The Rose Rent (15 page)

“I should take you to the gate.”

The rider was already out of the saddle. In the forest aisle where the darkness became relative there was movement upon the ground, a blacker shape shifting across the pallor of the horse like drifts of cloud across the moon.

“No,” said Judith’s voice, chill and clear. “That was not in the bargain. I do not wish it.”

By the horse’s stirring and the susurration of movement Niall knew the moment when the man lifted her down, though still, without conviction, his voice protested: “I cannot let you go alone.”

“It is not far,” she said. “I am not afraid.”

And he was accepting his dismissal, for again the horse stirred and trod the turf, and a stirrup rang once. The rider was remounting. Something more he said, but it was lost as his mount turned, not to go back the way he had come, but onward to the left, uphill by another track, to cut through the rough uplands the nearest way to the road. Speed rather than secrecy was his concern now. But after a few hasty paces he did check and turn to offer again what she had refused, knowing she would still refuse it.

“I’m loth to leave you so…”

“I know my way now,” she said simply. “Go, get home before light.”

At that he did turn, shake his bridle, and start along a rising ride that seemed to offer better speed and a more open and smooth surface, for in a little while the receding sound of the hooves became a cautious trot, intent on making good speed away from this mysterious errand. Judith still stood where he had set her down, quite invisible in the edge of the trees, but Niall would know when she moved. He drew nearer still, ready to follow whatever move she made. She knew her way, it was not far, and she was not afraid. But he would go at her back until she reached her chosen haven, wherever that might be.

The rider was gone, the last muted sound had died into silence, before she stirred, and then he heard her turn away to the right, out of the comparative twilight of the open ride, back into the lush, leafy blackness of thick forest, for a twig snapped under her foot. He crossed the ride and followed. There was a narrow but trodden path slanting away downhill, towards some larger tributary of the Meole, for he caught the distant small whispering of water from below.

He had gone no more than twenty paces down the path, and she was perhaps twenty before him, when there was a sudden violent threshing of bushes from the right, out of the thick undergrowth, and then Judith cried out, one wild, brief cry of alarm and dread. Niall sprang forward in a reckless run towards the cry, and felt, rather than heard or saw, the night convulsed before him with the turbulence of an almost silent struggle. His spread arms embraced two bodies, blindly and clumsily, and struggled to pluck them apart. Judith’s long hair, torn from its coil, streamed across his face, and he took her about the waist to put her behind him and out of danger. He felt the upward swing of a long arm reaching past him to strike at her, and some strange trick of lambent light flashed for one instant blue along the blade of a knife.

Niall caught the descending arm and wrenched it aside, hooked a knee round the assailant’s knee with a wrestler’s instinct, and brought them both crashing to the ground. They rolled and strained, twigs crackling under them in the blind dark, bruised shoulders against the boles of trees, wrenched and struggled, the one to free his knife arm, the other to hold the blade away from himself or get possession of it. Their breath mingled as they strained and panted face to face, and each still invisible to the other. The attacker was strong, muscular and determined, and had a fund of vicious tricks to play, using head and teeth and knees freely, but he could not break away or get to his feet again. Niall had him by the right wrist, and with his other arm wound about the man’s body, pinning the upper arm so that his opponent could only claw fiercely at neck and face, drawing blood. With a grunting effort he heaved up his body and rolled them both over to make violent impact with the bole of a tree, intent on half-stunning Niall and breaking his grip to free the knife, but he succeeded all too well, and his own knife arm, already weakened with cramps from the grip on his wrist, struck the solid timber hard, jarring from elbow to fingers. His hand started open, the knife flew wide and was lost in the grass.

Niall came dazedly to his knees, to hear his enemy gasping and moaning, groping about in the turf and leaf-mould for his weapon, and muttering curses because he could not find it. And at the first lunge Niall made to grapple with him again he dragged himself to his feet and ran, breaking through the bushes, back the way he had come. The lashing of branches and rustling of leaves marked his path through the thick woods, until the last sound faded away into distance, and he was gone.

