by Ellis Peters
They wrapped her gently in a brychan borrowed from the salvaged bedding, rather for comfortable padding than for warmth, for the evening was still serene and mild, though she might yet suffer the cold that comes after effort is all over.
She accepted everything with serenity, like one in a dream, though the pain of her hand must, they reasoned, be acute. She seemed to feel nothing but a supreme inner peace that made everything else of no account. They mounted Philip on a great, broad-backed, steady-paced gelding, and then lifted Emma up to him in her swathing blanket, and she settled into the cradle of his lap and arms and braced shoulder as though God had made her to fit there.
“And perhaps so he did,” said Brother Cadfael, riding behind with Hugh Beringar close beside him.
“So he did what?” wondered Hugh, starting out of very different considerations, for two officers brought a bound Turstan Fowler behind them.
“Direct all,” said Cadfael. “It is, after all, a way he has.”
Halfway back towards Shrewsbury she fell asleep in his arms, nestled on his breast. For the fall of her black, smoke-scented hair he could see only the lower part of her face, but the mouth was soft and moist and smiling, and all her weight melted and moulded into the cradle of his loving body as into a marriage-bed. In her dream she had gone somewhere beyond the pain of her burned hand. It was as if she had thrust her hand into the future, and found it worth the price. The left hand, the unmarked one, lay clasped warmly round him, inside his coat, holding him close to her in her dream.
CHAPTER 5
The summer darkness of fine nights, which is never quite dark, showed a horse-fair deserted, no trace of the past three days but the trampled patches and the marks of trestles in the grass. All over for another year. The abbey stewards had gathered in the profits of rent and toll and tax, delivered their accounts, and gone to their beds. So had the monks of the abbey, the lay servants, the novices and the pupils. A sleepy porter opened the gate for them; and mysteriously, at the sounds of their arrival, though circumspect and subdued, the great court awoke to life. Aline came running from the guest-hall with the aggrieved merchant, now remarkably complacent, at her back, Brother Mark from the dortoir, and Abbot Radulfus’s own clerk from the abbot’s lodging, with a bidding to Brother Cadfael to attend there as soon as he arrived, however late the hour.
“I sent him word what was toward,” said Hugh, “as we left. It was right he should know. He’ll be anxious to hear how it ended.”
While Aline took Emma and Philip, half awake and dazedly docile, to rest and refresh themselves in the guest-hall, and Brother Mark ran to the herbarium to collect the paste of mulberry leaves and the unguent of Our Lady’s mantle, known specifics for burns, and the men-at-arms went on to the castle with their prisoner, Brother Cadfael duly attended Radulfus in his study. Whether at midday or midnight, the abbot was equally wide-awake. By the single candle burning he surveyed Cadfael and asked simply: “Well?”
“It is well, Father. We are returned with Mistress Vernold safe and little the worse, and the murderer of her uncle is in the sheriff’s hands. One murdererthe man Turstan Fowler.”
“There is another?” asked Radulfus.
“There was another. He is dead. Not by any man’s hand, Father, none of us has killed or done violence. He is dead by fire.”
“Tell me,” said the abbot.
Cadfael told him the whole story, so far as he knew it, and briefly. How much more Emma knew was a matter for conjecture.
“And what,” the abbot wished to know, “can this communication have been, to cause any man to commit such crimes in pursuit of it?”
“That we do not know, and no man now will know, for it is burned with him. But where there are two warring factions in a land,” said Cadfael, “men without scruples can turn controversy to gain, sell men for profit, take revenge on their rivals, hope to be awarded the lands of those they betray. Whatever evil was intended, now will never come to fruit.”
“A better ending than I began to fear,” said Radulfus, and drew a thankful sigh.
“Then all danger is now over, and the guests of our house are come to no harm.”
He pondered for a moment. “This young man who did so well for us and for the girlyou say he is son to the provost?”
“He is, Father. I am going with them now, with your permission, to see them safely home and dress their burns. They are not too grave, but they should be cleansed and tended at once.”
“Go with God’s blessing!” said the abbot. “It is convenient, for I have a message to the provost, which you may deliver for me, if you will. Ask Master Corviser, with my compliments, if he will be kind enough to attend here tomorrow morning, about the end of chapter. I have some business to transact with him.”
Mistress Corviser had undoubtedly been fulminating for hours about her errant son, a good-for-nothing who was no sooner bailed out of prison than he was off in mischief somewhere else until midnight and past. Probably she had said at least a dozen times that she washed her hands of him, that he was past praying for, and she no longer cared, let him go to the devil his own way. But for all that, her husband could not get her to go to bed, and at every least sound that might be a footstep at the door or in the street, steady or staggering, she flew to look out, with her mouth full of abuse but her heart full of hope.
And then, when he did come, it was with a great-eyed girl in his arm, a thick handful of his curls singed off at one temple, the smell of smoke in his coat, his shirt in tatters, a monk of Saint Peter’s at his heels, and a look of roused authority and maturity about him that quite overcame his draggled and soiled state. And instead of either scolding or embracing him, she took both him and the girl by the hand and drew them inside together, and went about seating, feeding, tending them, with only few words, and those practical and concerned.
