The Potter's Field

by Ellis Peters

  The shop was there, or at least a flourishing silversmith’s shop was there, open for business and showing a prosperous front to the world. That was the first confirmation. Hugh went in, and enquired of the young fellow sitting at work in the back of the shop, under a window that lit his workbench, for Master John Hinde. The name was received blithely, and the young man laid down his tools and went out by a rear door to call his master. No question of any discrepancy here, the shop and the man were here to be found, just as Sulien had left them when he made his way west from Ramsey.

  Master John Hinde, when he followed his assistant in from his private quarters, was plainly a man of substance in the town, one who might well be a good patron to his favoured religious house, and on excellent terms with abbots. He was perhaps fifty, a lean, active, upright figure in a rich furred gown. Quick dark eyes in a thin, decisive face summed up Hugh in a glance.

  “I am John Hinde. How can I help you?” The marks of the wearisome lurking in wet, windswept ambushes, and occasional hard riding in the open, were there to be seen in Hugh’s clothes and harness. “You come from the king’s muster? We have heard he’s withdrawing his host. Not to leave the field clear for de Mandeville, I hope?”

  “No such matter,” Hugh assured him, “though I’m sent back to take care of my own field. No, you’ll be none the worse for our leaving, the Flemings will be between you and danger, with at least one strong-point well placed to pen them into their island. There’s little more or better he could do now, with the winter coming.”

  “Well, we live as candles in the breath of God,” said the silversmith philosophically, “wherever we are. I’ve known it too long to be easily frightened off. And what’s your need, sir, before you head for home?”

  “Do you remember,” said Hugh, “about the first or second day of October, a young monk sheltering here with you overnight? It was just after the sack of Ramsey, the boy came from there, commended to you, he said, by his abbot. Abbot Walker was sending him home to the brother house at Shrewsbury, to take the news of Ramsey with him along the way. You remember the man?”

  “Clearly,” said John Hinde, without hesitation. “He was just at the end of his novitiate. The brothers were scattering for safety. None of us is likely to forget that time. I would have lent the lad a horse for the first few miles, but he said he would do better afoot, for they were all about the open countryside like bees in swarm then. What of him? I hope he reached Shrewsbury safely?”

  “He did, and brought the news wherever he passed. Yes, he’s well, though he’s left the Order since, and returned to his brother’s manor.”

  “He told me then he was in doubts if he was on the right way,” agreed the silversmith. “Walter was not the man to hold on to a youngster against his inclination. So what is it I can add, concerning this youth?”

  “Did he,” asked Hugh deliberately, “notice a particular ring in your shop? And did he remark upon it, and ask after the woman from whom you had bought it, only ten days or so earlier? A plain silver ring set with a small yellow stone, and bearing initials engraved within it? And did he beg it of you, because he had known the woman well from his childhood, and kept a kindness for her? Is any part of this truth?”

  There was a long moment of silence while the silversmith looked back at him, eye to eye, with intelligent speculation sharpening the lean lines of his face. It is possible that he was considering retreat from any further confidence, for want of knowing what might result from his answers for a young man perhaps innocently entrammelled in some misfortune no fault of his own. Men of business learn to be chary of trusting too many too soon. But if so, he discarded the impulse of denial, after studying Hugh with close attention and arriving, it seemed, at a judgement.

  “Come within!” he said then, with equal deliberation and equal certainty. And he turned towards the door from which he had emerged, inviting Hugh with a gesture of his hand. “Come! Let me hear more. Now we have gone so far, we may as well go further together.”

  Chapter 11

  SULIEN HAD PUT OFF THE HABIT, but the hourly order that went with it was not so easy to discard. He found himself waking at midnight for Matins and Lauds, and listening for the bell, and was shaken and daunted by the silence and isolation where there should have been the sense of many brothers stirring and sighing, a soft murmur of voices urging the heavy sleepers, and in the dimness at the head of the night stairs the glow of the little lamp to light them down safely to the church. Even the freedom of his own clothes sat uneasily on him still, after a year of the skirted gown. He had put away one life without being able to take up the old where he had abandoned it, and making a new beginning was unexpected effort and pain. Moreover, things at Longner had changed since his departure to Ramsey. His brother was married to a young wife, settled in his lordship, and happy in the prospect of an heir, for Jehane was pregnant. The Longner lands were a very fair holding, but not great enough to support two families, even if such sharing had ever promised well, and a younger son would have to work out an independent life for himself, as younger sons had always had to do. The cloister he had sampled and abandoned. His family bore with him tolerantly and patiently until he should find his way. Eudo was the most open and amiable of young men, and fond of his brother. Sulien was welcome to all the time he needed, and until he made up his mind Longner was his home, and glad to have him back.

  But no one could quite be sure that Sulien was glad. He filled his days with whatever work offered, in the stables and byres, exercising hawk and hound, lending a hand with sheep and cattle in the fields, carting timber for fence repairs and fuel, whatever was needed he was willing and anxious to do, as though he had stored within him such a tension of energy that he must at all costs grind it out of his body or sicken with it.