Niall clambered to his feet, shaking his ringing head, and groped for a tree to hold by. He was no longer sure which way he was facing on the path, or where to find Judith, until a still voice said, with slow, composed wonder: “I am here!” and the barely perceptible pallor of an extended hand beckoned him, and closed on the hand he reached out to meet it. Her touch was chill but firm. Whether she knew him or not, of him she had no fear. “Are you hurt?” she said. They drew together very gently, rather out of a startled and mutual respect than out of any caution, and their human warmth met and mingled.

“Are you? He struck at you before I could reach him. Did he wound you?”

“He has slit my sleeve,” she said, feeling at her left shoulder. “A scratch, perhaps—nothing more. I’m not hurt, I can go. But you…”

She laid her hands on his breast, and felt anxiously down from shoulders to forearms, and found blood. “He has gashed you—this left arm

“It’s nothing,” said Niall. “We’re lightly rid of him.”

“He meant killing,” said Judith gravely. “I didn’t know there could be outlaws prowling so close to the town. Night travellers could be butchered for the clothes they wear, let alone the money they might be carrying.” Only then did she begin to quiver with the laggard disruption of shock, and he drew her into his arms to warm the chill out of her. Then she did know him. His voice had started echoes for her, his touch was certainty. “Master Bronzesmith? How did you come to be here? So happily for me! But how?”

“No matter for that now,” said Niall. “First let me bring you wherever you were going. Here in the forest, if there are such scum abroad, we could still come to grief. And you may take cold from the very malice and violence of it. How far have you to go?”

“Not far,” she said. “Down to the brook here, barely half a mile. All the stranger that footpads should be loose here. I am going to the Benedictine nuns at Godric’s Ford.”

He asked her nothing more. Her plans were her own, there was nothing here for him to do but see that they were not impeded. He kept an arm about her as they set off down the path, until presently it widened into a grassy ride, where a faint light came in like mist. Invisibly beyond the trees the moon was rising at last. Somewhere before them there was the elusive gleam of water in motion, in mysterious, vibrant glimpses that shifted and vanished, and emerging from the misty air on their side of it, the sharp black edges of roofs and a fence, and a little bell-turret, the only vertical line.

“This is the place?” asked Niall. He had heard of the cell, but never before questioned where it lay, or been anywhere near it.

“Yes.”

“I’ll bring you as far as the gate, and see you within.”

“No, you must come in with me. You must not go back now, alone. Tomorrow, by daylight, we shall be safe enough.”

“There’s no place here for me,” he said doubtfully.

“Sister Magdalen will find a place.” And she said with sudden passionate entreaty: “Don’t leave me now!”

They came down together to the high timber fence that enclosed the cell and its gardens. Though the moon was still hidden from their sight beyond the forested uplands, its reflected light was growing with every moment; buildings, trees, bushes, the curve of the brook and cushioned strips of meadow along its banks, all emerged slowly from black obscurity into subtle modulations of grey, soon to be silvered as the moon climbed. Niall hesitated with his hand on the rope of the bell at the closed gate, such a violation it seemed to break the silence. When he did rouse himself to pull, the jangle of sound went echoing along the water, and rang back from the trees of the opposite shore. But there was only a short wait before the portress came grumbling and yawning to open the grille and peer out at them.

“Who is it? Benighted, are you?” She saw a man and a woman, both unknown to her and astray here in the forest at night, and took them for what they seemed, respectable travellers who had lost their way and found themselves in unfrequented solitudes where any shelter was more than welcome. “You want a night’s lodging?”

“My name is Judith Perle,” said Judith. “Sister Magdalen knows of me, and once offered me a place of refuge when I needed it. Sister, I need it now. And here with me is my good friend who has stood between me and danger and brought me safely here. I pray shelter through the night for him, too.”

“I’ll call Sister Magdalen,” said the portress with wise caution, and went away to do so, leaving the grille open. In a very few minutes the two returned together, and Sister Magdalen’s bright, shrewd brown eyes looked through the lattice with wide-awake interest, alert even at this hour of the night.

“You may open,” she said cheerfully. “Here is a friend, and a friend’s friend is just as welcome.”

In the tiny parlour, without fuss and without questions, Sister Magdalen did first things first, mulled strong wine to warm the last chill of shock and fright out of them, rolled back Niall’s bloody sleeve, bathed and bandaged the long gash in his forearm, anointed the scratch on Judith’s shoulder, and briskly repaired the long tear in her bodice and sleeve.

