The Rose Rent (12 page)

“There’s no one; you imagined it. Nothing!” She gripped his hands suddenly, asserting her mastery, where hitherto she had merely suffered his touch without response. “Listen to me! There might be a way! When Sister Magdalen visited me, she offered me a place of retreat at Godric’s Ford with her, if ever I reached the end of my tether and needed a refuge and a pause for breath. As God knows I have needed both, and still do. If you will take me there by night, secretly, then I can return later and say where I have been, and why, and how this turmoil and hunt for me never came to our ears there. As I hope may be true. I will say that I fled from my life for a while, to get courage to take it up again to better purpose. And I hope to God that may also be true. I will not name you, nor betray what you have done to me.”

He was staring up at her wide-eyed, hesitant to hope but unable to resist, glowing only to doubt again the possibility of salvation. “They’ll press you hard, they’ll ask why did you say no word, why go away and leave everyone to fear for you. And the boat—they know about the boat, they must know—”

“When they ask,” she said starkly, “I’ll answer, or refuse them an answer. Fret as you may, you must needs leave all that to me. I am offering you a way of escape. Take it or leave it.”

“I daren’t go all the way with you,” he said, writhing. “If I were seen it would all come out in spite of you.”

“You need not come all the way. You may leave me to go the last piece of the way alone, I am not afraid. No one need see you.”

He was flushing into hope with every word. “My father is gone back to his flocks today, he’ll stay two nights or more up there with the shepherds, and there’s one good horse still in the stable, stout enough to carry two, if you’ll ride pillion with me. I could bring him out of the town before the gate’s closed. Best not pass through the town together, but set out this way. There’s a ford a little way downstream from here, we can make our way south on the other side and get to the road to Beistan. At dusk—if we start at dusk tomorrow… Oh, Judith, and I’ve done you such wrong, and can you so far forgive me? I have not deserved!”

It was something new, she thought wryly, for Vivian Hynde to suppose that his deserts were small, or that there was anything to which he was not entitled. He might yet be all the better for this one salutary fright which he had brought upon himself. He was no great villain, only a weak and self-indulgent boy. But she did not answer his question. There was one thing at least she found it hard to forgive him, and that was that he had exposed her to the rough handling of Gunnar, who had taken palpable delight in the close embrace of her body and the strength which had held her helpless. She had no fear of Vivian, but of Gunnar, if ever she encountered him without Vivian, she might be very much afraid.

“I do this for myself as much as for you,” she said. “I’ve given my word and I’ll keep it. Tomorrow at dusk. Agreed, it’s too late to move tonight.”

He had recoiled again into doubt and fear, recalling the noises without, and the baying of the mastiff. “But how if someone has suspicions of this place? How if they come again tomorrow demanding the keys? Judith, come back with me now, come to our house, it’s not far from the wicket, no one will see us now. My mother will hide you and help us, and be grateful to you for sparing me. And my father’s away in the hills, he’ll never know. And there you may have rest and a bed, and water for washing, and all you need for your comfort

“Your mother knows of what you’ve done?” she demanded, aghast.

“No, no, nothing! But she’ll help us now, for my sake.” He was at the narrow door which had lain hidden behind the baled fleeces, turning the key, drawing her after him, feverish in his haste to be out of here and safe in his own home. “I’ll send Gunnar to make all innocent here. If they come they must find the place bare and deserted.”

She blew out the wick of the lamp and went with him, backwards down the ladder from the loft, out through the lower door and into the night. The moon was just rising, bathing the slope in pale-green light. The air was sweet and cool on her face after the close, musty smell of dust and the smoke of the lamp in the enclosed space. It was no very long walk to the shadows of the castle towers, and the wicket in the wall.

A darker shadow made its way round the spreading plane of moonlight, by the shortest route from behind the warehouse to the cover of trees, and so roundabout to the river-bank, rapid and silent. The overhang where Bertred had made his leap to evade the mastiff was still in shadow. He lay as he had fallen, still out of his senses, though he was beginning to stir and groan, and draw the laborious breath of one quickening to the consciousness of pain. The deeper shadow that fell across his body just as the edge of the moonlight reached the river did not penetrate his dazed mind or trouble his closed eyes. A hand reached down and took him by the hair, turning his face up to view it closely. He lived, he breathed, a little patching and a few hours to recover, and he would be able to account for himself and confess everything he knew.

