The Rose Rent (8 page)

“Because,” he said, glittering, and leaning closer to lower his voice for fear Agatha should choose that moment to enter yet again on some pretext or other, “because you are young and beautiful, and have no real wish to bury yourself in a convent. You know it! And because I am your devoted worshipper, as well you know, and if you vanish from my life it will be the death of me.”

She took that as a well-intended if ill-judged flourish, and was even a little touched by his suddenly caught breath and stricken gaze as he realised what he had said, and how it must bite home on this of all days. He caught at her hand, voluble and honeyed in dismay. “Oh, forgive me, forgive me! Fool that I am, I never meant… There is no blame, none, can touch you. Let me in to your life closer, and I’ll convince you. Marry me, and I’ll shut out all vexations and doubts from you.”

She did begin to wonder, afterwards, if it was all calculated, for he was a subtle and persuasive young man; but then she was disarmed and self-doubting, and could not bring herself to attribute deceit or self-interest to any other. Vivian had often enough pressed his attentions upon her and made no impression. Now what she saw in him was a boy no more than a year older than Brother Eluric, one who might, for all his flattery and exaggeration, be suffering something of what Brother Eluric had suffered. She had so lamentably failed to offer the slightest help to the one, the more reason she should deal considerately with the other. So she tolerated him, and made firm but gentle answers, longer than she would have done at any other time.

“It’s foolish to talk so,” she said. “You and I have known each other from childhood. I’m your elder, and a widow, by no means a match for you, and I do not intend to marry again with any man. You must accept that for an answer. Waste no more time here on me.”

“You are fretting now,” he said vehemently, “over this monk who is dead, though God knows that’s none of your fault. But it will not always be so, you’ll see all very differently in a month or so. And for this charter that troubles you, it can be changed. You can, you should rid yourself of the bargain, and with it the reproach. You see now it was folly.”

“Yes,” she agreed resignedly, “it was indeed folly to put a price, even a nominal price, upon a gift. I should never have done it. It has brought nothing but grief. But yes, it can be undone.”

It seemed to her that he was drawing encouragement from this lengthening colloquy, and that she certainly did not desire. So she rose, and pleaded her very real weariness to rid herself of his continuing assiduities as gently as possible. Vivian departed reluctantly but still gracefully, looking back from the doorway for a long, ingratiating moment before he swung about and went, lithe and long-legged and elegant, down the street called Maerdol towards the bridge.

But even when he was gone, the evening was full of echoes of the morning, reminders of disaster, reproaches of folly, as Agatha worried away at the past.

“You see now how foolish it was to make such a ballad-romance agreement, like any green girl. A rose, indeed! You should never have given away half your patrimony so rashly, how could you know when you and yours might have great need of it? And now see what it’s come to! A death, and all at the door of that foolish charter.”

“You need not trouble any longer,” said Judith wearily. “I do repent it. It is not too late to amend it. Let me alone now. There is nothing you could say to me that I have not already said to myself.”

She went early to her bed, and the girl Branwen, relieved of the carding that brought her out in a rash, and put to work for a time in the household, came to fetch and carry for her, fold away into the chest the gown her mistress discarded, and curtain the unshuttered window. Branwen was fond of Judith, but not sorry, on this occasion, to be dismissed early, for Vivian’s serving-man, left behind to carry home the bolt of cloth for Mistress Hynde, was settled cosily in the kitchen, throwing dice with Bertred, the foreman of the weavers, and both of them were personable fellows with an eye for a pretty girl. Branwen was not at all averse to being the desirable bone between two handsome dogs. Sometimes she had felt that Bertred had ideas above his station, and was casting a greedy eye in the direction of his mistress, being vain of his sturdy, straight body and fresh, comely face, and a silver tongue to match. But nothing would ever come of that! And when he had Master Hynde’s Gunnar across the table from him, plainly captivated, he might better appreciate more accessible meat.

“Go now,” said Judith, loosing the great sheaf of her hair about her shoulders. “I shan’t need you tonight. But call me very early in the morning,” she added with sudden resolution, “for I’m going to the abbey. I’ll not leave this matter lying one hour more than need be. Tomorrow I’ll go to the abbot and have a new charter drawn up. No more roses! The gift I made for so foolish a fee I’ll now make unconditional.”

