The Potter's Field (18 page)

“We're on the march tomorrow morning. The word came only an hour past. Go in to him, Brother, he's in the gate-tower.”

And he was gone, waving the teamster of the second cart through the arch to the inner ward, and vanishing after the cart to see it efficiently loaded. The supply column must be preparing to leave today, the armed company would ride after them at first light.

Cadfael abandoned his mule to a stable boy, and crossed to the deep doorway of the guardroom in the gate-tower. Hugh rose from a littered table at sight of him, shuffled his records together and pushed them aside.

“It's come, as I thought it would. The king had to move against the man, for the saving of his own face he could no longer sit and do nothing. Though he knows as well as I do,” admitted Hugh, preoccupied and vehement, “that the chances of bringing Geoffrey de Mandeville to pitched battle are all too thin. What, with his Essex supply lines secure even if the time comes when he can wring no more corn or cattle out of the Fens? And all those bleak levels laced with water, and as familiar to him as the lines of his own hand? Well, we'll do him what damage we can, perhaps bolt him in if we can't flush him out. Whatever the odds, Stephen has ordered his muster to Cambridge, and demanded a company of me for a limited time, and a company he shall have, as good as any he'll get from his Flemings. And unless he has the lightning fit on him—it takes him and us by surprise sometimes—we'll be in Cambridge before him.”

Having thus unburdened himself of his own immediate preoccupations, concerning which there was no particular haste, since everything had been taken care of in advance, Hugh took a more attentive look at his friend's face, and saw that King Stephen's courier had not been the only visitor with news of moment to impart.

“Well, well!” he said mildly. “I see you have things on your mind, no less than his Grace the king. And here am I about to leave you hefting the load alone. Sit down and tell me what's new. There's time, before I need stir.”

“Chance had no part in it,” said Cadfael, leaning his folded arms upon the table. “You were right. History repeated itself for good reason, because the same hand thrust it where the same mind wanted it. Twice! It was in my mind, so I put it to the test. I took care the boy should know there was another man suspected of this death. It may even be that I painted Britric's danger blacker than it was. And behold, the lad takes to heart that true word I offered him, that the folk of the roads look round for a warm haven through the winter, and off he goes, searching here and there about these parts, to find out if one Gunnild had found a corner by some manor fire. And this time, mark you, he had no possibility of knowing whether the woman was alive or dead, knowing nothing of her beyond what I had told him. He had luck, and he found her. Now, why, never having heard her name before, never seen her face, why should he bestir himself for Britric's sake?”

“Why,” agreed Hugh, eye to eye with him across the board, “unless he knew, whatever else he did not know, that our dead woman was not and could not be this Gunnild? And how could he know that, unless he knows all too well who she really is? And what happened to her?”

“Or believes he knows,” said Cadfael cautiously.

“Cadfael, I begin to find your failed brother interesting. Let us see just what we have here. Here is this youngster who suddenly, so short a while after Ruald's wife vanished from her home, chooses most unexpectedly to desert his own home and take the cowl, not close here where he's known, with you, or at Haughmond, the house and the order his family has always favoured, but far away at Ramsey. Removing himself from a scene now haunting and painful to him? Perhaps even dangerous? He comes home, perforce, when Ramsey becomes a robber's nest, and it may well be true that he comes now in doubt of his own wisdom in turning to the cloister. And what does he find here? That the body of a woman has been found, buried on lands that once pertained to his family demesne, and that the common and reasonable thought is that this is Ruald's lost wife, and Ruald her murderer. So what does he do? He tells a story to prove that Generys is alive and well. Distant too far to be easily found and answer for herself, seeing the state of that country now, but he has proof. He has a ring which was hers, a ring she sold in Peterborough, long after she was gone from here. Therefore this body cannot be hers.”

“The ring,” said Cadfael reasonably, “was unquestionably hers, and genuine. Ruald knew it at once, and was glad and grateful beyond measure to be reassured that she's alive and well, and seemingly faring well enough without him. You saw him, as I did. I am sure there was no guile in him, and no falsity.”