  Withindoors he was quiet company, but then he had always been the quiet one. He was gentle and attentive to his mother, and endured stoically hours of her anguished presence, which Eudo tended to avoid when he could. The steely control with which she put aside every sign of pain was admirable, but almost harder to bear than open distress. Sulien marvelled and endured with her, since there was nothing more he could do for her. And she was gracious and dignified, but whether she was glad of his company or whether it added one more dimension to her burden, there was no telling. He had always supposed that Eudo was her favourite and had the lion’s share of her love. That was the usual order of things, and Sulien had no fault to find with it.

  His abstraction and quietness were hardly noticed by Eudo and Jehane. They were breeding, they were happy, they found life full and pleasant, and took it for granted that a youth who had mistakenly wasted a year of his life on a vocation of which he had thought better only just in time, should spend these first weeks of freedom doing a great deal of hard thinking about his future. So they left him to his thoughts, accommodated him with the hard labour he seemed to need, and waited with easy affection for him to emerge into the open in his own good time.

  He rode out one day in mid November with orders to Eudo’s herdsman in the outlying fields of Longner land to eastward, along the River Tern, almost as far afield as Upton, and having discharged his errand, turned to ride back, and then instead wheeled the horse again and rode on very slowly, leaving the village of Upton on his left hand, hardly knowing what it was he had in mind. There was no haste, all his own industry could not convince him that he was needed at home, and the day, though cloudy, was dry, and the air mild. He rode on, gradually drawing a little further from the river bank, and only when he topped the slight ridge which offered the highest point in these flat, open fields did he realise where he was heading. Before him, at no great distance, the roofs of Withington showed through a frail filigree of naked branches, and the squat, square tower of the church just rose above the grove of low trees.

  He had not realised how constantly she had been in his mind since his visit here, lodged deep in his memory, unobtrusive but always present. He had only to close his eyes now, and
he could see her face as clearly as when she had first caught the sound of his horse’s hooves on the hard soil of the courtyard, and turned to see who was riding in. The very way she halted and turned to him was like a flower swaying in the lightest of winds, and the face she raised to him was open like a flower, without reserve or fear, so that at that first glance he had seemed to see deep into her being. As though her flesh, though rounded and full and firm, had been translucent from without and luminous from within. There had been a little pale sunshine that day, and it had gained radiance from her eyes, russet-gold eyes, and reflected light from her broad brow under the soft brown hair. She had smiled at him with that same ungrudging radiance, shedding warmth about her to melt the chill of anxiety from his mind and heart, she who had never set eyes on him before, and must not be made ever to see him or think of him again.

  But he had thought of her, whether he willed it or not.

  He had hardly realised now that he was still riding towards the further edge of the village, where the manor lay. The line of the stockade rose out of the fields, the steep pitch of the roof within, the pattern of field strips beyond the enclosure, a square plot of orchard trees, all gleaned and almost leafless. He had splashed through the first stream almost without noticing, but the second, so close now to the wide-open gate in the manor fence, caused him to baulk suddenly and consider what he was doing, and must not do, had no right to do.

  He could see the courtyard within the stockade, and the elder boy carefully leading a pony in decorously steady circles, with the small girl on its back. Regularly they appeared, passed and vanished, to reappear at the far rim of their circle and vanish again, the boy giving orders importantly, the child with both small fists clutched in the pony’s mane. Once Gunnild came into view for a moment, smiling, watching her youngest charge, astride like a boy, kicking round bare heels into the pony’s fat sides. Then she drew back again to clear their exercise ground, and passed from his sight. With an effort, Sulien came to himself, and swung away from them towards the village.

  And there she was, coming towards him from the direction of the church, with a basket on her arm under the folds of her cloak, and her brown hair braided in a thick plait and tied with a scarlet cord. Her eyes were on him. She had known him before ever he was aware of her, and she approached him without either hastening or lingering, with confident pleasure. Just as he had been seeing her with his mind’s eye a moment earlier, except that then she had worn no cloak, and her hair had been loose about her shoulders. But her face had the same open radiance, her eyes the same quality of letting him into her heart.

  A few paces from where he had reined in she halted, and they looked at each other for a long moment in silence. Then she said: “Were you really going away again, now that you’ve come? Without a word? Without coming in?”

  He knew that he ought to claw out of some astute corner of his mind wit enough and words enough to show that his presence here had nothing to do with her or his former visit, some errand that would account for his having to ride by here, and make it urgent that he should be on his way home again without delay. But he could not find a single word, however false, however rough, to thrust her away from him.

  “Come and be acquainted with my father,” she said simply. “He will be glad, he knows why you came before. Of course Gunnild told him, how else do you think she got horse and groom to bring her into Shrewsbury, to the sheriff? None of us need ever go behind my father’s back. I know you asked her to leave you out of it with Hugh Beringar, and so she did, but in this house we don’t have secrets, we have no cause.”

