An Excellent Mystery

by Ellis Peters

  There’s news,” said Cadfael bluntly. “You should hear it before you leave us. The empress has made an attack on the town of Wherwell, a disastrous attack. Her force is wiped out by the queen’s army. But in the fighting the abbey of Wherwell was fired, the church burned to the ground. I know no more detail, but so much is certain. The sheriff here got the word last night.”

  “By a reliable man,” said Hugh, drawing close. “It’s certain.”

  Nicholas stood staring, eyes and mouth wide, his golden sunburn dulling to an earthen grey as the blood drained from beneath it. He got out in a creaking whisper: “Wherwell? They’ve dared…?”

  “No daring,” said Hugh ruefully, “but plain terror. They were men penned in, the raiding party, they sought any place of hiding they could find, surely, and slammed to the door. But the end was the same, whoever tossed in the firebrands. The abbey’s laid waste. Sorry I am to say it.”

  “And the women…? Oh, God… Julian’s there… Is there any word of the women?”

  “They’d taken to the church for sanctuary,” said Hugh. In such civil warfare there were no sanctuaries, not even for women and children. “The remnant of the raiders surrendered — most may have come out alive. All, I doubt.”

  Nicholas turned blindly to grope for his bridle, plucking his sleeve out of the quivering hand Humilis had laid on his arm. “Let me away! I must go… I must go there and find her.” He swung back to catch again briefly at the older man’s hand and wring it hard. “I will find her! If she lives I’ll find her, and see her safe.” He found his stirrup and heaved himself into the saddle.

  “If God’s with you, send me word,” said Humilis. “Let me know that she lives and is safe.”

  “I will, my lord, surely I will.”

  “Don’t trouble her, don’t speak to her of me. No questions! All I need, all you must ask, is to know that God has preserved her,” and that she has the life she wanted. There’ll be a place elsewhere for her, with other sisters. If only she still lives!”

  Nicholas nodded mutely, shook himself out of his daze with a great heave, wheeled his horse, and was gone, out through the gatehouse without another word or a look behind. They were left gazing after him, as the light dust of his passing shimmered and settled under the arch of the gate, where the cobbles ended, and the beaten earth of the Foregate began.

  *

  All that day Humilis seemed to Cadfael to press his own powers to the limit, as though the stress that drove Nicholas headlong south took its toll here in enforced stillness and inaction, where the heart would rather have been riding with the boy, at whatever cost. And all that day Fidelis, turning his back even on Rhun, shadowed Humilis with a special and grievous solicitude, tenderness and anxiety, as though he had just realised that death stood no great distance away, and advanced one gentle step with every hour that passed.

  Humilis went to his bed immediately after Compline, and Cadfael, looking in on him ten minutes later, found him already asleep, and left him undisturbed accordingly. It was not a festering wound and a maimed body that troubled Humilis now, but an obscure feeling of guilt towards the girl who might, had he married her, have been safe in some manor far remote from Winchester and Wherwell and the clash of arms, instead of driven by fire and slaughter even out of her chosen cloister. Sleep could do more for his grieving mind than the changing of a dressing could do now for his body. Sleeping, he had the hieratic calm of a figure already carved on a tomb. He was at peace. Cadfael went quietly away and left him, as Fidelis must have left him, to rest the better alone.

  In the sweet-scented twilight Cadfael went to pay his usual nightly visit to his workshop, to make sure all was well there, and stir a brew he had standing to cool overnight. Sometimes, when the nights were so fresh after the heat of the day, the skies so full of stars and so infinitely lofty, and every flower and leaf suddenly so imbued with its own lambent colour and light in despite of the light’s departure, he felt it to be a great waste of the gifts of God to be going to bed and shutting his eyes to them. There had been illicit nights of venturing abroad in the past — he trusted for good enough reasons, but did not probe too deeply. Hugh had had his part in them, too. Ah, well!