Branwen was proud of her advancement into Judith’s personal service, and fondly imagined herself closer in her mistress’s confidence than in fact she was. And with two young men in the kitchen already interested in her and prepared to be impressed, what wonder if she boasted of being the first to be entrusted with Judith’s plans for the morrow? It seemed a pity that Gunnar should so soon afterwards recall that he had to carry home Mistress Hynde’s cloth, and might end with a flea in his ear if he delayed too long. And though that left her the attentions of Bertred, whom on the whole she preferred, his pricked sense of proprietorship in a woman of this household seemed to flag disappointingly once his rival was out of the house. It was not, after all, a satisfactory evening. Branwen went to her bed out of temper between disillusionment and dudgeon, and out of sorts with men.

Young Alan Herbard, Hugh’s deputy, dutiful and determined though he was, drew the line at coping unaided with murder, and had had a courier on the road as soon as the news came to his ears. By noon of the next day, which was the eighteenth day of June, Hugh would surely be back in Shrewsbury, not in his own house, where only one elderly servant remained during the family’s absence, but at the castle, where garrison, sergeant and all were at his disposal.

Meantime, Cadfael betook himself and his waxen footprint, with the abbot’s blessing, into the town, and showed mould and drawing to Geoffrey Corviser, the provost, and his son Philip, the foremost shoemakers and leather workers in the town. “For sooner or later every boot comes into the cobbler’s hands,” he said simply, “though it may be a year ahead or more. No harm, at least, in keeping a copy of such witness as you see there, and looking out for the like among any you repair.”

Philip handled the wax delicately, and nodded over the evidence it provided of its wearer’s tread. “I don’t know it, but it will be easily seen if ever it does find its way in here. And I’ll show it to the cobbler over the bridge, in Frankwell. Between us, who knows, we may run the fellow down in the end. But there’s many a man patches his own,” said the good craftsman with professional disdain.

A thin chance enough, Cadfael admitted to himself on his way back over the bridge, but one that could not be neglected. What else had they to offer a lead? Little enough, except the inevitable and unanswerable question: Who could possibly have wanted to destroy the rosebush? And for what conceivable reason? A question they had all voiced already, without profit, and one that would be posed all over again when Hugh arrived.

Instead of turning in at the gatehouse Cadfael passed by and walked the length of the Foregate, along the dusty highway, past the bakery, past the forge, exchanging greetings in at doorways and over hedges as he went, to turn in at the gate of Niall’s yard, and cross to the wicket which led through into the garden. It was bolted fast on the inner side. Cadfael turned instead to the shop, where Niall was at work with a small ceramic crucible and a tiny clay mould for a brooch.

“I came to see if you’d had any further night visitors,” said Cadfael, “but I see you’ve secured one way in, at least. A pity there’s no wall ever built high enough to keep out a man determined to get in. But even stopping one hole is something. What of the bush? Will it live?”

“Come and see. One side may die off, but it’s no more than two or three branches. It may leave the tree lopsided, but a year or so, and pruning and growth will balance all.”

In the green and sunlight and tangled colour of the garden the rosebush spread its arms firmly against the north wall, the dangling trailers pegged back to the stone with strips of cloth. Niall had wound a length of stout canvas round and round the damaged bole, binding the severed wood together, and coated the covering with a thick layer of wax and grease.

“There’s love been put into this,” said Cadfael approvingly, but wisely did not say whether for the bush or the woman. The leaves on the half-severed part had wilted, and a few had fallen, but the bulk of the tree stood green and glossy, and full of half-open buds. “You’ve done well by it. I could use you inside the enclave, if ever you tire of bronze and the world.”

The quiet, decent man never opened his mouth to answer that. Whatever he felt for woman or rose was his business, no other man’s. Cadfael respected that, and viewing the wide, wide-set, honest and yet reticent eyes, he took his leave and set off back to his proper duties feeling somewhat reproved, and curiously elated. One man at least in this sorry business kept his eyes on his own course, and would not easily be turned aside. And he, surely, looking for no gain. Somewhere in all this there was greed of gain more than enough, and little enough of love.

It was almost noon by this time, and the sun high and hot, a true June day. Saint Winifred must have been at work coaxing the heavens to do her honour for the festival of her translation. As so often happened in a late season, the summer had all but caught up with the laggard spring, flowers which had lingered shivering and reluctant to bloom suddenly sprang into fevered haste, bursting their buds overnight into a blazing prime. The crops, slower to take risks, might still be as much as a month late, but they would be lavish and clean, half their hereditary enemies chilled to death in April and May.