“It is but cobbled,” she said. “I was never a good hand with a needle. But it will serve until you’re home.” And she picked up the bowl of stained water and bore it away, leaving them for the first time alone together by candle-light, gazing earnestly and wonderingly at each other.

“And you have asked me nothing,” said Judith slowly. “Neither where I have been all these days past, nor how I came to be riding through the night to this place, in company with a man. Neither how I vanished, nor how I got my freedom again. And I owe you so much, and I have not even thanked you. But I do, from my heart! But for you I should be lying dead in the forest. He meant killing!”

“I know well enough,” said Niall steadily, “that you never would willingly have left us all in distress and dismay for you these three days. And I know that if you choose now to spare the man who put you to such straits, you do it of good intent, and in the kindness of your heart. What more do I need to know?”

“I want it buried for my own sake, too,” she said ruefully. “What is there to gain by denouncing him? And much to lose. He is no such great villain, only presumptuous and vain and foolish. He has done me no violence, no lasting wrong. Better it should all be put away. You did not recognise him?” she asked, looking at him earnestly with her penetrating grey eyes, a little bruised with tiredness.

“That was he who rode with you? No, I could not tell who he was. But if I could, I would still go with your wish. Provided it was not he,” said Niall sharply, “who came back afoot to make sure of your silence. For yes, he meant killing!”

“No, no, that was not he. He was gone, you heard him go. Besides, he would not. We had agreed, he knew I would keep my word. No, that other was some wretch living wild on the pickings of the roads. And we must warn Hugh Beringar so,” she said, “when we go back. This place is very lonely. As well he should know there are masterless men abroad here.”

She had left the great waving sheaf of her hair loose on her shoulders, ready for the sleep she sorely needed. The large, high eyelids, iris-veined and translucent, hung heavily over the grey eyes. The sheen of candle-light over her tired pallor made her look like a woman fashioned in mother-of-pearl. He looked at her, and his heart ached.

“How came it,” she asked wonderingly, “that you were there when I so needed you? I had but to cry out, and you came. It was like the grace of God, an instant mercy.”

“I was on my way home from Pulley,” said Niall, shaken and tongue-tied for a moment by the sudden sweet intensity of her voice, “and I saw—saw, heard, no, felt in my blood—when you passed by. I never thought to trouble you, only to see that you came safely wherever it was you wished to be.”

“You knew me?” she said, marvelling.

“Yes. Yes, I knew you.”

“But not the man?”

“No, not the man.”

“I think,” she said, with abrupt and reviving resolution, “that you may, you of all people, that you should. I think I want to tell everything to you, you and Sister Magdalen—even what the world must not know, even what I have promised to keep hidden.”

“So you see,” she said starkly, coming to the end of her story, which had taken but a few minutes to tell, “how shamelessly I am making use of you, Sister, in coming here. I have been lost and sought, hunted high and low, for three days, and tomorrow I must go back and face all those who have laboured and agonised for me, and tell them I have been here with you, that I fled all my troubles because they fell too heavily on me, and I took refuge without a word to any, here in this retreat, where you once offered me shelter from the world. Well, it will not be quite a lie, for I am here, if only for the half of this one night. But it shames me, so to use you. Yet I must go back tomorrow.” Though it was already today, she recalled through a haze of weariness and relief. “I cannot leave them longer than need be in doubt and anxiety, now I’m free to return. Or God knows I would stay here, and how gladly!”

“I see no need to fret over a scruple,” said Sister Magdalen sensibly. “If this spares both you and this idiot youth you have forgiven, and shuts the mouths of gossips, then I find it as good a way of serving as any. And the need for quietness and counsel you can declare without ever a blush, for that’s no lie. For that matter, you may come back again when you will, and stay as long as you will, as once I told you. But you’re right, it is but fair to set their minds at rest and call off the hunt. Later, when you’re rested, you shall go back and face them all, and say that you came to me when the world and the stupidity of men—saving present company, that’s understood!—bore you down to despair. But creep back afoot, no, that you shan’t. Would I let a woman go so poorly provided from a retreat with me? You shall have Mother Mariana’s mule—poor soul, she’s bedridden now, she’ll do no more riding—and I’ll ride with you, to give colour and body to all. I have an errand I can do to the lord abbot at the same time.”