by Ellis Peters
“So it would be, my lord. Why not? I doubt if a soul had gone through that door since it was first shut up. There’s nothing within there.”
Nothing now, Cadfael was thinking. But was there something someone! there only yesterday? It would seem that Bertred thought so, though of course Bertred could be wrong. He must have known of the abandoned room, he may well have thought it worth putting to the test at a venture, without special cause. If so, it cost him dear. All those dreams of bettering his fortune by a gallant rescue, of exploiting a woman’s gratitude to the limit and advancing his own cause step by step with insinuating care, all shattered, swept away down the currents of the Severn. Did he really know something no one else among the searchers knew, or was he speaking only of this hidden room as a possibility?
“Will,” said Hugh,”send a man up to Hynde’s house, and ask him, or his son, to come down here and bring the keys. All his keys! It’s time I took a look within here myself. I should have done it earlier.”
But it was neither William Hynde nor his son Vivian who came striding down the field with the sergeant after a wait of some ten or fifteen minutes. It was a serving-man in homespun and leather, a tall, bold-faced, muscular fellow in his thirties, sporting a close-trimmed beard that outlined a wide mouth and a jaunty jaw with all the dandified elegance of a Norman lordling, though his build was Saxon and his colouring reddish-fair. He made a careless obeisance to Hugh, and straightened up to measure eyes with him, ice-pale eyes with only the glittering Norse-tinge of blue in them.
“My lord, my mistress sends you these, and my services.” He had the keys in his hand on a great ring, a rich bunch of them. His voice was loud, with a brazen ring to it, though his manner was civil enough. “My master’s away at his sheepfolds by Forton, has been since yesterday, and the young master’s gone up there to help them today, but he’ll be back tomorrow if you need him. Will it please you command me? I’m here to serve.”
“I’ve seen you about the town,” said Hugh, eyeing him with detached interest. “So you’re in Hynde’s service, are you? What’s your name?”
“Gunnar, my lord.”
“And he trusts you with his keys. Well, Gunnar, open these doors for us. I want to see what’s within.” And he added, as the man turned willingly to obey: “When is the barge expected, if Master Hynde can spare time to go in person to his flocks?”
“Before the end of the month, my lord, but the merchant sends word ahead from Worcester. They take the clip by water to Bristol, and then overland to Southampton for shipping, it cuts off the long voyage round. A rough passage they say it is, all round the south-west.” He was busy as he talked, unfastening two massive padlocks from the bar of the warehouse doors, and drawing both leaves wide open to let in the light upon a clean-swept, slightly raised floor of boards, on which the lower-grade fleeces had been stacked. This level was empty now. From the left-hand corner within the door a wooden ladder led up through a wide, open trap to the floor above.
“You’re well informed concerning Master Hynde’s business affairs, Gunnar,” said Hugh mildly, stepping over the threshold.
“He trusts me. I made the journey down to Bristol with the barge once, when they had a man injured and were short-handed. Will it please you go up, sir? Shall I lead the way?”
A very self-assured and articulate person, this Gunnar, Cadfael reflected, the very image of the intelligent and trusted servant of a commercial house, capable of adapting to travel, and learning from every experience. By his stature, bearing and colouring he proclaimed his northern ancestry. The Danes had reached no further south than Brigge in this shire, but they had left a few of their getting behind when they retreated. Cadfael followed without haste as they mounted the ladder and stepped on to the upper floor. Here the light was dim, reflected up from the wide doors below, but enough to show the stacked bales stretching the full length of the storehouse.
“We could do with more light,” said Hugh.
“Wait, my lord, and I’ll open.” And Gunnar made no more ado, but seized one of the bales in the centre of the array and hauled it down to set aside, and after it several more, until the stout wooden planks of a narrow door were laid bare. He flourished his ring of keys with a flurry of sound, selected one, and thrust it into the lock. There were two iron bars slotted across the door in addition, and they grated rustily as he drew them from the sockets. The key creaked as it turned. “There’s been no use made of this for a while now,” said Gunnar cheerfully. “We’ll do no harm by letting in the air for once.”
