same, and men are blind and stupid.” She laughed then, viewing Cadfael’s placid competence, and suddenly she was all woman, and startlingly pretty in her gaiety and relief. “Oh, not you! How did you know? I tried so hard, I thought I could pass all trials. Where did I go wrong?”
“You did very well,” said Cadfael soothingly. “But, child, I was forty years about the world, and from end to end of it, before I took the cowl and came to my green, sweet ending here. Where did you go wrong? Don’t take it amiss, take it as sound advice from an ally, if I answer you. When you came to argument, and meant it with all your heart, you let your voice soar. And never a crack in it, mind you, to cover the change. That can be learned, I’ll show you when we have leisure. And then, when I bade you strip and be easy — ah, never blush, child, I was all but certain then! — of course you put me off. And last, when I got you to toss a stone across the brook, you did it like a girl, under-arm, with a round swing. When did you ever see a boy throw like that? Don’t let anyone else trick you into such another throw, not until you master the art. It betrays you at once.”
He stood patiently silent then, for she had dropped on to the bed, and sat with her head in her hands, and first she began to laugh, and then to cry, and then both together; and all the while he let her alone, for she was no more out of control than a man tossed between gain and loss, and manfully balancing his books. Now he could believe she was seventeen, a budding woman, and a fine one, too.
When she was ready, she wiped her eyes on the back of her hand, and looked up alertly, smiling like sunlight through a rainbow. “And did you mean it?” she said. “That you’re responsible for me? I said I trusted you to extremes!”
“Daughter dear,” said Cadfael patiently, “what should I do with you now but serve you as best I can, and see you safe out of here to wherever you would be?”
“And you don’t even know who I am,” she said, marvelling. “Who is trusting too far now?”
“What difference should it make to me, child, what your name may be? A lass left forlorn here to weather out this storm and be restored to her own people — is not that enough? What you want to tell, you’ll tell, and I need no more.”
“I think I want to tell you everything,” said the girl simply, looking up at him with eyes wide and candid as the sky. “My father is either in Shrewsbury castle this minute with his death hanging over him, or out of it and running for his life with William FitzAlan for the empress’s lands in Normandy, with a hue and cry ready to be loosed after him any moment. I’m a burden to anyone who befriends me now, and likely to be a hunted hostage as soon as I’m missed from where I should be. Even to you, Brother Cadfael, I could be dangerous. I’m daughter to FitzAlan’s chief ally and friend. My name is Godith Adeney.”
Lame Osbern, who had been born with both legs withered, and scuttled around at unbelievable speed on hands provided with wooden pattens, dragging his shrivelled knees behind him on a little wheeled trolley, was the humblest of the king’s campfollowers. Normally he had his pitch by the castle gates in the town, but he had forsaken in time a spot now so dangerous, and transferred his hopeful allegiance to the edge of the siege camp, as near as he was allowed to get to the main guard, where the great went in and out. The king was notoriously open-handed, except towards his enemies-at-arms, and the pickings were good. The chief military officers, perhaps, were too preoccupied to waste thought or alms on a beggar, but some of those who came belatedly seeking favour, having decided which way fortune was tending, were apt to give to the poor as a kind of sop to God for luck, and the common bowmen and even the Flemings, when off-duty and merry, tossed Osbern a few coppers, or the scraps from their mess.
He had his little wagon backed well into the lee of a clump of half-grown trees, close to the guard-post, where he might come in for a crust of bread or a drink, and could enjoy the glow of the field-fire at night. Even summer nights can strike chill after the heat of the August day, when you have only a few rags to cover you, and the fire was doubly welcome. They kept it partially turfed, to subdue the glow, but left themselves light enough to scrutinise any who came late.
It was close to midnight when Osbern stirred out of an uneasy sleep, and straining his ears for the reason, caught the rustling of the bushes behind and to his left, towards the Castle Foregate but well aside from the open road. Someone was approaching from the direction of the t9wn, and certainly not from the main gates, but roundabout in cover from along the riverside. Osbern knew the town like his own callused palm. Either this was a scout returning from reconnaissance — but why keep up this stealth right into the camp? — or else someone had crept out of town or castle by the only other way through the wall on this side, the water-port that led down to the river.
A dark figure, visible rather as movement than matter in a moonless night, slid out from the bushes and made at a crouching, silent scurry for the guard-post. At the sentry’s challenge he halted immediately, and stood frozen but eager, and Osbern saw the faint outline of a slight, willowy body, wrapped closely in a black cloak, so that only a gleam of pale face showed. The voice that answered the challenge was young, high-pitched, tormentedly afraid and desperately urgent.
“I beg audience — I am not armed! Take me to your officer. I have something to tell — to the king’s advantage… .”
They hauled him in and went over him roughly to ensure he bore no weapons; and whatever was said between them did not reach Osbern’s ears, but the upshot of it was that he had his will. They led him within the camp, and there he vanished from view.