“So I believe, too. I do not think we are back to Ruald, though God knows we may be back with Generys. But see what follows! Next, a search throws up another man who may by all the signs be guilty of killing another vanished woman in that very place. And yet again Sulien Blount, when he hears of it so helpfully from you, continues to interest himself in the matter, voluntarily setting out to trace this woman also, and show that she is alive. And, by God, is lucky enough to find her! Thus delivering Britric as he delivered Ruald. And now tell me, Cadfael, tell me truly, what does all that say to you?”

“It says,” admitted Cadfael honestly, “that whoever the woman may be, Sulien himself is guilty, and means to battle it out for his life, yes, but not at the expense of Ruald or Britric or any innocent man. And that, I think, would be in character for him. He might kill. He would not let another man hang for it.”

“That is how you read the omens?” Hugh was studying him closely, black brows obliquely tilted, and a wry smile curling one corner of his expressive mouth.

“That is how I read the omens.”

“But you do not believe it!”

It was a statement rather than a question, and voiced without surprise. Hugh was well enough versed in Cadfael by now to discern in him tendencies of which he himself was still unaware. Cadfael considered the implications very seriously for a few moments of silence. Then he said judicially: “On the face of it, it is logical, it is possible, it is even likely. If, after all, this is Generys, as now again seems all too likely, by common consent she was a very beautiful woman. Nearly old enough to be the boy's mother, true, and he had known her from infancy, but he himself as good as said that he fled to Ramsey because he found himself guiltily and painfully in love with her. It happens to many a green boy, to suffer his first disastrous experience of love for a woman long familiarly known, and loved in another fashion, a woman out of his generation and out of his reach. But how if there was more to it than mere flight to escape from insoluble problems and incurable pain? Consider the situation, when a husband she had loved and trusted was wrenching himself away from her as it were in blood, her blood, and yet leaving her bound and lonely! In her rage and bitterness at such a desertion a passionate woman might well have set herself to take revenge on all men, even the vulnerable young. Taken him up, comforted herself in his worshipping dog's eyes, and then cast him off. Such affronts the young in their first throes feel mortally. But the death may have been hers. Reason enough to fly from the scene and from the world into a distant cloister, out of sight even of the trees that sheltered her home.”

“It is logical,” said Hugh, echoing Cadfael's own words, “it is possible, it is credible.”

“My only objection,” agreed Cadfael, “is that I find I do not credit it. Nor cannot, for good sound reasons—simply do not.”

“Your reservations,” said Hugh philosophically, “always have me reining in and treading very carefully. Now as ever! But I have another thought: How if Sulien had the ring in his possession all along, ever since he parted with Generys—living or dead? How if she herself had given it to him? Tossed away her husband's love gift in bitterness at his desertion upon the most innocent and piteous lover she could ever have had. And she did say that she had a lover.”

“If he had killed her,” said Cadfael, “would he have kept her token?”

“He might! Oh, yes, he very well might. Such things have been known, when love at its most devilish raises hate as another devil, to fight it out between them. Yes, I think he would keep her ring, even through a year of concealing it from abbot and confessor and all, in Ramsey.”

“As he swore to Radulfus,” remarked Cadfael, suddenly reminded, “that he did not. He could lie, I think, but would not lie wantonly, for no good reason.”

“Have we not attributed to him good reason enough for lying? Then, if all along he had the ring, the time came when it was urgent, for Ruald's sake, to produce it in evidence, with this false story of how he came by it. If indeed it is false. If I had proof it is not,” said Hugh, fretting at the frustration of chance, “I could put Sulien almost—
almost
—out of my mind.”

“There is also,” said Cadfael slowly, “the question of why he did not tell Ruald at once, when they met, that he had heard news of Generys in Peterborough, and she was alive and well. Even if, as he says, his intent was to keep the ring for himself, still he could have told the man what he must have known would come as great ease and relief to him. But he did not.”

