The Rose Rent (16 page)

“How if they ask how long I have been here?” asked Judith.

“With me beside you? They won’t ask. Or if they do, we shall not answer. Questions are as supple as willow wands,” said Sister Magdalen, rising authoritatively to lead them to the beds prepared, “it’s easy to brush by them and slip them aside, and no one the worse for it.”

Chapter Twelve

THE BROTHERS WERE just issuing from the church after High Mass, and the sun was climbing high into a pale blue sky, when Sister Magdalen’s little cavalcade turned in at the abbey gatehouse. This was the eve of the translation of Saint Winifred, and not even for violent deaths, disappearances and disasters can the proper routine of the church be allowed to lapse into disorder. This year there would be no solemn procession from Saint Giles, at the edge of the town, to bring the relics once again to their resting-place on Winifred’s altar, but there would be celebratory Masses, and day-long access to her shrine for the pilgrims who had special pleas to make for her intercession. Not so many of them this year, yet the guest-hall was well filled, and Brother Denis kept busy with provision for the arrivals, as Brother Anselm was with the new music he had prepared in the saint’s honour. The novices and the children hardly realised what mortal preoccupations had convulsed town and Foregate in the recent days. The younger brothers, even those who had been closest to Brother Eluric and deeply shaken by his death, had almost forgotten him now in the cheerful prospect of a festival which brought them extra dishes at meals, and additional privileges.

Brother Cadfael was in no such case. Try as he would to keep his mind firmly on the divine office, it would stray away at every turn to worry at the problem of where Judith Perle could be hidden away now, and whether, after so many sinister happenings, the death of Bertred could really be the random and callous accident it seemed, or whether that, too, had the taint of murder about it. But if so, why murder, and by whom? There seemed no doubt that Bertred himself was the murderer of Brother Eluric, but the signs indicated that so far from being the abductor of his mistress, he had been probing that ill deed for himself, and had intended to be her deliverer, and exploit the favour to the limit afterwards. No question but the watchman was telling the truth as far as he knew it, Bertred had fallen from the hatch, roused the mastiff, and been hunted to the river-bank, with a single clout on the head to speed his flight. Yes, but only one, and the body that was drawn out of the river on the other side showed a second, worse injury, though neither in itself could have been fatal. How if someone had helped him into the water with that second blow, after the watchman had called off his dog?

If that was a possibility, who could it have been but the abductor, alarmed by Bertred’s interference and intent on covering up his own crime?

And Vivian Hynde was away helping his father with the flocks at Forton, was he? Well, perhaps! Not for long! If he did not ride into the arms of the watch at the town gates before noon, Hugh would be sending an armed guard to fetch him.

Cadfael had arrived at this precise point as they emerged into the sunlight of the morning, and beheld Sister Magdalen just riding in at the gatehouse on her elderly dun-coloured mule, at its usual leisurely and determined foot-pace. She rode with the same unhurried competence with which she did everything, without fuss or pretence, and looked about her as she entered with a bright, observant eye. Close to her stirrup walked the miller from the Ford, her trusted ally in all things. Sister Magdalen would never be short of a man to do what she wanted.

But there was another mule following, a taller beast, and white, and as he cleared the arch of the gateway they saw that his rider, also, was a woman, and not in the Benedictine habit, but gowned in dark green, and with a scarf over her hair. A tall, slender woman, erect and graceful in the saddle, the carriage and balance of her head arrestingly dignified, and suddenly, startlingly, familiar.

Cadfael checked so suddenly that the brother behind collided with him, and stumbled. At the head of their company the abbot had also halted abruptly, staring in wonder.

So she had come back, of her own will, at her own time, free, composed, not greatly changed, to confound them all. Judith Perle reined her mule alongside Magdalen’s, and there halted. She was paler than Cadfael remembered her. By nature her skin was clear and translucent as pearl, but now with a somewhat dulled whiteness, and her eyelids were a little swollen and heavy from want of sleep, and blanched and bluish like snow. But also there was a calm and serenity upon her, though without joy. She had the mastery of herself, she looked back into the astonished and questioning eyes that devoured her, and did not lower her own.

John Miller went to lift her down, and she laid her hands on his shoulders and set foot to the cobbles of the great court with a lightness that did not quite conceal her weariness. Abbot Radulfus had got his breath back, and started forward to meet her as she came towards him, bent the knee to him deeply, and stooped to kiss the hand he extended to her.

