The Potter's Field (27 page)

Not until then had it entered Cadfael's mind to wonder if indeed they knew, or Sulien knew, even the half of it. They were being very sure, because they thought they had discounted every other possibility, that what they had left was truth. Now the doubt that had waited aside presented itself suddenly as a world of unconsidered possibilities, and no amount of thought could rule out all. How much even of what Sulien knew was not knowledge at all, but assumption? How much of what he believed he had seen was not vision, but illusion?

They dismounted in the stable yard at the abbey, and presented themselves at the abbot's door.

*

It was the middle of the morning when they assembled at last in the abbot's parlour. Hugh had waited for her at the gatehouse, to ensure that she should be carried at once the length of the great court to the very door of Radulfus's lodging. His solicitude, perhaps, reminded her of Eudo, for when he handed her out among the tattered autumnal beds of the abbot's garden she permitted all with a small, tight but tolerant smile, bearing the too-anxious assiduities of youth and health with the hard-learned patience of age and sickness. She accepted the support of his arm through the ante-room where normally Brother Vitalis, chaplain and secretary, might have been working at this hour, and Abbot Radulfus took her hand upon the other side, and led her within, to a cushioned place prepared for her, with the support of the panelled wall at her back.

Cadfael, watching this ceremonious installation without attempting to take any part in it, thought that it had something of the enthronement of a sovereign lady about it. That might even amuse her, privately. The privileges of mortal sickness had almost been forced upon her, what she thought of them might never be told. Certainly she had an imperishable dignity, and a large and tolerant understanding of the concern and even unease she caused in others and must endure graciously. She had also, thus carefully dressed for an ordeal and a social visit, a fragile and admirable elegance. Her gown was deep blue like her eyes, and like her eyes a little faded, and the bliaut she wore over it, sleeveless and cut down to either hip, was the same blue, embroidered in rose and silver at the hems. “The whiteness of her linen wimple turned her drawn cheeks to a translucent grey in the light almost of noon.

Pernel had followed silently into the ante-room, but did not enter the parlour. She stood waiting in the doorway, her golden-russet eyes round and grave.

Pernel Otmere has been kind enough to bear me company all this way,” said Donata, “and I am grateful to her for more than that, but she need not be put to the weariness of listening to the long conference I fear I may be forcing upon you, my lords. If I may ask, first… where is my son now?”

“He is in the castle,” said Hugh simply.

“Locked up?” she asked pointblank, but without reproach or excitement. “Or on his parole?”

“He has the freedom of the wards,” said Hugh, and added no further enlightenment.

“Then, Hugh, if you would be kind enough to provide Pernel with some token that would let her in to him, I think they might spend the time more pleasantly together than apart, while we confer? Without prejudice,” she said gently, “to any proceedings you may have in mind later.”

Cadfael saw Hugh's black, betraying brows twitch, and lift into oblique appreciation, and thanked God devoutly for an understanding rare between two so different.

“I will give her my glove,” said Hugh, and cast one sharp, enjoying glance aside at the mute girl in the doorway. “No one will question it, no need for more.” And he turned and took Pernel by the hand, and went out with her.

Their plans had been made, of course, last night or this morning, in the solar at Longner where the truth came forth so far as truth was known, or on the journey at dawn, before they ever reached the ferry over Severn, where Cadfael had met them. A conspiracy of women had been hatched in Eudo's hall, that kept due consideration of Eudo's rights and needs, of his wife's contented pregnancy, even as it nurtured and advanced Pernel Otmere's determined pursuit of a truth that would set Sulien Blount free from every haunted and chivalrous burden that weighed him down. The young one and the old one—old not in years, only in the rapidity of her advance upon death—they had come together like lodestone and metal, to compound their own justice.

Hugh came back into the room smiling, though the smile was invisible to all but Cadfael. A burdened smile, none the less, for he, too, was in pursuit of a truth which might not be Pernel's truth. He closed the door firmly on the world without.