The door opened inward. He thrust it wide and made straight across to the shuttered hatch, and with a lusty banging of latches and beams released the shutters and pushed them wide to let in the slanting sunlight. “Mind the dust, my lord,” he warned helpfully, and stood back to let them examine the whole narrow room. A rising breeze blew in, fluttering trailers of cobweb from the rough wood of the hatch.
A small, barren space, an old bench against the wall, a heap of discarded fragments of vellum and cloth and wool and wood, and indistinguishable rubbish drifted into one corner, a large ewer with a broken lip, the ancient desk leaning askew, and over all the grime and dust of abandonment, of a place two years disused, and a year sealed and forgotten.
“There was a thief got in this way once,” said Gunnar airily. “They’d have much ado to manage it a second time. But I must make all secure again before I leave it, my master’d have my head if I forgot to shoot every bolt and turn every key.”
“There was a thief tried to get in this way only last night,” said Hugh casually. “Have they not told you?”
Gunnar had turned on him a face fallen open in sheer astonishment.” A thief? Last night? Not one word of this have I heard, or the mistress, either. Who says it’s so?”
“Ask the watchman below, he’ll tell you. One Bertred, a weaver who works for Mistress Perle. Take a look at the sill outside the hatch, Gunnar, you’ll see how it came down with his weight. The hound hunted him into the river,” said Hugh, offhand, gazing musingly all round the neglected room, but well aware of the look on Gunnar’s face. “He drowned.”
The silence that followed was brief but profound. Gunnar stood mute, staring, and all his light assurance had frozen into a steely gravity.
“You’d heard nothing?” marvelled Hugh, his eyes on the dusty floor, on which Gunnar’s vigorous passage had printed the only pattern of footmarks perceptible between door and hatch.
“No, my lord nothing.” The loud, confident voice had become taut, intent and quiet. “I know the man. Why should he want to steal fleeces? He is very well settled as he is he was
Dead?
“Drowned, Gunnar. Yes.”
“Sweet Christ have his soul!” said Gunnar, slowly and quietly, to himself rather than to them. “I knew him. I’ve diced with him. God knows neither I nor any that I know of bore Bertred any ill will, or ever wished him harm.”
There was another silence. It was as if Gunnar had left them, and was withdrawn into another place. The ice-blue eyes looked opaque, as if he had drawn a shutter down over them, or turned their gaze within rather than without. In a few moments he stirred, and asked levelly: “Have you done here, my lord? May I close these again?”
“You may,” said Hugh as shortly. “I have done.”
On the way back into the town through the castle gate they were both silent and thoughtful, until Hugh said suddenly: “If ever she was there in that dusty hole, someone has done excellent work wiping out every trace.”
“Bertred thought she was,” said Cadfael. “Though Bertred may have been wrong. Surely he was there to try and set her free, but he may have been guessing, and guessing wrongly. He knew of the room, and knew it was not common knowledge and therefore, with care, might be used for such a purpose. And he knew that young Hynde made a very possible abductor, being vain, persistent and in urgent need of money to maintain his easy life. But was it more than a guess? Did he really discover something that made
it a certainty?”
“The very dust!” said Hugh. “No mark of any foot but Gunnar’s, or none that I could see. And the young fellow, the son, this Vivian he did ride off this morning, out of the town, that I knew already, Will reported it to me. So there’s no one there but the mother now. And would she be lying? Hardly likely he’d tell her if he had a woman hidden away. If he’s taken the girl elsewhere after the night alarm, it would hardly be to his mother. But I’ll pay the house another visit, all the same. I fancy Bertred must have been trying his luckbut that the poor wretch had no luck! No luck with the roses, no luck with the rescue. No luck in any of his schemes.”
Another long silence, while they climbed the gradual slope within the gate, and approached the ramp to the castle entrance. “And he did not know!” said Hugh. “He really did not know!”
“He? And know what?”