  That he could well believe. Her nature spoke for her sire, a constant and carefree inheritance. And though he knew it was none the less incumbent upon him to draw away from her, to avoid her and leave her her peace of mind, and relieve her parents of any future grief on her behalf, he could not do it. He dismounted, and walked with her, bridle in hand and still mute and confounded, in at the gate of Withington.

  *

  Brother Cadfael saw them in church together at the sung Mass for Saint Cecilia’s day, the twenty-second of November. It was a matter for conjecture why they should choose to attend here at the abbey, when they had parish churches of their own. Perhaps Sulien still kept a precarious fondness for the Order he had left, for its stability and certainty, not to be found in the world outside, and still felt the need to make contact with it from time to time, while he reorientated his life. Perhaps she wanted Brother Anselm’s admired music, especially on this day of all the saints’ days. Or perhaps, Cadfael reflected, they found this a convenient and eminently respectable meeting-place for two who had not yet progressed so far as to be seen together publicly nearer home. Whatever the reason, there they were in the nave, close to the parish altar where they could see through into the choir and hear the singing unmarred by the mute spots behind some of the massive pillars. They stood close, but not touching each other, not even the folds of a sleeve brushing, very still, very attentive, with solemn faces and wide, clear eyes. Cadfael saw the girl for once grave, though she still shone, and the boy for once eased and tranquil, though the shadow of his disquiet still set its finger in the small furrow between his brows.

  When the brothers emerged after service Sulien and Pernel had already left by the west door, and Cadfael went to his work in the garden wondering how often they had met thus, and how the first meeting had come about, for though the two had never looked at each other or touched hands during worship, or given any sign of being aware each of the other’s presence, yet there was something about their very composure and the fixity of their attention that bound them together beyond doubt.

  It was not difficult, he found, to account for this ambivalent aura they carried with them, so clearly together, so tacitly apart. There would be no resolution, no solving of the dichotomy, until the one devouring question was answered. Ruald, who knew the boy best, had never found the least occasion to doubt that what he told was truth, and the simplicity of Ruald’s acceptance of that certainty was Ruald’s own salvation. But Cadfael could not see certainty yet upon either side. And Hugh and his lances and archers were still many miles away, their fortune still unknown, and nothing to be done but wait.

  *

  On the last day of November an archer of the garrison, soiled and draggled from the roads, rode in from the east, pausing first at Saint Giles to cry the news that the sheriff’s levy was not far behind him, intact as it had left the town, apart from a few grazes and bruises, that the king’s shire levies, those most needed elsewhere, were dismissed to their own garrisons at least for the winter, and his tactics changed from the attempt to dislodge and destroy his enemy to measures to contain him territorially and limit the damage he could do to his neighbours. A campaign postponed rather than ended, but it meant the safe return of the men of Shropshire to their own pastures. By the time the courier rode on into the Foregate the news was already flying ahead of him, and he eased his speed to cry it again as he passed, and answer some of the eager questions called out to him by the inhabitants. They came running out of their houses and shops and lofts, tools in hand, the women from their kitchens, the smith from his forge, Father Boniface from his room over the north porch of the abbey church, in a great buzz of relief and delight, passing details back and forth to one another as they had snatched them by chance from the courier’s lips.

  By the time the solitary rider was past the abbey gatehouse and heading for the bridge, the orderly thudding of hooves and the faint jingle of harness had reached Saint Giles, and the populace of the Foregate stayed to welcome the returning company. Work could wait for an hour or two. Even within the abbey pale the news was going round, and brothers gathered outside the wall unreproved, to watch the return. Cadfael, who had risen to see them depart, came thankfully to see them safely home again.

  They came, understandably, a little less immaculate in their accoutrements than they had departed. The lance pennants were soiled and frayed, even tattered here and
there, some of the light armour dinted and dulled, a few heads bandaged, one or two wrists slung for support, and several beards where none had been before. But they rode in good order and made a very respectable show, in spite of the travel stains and the mud imperfectly brushed out of their garments. Hugh had overtaken his men well before they reached Coventry, and made a sufficient halt there to allow rest and grooming to men and horses alike. The baggage carts and the foot bowmen could take their time from Coventry on, where the roads were open and good, and word of their safety had gone before them.

  Riding at the head of the column, Hugh had discarded his mail to ride at ease in his own coat and cloak. He looked alert and stimulated, faintly flushed with pleasure from the hum and babel of relief and joy that accompanied him along the Foregate, and would certainly be continued through the town. Hugh would always make a wry mock of praise and plaudits, well aware of how narrowly they were separated from the rumblings of reproach that might have greeted him had he lost men, in however desperate an encounter. But it was human to take pleasure in knowing he had lost none. The return from Lincoln, almost three years ago, had not been like this; he could afford to enjoy his welcome.

  At the abbey gatehouse he looked for Cadfael among the bevy of shaven crowns, and found him on the steps of the west door. Hugh said a word into his captain’s ear, and drew his grey horse out of the line to rein in alongside, though he did not dismount. Cadfael reached up to the bridle in high content.

  “Well, lad, this is a welcome sight if ever there was. Barely a scratch on you, and not a man missing! Who would want more?”