“Daughter,” said Radulfus, shaken and glad, “how I rejoice to see you restored here, whole and well. We have been in great trouble for you.”

“So I have learned, Father,” she said in a low voice, “and I take it to my blame. God knows it was never my wish that anyone should be in distress of mind for me, and I am sorry to have put you and the lord sheriff and so many good men to such a trouble and expense on my behalf. I will make amends as best I may.”

“Oh, child, pains spent in goodwill require no payment. If you are come back to your place safe and well, what else matters? But how does this come about? Where have you been all this time?”

“Father,” she said, drawing breath in a moment’s hesitation, “you see no harm has come to me. It was rather I who fled from a burden that had become too hard to bear alone. That I never said word to any you must excuse, but my need, my compulsion, was sudden and urgent. I needed a place of quietness and peace, and a time for thought, all that Sister Magdalen once promised me if ever I needed to shut out the world for a little while, until my heart could stand it. I fled to her, and she has not failed me.”

“And you are just come from Godric’s Ford?” said Radulfus, marvelling. “All this while that you have been thought lost, you were safe and quiet there? Well, I thank God for it! And no news of this turmoil we were in here ever came to your ears there at the Ford?”

“Never a word, Father Abbot,” said Sister Magdalen promptly. She had lighted down and approached without haste, smoothing the skirt of her habit from the creases of riding with plump, shapely, ageing hands. “We live out of the world there, and seldom feel the want of it. News is slow to reach us. Since I was last here, not a soul has come our way from Shrewsbury until late last night, when a man from the Foregate happened by. So here I have brought Judith home, to put an end to all this doubt, and set all minds at rest.”

“As hers, I hope,” said the abbot, closely studying the pale but calm face, “is now at rest, after those stresses that drove her into hiding. Three days is not long, to bring about the healing of a heart.”

She looked up steadily into his face with her wide grey eyes, and very faintly smiled. “I thank you, Father, and I thank God, I have regained my courage.”

“I am well sure,” said the abbot warmly, “that you could not have placed yourself in better hands, and I, too, thank God that all our fears for you can be so happily put away.”

In the brief, profound silence the long file of brothers, halted perforce at the abbot’s back, shifted and craned and peered to get a good look at this woman who had been sought as lost, and even whispered about with sly undertones of scandal, and now returned immaculate in the blameless company of the sub-prioress of a Benedictine cell, effectively silencing comment, if not speculation, and confronting the world with unassailable composure and dignity. Even Prior Robert had so far forgotten himself as to stand and stare, instead of waving the brothers authoritatively away through the cloister to their proper duties.

“Will you not have your beasts cared for here,” the abbot invited, “and take some rest and refreshment? And I will send at once to the castle and let the lord sheriff know that you are back with us safe and sound. For you should see him as soon as possible, and explain your absence to him as you have here to me.”

“So I intend, Father,” said Judith, “but I must go home. My aunt and cousin and all my people will still be fretting for me, I must go at once and show myself, and put an end to their anxiety. I’ll send to the castle immediately to let Hugh Beringar know, and he may come to me or send for me to come to him, as soon as he pleases. But we could not pass by into the town without first coming to inform you.”

“That was considerate, and I am grateful. But, Sister, I trust you will be my guest while you are here?”

“Today, I think,” said Sister Magdalen, “I must go with Judith and see her safely restored to her family, and be her advocate with the sheriff, should she need one. Authority may be less indulgent over time and labour wasted than you are, Father. I shall stay with her at least overnight. But tomorrow I hope to have some talk with you. I’ve brought with me the altar frontal Mother Mariana has been working on since she took to her bed. Her hands still have all their skill, I think you will be pleased with it. But it’s packed carefully away in my saddle-roll, I would rather not delay to undo it now. If I might borrow Brother Cadfael, to walk up into the town with us, I think perhaps Hugh Beringar would be glad to have him in council when we meet, and he could bring down the altar-cloth to you afterwards.”

By this time Abbot Radulfus knew her well enough to know that there was always a reason for any request she might make. He looked round for Cadfael, who was already making his way out from the ranks of the brothers.

“Yes, go with our sister. You have leave for as long as you may be needed.”

“With your countenance, Father,” said Cadfael readily, “and if Sister Magdalen agrees, I could go straight on to the castle and take the message to Hugh Beringar, after we have brought Mistress Perle home. He’ll have men still out round the countryside, the sooner he can call them off, the better.”