Tomorrow Philip might be brought to tell the whole story. Tonight it was Cadfael who told the merest skeleton of it, as he cleansed and dressed Emma’s hand, and the superficial burns on Philip’s brow and arm. Better not make too much of what the boy had done. Emma would take care of that, later; his mother would value it most of all from her.
Emma herself said almost nothing, islanded in her exhaustion and bliss, but her eyes seldom left Philip, and when they did, it was to take in with deep content the solid, dark furnishings and warm panelling of this burgess house, so familiar to her that being accepted here was like coming home. Her rapt, secret smile was eloquent; mothers are quick to notice such looks. Emma had already conquered, even before she was led gently away to the bed prepared for her, and settled there by Mistress Corviser with all the clucking solicitude of a hen with one chick, with a posset laced with Brother Cadfael’s poppy syrup to make sure that she slept, and forgot her pain.
“As pretty a thing as ever I saw,” said Mistress Corviser, coming back softly into the room, and closing the door between. She cast a fond look at her son, and found him asleep in his chair. “And to think that’s what he was about, while I was thinking all manner of bad things about him, who should have known him better!”
“He knows himself a deal better than he did a few days ago,” said Cadfael, repacking his scrip. “I’ll leave you these pastes and ointments, you know how to use them. But I’ll come and take a look at her later tomorrow. Now I’ll take my leave, I confess I’m more than ready for my own bed. I doubt if I shall hear the bell for Prime tomorrow.”
In the yard Geoffrey Corviser was himself stabling the horse from Stanton Cobbold with his own. Cadfael gave him the abbot’s message. The provost raised sceptical eyebrows. “Now what can the lord abbot want with me? The last time I came cap in hand to chapter, I got a dusty answer.”
“All the same,” advised Cadfael, scrubbing thoughtfully at his blunt brown nose, “in your shoes I think I’d be curious enough to come and see. Who knows but the dust may have settled elsewhere by this time!”
It was no wonder if Brother Cadfael, though he did manage to rise for
Prime, took advantage of his carefully chosen place behind a pillar to doze his way through chapter. He was so sound asleep, indeed, that for once he was in danger of snoring, and at the first melodious horn-call Brother Mark took fright, and nudged him awake.
The provost had obeyed the abbot’s invitation to the latter, and arrived only at the very end of chapter. The steward of the grange court had just announced that he was in attendance when Cadfael opened his eyes.
“What can the provost be here for?” whispered Mark. “He was asked to come. Do I know why? Hush!” Geoffrey Corviser came in in his best, and made his reverence respectfully but coolly. He had no solid cohort at his back this time, and to tell the truth, though he may have felt some curiosity, he was attaching very little importance to this encounter. His mind was on other things. True, the problems of the town remained, and at any other time would have taken foremost place in his concern, but today he was proof against public cares by reason of private elation in a son vindicated and praised, a son to be proud of.
“You sent for me, Father Abbot. I am here.” “I thank you for your courtesy in attending,” said the abbot mildly. “Some days ago, Master Provost, before the fair, you came with a request to me which I could not meet.”
The provost said not a word; there was none due, and he felt no need to speak at a loss.
“The fair is now over,” said the abbot equably. “All the rents, tolls and taxes have been collected, and all have been delivered into the abbey treasury, as is due by charter. Do you endorse that?”
“It is the law,” said Corviser, “to the letter.”
“Good! We are agreed. Right has therefore been done, and the privilege of this house is maintained. That I could not infringe by any prior concession. Abbots who follow me would have blamed me, and with good reason. Their rights are sacrosanct. But now they have been met in full. And as abbot of this house, it is for me to determine what use shall be made of the monies in our hold. What I could not grant away in imperilment of charter,” said Radulfus with deliberation, “I can give freely as a gift from this house. Of the fruits of this year’s fair, I give a tenth to the town of Shrewsbury, for the repair of me walls and repaving of the streets.”
The provost, enlarged in his family content, flushed into startled and delighted acknowledgement, a generous man accepting generosity. “My lord, I take your tenth with pleasure and gratitude, and I will see that it is used worthily. And I make public here and now that no part of the abbey’s right is thereby changed.
Saint Peter’s Fair is your fair. Whether and when your neighbour town should also benefit, when it is in dire need, that rests with your judgment.”
“Our steward will convey you the money,” said Radulfus, and rose to conclude a satisfactory encounter. “This chapter is concluded,” he said.
CHAPTER 6
August continued blessedly fine, and all hands turned gladly to making sure of the harvest. Hugh Beringar and Aline set off with their hopes and purchases for Maesbury, as did the merchant of Worcester for his home town, a day late, but well compensated with a fee for the hire of his horse in an emergency, on the sheriff’s business, and a fine story which he would retail on suitable occasions for the rest of his life. The provost and council of Shrewsbury drafted a dignified acknowledgement to the abbey for its gift, warm enough to give proper expression to their appreciation of the gesture, canny enough not to compromise any of their own just claims for the future. The sheriff put on record the closure of a criminal affair, as related to him by the young woman who had been lured away on false pretences, with the apparent design of stealing from her a letter left in her possession, but of the contents of which she was ignorant.