“This man Gunnar. I had my doubts about him until then. So confident and assured, light as air, until mention was made of a man’s death. That I am sure came new to him. There was no pretence there. What say you, Cadfael?”
“I say there is a man who could lie and lie, whenever the occasion needed it. But who was not lying then. His very voice changed, no less than his face. No, he did not know. He was shaken to the heart. Whatever mischief he might have a part in, he had not contemplated a death. Let alone Bertred’s death!” They had reached the ramp and halted. “I must get back,” said Cadfael, looking up into a sky just veiled and softened with the approach of twilight. “What more can we do tonight? And what will you do tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow,” said Hugh with deliberation, “I’ll have Vivian Hynde brought to me as soon as he shows his face in the town gate, and see what’s to be got out of him concerning his father’s old counting-house. From all I’ve heard of him, he should be easier to frighten than his man shows any sign of being. And even if he’s a snow-white innocent, from all accounts a fright will do him no harm.”
“And will you make it public,” Cadfael asked,”that at least Brother Eluric’s murderer is known? And is dead?”
“No, not yet. Perhaps not at all, but at least let the poor woman have what peace she can find until her son’s buried. What point in blazoning forth guilt where there can never be a trial?” Hugh was looking back with a frown, and somewhat regretting that Miles had been present to witness that manifestation in the loom-shed. “If I know the sharp ears and long tongues of Shrewsbury it may yet be common talk by morning without any word from me. Perhaps not, perhaps Coliar will hold his tongue for the mother’s sake. But at any rate they shall have no official declaration to grit their teeth in until we find Judith Perle. As we will, as we must. Let them gossip and speculate. Someone may take fright and make the blunder I’m waiting for.”
“The lord abbot will have to know all that I know,” said Cadfael.
“So he will, but he’s another matter. He has the right and you have the duty. So you’d best be about getting back to him,” said Hugh, sighing, “and I’d best go in and see if any of those men of mine who’ve been out raking the countryside has done any better than I have.”
Upon which impeccably conscientious but none too hopeful note they parted.
Cadfael arrived back at the gatehouse too late for Vespers. The brothers were in the choir, and the office almost over. A great deal had happened in one short afternoon.
“There’s one here been waiting for you,” said the porter, looking out from his lodge as Cadfael stepped through the wicket. “Master Niall the bronzesmith. Come in to him here, we’ve been passing the time of evening together, but he wants to be on his way as soon as may be.”
Niall had heard enough to know who came, and emerged from the gatehouse with a coarse linen bag under his arm. It needed but one glance at Cadfael’s face to show that there was nothing to tell, but he asked, all the same. “No word of her?”
“None that’s new. No, sorry I am to say it. I’m just back from the sheriff himself, but without comfort.”
“I waited,” said Niall, “in case you might bring at least some news. The least trace would be welcome. And I can do nothing! Well, I must be on my way, then.”
“Where are you bound tonight?”
“To my sister and her man at Pulley, to see my little girl. I have a set of harness ornaments to deliver for one of Mortimer’s horses, though that could have waited a few days yet. But the child will be looking for me. This is the evening I usually go to her, else I wouldn’t stir. But I shall not stay overnight. I’ll walk back in the dark. At least to be there with the roses, if I can do nothing better for her.”
“You’ve done more than the rest of us,” said Cadfael ruefully, “for you’ve kept the bush alive. And she’ll be back yet to take the pick of its flowers from your hand, the day after tomorrow.”
“Should I read that as a promise?” asked Niall, with a wry and grudging smile.
“No, as a prayer. The best I can do. With three miles or more to walk to Pulley, and three miles back,” said Cadfael, “you’ll have time for a whole litany. And bear in mind whose festival it will be in two days’ time! Saint Winifred will be listening. Who more likely? She herself stood off an unwanted suitor and kept her virtue, she’ll not forsake a sister.”
“Well
I’d best be off. God with you, Brother.” Niall shouldered his bag of ornamental bronze rosettes and harness buckles for Mortimer’s horse, and strode away along the Foregate, towards the track that led south-west from the bridge, a square, erect figure thrusting briskly into the pearly evening air cooling towards twilight. Cadfael stood looking after him until he turned the corner beyond the mill-pond and vanished from sight.