“Yes, agreed! Go, then!” He led the way back to where the mules stood waiting, with John Miller solid and passive beside them. The file of brothers, released from the porch, went its dutiful way, not without several glances over shoulders to watch the two women mount and depart. While they were about it, Radulfus drew Cadfael aside and said quietly: “If the news came so laggardly to Godric’s Ford, there may still be some things that have happened here that she does not know, and not all will be pleasant hearing. This man of hers who is dead, worse, guilty…”

“I had thought of it,” said Cadfael as softly. “She shall know, before she ever reaches home.”

As soon as they were on the open stretch of the bridge, going at the dogged mule-pace that would not be hurried, Cadfael moved to Judith’s bridle, and said mildly: “Three days you’ve been absent. Have I to give account, before you face others, of all that has happened during those three days?”

“No need,” she said simply. “I have had some account already.”

“Perhaps not of all, for not all is generally known. There has been another death. Yesterday, in the afternoon, we found a body washed up on our side the river, beyond where the Gaye ends. A drowned man—one of your weavers, the young man Bertred. I tell you now,” he said gently, hearing the sharp and painful intake of her breath, “because at home you will find him being coffined and readied for burial. I could not let you walk into the house and come face to face with that, and all unwarned.”

“Bertred drowned?” she said in a shocked whisper. “But how could such a thing happen? He swims like an eel. How could he drown?”

“He had had a blow on the head, though it would not have done more than make his wits spin for a while. And somehow he came by another such knock before he went into the water. Whatever happened to him happened in the night. The watchman at Fuller’s had a tale to tell,” said Cadfael with careful deliberation, and went on to repeat it as nearly word for word as he could recall. She sat on her mule in chill silence throughout the story, almost he felt her freeze as she connected the hour of the night, the place, and surely also the narrow, dusty, half-forgotten room behind the bales of wool. Her silence and her word would be hard to keep. Here was lost a second young man, withered by the touch of some fatal flaw in her, and yet a third she might scarcely be able to save, now they had drawn so near to the truth.

They had reached the gate, and entered under the archway. On the steep climb up the Wyle the mules slowed even more, and no one sought to hurry them.

“There is more,” said Cadfael. “You will remember the morning we found Brother Eluric, and the mould I made of the boot-print in the soil. The boots we took from Bertred’s body, when we carried him to the abbey dead—the left boot… fits that print.”

“No!” she said in sharp distress and disbelief. “That is impossible! There is here some terrible mistake.”

“There is no mistake. No possibility of a mistake. The match is absolute.”

“But why? Why? What reason could Bertred have had to try to cut down my rosebush? What possible reason to strike at the young brother?” And in a lost and distant voice, almost to herself, she said: “None of this did he tell me!”

Cadfael said nothing, but she knew he had heard. After a silence she said: “You shall hear. You shall know. We had better hurry. I must talk to Hugh Beringar.” And she shook her bridle and pressed ahead along the High Street. From open booths and shop doorways heads were beginning to be thrust in excited recognition, neighbour nudging neighbour, and presently, as she drew nearer to home, there were greetings called out to her, but she hardly noticed them. The word would soon be going round that Judith Perle was home again, and riding, and in respectable religious company, after all that talk of her being carried off by some villain with marriage by rape in mind.

Sister Magdalen kept close at her heels, so that there should be no mistaking that they were travelling together. She had said nothing throughout this ride from the abbey, though she had sharp ears and a quick intelligence, and had certainly heard most of what had been said. The miller, perhaps deliberately, had let them go well ahead of him. His sole concern was that whatever Sister Magdalen designed was good and wise, and nothing and no one should be allowed to frustrate it. Of curiosity he had very little. What he needed to know in order to be of use to her she would tell him. He had been her able supporter so long now that there were things between them that could be communicated and understood without words. They had reached Maerdol-head, and halted outside the Vestier house. Cadfael helped Judith down from the saddle, for the passage through the frontage to the yard, though wide enough, was too low for entering mounted. She had barely set foot to the ground when the saddler from the shop next door came peering out from his doorway in round-eyed astonishment, and bolted as suddenly back again to relay the news to some customer within. Cadfael took the white mule’s bridle, and followed Judith in through the dim passage and into the yard. From the shed on the right the rhythmic clack of the looms met them, and from the hall the faint sound of muted voices. The women sounded subdued and dispirited at their spinning, and there was no singing in this house of mourning.