The shadow stooping over him straightened and stood a moment looking down at him dispassionately. Then he thrust a booted toe into Bertred’s side, levered him towards the edge of the stones on which he lay, and heaved him out into deep water, where the current curled fast, bearing the body out across midstream towards the further shore.

The twentieth of June dawned in a series of sparkling showers, settling by mid-morning into a fine, warm day. There was plenty of work waiting to be done in the orchards of the Gaye, but because of the morning rain it was necessary to wait for the midday heat before tackling them. The sweet cherries were ready for picking, but needed to be gathered dry, and there were also the first strawberries to pick, and there it was equally desirable to let the sun dry off the early moisture. On the open, sunlit expanse of the vegetable plots the ground dried out earlier, and the brothers on duty were busy sowing lettuces for succession, and hoeing and weeding, before noon, but it was after dinner that the orchard party began work at the extreme end of the abbey grounds.

There was no particular need for Brother Cadfael to go out with them, but neither was there anything urgently needing his attention in the herbarium, and the mounting uneasiness of the three-day vain hunt for Judith Perle would not let him rest or settle to any routine occupation. There had been no further word from Hugh, and nothing to tell Niall when he came anxiously enquiring. The entire affair stood still, the very hours of the day held their breath, making time endless.

To fill it at least with some physical movement, Cadfael went out to the orchards with the rest. As so often in a late season, nature had set out to make good the weeks that had been lost to the spring cold, and contrived to bring on, almost at the usual time, both strawberries and the first of the little hard gooseberries on their thorny bushes. But Cadfael’s mind was not on fruit-picking. The orchards lay just opposite the level where the young archers shot at the butts on fair-days, under the sweep of the town wall and in the lee of the castle towers. Only a little way beyond, through the first belt of woodland, and he would be gazing straight across the water at the fulling-works, and just downstream at William Hynde’s jetty.

Cadfael worked for a while, so distractedly that he collected more than his share of scratches. But after a while he straightened his back, sucked out of his finger the latest of many thorns, and walked on along the riverside into the belt of trees. Through their leaning branches the sweeping coronal of the town wall unrolled beside him across the water, and the steep green slope beneath the wall. Then the first jutting bastion of the castle, with the narrower level of meadow under it. Cadfael walked on, through the trees and out to a broad greensward beyond, dotted with low bushes close to the bank, and here and there a bed of reeds where the shallows ran gently and the fast current sped out into midstream. Now he was opposite the tenterground, where Godfrey Fuller’s men were working, and a length of brown cloth was stretched taut between the frames to dry.

He reached a spot directly opposite the overhanging bushes where they had found the stolen boat abandoned. Along the bank beyond, a small boy was pasturing goats. Sunlit and peaceful, the Severn landscape lay somnolent in the afternoon light, denying the existence of murder, malice and abduction in so lovely a world.

Cadfael had gone but a hundred or so paces further, and was about to turn back, when he reached a curve where the bank opposite was undercut and the water beneath it deep, while on his side it shallowed into a sandy shoal, and subsided into soft, innocent ripples, barely moving. One of those places Madog knew well, where whatever had gone into the river upstream might fetch up again on land.

And something had indeed fetched up here in the night just past. It lay almost submerged, at rest on the sand but barely breaking the surface, a mass of darker colour washed over by the silvery shimmer of water, and lodged in the dull gold of the sand beneath. It was the small, languid pallor, which swung lightly with the flow but was no fish, that first caught Cadfael’s eye. A man’s hand, at the end of a dark sleeve that buoyed it up just enough to set it swaying. A man’s brown head, the back of it just dimpling the surface, all its curling locks stretching out with the ripples and stirring like drowsy living things.

Cadfael slid down the shelving bank in haste, and waded into the shallow water to get a double grip on the sodden clothing under the trailing arms, and drag the body ashore. Dead beyond doubt, probably several hours dead. He lay on his face in the sand just clear of the water, and tiny rivulets ran out of him from every fold of clothing and every tangled curl of hair. A young man, very well made and shapely. Far too late to do anything for him but carry him home and provide him a decent burial. It would need more than one man to get him up the bank and bear him back along the Gaye, and Cadfael had better be about getting help as fast as possible.

