“I can shift for myself,” said Joscelin, rising cautiously erect in his covert, soiled and draggled, his fair hair plastered to his head still, but drying in wilful drifts of yellow at his temples. “You’re a good fellow, Simon, but I advise you take no foolish risks for me.”
“What do you want me to do?” Simon sounded exasperated. “Stand back and let you be taken? See here, the safest place for you now, the one place they’ll never think to look, is inside the bishop’s grounds. Oh, not in house or stables or court, naturally. But that’s the one household and garden this hunt is going to pass by. Everyone else’s barns and byres will be ransacked. There’s a hut in the corner of the grounds, by the door I came out at, where they store the hay from the back field. You could lie dry enough there, and I could bring you food?and the wicket in the wall we can bar inside, no one can come through from without. Then, if I can get Briar out to you somehow … What do you say?”
It was good sense enough, and Joscelin said yes to it with fervor and gratitude. What he did not say was that the want of a horse was nothing to him as yet, for he had no intention of going anywhere until either he had found some way of rescuing Iveta, or lost hope and heart and probably life in the attempt.
“You’re a good friend, and I won’t forget it. But take care for yourself, one of us in this coil is enough. Listen!” He caught Simon by the wrist, and shook him earnestly. “If things fall out badly, and I’m ferreted out and taken, you knew nothing of it, I made my own way. Deny me, with all my goodwill. If there’s meat or other matter to account for, I’ll say I stole, and you’ll let it rest at that. Promise! I should be ashamed if I brought you into question.”
“You’ll not be taken,” said Simon firmly.
“No, but promise!”
“Oh, very well, since you’re so set, I’ll let you stew?or at least go roundabout to hook you out of it. I like my skin whole, like most men, I’ll take good care of it, one way or another. Come on, then! While things are quiet and I’m not missed.”
The way back was shorter, since they could make directly for the rear wall of the bishop’s garden, and there was cover all the way. Once or twice Simon, going before, set up a soft whistling, and Joscelin dropped into the bushes, but each alarm passed in a moment, the small sounds that had set it off traced to birds taking flight, or wild things creeping among the dry brush. The wicket in the wall stood ajar as Simon had left it. He went first to open it cautiously and look round within, and then beckoned, and Joscelin dived through it thankfully, and heard it closed and barred behind him. And there was the low wooden fodder-store close against the wall. Within, it smelled of dry grass, and the fine dust stirred by their feet tickled the nose, and stung.
“No one will come here,” said Simon, low-voiced. “The stables in the yard are well stocked. And it’s snug enough lying. Keep close and quiet. I go with my uncle to sup with the abbot tonight, but I’ll bring you meat and drink before then. You’ll dry off nicely here in the hay.”
“It’s a palace,” said Joscelin heartily, and squeezed his friend’s arm with grateful warmth. “I’ll not forget this to you. Whatever happens now, praise God, I shall know there’s one person who refuses to believe me a thief, and one friend I can rely on. But bear in mind, if it comes to it, I’d rather sink alone than drag you down into the muck with me.”
“Leave Simon’s well-being,” said that young man with a confident grin, “to one who loves him well. You take care of your own skin, I’ll vouch for mine. And now I’m gone! He’ll be yelling for me to help him dress for Vespers. That’s the price he pays for supping with the abbot!”
Brother Cadfael marked their presence at Vespers, Huon de Domville somberly splendid for the abbot’s table, in rich crimson and black, Canon Eudo imperturbably demure and ascetic, like a much younger Prior Robert studying for sainthood, but keeping a weather eye on the secular prospects around him, all the same. And in attendance, the young squire Simon Aguilon, curly-haired, athletic and discreet, with a brown, open face stricken into unusual gravity by the events of the day.
The Picards also attended, but the bride, Cadfael noted, did not, nor did the elderly maid. He had caught glimpses of Iveta twice during the later afternoon, but once again with a guardian on either side. She maintained her calm and composed bearing, she wore the same pale but proud and confident face, the slight smile was ready to visit her lips at a glance; but only that once, Cadfael reflected thoughtfully, had she been unquestionably alone, unwatched, at liberty to speak her mind without restraint. And so she had, and confounded all expectation. There was no way of getting round it. She had believed the worst of young Joscelin Lucy, and put him out of her grace with a resolution that seemed far beyond her scope. She was reconciled to her marriage and determined to go through with it, in bitter recoil, perhaps, from a far more pleasing dream which had proved disillusionment on waking.
Then she was all too ingenuous, Cadfael decided, and far too easily convinced. Was there not a cup hidden in the sack of the boy Benjamin, in the Bible story, to make it possible to detain him? And had not the same stratagem been used many times since? But she was very young, and had been, perhaps, so artlessly in love that it took little art to overturn her too rash affection. Yet the trouble with things so obviously suspect, after all, is that they may indeed be true.
He watched the guests cross to the abbot’s lodging after Vespers, and observed the return of Agnes Picard to the guest-hall. There was no room for action, nothing to be done about anything. Cadfael went to his own supper in the refectory, and afterwards to the readings in the chapterhouse, but had mislaid, for some reason, both his appetite and his concentration.
The abbot’s guests, no doubt, supped well, but they did not sit very late afterwards. Cadfael had gone to close his workshop before retiring, well after Compline, and was returning to the dortoir when he saw, by the lantern at the gate, Domville and his squire mounting to return to the bishop’s house, and Picard taking his leave of them. Canon Eudo, evidently, was spending the night with the abbot, to see all made ready for the morrow.
They had drank well enough, by the jovial ring of their voices, but certainly not to excess, since Radulfus was an abstemious man himself, and provided as he thought right and fitting, but not beyond. The sharp yellow light distinguished them scrupulously, showed the baron gross, self-indulgent but powerful still, in purse, possessions, body and mind, in no way a small or inconsiderable man. Picard was slenderer, viewed whichever way, a dark, devious, able man, whose subtlety could well complement Domville’s brutal force. Those two together could be formidable to any antagonist. The young man stood patient, assiduous but disinterested, his thoughts probably elsewhere, but his temperament equable. He would not be sorry to heave himself into his bed.
Cadfael watched them ride, saw the youngster hold his lord’s stirrup, almost heard his stifled yawn. He mounted after, light and glad, and fell in at Domville’s elbow, keeping his station neatly with one hand on the rein. He was certainly sober as stone, aware, probably, of his vulnerable situation, as responsible for getting his lord home and bedded. Picard drew back from them, raising a hand in farewell. The two horses walked at leisure out at the gate, and the measured clop of their hooves on the cobbles of the Foregate faded gradually into silence.
Along the Foregate all was dark, but for the faintly luminous quality of moonless starlight, the sky sparkling after several misted days, the air on the clear, near edge of frost. In one or two windows a candle showed. Outside the bishop’s house, where the gate-pillars drew back from the roadway, the wayside
