“Brother, however you may have hit on it, yes, there is such a woman. They come in all kinds, women. I was never a great one for them myself, I’ve had troubles enough without courting more. But he could not go far or long without them. They came and went, with him. By the score! But there’s this one who is different. She stays. Stable as a wife. Like an old gown or a pair of shoes, easy and comfortable, someone he need not make speeches for, or put himself out to flatter and please. I had a feeling always,” said Arnulf reflectively, scrubbing in his beard with thin fingers, “that wherever he went, she wouldn’t be far away. But I know nothing of any plans to bring her here. Not that he ever made use of me in such matters. I helped him into his shirts and hose, and pulled off his boots after hunting, and slept close to fetch him wine in the night if he called. Not for his women. That’s another service. What of her? There’s been no word of her here. I did wonder.”
“Nor of a palfrey,” asked Cadfael, “pure white, mane and all? A pretty little lady’s jennet out of Spanish stock, I should say by the glimpse I got of her. With a gilded bridle hanging on her stable door.”
“I know the one,” said Arnulf, startled. “He bought it for her. I was not supposed even to know these things. Where have you seen it?”
Cadfael told him. “The horse, but not the woman. She left her palfrey and her perfume behind, but she’s gone.”
“Well,” allowed Arnulf reasonably, “I suppose she might well want to avoid being tangled in a matter of murder, and certainly if she was there, and he found on that path, as they tell, it would seem that he rode to her when he sent young Simon in and went on alone. She might well take fright and think it better to vanish.”
“She has also very loyal servants there,” said Cadfael drily, “who are exerting themselves to convince me and all the world she never was there at all. By this time I daresay that young fellow has moved the jennet away to a safe place.”
It had occurred to him, somewhat belatedly, that the steward might have good reason to do as much for his own sake, as well as the lady’s. If she had been in attendance there all this while, waiting for a visit from her lord and keeper, she might well have passed the time pleasantly enough with a younger, handsomer, altogether more personable man who was there to hand. And he, for his part, might have a healthy fear of having the association known, in case it should bring him into suspicion of having made away with his lord for the woman’s sake, in jealousy and despite. It was but one step further to wonder if he had not done that very thing. Say that Domville came that night, after the young man had been blessed with the woman’s favors to the point where he thought of her as his. Say that he was cast out into the night while they were together, and had nothing to do but brood and grieve, until it came to him that his lord’s way home lay clear, and if he removed the act far enough from the lodge, near enough to Shrewsbury, he left the field wide open for any man to be judged the killer. It was possible! It could have happened so. Much depended on the woman. Cadfael wished that he knew more of her.
“The question now is, since she left her mount behind, where could she go from that remote place, on foot?” It was also, why should she choose to go afoot, but that he did not say, that was a more obscure problem.
“The manor where he usually kept her?her home, you might say?is well away in Cheshire.” Arnulf considered, and visibly stirred himself to recall things long neglected or forgotten. “But it was somewhere in these very parts he found her. Some rustic beauty, a young girl then, twenty years and more ago, that must have been. Yes, more. She used to be known as Avice of Thornbury, they say her father was the village wheelwright there. They were free folk, I recollect, not villeins.” So the village craftsmen usually were, but tied to their tofts just as surely as the villeins to the land. “Most likely she still has kin there,” said Arnulf. “Would that be far? I’m strange in these parts.”
“No,” said Cadfael, enlightened, “it is not far. Thornbury I know. There she could have gone on foot.”
He went away from the bishop’s house with much to think about. The vanishing lady became ever more interesting. Since it was more than twenty years that she had been Domville’s patient, permanent mistress, so firmly established as to have the respectability and the calm subservience of a wife, she must be fully forty years old, some years senior to that young steward at the hunting-lodge, but no doubt she must still have the charms to dazzle him, if she so wished. Yes, he could have fallen victim to desire and jealousy, and seen fit to rid himself of the old, hard man who was her owner and stood between. But the revelation of her probable years had other implications. So far gone towards middle age, a woman was unlikely to strike up another such comfortable liaison, now Domville was dead. That consideration could well have caused her to reflect that her own people were hardly more than a mile away, and that with them she could vanish, and be hidden for as long as she felt the need to hide.
But why, why should she leave behind a valuable horse, her own property, the gift of her lord? She could just as well have ridden to Thornbury as walked.
Today was more or less spent, he must go back ready for Vespers, and see what prodigies of destruction or genius Brother Oswin had performed in his absence.
But tomorrow he would find her!
At Saint Giles two young men were fretting over their personal problems. Brother Mark had long since made up his mind that the tall leper who matched Lazarus in all particulars but the completeness of his hands was indeed the fugitive squire for whom the sheriff was hunting with such formidable numbers and such ferocious determination. He was therefore caught up in a moral dilemma of some complexity.
He had heard the story of the supposed theft of the bride’s necklace, but it was as suspect to him as to Brother Cadfael. Too many men, in all manner of circumstances, had been dragged to ruin and death simply by inserting such valuables into their baggage. It was all too easy a way of wiping out an enemy. He simply did not believe in it. Nor, having observed Huon de Domville, would he willingly have surrendered any man to his vengeance, which was likely to be mortal.
But the murder, that was another matter. He found it all too credible that a young man so wronged, if that accusation had indeed been false, should be driven to brood on revenge even against his nature, and to extremes. Where then was right? And yet the ambush, and the finishing of a stunned man, stuck fast in Mark’s humble, unknightly craw. Such a vengeance no man could sanction. He was wrought to the limit, and he could not put off his burden upon any other shoulders. He alone knew what he knew.
He thought of approaching the intruder directly and asking for his confidence, but such a move demanded a privacy hardly to be found in this enclosed community. Not until he was certain of guilt would he make any move that should draw attention to the fugitive. Every man should be adjudged innocent until there was proof against him, and all the more when very suspect and malicious charges had already been thrown at him, and rang leaden as false coin.
If I can find occasion to be alone with him, unobserved of any, Brother Mark decided, I will speak openly and judge as I find. If I cannot, or until I can, I will watch him as best I may, mark all that he does, challenge him if he attempts any ill, stand ready to speak in his defense if he does none. And pray that God may see fit to make use of me for truth, one way or the other.