In the doorway of his lodge in the gatehouse Brother Porter was standing in earnest talk with an agitated young man. Cadfael, always vulnerable to curiosity, his prevalent sin, halted, wavered and turned aside, recognising Miles Coliar, that tidy, practical, trim young fellow a great deal less trim than usual, his hair blown and teased erect in disorder, his bright blue eyes dilated beneath drawn and anxious copper brows. Miles turned his head, hearing a new step approaching, and recognised, through a haze of worry, a brother he had seen only the previous day sitting amicably with his cousin. He swung about eagerly.

“Brother, I remember you—you were of some comfort and help yesterday to Judith. You have not seen her today? She has not spoken again with you?”

“She has not,” said Cadfael, surprised. “Why? What is new now? She went home with you yesterday. I trust she has met with no further grief?”

“No, none that I know of. I do know she went to her bed in good time, and I hoped she would sleep well. But now…” He cast a vague, distracted glance about him: “They tell me at home she set out to come here. But…”

“She has not been here,” said the porter positively. “I have not left my post, I should know if she had entered the gate. I know the lady from the time she came here making her gift to the house. I have not set eyes on her today. But Master Coliar here says she left home very early…”

“Very early,” Miles confirmed vehemently. “Before I was waking.”

“And with intent to come here on some errand to the lord abbot,” concluded the porter.

“So her maid told me,” said Miles, sweating. “Judith told her so last night, when the girl attended her to bed. I knew nothing of it until this morning. But it seems she has not been here. She never reached here. And she has not come home again. Midday, and she has not come home! I dread something ill has befallen her.”

Chapter Six

THERE WERE FIVE of them gathered in the abbot’s parlour that afternoon, in urgent conclave: Radulfus himself, Brothers Anselm and Cadfael, witnesses to the charter which had somehow precipitated these dire events, Miles Coliar, restless and fevered with anxiety, and Hugh Beringar, who had ridden south in haste from Maesbury with Eluric’s murder on his mind, to find on arrival that a second crisis had followed hard on the heels of the first. He had already deputed Alan Herbard to send men hunting through the town and the Foregate for any sign or news of the missing lady, with orders to send word if by any chance she should have returned home. There could, after all, be legitimate reasons for her absence, something unforeseen that had met and deflected her on her way. But minute by minute it began to look less likely. Branwen had told her tearful story, and there was no question but Judith had indeed set out from home to visit the abbey. None, either, that she had never reached it.

“The girl never told me what my cousin had said, until this morning,” said Miles, twisting frustrated hands. “I knew nothing of it, or I could have borne her company. So short a walk, down here from the town! And the watchman at the town gate said good day to her and saw her start across the bridge, but after that he was busy, and had no call to watch her go. And not a sign of her from that moment.”

“And she said her errand was to remit the rose rent,” said Hugh intently, “and make her gift to the abbey free of all conditions?”

“So her maid says. So Judith told her. She was much distressed,” said Miles, “over the young brother’s death. She surely took it to heart that it was her whim brought about that murder.”

“It has yet to be explained,” said Abbot Radulfus, “why that should be. Truly it does appear that Brother Eluric interrupted the attack upon the rosebush, and was killed for his pains, perhaps in mere panic, yet killed he was. What I do not understand is why anyone should wish to destroy the rosebush in the first place. But for that inexplicable deed there would have been no interruption and no death. Who could want to hack down the bush? What possible motive could there be?”

“Ah, but, Father, there could!” Miles turned on him with feverish vehemence. “There were some not best pleased when my cousin gave away so valuable a property, worth the half of all she has. If the bush was hacked down and all the roses dead by the day of Saint Winifred’s translation, the rent could not be paid, and the terms of the charter would have been broken. The whole bargain could be repudiated.”

“Could,” Hugh pointed out briskly, “but would not. The matter would still be in the lady’s hands, she could remit the rent at will. And you see she had the will.”

“She could remit it,” Miles echoed with sharp intent, “if she were here to do it. But she is not here. Four days until the payment is due, and she has vanished. Time gained, time gained! Whoever failed to destroy the bush has now abducted my cousin. She is not here to grant or deny. What he did not accomplish by one way he now approaches by another.”

There was a brief, intent silence, and then the abbot said slowly: “Do you indeed believe that? You speak as one believing.”

“I do, my lord. I see no other possibility. Yesterday she announced her intention of making her gift unconditional. Today that has been prevented. There was no time to be lost.”

“Yet you yourself did not know what she meant to do,” said Hugh, “not until today. Did any other know of it?”