  Making his way back with some reluctance, he went in by the church to the night stairs. All the shapes within the vast stone ship showed dimly by the small altar lamps. Cadfael never passed through without stepping for a moment into the choir, to cast a glance and a thought towards Saint Winifred’s altar, in affectionate remembrance of their first encounter, and gratitude for her forbearance. He did so now, and checked abruptly before venturing nearer. For there was one of the brothers kneeling at the foot of the altar, and the tiny red glow of the lamp showed him the uplifted face, fast-closed eyes and prayerfully folded hands of Fidelis. Showed him no less clearly, as he drew softly nearer, the tears glittering on the young man’s cheeks. A perfectly still face, but for the mute lips moving soundlessly on his prayers, and the tears welling slowly from beneath his closed eyelids and spilling on to his breast. The shocks of the day might well send him here, now his charge was sleeping, to put up fervent prayers for a better ending to the story. But why should his face seem rather that of a penitent than an innocent appellant? And a penitent unsure of absolution!

  Cadfael slipped away very quietly to the night stairs and left the boy the entire sheltering space of the church for his inexplicable pain.

  *

  The other figure, motionless in the darkest corner of the choir, did not stir until Cadfael had departed, and even then waited long moments before stealing forward by inches, with held breath, over the chilly paving.

  A naked foot touched the hem of Fidelis’s habit, and as hastily and delicately drew back again from the contact. A hand was outstretched to hover over the oblivious head, longing to touch and yet not daring until the continued silence and stillness gave it courage. Tensed fingers sank into the curling russet that ringed the tonsure, the light touch set the hand quivering, like the pricking of imminent lightning in the air before a storm. If Fidelis also sensed it, he gave no sign. Even when the fingers stirred lovingly in his hair, and stroked down into the nape of his neck within the cowl he did not move, but rather froze where he kneeled, and held his breath.

  “Fidelis,” whispered a hushed and aching voice close at his shoulder. “Brother, never grieve alone! Turn to me… I could comfort you, for everything, everything… whatever your need…”

  The stroking palm circled his neck, but before it reached his cheek Fidelis had started to his feet in one smooth movement, resolute and unalarmed, and swung out of reach. Without haste, or perhaps unwilling to show his face, even by this dim light, until he had mastered it, he turned to look upon the intruder into his solitude, for whispers have no identity, and he had never before taken any particular notice of Brother Urien. He did so now, with wide and wary grey eyes. A dark, passionate, handsome man, one who should never have shut himself in within these walls, one who burned, and might burn others before ever he grew cool at last. He stared back at Fidelis, and his face was wrung and his outstretched hand quaked, yearning towards Fidelis’s sleeve, which was withdrawn from him austerely before he could grasp it.

  “I’ve watched you,” breathed the husky, whispering voice, “I know every motion and grace. Waste, waste of youth, waste of beauty… Don’t go! No one sees us now…”

  Fidelis turned his back steadily, and walked out from the choir towards the night stairs. Silent on the tiled floor, Urien’s naked feet followed him, the tormented whisper followed him.

  “Why turn your back on loving kindness? You will not always do so. Think of me! I will wait…”

  Fidelis began to climb the stairs. The pursuer halted at the foot, too sick with anguish to go where other men might still be wakeful. “Unkind, unkind…” wailed the faintest thread of a voice, receding, and then, with barely audible but extreme bitterness: “If not here, in another place… If not now, at another time!”

  Chapter 6 />
  NICHOLAS COMMANDEERED a change of horses twice on the way south, leaving those he had ridden hard to await the early return he foresaw, with the news he had promised to carry faithfully, whether good or bad. The stench of burning, old and acrid now, met him on the wind some miles from Wherwell, and when he entered what was left of the small town it was to find an almost de-peopled desolation. The few whose houses had survived unlooted and almost undamaged were sorting through their premises and salvaging their goods, but those who had lost their dwellings in the fire held off cautiously as yet from coming back to rebuild. For though the raiding party from Winchester had been either wiped out or made prisoner, and William of Ypres had withdrawn the queen’s Flemings to their old positions ringing the city and the region, this place was still within the circle, and might yet be subjected to more violence.