“Now, madam, in what particular can we be of service to you?”

She had composed herself into a settled stillness which could be sustained through a long conference. Without her cloak she made so slight a figure, it seemed a man could have spanned her body with his hands.

“I must thank you, my lords,” she said, “for granting me this audience. I should have asked for it earlier, but only yesterday did I hear of this matter which has been troubling you both. My family are too careful of me, and their intent was to spare me any knowledge that might be distressing. A mistake! There is nothing more distressing than to find out, very late, that those who rearrange circumstances around you to spare you pain have themselves been agonising day and night. And needlessly, to no purpose. It is an indignity, would not you think, to be protected by people you know, in your own mind, to be more in need of protection than you have ever been, or ever will be? Still, it is an error of affection. I cannot complain of it. But I need no longer suffer it. Pernel has had the good sense to tell me what no one else would. But there are still things I do not know, since she did not yet know them herself. May I ask?”

“Ask whatever you wish,” said the abbot. “In your own time, and tell us if you need to rest.”

“True,” said Donata, “there is no haste now. Those who are dead are safe enough, and those still living and wound into this coil, I trust, are also safe. I have learned that my son Sulien has given you some cause to believe him guilty of this death which is come to judgement here. Is he still suspect?”

“No,” said Hugh without hesitation. “Certainly not of murder. Though he has said, and maintains, and will not be persuaded to depart from it, that he is willing to confess to murder. And if need be, to die for it.”

She nodded her head slowly, unsurprised. The stiff folds of linen rustled softly against her cheeks. “I thought it might be so. When Brother Cadfael here came for him yesterday, I knew nothing to make me wonder or question. I thought all was as it seemed, and that you, Father, had still some doubts whether he had not made a wrong decision, and should not be advised to think more deeply about abandoning his vocation. But when Pernel told me how Generys had been found, and how my son had set himself to prove Ruald blameless, by proving this could not in fact be Generys… And then how he exerted himself, once again, to find the woman Gunnild alive… Then I understood that he had brought in evitable suspicion upon himself, as one knowing far too much. So much wasted exertion, if only I had known! And he was willing to take that load upon him? Well, but it seems you have already seen through that pretence, with no aid from me. May I take it, Hugh, that you have been in Peterborough? We heard that you were newly back from the Fen country, and since Sulien was sent for so promptly after your return, I could not fail to conclude the two were connected.”

“Yes,” said Hugh, “I went to Peterborough.”

“And you found that he had lied?”

“Yes, he had lied. The silversmith lodged him overnight, true. But he never gave him the ring, never saw the ring, never bought anything from Generys. Yes, Sulien lied.”

“And yesterday? Being found out in his lies, what did he tell you yesterday?”

“He said that he had the ring all along, that Generys had given it to him.”

“One lie leads to another,” she said with a deep sigh. “He felt he had good cause, but there is never cause good enough. Always lies come to grief. I can tell you where he got the ring. He took it from a small box I keep in my press. There are a few other things in it, a pin for fastening a cloak, a plain silver torque, a ribbon… All trifles, but they could have been recognised, and given her a name, even after years.”

“Are you saying,” asked Radulfus, listening incredulously to the quiet, detached tone of the voice that uttered such things, “that these things were taken from the dead woman? That she is indeed Generys, Ruald's wife?”

“Yes, she is indeed Generys. I could have named her at once, if anyone had asked me. I would have named her. I do not deal in lies. And yes, the trinkets were all hers.”

“It is a terrible sin,” said the abbot heavily, “to steal from the dead.”

“There was no such intent,” she said with unshakable calm. “But without them, after no very long time, no one would be able to name her. As you found, no one was. But it was not my choice, I would not have gone to such lengths. I think it must have been when Sulien brought my lord's body back from Salisbury, after Wilton, and we buried him and set all his affairs and debts in order, that Sulien found the box. He would know the ring. When he needed his proof, to show that she still lived, then he came home and took it. Her possessions no one has ever worn or touched, otherwise. Simply, they are in safe keeping. I will readily deliver them up to you, or to anyone who has a claim. Until last night I had not opened the box since first it was laid there. I did not know what he had done. Neither did Eudo. He knows nothing about this. Nor never shall.”

