“Here is one says I have grossly mistaken you,” said Philip directly, “and I have begun to be of his opinion. I make known now that you are free to go, no enemy henceforth of mine, and not to be meddled with where my writ runs.”
Yves looked from one to the other, and was at a loss, so suddenly hailed out of his prison and brought forth into the light. He had been captive for so short a time that the signs hardly showed on him at all. His wrists were bruised from the irons, but there was no more than a thin blue line to be seen, and either he had been housed somewhere clean and dry, or he had changed into fresh clothes. His hair, still damp, curled about his head, drying fluffy as a child’s. But there were the dark shadows of anger and suspicion in the stiffness of his face when he looked at Philip.
“You won him fairly,” said Philip indifferently, smiling a little at the boy’s black stare. “Embrace him!”
Bewildered and wary, Yves tensed at the very touch of Cadfael’s hands on his shoulders, but as suddenly melted, and inclined a flushed and still half-reluctant cheek for the kiss, quivering. In a stumbling breath he demanded helplessly: “What have you done? What brings you here? You should never have followed.”
“Question nothing!” said Cadfael, putting him off firmly to the length of his arms. “No need! Take what is offered you, and be glad. There is no deceit.”
“He said you had won me.” Yves turned upon Philip, frowning, ready to blaze. “What has he done? How did he get you to let go of me? I do not believe you do it for nothing. What has he pledged for me?”
“It is true,” said Philip coolly,”that Brother Cadfael came offering a life. Not, however, for you. He has reasoned me out of you, my friend, no price has been paid. Nor asked.”
“That is truth,” said Cadfael.
Yves looked from one to the other, swayed between belief in the one and disbelief in the other. “Not for me,” he said slowly. “It’s true, then, it must be true. Olivier is here! Who else?”
“Olivier is here,” agreed Philip equably, and added with finality: “And stays here.”
“You have no right.” Yves was too intent and solemn now to have room for anger. “What you held against me was at least credible. Against him you have no justification. Let him go now. Keep me if you will, but let Olivier go free.”
“I will be the judge,” said Philip, his brows drawn formidably, but his voice as level as before, “whether I have ground of bitter complaint against Olivier de Bretagne. As for you, your horse is saddled and provided, and you may ride where you will, back to your empress without hindrance from any man of mine. The gate will open for you. Be on your way.”
The curtness of the dismissal raised a flush in Yves’ smooth, scrubbed cheeks, and for a moment Cadfael feared for the young man’s newly achieved maturity. Where would be the sense in protesting further when the situation put all but dignified compliance out of his reach? A few months back, and he might have blazed in ineffective rage, in the perilous confusion of the transition from boy to man. But somewhere beneath one of the curtain towers of La Musarderie Yves had completed his growing up. He confronted his antagonist with mastered face and civil bearing.
“Let me at least ask,” he said, “what is your intent with Brother Cadfael. Is he also prisoner?”
“Brother Cadfael is safe enough with me. You need not fear for him. But for the present I desire to retain his company, and I think he will not deny me. He is free to go when he will, or stay as long as he will. He can keep the hours as faithfully in my chapel as in Shrewsbury. And so he does,” said Philip with a brief smile, remembering the night encounter, “even the midnight matin. Leave Brother Cadfael to his own choice.”
“I have still business here,” said Cadfael, meeting the boy’s earnest eyes, that widened to take in more meanings than the mere words conveyed.
“I go, then,” he said. “But I give you to know, Philip FitzRobert, that I shall come back for Olivier de Bretagne in arms.”
“Do so,” said Philip, “but do not complain then of your welcome.”
He was gone, without looking back. A hand to the bridle, a foot in the stirrup, and a light spring into the saddle, and the reins were gathered in one hand, and his spurless heels drove into the horse’s dappled flanks. The ranks of curious soldiers, servants and retainers parted to let him through, and he was out at the gate and on the descending causeway, towards the rim of the trees in the river valley below. There he would cross, and climb out again through the thick belt of woodland that everywhere surrounded Greenhamsted. By the same way that Cadfael had come, Yves departed, out to the great, straight road the Romans had made long ago, arrow-straight across the plateau of the Cotswolds, and when he reached it he would turn left, towards Gloucester and back to his duty.
Cadfael did not go towards the gate to watch him depart. The last he saw of him that day was clear against a sullen sky in the gateway, his back as straight as a lance, before the gates were closed and barred behind him.
“He means it,” said Cadfael by way of warning. For there are young men who say things they do not really mean, and those who fail to understand how to distinguish between the two may live to regret it. “He will come back.”
“I know it,” said Philip. “I would not grudge him his flourish even if it was no more than a flourish.”
“It is more. Do not disdain him.”
“God forbid! He will come, and we shall see. It depends how great a force she has now in Gloucester, and whether my father is with her.” He spoke of his father quite coldly, simply estimating in his competent mind the possible forces arrayed against him.
The men of the garrison had dispersed to their various duties. A wind from the courtyard brought in the scent of fresh, warm bread carried in trays from the bakery, sweet as clover, and the sharp, metallic chirping of hammers from the armoury.
“Why,” asked Cadfael, “should you wish to retain my company? It is I who had business unfinished with you, not you with me.”
Philip stirred out of his pondering to consider question and questioner with sharp attention. “Why did you choose to remain? I told you you might go whenever you wished.”
“The answer to that you know,” said Cadfael patiently. “The answer to my question I do not know. What is it you want of me?”
“I am not sure myself,” Philip owned with a wry smile. “Some signpost into your mind, perhaps. You interest me more than most people.”
That, if it was a compliment, was one which Cadfael could have returned with fervent truth. Some signpost into this man’s mind, indeed, might be a revelation. To get some grasp of the son might even illuminate the father. If Yves found Robert of Gloucester with the empress in the city, would he urge her to the attack against Philip with a bitterness the match of Philip’s own, or try to temper her animosity and spare his son?
“I trust,” said Philip, “you will use my house as your own, brother, while you are here. If there is anything lacking to you, ask.”
“There is a thing lacking.” He stepped directly into Philip’s path, to be clearly seen and heard, and if need be, denied, eye to eye. “My son is withheld from me. Give me leave to see him.”
Philip said simply: “No.” Without emphasis or need of emphasis.
“Use your house as my own, you said. Do you now place any restriction on where I may go within these walls?”
“No, none. Go where you will, open any unlocked door, wherever you please. You may find him, but you will not be able to get in to him,” said Philip dispassionately, “and he will not be able to get out.”
In the early twilight before Vespers, Philip made the rounds of his fortress, saw every guard set, and all defences secured. On the western side, where the ground rose steeply towards the village on the ridge, the wall was bratticed with a broad timber gallery braced out from its crest, since this was the side which could more easily be approached closely to attack the walls with rams or mining. Philip paced the length of the gallery to satisfy himself that all the traps built into its floor to allow attack from above on any besiegers who reached the wall, without exposing the defenders to archery, were clear of all obstacles and looked down stark stone to the ground, uncluttered by outside growth of bush or sapling. True, the brattice itself could be fired. He would have preferred to replace the timber with stone, but was grateful that Musard had at least provided this temporary asset. The great vine that climbed the wall on the eastern side had been permitted to remain, clothing a corner where a tower projected, but approach from that direction, climbing steeply over ground cleared of cover, was no great threat.