  Nicholas made his way with a cramped and anxious heart to the enclave of the nunnery, one of the three greatest in the shire, until this disaster fell upon its buildings and laid the half of them flat and the rest uninhabitable. The shell of the church stood up gaunt and blackened against the cloudless sky, the walls jagged and discoloured like decayed teeth. There were new graves in the nuns’ cemetery. As for the survivors, they were gone, there was no home for them here. He looked at the newly-turned earth with a sick heart, and wondered whose daughters lay beneath. There had not yet been time to do more for them than bury them, they were nameless.

  He would not let himself even consider that she might be there. He looked for the parish church and sought out the priest, who had gathered two homeless families beneath his roof and in his barn. A careworn, tired man, growing old, in a shabby gown that needed mending.

  “The nuns?” he said, stepping out from his low, dark doorway. “They’re scattered, poor souls, we hardly know where. Three of them died in the fire. Three that we know of, but there may well be more, lying under the rubble there still. There was fighting all about the court and the Flemings were dragging their prisoners out of the church, but neither side cared for the women. Some are fled into Winchester, they say, though there’s little safety to be found there, but the lord bishop must try to do something for them, their house was allied to the Old Minster. Others… I don’t know! I hear the abbess is fled to a manor near Reading, where she has kin, and some she may have taken with her. But all’s confusion — who can tell?”

  “Where is this manor?” demanded Nicholas feverishly, and was met by a weary shake of the head.

  “It was only a thing I heard — no one said where. It may not even be true.”

  “And you do not know, Father, the names of those sisters who died?” He trembled as he asked it.

  “Son,” said the priest with infinite resignation, “what we found could not have a name. And we have yet to seek there for others, when we have found enough food to keep those alive who still live. The empress’s men looted our houses first, and after them the Flemings. Those who have, here, must share with those who have nothing. And which of us has very much? God knows not I!”

  Nor had he, in material things, only in tired but obstinate compassion. Nicholas had bread and meat in his saddlebag, brought for provision on the road from his last halt to change horses. He hunted it out and put it into the old man’s hands, a meagre drop in a hungry ocean, but the money in his purse could buy nothing here where there was nothing to buy. They would have to milk the countryside to feed their people. He left them to their stubborn labours, and rode slowly through the rubble of Wherwell, asking here and there if anyone had more precise information to impart. Everyone knew the sisters had dispersed, no one could say where. As for one woman’s name, it meant nothing, it might not even be the name by which she had entered on her vows. Nevertheless, he continued to utter it wherever he enquired, doggedly proclaiming the irreplaceable uniqueness of Julian Grace, separate from all other women.

  From Wherwell he rode on into Winchester. A soldier of the queen could pass through the iron ring without difficulty, and in the city it was plain that the empress’s faction were hard-pressed, and dared not venture far from their tight fortress in the castle. But the nuns of Winchester, themselves earlier endangered and now breathing more easily, could tell him nothing of Julian Grace. Some sisters from Wherwell they had taken in and cherished, but she was not among them. Nicholas had speech with one of their elder members, who was kind and solicitous, but could not help him.

  “Sir, it is a name I do not know. But consider, there is no reason I should know it, for surely this lady may have taken a very different name when she took her vows, and we do not ask our sisters where they came from, nor who they once were, unless they choose to tell us freely. And I had no office that should bring me knowledge of these things. Our abbess would certainly be able to answer you, but we do not know where she is now. Our prioress, also. We are as lost as you. But God will find us, and bring us together again. As he will find for you the one you seek.”

  She was a shrewd, agile, withered woman, thin as a gnat but indestructible as scutch grass. She eyed him with mildly amused sympathy, and asked blandly: “She is kin to you, this Julian?”

  “No,” said Nicholas shortly, “but I would have had her kin, and very close kin, too.”

  “And now?”

  “I want to know her safe, living, content. There is no more in it. If she is so, God keep her so, and I am satisfied.”