“Her maid owns she repeated it in the kitchen. Who knows how many heard it then, or got it from those who did? Such things come out through keyholes and the chinks of shutters. Moreover, Judith may have met with some acquaintance on the bridge or in the Foregate, and told them where she was bound. However lightly and thoughtlessly she had that provision written into the charter, the failure to observe it would render the bargain null and void. Father, you know that is true.”

“I do know it,” acknowledged Radulfus, and came at last to the unavoidable question: “Who, then, could possibly stand to gain by breaking the agreement, by whatever means?”

“Father, my cousin is young, and a widow, and a rich prize in marriage, all the richer if her gift to you could be annulled. There are a bevy of suitors about the town pursuing her, and have been now for a year and more, and every one of them would rather marry the whole of her wealth than merely the half. Me, I manage the business for her, I’m very well content with what I have, and with the wife I’m to marry before the year’s out, a good match. But even if we were not first cousins I should have no interest in Judith but as a loyal kinsman and craftsman should. But I cannot choose but know how she is pestered with wooers. Not that she encourages any of them, nor ever gives them grounds for hope, but they never cease their efforts. After three years and more of widowhood, they reason, her resolution must surely weaken, and she’ll be worn down into taking a second husband at last. It may be that one of them is running out of patience.”

“To name names,” said Hugh mildly, “may sometimes be dangerous, but to call a man a wooer is not necessarily to call him an abductor and murderer into the bargain. And I think you have gone so far, Master Coliar, that in this company you may as well go the rest of the way.”

Miles moistened his lips and brushed a sleeve across his beaded forehead. “Business looks to business for a match, my lord. There are two guildsmen in the town, at least, who would be only too glad to get hold of Judith’s trade, and both of them work in with us, and know well enough what she’s worth. There’s Godfrey Fuller does all the dyeing of our fleeces, and the fulling of the cloth at the end of it, and he’d dearly like to make himself the master of the spinning and weaving, too, and have all in one profitable basket. And then there’s old William Hynde, he has a wife still, but by another road he could get his hands on the Vestier property, for he has a young spark of a son who comes courting her day in, day out, and has the entry because they know each other from children. The father might be willing to use him as bait for a woman, though he’s drawn his purse-strings tight from paying the young fellow’s debts any longer. And the son—if he could win her I fancy he’d be set up for life, but not dance to his father’s tune, more likely to laugh in his face. And that’s not the whole of it, for our neighbour the saddler is just of an age to feel the want of a wife, and in his plodding way has settled on her as suitable. And our best weaver chances to be a very good craftsmen and a fine-looking man, and fancies himself even prettier than he is, and he’s been casting sheep’s eyes at her lately, though I doubt if she even noticed. There’s more than one comely journeyman has caught his mistress’s eye and done very well for himself.”

“Hard to imagine our solid guildsmen resorting to murder and abduction,” objected the abbot, unwilling to accept so readily a suggestion so outrageous.

“But the murder,” Hugh pointed out alertly, “seems to have been done in alarm and terror, and probably never was intended. Yet having so far committed himself, why should a man stop at the second crime?”

“Still it seems to me a hazardous business, for from all I know or have heard about the lady, she would not easily give way to persuasion. Captive or free, she has thus far resisted all blandishments, she will not change now. I do understand,” said Radulfus ruefully, “what force of compulsion the common report may bring to bear in such a case, how a woman might feel it better to yield and marry than endure the scandal of suspicion and the ill will between families that must follow. But this lady, it seems to me, might well survive even that pressure. Then her captor would have gained nothing.”

Miles drew deep breath, and ran a hand through his fair curls, dragging them wildly awry. “Father, what you say is true, Judith is a strong spirit, and will not easily be broken. But, Father, there may be worse! Marriage by rape is no new thing. Once in a man’s power, hidden away with no means of escape, if coaxing and persuasion have no effect, there remains force. It has been known time and time again. My lord Beringar here will witness it happens among the nobility, and I know it happens among the commonalty. Even a town tradesman might resort to it at last. And I know my cousin, if once her virtue was lost, she might well think it best to mend her sorry state by marriage. Wretched though that remedy must be.”

“Wretched indeed!” agreed Radulfus with detestation. “Such a thing must not be. Hugh, this house is deeply committed here, the charter and the gift draw us in, and whatever aid we can lend you to recover this unhappy lady is at your disposal, men, funds, whatever you require. No need to ask—take! And as for our prayers, they shall not be wanting. There is still some frail chance that no harm has come to her, and she may yet return home of her own volition, and wonder at this fury and alarm. But now we must reckon with the worst, and hunt as for a soul in danger.”

