But all through the office he felt within himself an impossible paradox, a void that weighed heavier than stone.
He came through the woodlands flanking the vale of Gloucester during the next afternoon. All these midland shires of England seemed to him richly treed and full of game, one great, lavish hunting chase. And in these particular glades Philip FitzRobert had hunted a man. One more desperate loss to that gallant girl now solitary in Gloucester, and with child.
He had left Tewkesbury aside on his right hand, following the most direct road for Gloucester, as the empress and her train would have done. The forest stretches were on good, broad rides that narrowed only in a few short stretches, making use of level ground. At a bend in the path where the trees grew close, the messenger had said. Hearing her journey’s end, the empress would have quickened her pace to be in before dark, and they had taken fresh horses at Evesham. The rearguard had straggled somewhat; easy enough to close in from both sides and cut out a single man. Somewhere here, and two nights past now, and even the traces left by several riders in haste would be fading.
The thicker woodland opened out on the southern side of the track, letting light through the trees to enrich the grasses and wild ground plants below, and someone had chosen this favourable spot to cut out an assart for himself. The hut lay some yards aside, among the trees, with a low wooden fence round it, and a byre beyond. Cadfael heard a cow lowing, very contentedly, and marked how a small space to one side had been cleared of what larger timber it had carried, to allow of modest coppicing. The man of the house was digging within his enclosure, and straightened his back to stare alertly when he heard the soft thudding of hooves along the ride. Beholding a Benedictine brother, he perceptibly relaxed his braced shoulders, slackened his grip on the spade, and called a greeting across the dozen yards or so between.
“Good day to you, brother!”
“God bless the work!” said Cadfael, and checked his horse, turning in between the trees to draw nearer. The man put down his spade and dusted his hands, willing to interrupt his labours for a gossip with a harmless passerby. A square, compact fellow with a creased brown face like a walnut, and sharp blue eyes, well established in his woodland holding, and apparently solitary, for there was no sound or sign of any other creature about the garden or within the hut. “A right hermitage you have here,” said Cadfael. “Do you not want for company sometimes?”
“Oh, I’ve a mind for quietness. And if I tire of it, I have a son married and settled in Hardwicke, barely a mile off, that way, and the children come round on holy days. I get my times for company, but I like the forest life. Whither bound, brother? You’ll be in the dusk soon.”
“I’ll bide the night over at Deerhurst,” said Cadfael placidly. “So you never have troubles yourself, friend, with wild men also liking the forest life, but for no good reasons like yours?”
“I’m a man of my hands,” said the cottar confidently. “And it’s not modest prey like me the outlaws are after. Richer pickings ride along here often enough. Not that we see much trouble of that kind. Cover here is good, but narrow. There are better hunting-grounds.”
“That depends on the quarry,” said Cadfael, and studied him consideringly. “Two nights back, I think you had a great company through here, on their way to Gloucester. About this time of day, perhaps an hour further into the dark. Did you hear them pass?”
The man had stiffened, and stood regarding Cadfael with narrowed thoughtful eyes, already wary but not, Cadfael thought, of either this enquiry or the enquirer.
“I saw them pass,” he said evenly. “Such a stir a wise man does not miss. I did not know then who came. I know now. The empress, she that was all but queen, she came with her men from the bishops’ court at Coventry, back into Gloucester. Nothing good ever comes to men like me from her skirts brushing by, nor from the edge of King Stephen’s mantle, either. We watch them go by, and thank God when they’re gone.”
“And did they go by in peace?” asked Cadfael. “Or were there others abroad, lying in ambush for them? Was there fighting? Or any manner of alarm that night?”
“Brother,” said the man slowly, “what’s your interest in these matters? I stay within doors when armed men pass by, and let alone all who let me alone. Yes, there was some sort of outcry, not here, a piece back along the way, heard, not seen. Shouting, and sudden crashing about among the trees, but all was over in minutes. And then one man came riding at a gallop after the company, crying news, and later another set off back along the route in haste. Brother, if you know more of all this than I do who heard it, why question me?”
“And next morning, by daylight,” said Cadfael, “did you go to view that place where the attack was made? And what signs did you find there? How many men, would you judge? And which way did they go, afterwards?”
“They had been waiting in hiding,” said the man, “very patiently, most on the southern side of the track, but a few to the north. Their horses had trampled the sward among the trees. I would say at least a dozen in all. And when it was done, whatever was done, they massed and rode at speed, southward. There is a path there. Bushes broken and torn as they crashed through.”
“Due south?” said Cadfael.
“And in a hurry. Men who knew their way well enough to hurry, even in the dark. And now that I’ve told you what I heard and saw, and but for your cloth I would have kept my mouth shut, do you tell me what business you have with such night surprises.”
“To the best of my understanding,” said Cadfael, consenting to a curiosity as practical and urgent as his own, “those who struck at the empress’s rearguard and rode away in haste southward have seized and taken with them into captivity a young man of my close acquaintance, who has done nothing wrong but for incurring the hatred of Philip FitzRobert. And my business is to find where they have taken him, and win him free.”
“Gloucester’s son, is it? In these parts it’s he calls the tune, true enough, and has boltholes everywhere. But, brother,” urged the cottar, appalled, “you’d as well beard the devil himself as walk into La Musarderie and confront Philip FitzRobert.”
“La Musarderie? Is that where he is?” echoed Cadfael.
“So they’re saying. And has a hostage or two in there already, and if there’s one more since that tussle here, you have as much chance of winning him free as of being taken up to heaven living. Think twice and again before you venture.”
“Friend, I will. And do you live safe here from all armed men, and say a prayer now and then for all prisoners and captives, and you’ll be doing your share.”
Here among the trees the light was perceptibly fading. He had best be moving on to Deerhurst. At least he had gleaned a crumb of evidence to help him on his way. A hostage or two in there already. And Philip himself installed there. And where he was, surely he would bring with him his perverse treasure of bitterness and hatred, and hoard up his revenges.
Cadfael was about to turn his horse to the track once more, when he thought of one more thing he most needed to know, and brought out the rolled leaf of vellum from the breast of his habit, and spread it open on his thigh to show the drawings of the salamander seal.
“Have you ever seen this badge, on pennant, or harness, or seal? I am trying to find its owner.”
The man viewed it attentively, but shook his head. “I know nothing of these badges and devices of the gentles, barring the few close hereabouts. No, I never saw it. But if you’re bound for Deerhurst, there’s a brother of the house studies such things, and prides himself on knowing the devices of every earl and baron in the land. He can surely give this one a name.”
He emerged from the dusk of the woodland into the full daylight of the wide water-meadows flanking that same Severn he had left behind at Shrewsbury, but here twice the width and flowing with a heavy dark power. And there gleaming through trees no great way inland from the water was the creamy silver stone of the church tower, solid Saxon work, squat and strong as a castle keep. As he approached, the long line of the nave roof came into view, and an apse at the east end, with a semicircular base and a faceted upper part. An old, old house, centuries old, and refounded and endowed by the Confessor, and bestowed by him upon Saint Denis. The Confessor was always more Norman in his sympathies than English.