thank God that all our fears for you can be so happily put away.”
In the brief, profound silence the long file of brothers, halted perforce at the abbot’s back, shifted and craned and peered to get a good look at this woman who had been sought as lost, and even whispered about with sly undertones of scandal, and now returned immaculate in the blameless company of the sub-prioress of a Benedictine cell, effectively silencing comment, if not speculation, and confronting the world with unassailable composure and dignity. Even Prior Robert had so far forgotten himself as to stand and stare, instead of waving the brothers authoritatively away through the cloister to their proper duties.
“Will you not have your beasts cared for here,” the abbot invited, “and take some rest and refreshment? And I will send at once to the castle and let the lord sheriff know that you are back with us safe and sound. For you should see him as soon as possible, and explain your absence to him as you have here to me.”
“So I intend, Father,” said Judith, “but I must go home. My aunt and cousin and all my people will still be fretting for me, I must go at once and show myself, and put an end to their anxiety. I’ll send to the castle immediately to let Hugh Beringar know, and he may come to me or send for me to come to him, as soon as he pleases. But we could not pass by into the town without first coming to inform you.”
“That was considerate, and I am grateful. But, Sister, I trust you will be my guest while you are here?”
“Today, I think,” said Sister Magdalen, “I must go with Judith and see her safely restored to her family, and be her advocate with the sheriff, should she need one. Authority may be less indulgent over time and labour wasted than you are, Father. I shall stay with her at least overnight. But tomorrow I hope to have some talk with you. I’ve brought with me the altar frontal Mother Mariana has been working on since she took to her bed. Her hands still have all their skill, I think you will be pleased with it. But it’s packed carefully away in my saddle-roll, I would rather not delay to undo it now. If I might borrow Brother Cadfael, to walk up into the town with us, I think perhaps Hugh Beringar would be glad to have him in council when we meet, and he could bring down the altar-cloth to you afterwards.”
By this time Abbot Radulfus knew her well enough to know that there was always a reason for any request she might make. He looked round for Cadfael, who was already making his way out from the ranks of the brothers.
“Yes, go with our sister. You have leave for as long as you may be needed.”
“With your countenance, Father,” said Cadfael readily, “and if Sister Magdalen agrees, I could go straight on to the castle and take the message to Hugh Beringar, after we have brought Mistress Perle home. He’ll have men still out round the countryside, the sooner he can call them off, the better.”
“Yes, agreed! Go, then!” He led the way back to where the mules stood waiting, with John Miller solid and passive beside them. The file of brothers, released from the porch, went its dutiful way, not without several glances over shoulders to watch the two women mount and depart. While they were about it, Radulfus drew Cadfael aside and said quietly: “If the news came so laggardly to Godric’s Ford, there may still be some things that have happened here that she does not know, and not all will be pleasant hearing. This man of hers who is dead, worse, guilty
“
“I had thought of it,” said Cadfael as softly. “She shall know, before she ever reaches home.”
As soon as they were on the open stretch of the bridge, going at the dogged mule-pace that would not be hurried, Cadfael moved to Judith’s bridle, and said mildly: “Three days you’ve been absent. Have I to give account, before you face others, of all that has happened during those three days?”
“No need,” she said simply. “I have had some account already.”
“Perhaps not of all, for not all is generally known. There has been another death. Yesterday, in the afternoon, we found a body washed up on our side the river, beyond where the Gaye ends. A drowned man ?one of your weavers, the young man Bertred. I tell you now,” he said gently, hearing the sharp and painful intake of her breath, “because at home you will find him being coffined and readied for burial. I could not let you walk into the house and come face to face with that, and all unwarned.”
“Bertred drowned?” she said in a shocked whisper. “But how could such a thing happen? He swims like an eel. How could he drown?”
“He had had a blow on the head, though it would not have done more than make his wits spin for a while. And somehow he came by another such knock before he went into the water. Whatever happened to him happened in the night. The watchman at Fuller’s had a tale to tell,” said Cadfael with careful deliberation, and went on to repeat it as nearly word for word as he could recall. She sat on her mule in chill silence throughout the story, almost he felt her freeze as she connected the hour of the night, the place, and surely also the narrow, dusty, half-forgotten room behind the bales of wool. Her silence and her word would be hard to keep. Here was lost a second young man, withered by the touch of some fatal flaw in her, and yet a third she might scarcely be able to save, now they had drawn so near to the truth.
They had reached the gate, and entered under the archway. On the steep climb up the Wyle the mules slowed even more, and no one sought to hurry them.
“There is more,” said Cadfael. “You will remember the morning we found Brother Eluric, and the mould I made of the bootprint in the soil. The boots we took from Bertred’s body, when we carried him to the abbey dead ?the left boot
fits that print.”
“No!” she said in sharp distress and disbelief. “That is impossible! There is here some terrible mistake.”
“There is no mistake. No possibility of a mistake. The match is absolute.”
“But why? Why? What reason could Bertred have had to try to cut down my rose-bush? What possible reason to strike at the young brother?” And in a lost and distant voice, almost to herself, she said: “None of this did he tell me!”
Cadfael said nothing, but she knew he had heard. After a silence she said: “You shall hear. You shall know. We had better hurry. I must talk to Hugh Beringar.” And she shook her bridle and pressed ahead along the High Street. From open booths and shop doorways heads were beginning to be thrust in excited recognition, neighbour nudging neighbour, and presently, as she drew nearer to home, there were greetings called out to her, but she hardly noticed them. The word would soon be going round that Judith Perle was home again, and riding, and in respectable religious company, after all that talk of her being carried off by some villain with marriage by rape in mind.
Sister Magdalen kept close at her heels, so that there should be no mistaking that they were travelling together. She had said nothing throughout this ride from the abbey, though she had sharp ears and a quick