The build, the common dun-coloured coat and chausses, might have belonged to a hundred young fellows from Shrewsbury, being the common working wear, and the body was not immediately recognisable to Cadfael. He stooped to resume a careful hold under the lax arms, and turned the dead man over to lie on his back, revealing to the indifferent sunlight the smeared, pallid but still comely face of Bertred, Judith Perle’s foreman weaver.

Chapter Nine

THEY CAME IN HASTE at his call, fluttered and dismayed, though a drowned man cast up by the Severn was no such rare matter, and these young brothers knew no more of the affair than that. No doubt whispers of the outer world’s crises made their way in among the elders, but by and large the novices lived in innocence. Cadfael chose the strongest and the least likely to be distressed by the contemplation of death, and sent the others back to their work. With their hoes and rope girdles and scapulars they rigged a makeshift litter, and carried it down the riverside path to where the dead man lay.

In awed silence they took up their sodden burden, and bore him back in dripping procession through the belt of woodland and all along the lush level of the Gaye, to the path that climbed to the Foregate.

“We’d best take him to the abbey,” said Cadfael, halting a moment to consider. “That’s the quickest means of getting him decently out of the public view, and we can send for his master or his kin from there.” There were other reasons for the decision, too, but he did not think fit to mention them at this point. The dead man came from Judith Perle’s household, and what had befallen him surely could not be entirely disconnected from all the other disasters which seemed to be haunting the house and the heiress of the Vestier business. In which case Abbot Radulfus had a direct interest and a right to be informed, and even more surely, so had Hugh Beringar. Not only a right, but a need. Two deaths and a disappearance, all circling round the same lady and her dealings with the abbey, demanded very close attention. Even young, strong men in the most exuberant of health can drown. But Cadfael had already seen the broken bruise on the dead man’s right temple, washed white and bleached of blood by the water of the river. “Run on ahead, lad,” he said to Brother Rhun, the youngest of the novices, “and let Father Prior know what manner of guest we’re bringing.”

The boy bowed his flaxen head in the small gesture of respect with which he received any order from an elder, and was off in an instant, willing and eager. To bid Rhun run was a kindness rather than an imposition, for there was nothing in which he took greater delight than making use of the fleetness and grace he had possessed for barely a year, after coming to Saint Winifred’s festival a cripple and in pain. His year’s novitiate was almost over, and soon he would be admitted as a full brother. No power or persuasion could have induced him to depart from the service of the saint who had healed him. What to Cadfael was still the serious burden and stumbling-block of obedience, Rhun embraced as a privilege, as happily as he accepted the sunlight on his face.

Cadfael turned from watching the bright head and flashing feet ascend the path, and covered the dead man’s face with the corner of a scapular. Water dripped through the saturated cloth as they carried Bertred up to the road, and along the Foregate to the abbey gatehouse. Inevitably there were people abroad to halt at sight of the mournful procession, and nudge and whisper and stare as they passed. It was always a mystery where the urchins of the Foregate sprang from, as soon as there was something unusual to stare at, and how they multiplied at every step, and how the dogs, their inseparable playmates, also halted and dawdled alongside them with much the same expression of alerted curiosity on their faces. Soon guess and counter-guess would be running through the streets, but none of them would yet be able to name the drowned man. The little time before it was common knowledge who he was could be useful to Hugh Beringar, and merciful to the dead man’s mother. One more widow, Cadfael recalled, as they turned in at the gatehouse and left a ring of watchers gathered at a respectable distance outside.

Prior Robert came hastening to meet the procession, with Brother Jerome scurrying at his heels, and Brother Edmund from the infirmary and Brother Denis from the guest-hall converged at the same time upon the bearers and the bier. Half a dozen brothers who had been crossing the great court variously about their own proper business lingered to watch, and to draw closer by degrees to hear and see the better.

“I have sent Brother Rhun to notify the lord abbot,” said Robert, stooping his lofty silver head over the still body on the improvised litter. “This is a very bad business. Where did you find the man? Was it on our ground you took him ashore?”

“No, some way beyond,” said Cadfael, “cast up on the sand. Dead some hours, I judge. There was nothing to be done for him.”