Not a man for grand gestures or many words, Niall Bronzesmith, but Cadfael was bitterly and painfully aware of the gnawing frustration that eats away at the heart from within, when there is nothing to be done about the one thing in the world of any importance.
Chapter Eleven
Niall set out from Pulley on his return walk to Shrewsbury a little before midnight. Cecily would have had him stay, urging truly enough that if he did go back it would change nothing, and stating bluntly what Cadfael had refrained from stating, that while the woman herself was still safely out of reach there was hardly likely to be any further attack on the rose-bush, for any such attack was unnecessary. No one could deliver a rose into the hand of a woman who was missing. If someone was plotting to break the bargain and recover the house in the Foregate, as by now everyone seemed to be agreed, the thing was already done, without taking any further risk.
Niall had said very little about the affair to his sister, and nothing at all about his own deep feelings, but she seemed to know by instinct. The talk of Shrewsbury found its way out here softened and distanced into a kind of folk-tale, hardly bearing at all on real life. The reality here was the demesne, its fields, its few labourers, the ditched coppice from which the children fended off the goats at pasture, the plough-oxen, and the enshrouding forest. The two little girls, listening round-eyed to the grown-ups’ talk, must have thought of Judith Perle as of one of the enchanted ladies bewitched by evil magic in old nursery tales. Cecily’s two shock-headed, berry-brown boys, at home in all the woodland skills, had only two or three times in their lives, thus far, set eyes on the distant towers of Shrewsbury castle. Three miles is not so far, but far enough when you have no need to cross it. John Stury came into the town perhaps twice a year to buy, and for the rest the little manor was self-supporting. Sometimes Niall was moved to feel that he must soon remove his daughter and take her back with him to the town, for fear he might lose her for ever. To a happy household, a peaceful, simple life and good company, truly, but to his own irrevocable loss and bereavement.
She was asleep long before this hour, in her nest with the other three in the loft, he had laid her there himself, already drowsy. A fair creature, with a bright sheen of gold in her cloud of hair, like her mother before her, and a skin like creamy milk, that glowed in sunny weather wi
th the same gilded gloss. Cecily’s brood were reddish-dark, after their father, with lithe, lean bodies and black eyes. She was rounded and smooth and soft. Almost from birth she had been here with her cousins, it would be hard to take her away.
“You’ll have a dark walk home,” said John, peering out from the doorway. In the summer night the smell of the forest was spicy and strong, heavy in the windless dark. “The moon won’t be up for hours yet.”
“I don’t mind it. I should know the way well enough by now.”
“I’ll come out with you as far as the track,” said Cecily, “and set you on your road. It’s fine and warm still, and I’m wakeful.”
She walked beside him in silence as far as the gate in John’s stockade, and out across the clearing of open grass to the edge of the trees, and there they halted.
“One of these days,” she said, as though she had been listening to all that he had been thinking, “you’ll be taking the little one away from us. It’s only right you should, though we shall grudge her to you. As well we’re not so far away that we can’t borrow her back now and then. It wouldn’t do to leave it too long, Niall. I’ve had the gift of her, and been glad of it, but yours she is, yours and Avota’s, when all’s said, and best she should grow up knowing it and content with it.”
“She’s young yet,” said Niall defensively. “I dread to confuse her too soon.”
“She’s young, but she’s knowing. She begins to ask why you always leave her, and to wonder how you do, alone, and who cooks and washes for you. I reckon you could as well take her on a visit, show her how you live and what you make. She’s hungry to know, you’ll find she’ll drink it in. And much as she joys in playing with my brood, she never likes sharing you with them. That’s a true woman you’ll find there,” said Cecily with conviction. “But for all that, it might be the best thing of all you could do for her, Niall, just now is to give her another mother. One of her own, with no rival childer by. For she’s sharp enough, my dear, to know that I’m none of hers, love her as I may.”