From his preferred corner, where he could observe without involvement, Cadfael spoke for the first time. “I think, also, you may not yet know all you would wish to know about your son Sulien. Look back to the time when Ruald entered this house, abandoning his wife. How much did you know of what went on in Sulien's mind then? Did you know how deeply he was affected to Generys? A first love, the most desperate always. Did you know that in her desolation she gave him cause for a time to think there might be a cure for his? When in truth there was none?”

She had turned her head and fixed her gaunt dark eyes earnestly on Cadfael's face. And steadily she said: “No, I did not know it. I knew he frequented their croft. So he had from a small child, they were fond of him. But if there was so extreme a change, no, he never said word or gave sign. He was a secret child, Sulien. Whatever ailed Eudo I always knew, he is open as the day. Not Sulien!”

“He has told us that it was so. And did you know that because of this attachment he still went there, even when she had thought fit to put an end to his illusion? And that he was there in the dark,” said Cadfael with rueful gentleness, “when Generys was buried?”

“No,” she said, “I did not know. Only now had I begun to fear it. That or some other knowledge no less dreadful to him.”

“Dreadful enough to account for much. For why he made up his mind to take the cowl, and not here in Shrewsbury, but far away in Ramsey. What did you make of that, then?” asked Hugh.

“It was not so strange in him,” she said, looking into distance and faintly and ruefully smiling. “That was something that could well happen to Sulien, he ran deep, and thought much. And then, there was a bitterness and a pain in the house, and I know he could not choose but feel it and be troubled. I think I was not sorry that he should escape from it and go free, even if it must be into the cloister. I knew of no worse reason. That he had been there, and seen—no, that I did not know.”

“And what he saw,” said Hugh, after a brief and heavy silence, “was his father, burying the body of Generys.”

“Yes,” she said. “It must have been so.”

“We could find no other possibility,” said Hugh, “and I am sorry to have to set it before you. Though I still cannot see what reason there could be, why or how it came about that he killed her.”

“Oh, no!” said Donata. “No, not that. He buried her, yes. But he did not kill her. Why should he? I see that Sulien believed it, and would not at any cost have it known to the world. But it was not like that.”

“Then who did?” demanded Hugh, confounded. “Who was her murderer?”

“No one,” said Donata. “There was no murder.”

Of the unbelieving silence that followed, Hugh's voice asked: “If this was not murder, why the secret burial, why conceal a death for which there could be no blame?”

“I have not said,” Donata said patiently, “that there was no blame. I have not said that there was no sin. It is not for me to judge. But murder there was none. I am here to tell you truth. The judgement must be yours.”

She spoke as one, and the only one, who could shed light on all that had happened, and the only one who had been kept in ignorance of the need. Her voice remained considerate, authoritative and kind. Very simply and clearly she set out her case, excusing nothing, regretting nothing.

“When Ruald turned away from his wife, she was desolated and despairing. You will not have forgotten, Father, for you must have been in grave doubt concerning his decision. She, when she found she could not hold him, came to appeal to my husband, as overlord and friend to them both, to reason with Ruald and try to persuade him he did terrible wrong. And truly I think he did his best for her, and again and again went to argue her case, and tried also, surely, to comfort and reassure her, that she should not suffer loss of house and living by reason of Ruald's desertion. My lord was good to his people. But Ruald would not be turned back from the way he had chosen. He left her. She had loved him out of all measure,” said Donata dispassionately, speaking pure truth, “and in the same measure she hated him. And all these days and weeks my lord had contended for her right, but could not win it. He had never before been so often and so long in her company.”

A moment she paused, looking from face to face, presenting her own ruin with wide, illusionless eyes.