“Was it necessary, then, to bring him here? If he is known, and has family in the town or the Foregate, they will take charge of his burial rites.”

“If not necessary,” said Cadfael, “I thought it advisable he should be brought here. I believe the lord abbot will also think so. There are reasons. The sheriff may have an interest in this matter.”

“Indeed? Why should that be so, if the man died by drowning? Surely an accident not unknown here.” He reached a fastidious hand to turn back the scapular from the bleached and bluish face which in life had glowed with such self-conscious health. But these features meant nothing to him. If he had ever seen the man, it could have been only casually, passing the gates. The house at Maerdol-head lay in the town parish of Saint Chad; neither worship nor commerce would bring Bertred into frequent contact with the Foregate. “Do you know this man?”

“By sight, yes, though little more than that. But he is one of Mistress Perle’s weavers, and lives in her household.”

Even Prior Robert, who held himself aloof from those uncomfortable worldly concerns which sometimes infiltrated into the abbey’s well-ordered enclave and bred disruption there, opened his eyes wide at that. He could not choose but know what untoward things had happened connected with that household, nor quite resist the conviction that any new disaster similarly connected must be a part of the whole deplorable pattern. Coincidences do occur, but they seldom cluster by the dozen round one dwelling and one name.

“Well!” he said on a long breath, cautiously noncommittal. “Yes, the lord abbot should certainly know of this.” And with due relief he added: “He is coming now.”

Abbot Radulfus had emerged from his garden and was approaching briskly, with Rhun attendant at his elbow. He said nothing until he had drawn back the covering from Bertred’s head and shoulders and surveyed him in sombre and thoughtful silence for a long moment. Then he again covered the dead face, and turned to Cadfael.

“Brother Rhun has told me where he was found, and how, but he does not know who the man is. Do you?”

“Yes, Father. His name is Bertred, he is Mistress Perle’s foreman weaver. I saw him yesterday out with the sheriff’s men, helping in the hunt for the lady.”

“Who has not been found,” said Radulfus.

“No. This is the third day of searching for her, but she has not been found.”

“And her man is found dead.” There was no need to point out to him implications which were already plain. “Are you satisfied that he drowned?”

“Father, I need to consider that. I think he did, but also he has suffered a blow to the head. I would like to examine his body further.”

“So, I suppose, would the lord sheriff,” said the abbot briskly. “I’ll send to him at once, and keep the body here for the present. Do you know if he could swim?”

“No, Father, but there are few born here who can’t. His kin or his master will tell us.”

“Yes, we must also send to them. But perhaps later, after Hugh has seen him, and made what you and he between you can of the matter.” And to the bearers of the litter, who had laid it down meanwhile and stood waiting silently, a little apart, he said: “Take him to the mortuary chapel. You had best strip him and lay him decently. Light candles for him. However and for whatever cause he died, he is our mortal brother. I’ll send a groom to look for Hugh Beringar. Wait with me, Cadfael, until he comes. I want to know everything you have gathered concerning this poor girl who is lost.”

In the mortuary chapel they had laid Bertred’s naked body on the stone bier, and covered him with a linen cloth. His sodden clothes lay loosely folded aside, with the boots they had drawn from his feet. The light being dim in there, they had also provided candles on tall holders, so that they could be placed wherever they gave the best light. They stood close about the slab, Abbot Radulfus, Brother Cadfael and Hugh Beringar. It was the abbot who drew down the linen and uncovered the dead, who lay with his hands duly crossed on his breast, drawn out very straight and dignified. Someone had reverently closed the eyes Cadfael remembered as half-open, like someone just waking, too late ever to complete the awakening.

A youthful body and a handsome, perhaps slightly over-muscled for perfection. Not much past twenty, surely, and blessed with features regular and shapely, again perhaps a shade over-abundant in flesh or under-provided with bone. The Welsh are accustomed to seeing in the faces of neighbours the strong solidity and permanence of bone, are sensitive to loss where they see it pared down over-cushioned in others. Nevertheless, a very comely young man. Face and neck and shoulders, and from elbow to fingertips, he was tanned by outdoor sun and wind, though the brown was dulled and sad now.

“Not a mark on him,” said Hugh, looking him over from head to feet, “barring that knock on his forehead. And that surely caused him nothing worse than a headache.”

