The wheelwright rose and abandoned his adze, moving at ease in his own kingdom. He looked at his visitor with amiable curiosity, a round-faced, good-natured soul, but with a dignified reserve about him, too. “My father in his time was also Ulger, and also wheelwright to this and many another hamlet round here. Belike you had him in mind. God rest him, he died some years back. The toft and the office are mine.” And he added, after a rapid and shrewd scrutiny: “You’ll be from the Benedictines at Shrewsbury. By this way and that way, we do get word.”
“And we have our troubles, and you hear of them,” said Cadfael. He slipped the mule’s bridle over a fence-pale, and shook out his habit and stretched his back after the ride. “I tell you truth as I would be told truth. Huon de Domville was murdered early on his wedding-day, and at his hunting-lodge none so far from here he kept a woman. He was on his way from her when he died. And she is no longer at the hunting-lodge. They called her Avice of Thornbury, daughter to that Ulger who must be also your father. In these parts he found and took up with her. I do not think I tell you anything you did not already know.”
He waited, and there was silence. The wheelwright faced him with countenance suddenly hard and still, for all its native candor, and said no word.
“It is no part of my purpose or my need,” said Cadfael, “to bring upon your sister any danger or threat. Nevertheless, she may know what justice needs to know, and not only for retribution, but for the deliverance of the innocent. All I want is speech with her. She left behind her at Domville’s lodge her horse, and I believe much more that was hers. She left afoot. It is my belief that she came here, to her own people.”
“It is many years,” said Ulger, after a long silence, “since I had a sister, many years since I and mine were her own people to Avice of Thornbury.”
“That I understand,” said Cadfael. “Nevertheless, blood is blood. Did she come to you?”
Ulger regarded him somberly, and made up his mind. “She came.”
“Two days ago? After the news came from Shrewsbury of Huon de Domville found dead?”
“Two days ago, late in the afternoon she came. No, the news had not reached us then. But it had reached her.”
“If she is here with you,” said Cadfael, “I must have speech with her.” He looked towards the house, where a sturdy, comely woman moved out and in again as he gazed. In the corner of the yard a boy of about fourteen was fining down cleft oak spokes for some lighter wheel. Ulger’s wife and son. He saw no sign of another woman about the toft.
“She is not here,” said Ulger. “Nor would she be welcome in my house. Only once or twice have we seen her since she chose to go for a Norman baron’s whore, a shame to her kin and her race. I told her when she came that I would do for her all that a man should do for his sister, except let her into the house she abandoned long ago for money and ease and rich living. She was not changed nor put down. Make what you can of her, for I’m in many minds about her. She said calmly and civilly that she wanted nothing from me and mine but three things?the loan of my nag, a plain peasant gown in place of her fine clothes, and some hours of my son’s time to guide her where she was bound, and bring back the horse safely. She had three miles to go, and her fine shoes were not fit for the way.”
“And these three you granted her?” said Cadfael, marveling.
“I did. She put off her finery here in the undercroft, and put on an old gown of my wife’s. Also she stripped off the rings from her hands and a gold chain from her neck, and gave them to my wife, for she said she had no more need of them, and they might pay a part of her debt here. And she mounted my nag, and the boy there went with her on foot, and before night he rode the horse back to us here. And that is all I know of her, for I asked nothing.”
“Not even where she was bound?”
“Not even that. But my son told me, when he returned.”
“And where is she gone?”
“To a place they call Godric’s Ford, west from here and a short way into the forest.”
“I know it,” said Cadfael, enlightened. For at Godric’s Ford there was a small grange of Benedictine nuns, a cell of the abbey of Polesworth. So Avice had made for the nearest female sanctuary in her need, for safe hiding under the protection of a powerful and respected abbey until Huon de Domville’s murderer was known and taken, his death avenged, his mistress forgotten. From that secure haven she might be quite willing to speak out anything she did know to the purpose, provided she herself remained inviolable in her retreat.
So he was thinking, as he thanked Ulger for his help, and mounted to ride on to Godric’s Ford. A very natural course for a discreet woman to take, if she feared she might be drawn into a great scandal and the complex web of a crime.
And yet… ! And yet she had left her jennet behind and gone afoot. And yet she had put off her finery for a homespun gown, and stripped the rings from her fingers, to pay a part of her life’s debt to the kin she had deserted long ago….
The grange at Godric’s Ford was a decent long, low house in a broad clearing, with a small wooden chapel beside it, and a high stone wall enclosing its well-kept kitchen garden and orchard of fruit trees, now graced with only half their yellowing leaves. In a butt of newly dug ground within the wall a middle-aged novice, comfortably rounded in form and face, was planting out cabbage seedlings for the next spring. Cadfael observed her as he turned in at the gate and dismounted, and with his eye for competence and industry approved the confidence of her manner and the economy of her movements. Benedictine nuns, like Benedictine monks, think well of manual labor, and are expected to expend their energies as generously in cultivation as in prayer. This woman, rosily healthy, went about her work like a good, contented housewife, pressing the soil firm round her transplants with a broad foot, and brushing the loam from her hands with placid satisfaction. She was agreeably plump, and not very tall, and her face, however rounded and well-fleshed, yet had solid, determined bones and a notable firmness of lip and chin.
When she became aware of Cadfael and his mule, she straightened her back with the right cautious gradualness and a true gardener’s grunt, and turned upon him shrewd brown eyes under brows quizzically oblique, very knowing eyes that took him in from cowl to sandals in one sweeping glance.
She left her plot, and came unhurriedly towards him.
“God greet you, brother!” she said cheerfully. “Can any here be of service to you?”
“God bless your house!” said Cadfael ceremoniously. “I am seeking speech with a lady who has recently sought sanctuary here within. Or so I reason from such knowledge as I have. She is called Avice of Thornbury. Can you