“Then we’d best be about it,” said Hugh, and rose to take his leave. Miles was on his feet with a nervous spring, eager and anxious, and would have been first out at the door if Cadfael had not opened his mouth for the first time in this conference.

“I did hear, Master Coliar, indeed I know from Mistress Perle herself, that she has sometimes thought of leaving the world and taking the veil. Sister Magdalen talked with her about such a vocation a few days ago, I believe. Did you know of it?”

“I knew the sister came visiting,” said Miles, his blue eyes widening. “What they said I was not told and did not ask. That was Judith’s business. She has sometimes talked of it, but less of late.”

“Did you encourage such a step?” asked Cadfael.

“I never interfered, one way or the other. It would have been her decision. I would not urge it,” said Miles forcibly, “but neither would I stand in her way if that was what she wanted. At least,” he said with sudden bitterness, “that would have been a good and peaceful ending. Now only God knows what her dismay and despair must be.”

“There goes a most dutiful and loving cousin,” said Hugh, as Cadfael walked beside him across the great court. Miles was striding out at the gatehouse arch with hair on end, making for the town, and the house and shop at Maerdol-head, where there might by this time be news. A frail chance, but still possible.

“He has good cause,” said Cadfael reasonably. “But for Mistress Perle and the Vestier business he and his mother would not be in the comfortable state they are. He has everything to lose, should she give in to force and agree to marriage. He owes his cousin much, and by all accounts he’s requited her very well, with gratitude and good management. Works hard and to good effect, the business is flourishing. He may well be frantic about her now. Do I hear a certain sting in your voice, lad? Have you doubts about him?”

“No, none. He has no more idea where the girl is now than you or I, that’s clear. A man may dissemble very well, up to a point, but I never knew a man who could sweat at will. No, Miles is telling the truth. He’s off now to turn the town upside-down hunting for her. And so must I.”

“She had but so short a way to go,” said Cadfael, fretting at the fine detail, which left so little room for doubt that she was gone, that something untoward had indeed happened to her. “The watch at the gate spoke to her, she had only to cross the bridge and walk this short piece of the Foregate to our gatehouse. A river to cross, a short walk along open road, and in those few minutes she’s gone.”

“The river,” said Hugh honestly, “has been on my mind. I won’t deny it.”

“I doubt if it need be. Unless truly by some ill chance. No man is going to make himself rich or his business more prosperous by marriage with a dead woman. Only her heir would benefit by that, and her heir—I suppose that boy must be her nearest kin?—is going out of his mind worrying over what’s happened to her, as you yourself have seen. There’s nothing false about the state he’s in. No, if some wooer has determined on drastic action, he’ll have spirited her away into some safe place, not done her harm. We need not mourn for the lady, not yet, she’ll be guarded like a miser’s gold.”

Cadfael’s mind was occupied with the problem until Vespers and beyond. From the bridge to the abbey gatehouse there were but three footpaths leaving the Foregate, two that branched off to the right, one on either side the mill-pond, to serve the six small houses there, the other descending on the left to the long riverside tract of the Gaye, the main abbey gardens. Cover was sparse along the high road, any act of violence would be risky there, and the paths that served the abbey houses suffered the disadvantage, from a conspirator’s point of view, of being overlooked by the windows of all six cottages, and in this high summer there would be no shutters closed. The old woman in one cot was stone deaf, and would not have heard even the loudest screams, but generally old people sleep lightly and fitfully, and also, being no longer able to get about as actively as before, they have rather more than their share of curiosity, to fill up the tedium of their days. It would be a bold or a desperate man who attempted violence under their windows.

No trees drew close about the road on that, the southern side of the Foregate, only a few low bushes fringing the pond, and the scrub-covered slope down to the river. Only on the northern side were there well-grown trees, from the end of the bridge, where the path wound down to the Gaye, to a grove some little way short of the abbey gatehouse, where the houses of the Foregate began.

Now if a woman could be drawn aside there, even into the fringe of shadow, at that early hour and with few people abroad, it would not be so difficult to seize a moment when the road was empty and drag her further into the grove, or down among the bushes, with a cloak twisted about her head and arms. But in that case the person involved, man or woman, would have to be someone known to her, someone who could detain her plausibly in talk for a matter of minutes beside the road. Which fitted in well enough with the suggestion Miles had made, for even an unwelcome suitor who was also a town neighbour would be encountered in the ordinary meetings of the day with tolerance and civility. Life in a walled and crowded borough cannot be carried on otherwise.