‘and if it hadn’t been for this young fellow I should have been there yet, for I couldn’t shift the weight, and there was no one within call. God’s truth, there’s more muscle in the lad than you’d believe. You should have seen him heft that tree off me.’
Very strangely, Hyacinth’s spare, smooth cheeks flushed red beneath their dark gold sheen. It was a face certainly not given to blushing, but it had not lost the ability. He said with some constraint: ‘Is there anything more I could be doing for you? I would, gladly! You’ll be needing a skilled hand to set that bone. I’m no use there, but make use of me if you need an errand run. That’s my calling, that I can do.’
The girl turned for an instant from the bed, her blue eyes wide and shining on his face. ‘Why, so you can, if you’ll be so good and add to our debt. Will you send to the abbey, and ask for Brother Cadfael to come?’
‘I will well!’ said Hyacinth, as heartily as if she had made him a most acceptable gift. But as she turned back from him he hesitated, and caught her by the sleeve for an instant, and breathed into her ear urgently: ‘I must talk to you?alone, later, when he’s cared for and resting easy.’ And before she could say yes or no, though her eyes certainly were not refusing him, he was off and away through the trees, on the long run back to Shrewsbury.
Chapter Four
HUGH came looking for Brother Cadfael in mid-afternoon, with the first glimmers of news that had found their way out of Oxford since the siege began.
‘Robert of Gloucester is back in England,’ he said. ‘I have it from an armourer who took thought in time to get out of the city. A few were lucky and took warning. He says Robert has landed at Wareham in spite of the king’s garrison, brought in all his ships safely and taken the town. Not the castle, though, not yet, but he’s settled down to siege. He got precious little out of Geoffrey, maybe a handful of knights, no more.’
‘If he’s safe ashore and holds the town,’ said Cadfael reasonably, ‘what does he want with the castle? I should have thought he’d be hotfoot for Oxford to hale his sister out of the trap.’
‘He’d rather lure Stephen to come to him, and draw him off from his own siege. My man says the castle at Wareham’s none too well garrisoned, and they’ve come to a truce agreement, and sent to the king to relieve them by a fixed date, a know-all, but truly well informed, though even he doesn’t know the day appointed?or if he fails them they’ll surrender. That suits Robert. He knows it’s seldom any great feat to lure Stephen off a scent, but I fancy he’ll hold fast this time. When will he get such a chance again? Even he can’t throw it away, surely.’
‘There’s no end to the follies any man can commit,’ said Cadfael tolerantly. ‘To give him his due, most of his idiocies are generous, which is more than can be said for the lady. But I could wish this siege at Oxford might be the end of it. If he does take castle and empress and all, she’ll be safe enough of life and limb with him, it’s rather he who may be in danger. What else is new from the south?’
‘There’s a tale he tells of a horse found straying not far from the city, in the woods close to the road to Wallingford. Some time ago, this was, about the time all roads out of Oxford were closed, and the town on fire. A horse dragging a blood-stained saddle, and saddlebags slit open and emptied. A groom who’d slipped out of the town before the ring closed recognised horse and harness as belonging to one Renaud Bourchier, a knight in the empress’s service, and close in her confidence, too. My man says it’s known she sent him out of the garrison to try and break through the king’s lines and carry a message to Wallingford for her.’
Cadfael ceased to ply the hoe he was drawing leisurely between his herb beds, and turned his whole attention upon his friend. ‘To Brian FitzCount, you mean?’
The lord of Wallingford was the empress’s most faithful adherent arid companion, next only to the earl, her brother, and had held his castle for her, the most easterly and exposed outpost of her territory, through campaign after campaign and through good fortune and bad, indomitably loyal.
‘How comes it he’s not with her in Oxford? He hardly ever leaves her side, or so they say.’
‘The king moved so much faster than anyone thought for. And now he’s cut off from her. Moreover, she needs him in Wallingford, for if that’s ever lost she has nothing left but an isolated holding in the west country, and no way out towards London. She may well have sent out to him at the last moment, in so desperate a situation as she’s in now. And rumour down there says, it seems, that Bouchier was carrying treasure to him, less in coin than in jewels. It may well be so, for he needs to pay his men. Loyal for love though they may be, they still have to live and eat, and he’s beggared himself already in her service.’
‘There’s been talk, this autumn,’ said Cadfael, thoughtfully frowning, ‘that Bishop Henry of Winchester has been busy trying to lure away Brian to the king’s side. Bishop Henry has money enough to buy whoever’s for sale, but I doubt if even he could bid high enough to move FitzCount. All this time the man has shown as incorruptible. She had no need to try and outbid her enemies for Brian.’
‘None. But she may well have thought, when the king’s host closed round her, to send him an earnest of the value she sets on him, while the way was still open, or might at least be attempted by a single brave man. At such a pass, it may even have seemed to her the last chance for such a word ever to pass between them.’
Cadfael thought on that, and acknowledged its truth. King Stephen would never be a threat to his cousin’s life, however bitter their rivalry had been, but if once she was made captive he would be forced to hold her in close ward for his crown’s sake. Nor was she likely ever to relinquish her claim, even in prison, and agree to terms that would lightly release her. Friends and allies thus parted might, in very truth, never see each other again.
‘And a single brave man did attempt it,’ reflected Cadfael soberly. ‘And his horse found straying, his harness awry, his saddlebags emptied, and blood on saddle and saddlecloth. So where is Renaud Bourchier? Murdered for what he carried, and buried somewhere in the woods or slung into the river?’
‘What else can a man think? They have not found his body yet. Round Oxford men have other things to do this autumn besides scour the woods for a dead man. There are dead men enough to bury after the looting and burning of Oxford town,’ said Hugh with dry bitterness, almost resigned to the random slaughters of this capricious civil war.
‘I wonder how many within the castle knew of his errand? She would hardly blazon abroad her intent, but someone surely got wind of it.’
‘So it seems, and made very ill use of what he knew.’ Hugh shook himself, heaving off from his shoulders the distant evils that were out of his writ. ‘Thanks be to God, I am not sheriff of Oxfordshire! Our troubles here are mild enough, a little family bickering that leads to blows now and then, a bit of thieving, the customary poaching in season. Oh, and of course the bewitchment that seems to have fallen on your woodland of Eyton.’ Cadfael had told him what the abbot, perhaps, had not thought important enough to tell, that Dionisia had somehow coaxed her hermit into her quarrel, and that good man had surely taken very seriously her impersonation of a grieving grandam cruelly deprived of the society of her only grandhild. ‘And he fears worse to come, does he? I wonder what the next news from Eyton will be?’