“The boy did not know, then,” Hugh objected fairly, “that we had found a dead woman, nor that any shadow lay over Ruald. He knew of no very urgent need to give him news of his wife, not until he heard the whole story at Longner. Indeed, he might well have thought it better to leave well alone, since the man is blessedly happy where he is.”

“I am not altogether sure,” Cadfael said slowly, peering back into the brief while he had spent with Sulien as helper in the herbarium, “that he did not know of the case until he went home. The same day that he asked leave to visit Longner and see his family again, Jerome had been with him in the garden, for I met him as he left, and he was at once in haste, and a shade more civil and brotherly than usual. And I wonder now if something had not been said of a woman's bones discovered, and a man's reputation under threat. That same evening Sulien went to the lord abbot, and was given leave to ride to Longner. When he came back next day, it was to declare his intent to leave the Order, and to bring forth the ring and the story of how he got it.”

Hugh was drumming his fingers softly on the table, his eyes narrowed in thought. “Which first?” he demanded.

“First he asked and obtained his dismissal.”

“Would it, you think, be easier, to a man usually truthful, to lie to the abbot after that than before?”

“You have thoughts not unlike mine,” said Cadfael glumly.

“Well,” said Hugh, shaking off present concerns from his shoulders, “two things are certain. The first, that whatever the truth about Sulien himself, this second deliverance is proven absolutely. We have seen and spoken with Gunnild. She is alive, and thriving, and very sensibly has no intent in the world to go on her travels again. And since we have no cause to connect Britric with any other woman, away he goes in safety, and good luck to them both. And the second certainty, Cadfael, is that the very fact of this second deliverance casts great doubt upon the first. Generys we have
not
seen. Ring or no ring, I am in two minds now whether we ever shall see her again. And yet, and yet—Cadfael does not credit it! Not as it stands, not as we see it now.”

There is one more certainty,” Cadfael reminded him seriously, “that you are bound away from here tomorrow morning, and the king's business will not wait, so our business here must. What, if anything, do you want done until you can take the reins again? Which, God willing, may not be too long.”

They had both risen at the sound of the loaded carts moving briskly out under the archway, the hollow sound of the wheels beneath the stone echoing back to them as from a cavern. A detachment of archers on foot went with the supplies on this first stage of their journey, to pick up fresh horses at Coventry, where the lances would overtake them.

“Say no word to Sulien or any,” said Hugh, “but watch whatever follows. Let Radulfus know as much as you please, he knows how to keep a close mouth if any man does. Let young Sulien rest, if rest he can. I doubt if he'll sleep too easily, even though he has cleared the field of murderers for me, or hopes, believes, prays he has. Should I want him, when time serves, he'll be here.”

They went out together in the outer ward, and there halted to take leave. “If I'm gone long,” said Hugh, “you'll visit Aline?” There had been no mention, and would be none, of such small matters as that men get killed even in untidy regional skirmishes, such as the Fens were likely to provide. As Eudo Blount the elder had died in the rearguard after the messy ambush of Wilton, not quite a year ago. No doubt Geoffrey de Mandeville, expert at turning his coat and still making himself valuable and to be courted, would prefer to keep his devious options open by evading battle with the king's forces if he could, and killing none of baronial status, but he might not always be able to dictate the terms of engagement, even on his own watery ground. And Hugh was not a man to lead from behind.

“I will,” said Cadfael heartily. “And God keep the both of you, yes, and the lads who're going with you.”

Hugh went with him to the gate, a hand on his friend's shoulder. They were much of a height, and could match paces evenly. Under the shadow of the archway they halted.

“One more thought has entered my mind,” said Hugh, “one that has surely been in yours all this while, spoken or not. It's no very great distance from Cambridge to Peterborough.”

*

“So it has come!” said Abbot Radulfus sombrely, when Cadfael gave him the full report of his day's activities, after Vespers. “The first time Hugh has been called on to join the king's muster since Lincoln. I hope it may be to better success. God grant they need not be absent about this business very long.