  “If I were you,” said the lady, after viewing him closely for some moments in silence, “I should go on to Romsey. It is far enough removed to be a safer place than here, and it is the greatest of our Bendictine houses in these parts. God knows which of our sisters you may find there, but surely some, and it may be, the highest.”

  He was young enough and innocent enough still, for all his travels, to be strongly moved by any evidence of trust and kindness, and he caught and kissed her hand in taking leave, as though she had been his hostess somewhere in hall. She, for her part, was too old and experienced to blush or bridle, but when he was gone she sat smiling a long, quiet while, before she rejoined her sisters. He was a very personable young man.

  *

  Nicholas rode the twelve miles or so to Romsey in sobering solemnity, aware he might be drawing near to an answer possibly not to his liking. Once clear of Winchester and on his way further south-west, he was delivered from any threat, for he went through country where the queen’s writ ran without challenge. Pleasant, rolling country, well tree’d even before he reached the fringes of the great forest. He came to the abbey gatehouse, in the heart of the small town, in the late evening, and rang the bell at the gate. The portress peered at him through the grille, and asked his business. He stooped entreatingly to the grid, and gazed into a pair of bright, elderly eyes in beds of wrinkles.

  “Sister, have you given refuge here to some of the nuns of Wherwell? I am seeking for news of one of them, and could get no answers there.”

  The portress eyed him narrowly, and saw a young face soiled and drawn with travel, a young man alone, and in dead earnest, no threat. Even here in Romsey they had learned to be cautious about opening their gates, but the road beyond him was empty and still, and the twilight folded down on the little town peacefully enough.

  “The prioress and three sisters reached here,” she said, “but I doubt if any of them can tell you much of the rest, not yet. But come within, and I’ll ask if she will speak with you.”

  The wicket clanked open, lock and chain, and he stepped through into the court. “Who knows?” said the portress kindly, fastening the door again after him. “One of our three may be the one you’re seeking. At least you may try.”

  She led him along dim corridors to a small, panelled parlour, lit by a tiny lamp, and there left him. The evening meal would be long over, even Compline past, it was almost time for sleeping. They would want him satisfied, if satisfaction was possible, and out of their precinct before the night.

  He could not rest or sit, but was prowling the room like a caged bear when a further d
oor opened, and the prioress of Wherwell came quietly in. A short, round, rosy woman, but with a formidably strong face and exceedingly direct brown eyes, that studied her visitor from head to foot in one piercing glance as he made his reverence to her.

  “You asked for me, I am told. I am here. How can I help you?”

  “Madam,” said Nicholas, trembling for awe of what might come, “I was well north, in Shropshire, when I heard of the sack of Wherwell. There was a sister there of whose vocation I had only just learned, and now all I want is to know that she lives and is safe after that outrage. Perhaps to speak with her, and see for myself that she is well, if that can be permitted. I did ask in Wherwell itself, but could get no word of her — I know only the name she had in the world.”

  The prioress waved him to a seat, and herself sat down apart, where she could watch his face. “May I know your own name, sir?”

  “My name is Nicholas Harnage. I was squire to Godfrid Marescot until he took the cowl in Hyde Mead. He was formerly betrothed to this lady, and he is anxious now to know that she is safe and well.”

  She nodded at that very natural desire, but nevertheless her brows had drawn together in a thoughtful and somewhat puzzled frown. “That name I know, Hyde was proud of having gained him. But I never recall hearing… What is the name of this sister you seek?”

  “In the world she was Julian Cruce, of a Shropshire family. The sister I spoke with in Wherwell had never heard the name, but it may well be that she chose a very different name when she took the veil. But you will know of her both before and after.”

  “Julian Cruce?” she repeated, erect and intent now, her sharp eyes narrowing. “Young sir, are you not in some mistake? You are sure it was Wherwell she entered? Not some other house?”

  “No, certainly, madam, Wherwell,” he said earnestly. “I had it from her brother himself, he could not be mistaken.”

  There was a moment of taut silence, while she considered and shook her head over him, frowning. “When was it that she entered the Order? It cannot be long ago.”