“I can carry one pair,” said Godith, eager at his elbow.
“So you can, for a short spell, perhaps,” he said indulgently. He was busy disentangling the two pairs of linked bags from the sacks that had swathed them. They had straps comfortably broad for the shoulder, and the weights in them had been balanced in the first place for the horses. “I had thought we might save ourselves half a mile or so by making use of the river for the first part of the way,” he said, “but with three of us and only this hazel-shell we should founder. And it’s not so far we have to go, loaded — something over three miles, perhaps.”
He shook one pair of bags into the most comfortable position over his shoulder, and Torold took the other pair on his sound side. “I never carried goods to this value before in my life,” said Cadfael as he set off, “and now I’m not even to see what’s within.”
“Bitter stuff to me,” said Torold at his back, “it cost Nick his life, and I’m to have no chance to avenge him.”
“You give thought to your own life and bear your own burdens,” said Cadfael. “He will be avenged. Better you should look to the future, and leave Nick to me.”
The ways by which he led his little convoy differed from those he had used in Beringar’s company. Instead of crossing the brook and making directly for the grange beyond Pulley, he bore more strongly to the west, so that by the time they were as far south as the grange they were also a good mile west of it, nearer to Wales, and in somewhat thicker forest.
“How if we should be followed?” wondered Godith.
“We shall not be followed.” He was so positive about it that she accepted the reassurance gladly, and asked nothing more. If Brother Cadfael said it, it was so. She had insisted on carrying Torold’s load for half a mile or so, but he had taken it back from her at the first sign of quickening breath or faltering step.
A lace-work of sky showed paler between the branches ahead. They emerged cautiously into the edge of a broad forest ride that crossed their path on good turf at an oblique angle. Beyond it, their own track continued, a little more open to the night than up to this point.
“Now pay good heed,” said Cadfael, halting them within cover, “for you have to find your way back without me to this spot. This ride that crosses us here is a fine, straight road the old Romans made. Eastward, here to our left, it would bring us to the Severn bridge at Atcham. Westward, to our right, it will take you two straight as an arrow for Pool and Wales, or if you find any obstacle on the way, you may bear further south at the end for the ford at Montgomery. Once you’re on this, you can ride fast enough, though in parts it may be steep. Now we cross it here, and have another half-mile to go to the ford of the brook. So pay attention to the way.”
Here the path was clearly better used, horses could travel it without great difficulty. The ford, when they reached it, was wide and smooth. “And here,” said Cadfael, “we leave our loads. One tree among so many trees you might well lose, but one tree beside the only ford along the path, and you can’t lose it.”
“Leave them?” wondered Torold. “Why, are we not going straight to where the horses are? You said yourself we should not be followed tonight.”
“Not followed, no.” When you know where your quarry must come, and are sure of the night, you can be there waiting. “No, waste no more time, trust me and do as I say.” And he let down his own half of the burden, and looked about him, in the dimness to which by now their eyes were accustomed, for the best and safest concealment. In the thicket of bushes close to the ford, on their right, there was a gnarled old tree, one side of it dead, and its lowest branch deep in the cover of the bushes. Cadfael slung his saddle-bags over it, and without another word Torold hoisted his own beside them, and drew back to assure himself that only those who had hidden here were likely ever to find. The full leafage covered all.
“Good lad!” said Cadfael contentedly. “Now, from here we bear round to the east somewhat, and this path we’re on will join the more direct one I used before. For we must approach the grange from the right direction. It would never do for any curious person to suppose we’d been a mile nearer Wales.”
Unburdened now, they drew together and went after him hand in hand, trusting as children. And now that they were drawing nearer to the actual possibility of flight, they had nothing at all to say, but clung to each other and believed that things would go right.
Their path joined the direct one only some minutes’ walk from the small clearing where the stockade of the grange rose. The sky paled as the trees fell back. There was a small rush-light burning somewhere within the house, a tiny, broken gleam showed through the pales. All round them the night hung silent and placid.
Brother Anselm opened to them, so readily that surely some aggrieved traveller from Shrewsbury must have brought word even here of the day’s upheaval, and alerted him to the possibility that anyone running from worse penalties might well take warning, and get out at once. He drew them within thankfully and in haste, and peered curiously at the two young fellows at Cadfael’s back, as he closed the gate.
“I thought it! My thumbs pricked. I felt it must be tonight. Things grow very rough your way, so we’ve heard.”
“Rough enough,” admitted Cadfael, sighing. “I’d wish any friend well out of it. And most of all these two. Children, these good brothers have cared for your trust, and have it here safe for you. Anselm, this is Adeney’s daughter, and this FitzAlan’s squire. Where is Louis?”
“Saddling up,” said Brother Anselm, “the moment he saw who came. We had it in mind the whole day that you’d have to hurry things. I’ve put food together, in case you came. Here’s the scrip. It’s ill to ride too far empty. And a flask of wine here within.”
“Good! And these few things I brought,” said Cadfael, emptying his own pouch. “They’re medicines. Godith knows how to use them.”
Godith and Torold listened and marvelled. The boy said, almost tongue-tied with wondering gratitude: “I’ll go and help with the saddling.” He drew his hand from Godith’s and made for the stables, across the small untended court. This forest assart, unmanageable in such troubled times, would soon be forest again, these timber buildings, always modest enough, would moulder into the lush growth of successive summers. The Long Forest would swallow it without trace in three years, or four.
“Brother Anselm,” said Godith, running an awed glance from head to foot of the giant, “I do thank you with all my heart, for both of us, for what you have done for us two — though I think it was really for Brother Cadfael here. He has been my master eight days now, and I understand. This and more I would do for him, if ever I might. I promise you Torold and I will never forget, and never debase what you’ve done for us.”
“God love you, child,” said Brother Anselm, charmed and amused, “you talk like a holy book. What should a decent man do, when a young woman’s threatened, but see her safe out of her trouble? And her young man with her!”
Brother Louis came from the stables leading the roan Beringar had ridden when first these two horses of his were brought here by night. Torold followed with the black. They shone active and ready in the faint light, excellently groomed and fed, and well rested.
“And the baggage,” said Brother Anselm significantly. “That we have safe. For my own part I would have parted it into two, to balance it better on a beast, but I thought I had no right to open it, so it stays as you left it, in one. I should hoist it to the crupper with the lighter weight as rider, but as you think fit.”
They were away, the pair of them, to haul out the sackbound bundle Cadfael had carried here some nights ago. It seemed there were some things they had not been told, just as there were things Torold and Godith had accepted without understanding. Anselm brought the burden from the house on his huge shoulders, and dumped it beside the saddled horses. “I brought thongs to buckle it to the saddle.” They had indeed given some thought to this, they had fitted loops of cord to the rope bindings, and were threading their thongs into these when a blade sliced down through the plaited cords that held the latch of the gate behind them, and a clear, assured voice ordered sharply: