“Torold Blund!” said Godith, testing the name slow syllable by syllable. “That’s a Saxon name. There are plenty of them up there in the northern manors, good blood and old. But I don’t know him. I think I can never have seen him. And Nicholas was on good, close terms with him? Nicholas was easy, but not stupid, and they sound much of an age, he must have known him well. And yet . . .”
“Yes,” said Cadfael, “I know! And yet! Girl dear, I am too tired to think any more. I’m going to Compline, and then to my bed, and so should you. And tomorrow . . .”
“Tomorrow,” she said, rising to the touch of his hand, “we shall bury Nicholas. We! He was in some measure my friend, and I shall be there.”
“So you shall, my heart,” said Cadfael, yawning, and led her away in his arm to celebrate, with gratitude and grief and hope, the ending of the day.
Chapter Five
Nicholas Faintree was laid, with due honours, under a stone in the transept of the abbey church, an exceptional privilege. He was but one, after so many, and his singleness was matter for celebration, besides the fact that there was room within rather than without, and the labour involved was less. Abbot Heribert was increasingly disillusioned and depressed with all the affairs of this world, and welcomed a solitary guest who was not a symbol of civil war, but the victim of personal malice and ferocity. Against all the probabilities, in due course Nicholas might find himself a saint. He was mysterious, feloniously slain, young, to all appearances clean of heart and life, innocent of evil, the stuff of which martyrs are made.
Aline Seward was present at the funeral service, and had brought with her, intentionally or otherwise, Hugh Beringar. That young man made Cadfael increasingly uneasy. True, he was making no inimical move, nor showing any great diligence in his search for his affianced bride, if, indeed, he was in search of her at all. But there was something daunting in the very ease and impudence of his carriage, the small, sardonic turn of his lip, and the guileless clarity of the black eyes when they happened to encounter Cadfael’s. No doubt about it, thought Cadfael, I shall be happier when I’ve got the girl safely away from here, but in the meantime at least I can move her away from anywhere he’s likely to be.
The main orchards and vegetable gardens of the abbey were not within the precinct, but across the main road, stretched along the rich level beside the river, called the Gaye; and at the far end of this fertile reach there was a slightly higher field of corn. It lay almost opposite the castle, and no great distance from the king’s siege camp, and had suffered some damage during the siege; and though what remained had been ripe for cutting for almost a week, it had been too dangerous to attempt to get it in. Now that all was quiet, they were in haste to salvage a crop that could not be spared, and all hands possible were mustered to do the work in one day. The second of the abbey’s mills was at the end of the field, and because of the same dangers had been abandoned for the season, just when it was beginning to be needed, and had suffered damage which would keep it out of use until repairs could be undertaken.
“You go with the reapers,” said Cadfael to Godith. “My thumbs prick, and rightly or wrongly, I’d rather have you out of the enclave, if only for a day.”
“Without you?” said Godith, surprised.
“I must stay here and keep an eye on things. If anything threatens, I’ll be with you as fast as legs can go. But you’ll be well enough, no one is going to have leisure to look hard at you until that corn is in the barns. But stay by Brother Athanasius, he’s as blind as a mole, he wouldn’t know a stag from a hind. And take care how you swing a sickle, and don’t come back short of a foot!”
She went off quite happily among the crowd of reapers in the end, glad of an outing and a change of scene. She was not afraid. Not afraid enough, Cadfael considered censoriously, but then, she had an old fool here to do the fearing for her, just as she’d once had an old nurse, protective as a hen with one chick. He watched them out of the gate house and over the road towards the Gaye, and went back with a relieved sigh to his own labours in the inner gardens. He had not been long on his knees, weeding, when a cool, light voice behind him, almost as quiet as the steps he had not heard in the grass, said: “So this is where you spend your more peaceful hours. A far cry and a pleasant change from harvesting dead men.”
Brother Cadfael finished the last corner of the bed of mint before he turned to acknowledge the presence of Hugh Beringar. “A pleasant change, right enough. Let’s hope we’ve finished with that kind of crop, here in Shrewsbury.”
“And you found a name for your stranger in the end. How was that? No one in the town seemed to know him.”
“All questions get their answers,” said Brother Cadfael sententiously, “if you wait long enough.”
“And all searchers are bound to find? But of course,” said Beringar, smiling, “you did not say how long is long enough. If a man found at eighty what he was searching for at twenty, he might prove a shade ungrateful.”
“He might well have stopped wanting it long before that,” said Brother Cadfael drily, “which is in itself an answer to any want. Is there anything you are looking for here in the herbarium, that I can help you to, or are you curious to learn about these simples of mine?”
“No,” owned Beringar, his smile deepening, “I would hardly say it was any simplicity I came to study.” He pinched off a sprig of mint, crushed it between his fingers, and set it first to his nose and then closed fine white teeth upon its savour. “And what should such as I be looking for here? I may have caused a few ills in my time, I’m no hand at healing them. They tell me, Brother Cadfael, you have had a wide-ranging career before you came into the cloister. Don’t you find it unbearably dull here, after such battles, with no enemy left to fight?”
“I am not finding it at all dull, these days,” said Cadfael, plucking out willowherb from among the thyme. “And as for enemies, the devil makes his way in everywhere, even into cloister, and church, and herbarium.”
Beringar threw his head back and laughed aloud, until the short black hair danced on his forehead. “Vainly, if he comes looking for mischief where you are! But he’d hardly expect to blunt his horns against an old crusader here! I take the hint!”
But all the time, though he scarcely seemed to turn his head or pay much attention to anything round him, his black eyes were missing nothing, and his ears were at stretch while he laughed and jested. By this time he knew that the well-spoken and well-favoured boy of whom Aline had innocently spoken was not going to make his appearance, and more, that Brother Cadfael did not care if he poked his nose into every corner of the garden, sniffed at every drying herb and peered at every potion in the hut, for they would tell him nothing. The benchbed was stripped of its blanket, and laden with a large mortar and a gently bubbling jar of wine. There was no trace of Godith anywhere to be found. The boy was simply a boy like the rest, and no doubt slept in the dortoir with the rest.
“Well, I’ll leave you to your cleansing labours,” said Beringar, “and stop hampering your meditations with my prattle. Or have you work for me to do?”
“The king has none?” said Cadfael solicitously.
Another ungrudging laugh acknowledged the thrust. “Not yet, not yet, but that will come. Such talent he cannot afford to hold off suspiciously for ever. Though to be sure, he did lay one testing task upon me, and I seem to be making very little progress in that.” He plucked another tip of mint, and bruised and bit it with pleasure. “Brother Cadfael, it seems to me that you are the most practical man of hand and brain here. Supposing I should have need of your help, you would not refuse it without due thought — would you?”
Brother Cadfael straightened up, with some creaking of back muscles, to give him a long, considering look. “I hope,” he said cautiously, “I never do anything without due thought — even if the thought sometimes has to shift its feet pretty briskly to keep up with the deed.”