“Good sense enough,” Philip allowed, “so far as it goes.”
“It goes to the heart of the matter. Brien de Soulis bore arms, he had no mind to be present at Compline, he had another assignation that night. He waited in a carrel of the cloister, and came forth into the walk when he heard and saw his man approaching. A quiet time, with everyone else in the church, a time for private conference with no witnesses. Not with an avowed enemy, but with a friend, someone trusted, someone who could walk up to him confidently, never suspected of any evil intent, and stab him to the heart. And walked away and left him lying, for a foolish young man to stumble over, and yell his discovery to the night, and put his neck in a noose.”
“His neck,” said Philip dryly, “is still unwrung. I have not yet determined what to do with him.”
“And I am making your decision no easier, I trust. For what I tell you is truth, and you cannot but recognize it, whether you will or no. And there is more yet to tell, and though it does not remove from Yves Hugonin all cause for hating Brien de Soulis, it does open the door to many another who may have better cause to hate him even more. Even among some he may formerly have counted his friends.”
“Go on,” said Philip equably. “I am still listening.”
“After you were gone, under the bishop’s supervision we put together all that belonged to de Soulis, to deliver to his brother. He had with him his personal seal, as was to be expected. You know the badge?”
“I know it. The swan and willow wands.”
“But we found also another seal, and another device. Do you also know this badge?” He had drawn the rolled leaf out of the breast of his habit, and leaned to flatten it upon the table, between Philip’s long muscular hands. “The original is with the bishop. Do you know it?”
“Yes, I have seen it,” said Philip with careful detachment. “One of de Soulis’s captains in the Faringdon garrison used it. I knew the man, though not well. His own raising, a good company he had. Geoffrey FitzClare, a half-brother to Gilbert de Clare of Hertford, the wrong side the sheets.”
“And you must have heard, I think, that Geoffrey Fitz-Clare was thrown from his horse, and died of it, the day Faringdon was surrendered. He was said to have ridden for Cricklade during the night, after he had affixed his seal, like all the other captains who had their own followings within, to the surrender. He did not return. De Soulis and a few with him went out next day to look for him, and brought him home in a litter. Before night they told the garrison he was dead.”
“I do know of this,” said Philip, his voice for the first time tight and wary. “A very ill chance. He never reached me. I heard of it only afterwards.”
“And you were not expecting him? You had not sent for him?”
Philip was frowning now, his level black brows knotted tightly above the deep eyes. “No. There was no need. De Soulis had full powers. There is more to this. What is it you are saying?”
“I am saying that it was convenient he should die by accident so aptly, the day after his seal was added to the agreement that handed over Faringdon to King Stephen. If, indeed, he did not die in the night, before some other hand impressed his seal there. For there are those, and I have spoken with one of them, who will swear that Geoffrey FitzClare never would have consented to that surrender, had he still had voice to cry out or hand to lift and prevent. And if voice and hand had been raised against it, his men within, and maybe more than his would have fought on his side, and Faringdon would never have been taken.”
“You are saying,” said Philip, brooding, “that his death was no accident. And that it was another, not he, who affixed that seal to the surrender with all the rest. After the man was dead.”
“That is what I am saying. Since he would never have set it there himself, nor let it go into other hands while he lived. And his consent was essential, to convince the garrison. I think he died as soon as the thing was broached to him, and he condemned it. There was no time to lose.”
“Yet they rode out next day, to look for him, and brought him back to Faringdon openly, before the garrison.”
“Wrapped in cloaks, in a litter. No doubt his men saw him pass, saw the recognizable face plainly. But they never saw him close. They were never shown the body after they were told that he had died. A dead man in the night can very easily be carried out to be somewhere in hiding, against his open return next day. The postern that was opened to let the king’s negotiators in could as well let FitzClare’s dead body out, to some hiding-place in the woods. And how else, for what purpose,” said Cadfael heavily, “should FitzClare’s seal go with Brien de Soulis to Coventry, and be found in his saddle-bag there.”
Philip rose abruptly from his seat, and rounded the table sharply to pace across the room. He moved in silence, with a kind of contained violence, as if his mind was forcing his body into motion as the only means of relief from the smouldering turmoil within. He quartered the room like a prowling cat, and came to rest at length with clenched fists braced on the heavy chest in the darkest corner, his back turned to Cadfael and the source of light. His stillness was as tense as his pacing, and he was silent for long moments. When he turned, it was clear from the bright composure of his face that he had come to a reconciliation with everything he had heard.
“I knew nothing of all this. If it is truth, as my blood in me says it is truth, I had no hand in it, nor never would have allowed it.”
“I never thought it,” said Cadfael. “Whether the surrender was at your wish, no, at your decree!, I neither know nor ask, but no, you were not there, whatever was done was done at de Soulis’s orders. Perhaps by de Soulis’s hand. It would not be easy to get four other captains, with followings to be risked, to connive at murder. Better to draw him aside, man to man, and give out that he had been sent to confer with you at Cricklade, while one or two who had no objection to murder secretly conveyed away a dead man and the horse he was said to be riding on his midnight mission. And his seal was first on the vellum. No, you I never thought of as conniving at murder, whatever else I may have found within your scope. But FitzClare is dead, and de Soulis is dead, and you have not, I think, the reason you believed you had to mourn or avenge him. Nor any remaining cause to lay his death at the charge of a young man openly and honestly his enemy. There were many men in Faringdon who would be glad enough to avenge the murder of FitzClare. Who knows if some of them were also present at Coventry? He was well liked, and well served. And not every man of his following believed what he was told of that death.”
“De Soulis would have been as ready for such as for Hugonin,” said Philip.
“You think they would betray themselves as enemies? No, whoever set out to get close to him would take good care not to give any warning. But Yves had already cried out loud before the world his anger and enmity. No, yourself you know it, he would never have got within a sword’s reach, let alone a slender little knife. Set Yves Hugonin free,” said Cadfael, “and take me in my son’s stead.”
Philip came back slowly to his place at the table, and sat down, and finding his book left open and unregarded, quietly closed it. He leaned his head between long hands, and fixed his unnerving eyes again on Cadfael’s face.
“Yes,” he said, rather to himself than to Cadfael, “yes, there is the matter of your son Olivier. Let us not forget Olivier.” But his voice was not reassuring. “Let us see if the man I have known, I thought well, is the same as the son you have known. Never has he spoken of a father to me.”
“He knows no more than his mother told him, when he was a child. I have told him nothing. Of his father he knows only a too kindly legend, coloured too brightly by affection.”