There was some suspicion of a conspiracy involved, but as Mistress Vernold had never seen nor been told the significance of what she held, and as in any case it was now irrevocably lost by fire, no further action was necessary or possible. The malefactor was dead, his servant, self-confessed a murderer at his master’s orders, awaited trial, and would plead that he had been forced to obey, being villein-born and at his lord’s mercy. The dead man’s overlord had been informed. Someone else, at the discretion of the earl of Chester, would take seisin of the manor of Stanton Cobbold.
Everyone drew breath, dusted his hands, and went back to work.
Brother Cadfael went up into the town on the second day, to tend Emma’s hand.
The provost and his son were at work together, in strong content with each other and the world. Mistress Corviser returned to her kitchen, and left leech and patient together.
“I have wanted to talk to you,” said Emma, looking up earnestly into his face as he renewed the dressing. “There must be one person who hears the truth from me, and I would rather it should be you.”
“I don’t believe,” said Cadfael equably, “that you told the sheriff a single thing that was false.”
“No, but I did not tell him all the truth. I said that I had no knowledge of what was in the letter, or even for whom it was intended, or by whom it was sent. That was true, I had no such knowledge of my own, though I did know who brought it to my uncle, and that it was to be handed to the glover for delivery.
But when Ivo demanded the letter of me, and I span out the time asking what could be so important about a letter, he told me what he believed to be in it.
King Stephen’s kingdom stood at stake, he said, and the gain to the man who provided him the means to wipe out his enemies would stretch as wide as an earldom. He said the empress’s friends were pressing the earl of Chester to join them, and he would not move unless he had word of all the other powers her cause could muster, and this was the promised despatch, to convince him his interest lay with them. As many as fifty names there might be, he said, of those secretly bound to the empress, perhaps even the date when Robert of Gloucester hopes to bring her to England, even the port where they plan to land. All these sold in advance to the king’s vengeance, life and limb and lands, he said, and the earl of Chester with them, who had gone so far as to permit this approach! All these offered up bound and condemned, and he would get his own price for them. This is what he told me. This is what I do not know of my own knowledge, and yet in my heart and soul I do know it, for I am sure what he said was true.” She moistened her lips, and said carefully: “I do not know King Stephen well enough to know what he would do, but I remember what he did here, last summer. I saw all those men, as honest in their allegiance as those who hold with the king, thrown into prison, their lives forfeit, their families stripped of land and living, some forced into exile … I saw deaths and revenges and still more bitterness if the tide should turn again. So I did what I did.”
“I know what you did,” said Brother Cadfael gently. He was bandaging the healing proof of it.
“But still, you see,” she persisted gravely, “I am not sure if I did right, and for right reasons. King Stephen at least keeps a kind of peace where his writ runs. My uncle was absolute for the empress, but if she comes, if all these who hold with her rise and join her, there will be no peace anywhere. Whichever way I look I see deaths. But all I could think of, then, was preventing him from gaining by his treachery and murders. And there was only one way, by destroying the letter. Since then I have wondered … But I think now that I must stand by what I did. If there must be fighting, if there must be deaths, let it happen as God wills, not as ambitious and evil men contrive. Those lives we cannot save, at least let us not help to destroy. Do you think I was right? I have wanted someone’s word, I should like it to be yours.”
“Since you ask what I think,” said Cadfael, “I think my child, that if you carry scars on the fingers of this hand lifelong, you should wear them like jewels.”
Her lips parted in a startled smile. She shook her head over the persistent tremor of doubt. “But you must never tell Philip,” she said with sudden urgency, holding him by the sleeve with her good hand. “As I never shall. Let him believe me as innocent as he is himself …” She frowned ove
r the word, which did not seem to her quite what she had wanted, but she could not find one fitter for her purpose. If it was not innocence she meantfor of what was she guilty?was it simplicity, clarity, purity? None of them would do. Perhaps Brother Cadfael would understand, none the less. “I felt somehow mired,” she said. “He should never set foot in intrigue, it is not for him.”
Brother Cadfael gave her his promise, and walked back through the town in a muse, reflecting on the complexity of women. She was perfectly right. Philip, for all his two years advantage, his intelligence, and his new and masterful maturity, would always be the younger, and the simpler, and yes, she had the just word, after all!the more innocent. In Cadfael’s experience, it made for very good marriage prospects, where the woman was fully aware of her responsibilities.
On the thirtieth of September, just two months after Saint Peter’s Fair, the Empress Maud and her half-brother Robert of Gloucester landed near Arundel and entered into the castle there. But Earl Ranulf of Chester sat cannily in his own palatine, minded his own business, and stirred neither hand nor foot in her cause.
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Ellis Peters
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