High near the hairline the skin was certainly broken, but it seemed no more than a glancing blow. Cadfael took up the head, with its thick thatch of brown hair plastered to the broad forehead, between his hands, and felt about the skull with probing fingers. “He has another dunt, here, on the side, here in his hair, above the ear. Something with a long, sharp edge—through all this thickness of hair it made a scalp wound. That could have knocked the wits out of him for some time, perhaps, but not killed. No, he certainly drowned.”

“What could the man have been doing?” asked the abbot, pondering. “At that spot on that shore, in the night? There’s nothing there, no path that leads anywhere, no house to he visited. Hard to see what business a man could possibly have there in the dark.”

“The business he’d been on all yesterday,” said Hugh, “is the hunt for his mistress. He was in Mistress Perle’s service, of her household, he offered his help, and so far as I saw he gave it, unsparingly, and in good earnest. How if he was still bent on continuing the search?”

“By night? And there? There is nothing there but open meadow and a few groves of trees,” said Radulfus, “not one cottage for some distance, once past our border, nowhere that a stolen woman could be hidden. Even if he had been found on the opposite bank it would have been more believable, at least that gives access to the town and the houses of the Castle Foregate. But even so—by night, and a dark night until late…”

“And even so, how did he come by two blows on the head and end in the river? A man might go too near on a shelving bank, and miss his footing in the dark,” said Hugh, shaking his head, “but of a native Shrewsbury lad I doubt it. They know their river. We must find out if he was a swimmer, but the most of them learn early. Cadfael, we know where he was cast up. Is it possible he went into the water on the other side? If he tried to swim across, half-stunned after he got these injuries, might he fetch up about where you found him?”

“That we should ask of Madog,” said Cadfael. “He’ll know. The currents are certainly very strong and contrary in places, it would be possible.” He straightened the wet hair almost absently on the dead man’s forehead, and drew up the linen over his face. “There’s nothing more he can tell us. It remains to tell his kin. At least they may be able to say when last they saw him, and whether he owned to having any plans for the night.”

“I’ve sent for Miles Coliar, but said nothing to him yet of the reason. Better he should break it to the mother, it will come easier for her there, in her own home—for I’m told she belongs there, in the kitchen. And Coliar will need to have the body taken back there to make ready for burial, if you see no need to keep it longer.”

“None,” said Cadfael, turning away from the bier with a sigh. “At your discretion, both! I have done.” But at the door, last to leave the chapel, he cast one long glance back at the still white shape on the slab of stone. One more young man dead untimely, sad waste of the stuff of life. “Poor lad!” said Cadfael, and closed the door gently after him.

Miles Coliar came from the town in haste and alone, uninformed of the occasion for the summons, but certainly aware that there must be a grave reason, and by the look of his face speculating anxiously and fearfully as to what that might be. They awaited him in the ante-room of the gatehouse. Miles made his reverence to abbot and sheriff, and raised a worried countenance to look rapidly from face to face, questioning their solemnity.

“My lord, is there news? My cousin…? Have you got word of her, that you sent for me here?” His pallor blanched still more, and his face stiffened into a mask of dread, misreading, it seemed, their mute and sombre looks. “Oh, God, no! Not… no, she cannot be… You have not found her…?” His voice foundered on the word ‘dead’, but his lips shaped it.

“No, no!” said Hugh in haste. “Not that! No, there’s nothing new, no word of her yet, no need to think the worst. This is quite another matter, though grim enough. The hunt for your cousin goes on, and will go on until we find her.”

Miles said: “Thank God!” just audibly, and drew deep breath, the tense lines of his face relaxing. “Pardon if I am slow to think and speak and understand, and too hasty to fear extremes. These few days I have hardly slept or rested at all.”

“I am sorry to add more to your troubles,” said Hugh, “but needs must. It’s not Mistress Perle we’re concerned with here. Have you missed any man from your looms today?”

Miles stared, and scratched his bushy brown head, at once relieved and puzzled. “None of the weavers are working today, the looms have been neglected since yesterday morning, we’ve all or most been out on the hunt. I’ve kept the women spinning, it’s no work for them to go stravaging about with the sergeants and the men of the garrison. Why do you ask, my lord?”