She went first to Brother Cadfael, and asked his kiss also, with a frantic quiver in her voice and her face that no one else saw or heard, and that might have been of threatened tears, or of almost uncontrollable laughter, or of both together. The thanks she said to him and to the lay brothers were necessarily brief, being hampered by the same wild mixture of emotions. She had to escape quickly, before she betrayed herself. Torold went to hold her stirrup, but Brother Anselm hoisted her between his hands and set her lightly in the saddle. The stirrups were a little long for her, he bent to shorten them to her comfort, and then she saw him look up furtively and flash her a grin, and she knew that he, too, had fathomed what was going on, and shared her secret laughter. If he and his comrade had been let into the whole plot from the beginning, they might not have played their parts so convincingly; but they were very quick to pick up all the undercurrents.
Torold mounted Beringar’s roan, and looked down from the saddle at the whole group within the stockade. The archers had unstrung their bows, and stood by looking on with idle interest and some amusement, while the third man opened the gate wide to let the travellers pass.
“Brother Cadfael, everything I owe to you. I shall not forget.”
“If there’s anything owing,” said Cadfael comfortably, “you can repay it to Godith. And see you mind your ways with her until you bring her safe to her father,” he added sternly. “She’s in your care as a sacred charge, beware of taking any advantage.”
Torold’s smile flashed out brilliantly for an instant, and was gone; and the next moment so was Torold himself, and Godith after him, trotting out briskly through the open gate into the luminosity of the clearing, and thence into the shadowy spaces between the trees. They had but a little way to go to the wider path, and the ford of the brook, where the saddle-bags waited. Cadfael stood listening to the soft thudding of hooves in the turf, and the occasional rustling of leafy branches, until all sounds melted into the night’s silence. When he stirred out of his attentive stillness, it was to find that every other soul there had been listening just as intently. They looked at one another, and for a moment had nothing to say.
“If she comes to her father a virgin,” said Beringar then, “I’ll never stake on man or woman again.”
“It’s my belief,” said Cadfael, drily, “she’ll come to her father a wife, and very proper, too. There are plenty of priests between here and Normandy. She’ll have more trouble persuading Torold he has the right to take her, unapproved, but she’ll have her own ways of convincing him.”
“You know her better than I,” said Beringar. “I hardly knew the girl at all! A pity!” he added thoughtfully.
“Yet I think you recognised her the first time you ever saw her with me in the great court.”
“Oh, by sight, yes — I was not sure then, but within a couple of days I was. She’s not so changed in looks, only fined into such a springy young fellow.” He caught Cadfael’s eye, and smiled. “Yes, I did come looking for her, but not to hand her over to any man’s use. Nor that I wanted her for myself, but she was, as you said, a sacred charge upon me. I owed it to the alliance others made for us to see her into safety.”
“I trust,” said Cadfael, “that you have done so.”
“I, too. And no hard feelings upon either side?”
“None. And no revenges. The game is over.” He sounded, he realised suddenly, appropriately subdued and resigned, but it was only the pleasant weariness of relief.
“Then you’ll ride back with me to the abbey, and keep me company on the way? I have two horses here. And these lads of mine have earned their sleep, and if your good brothers will give them house-room overnight, and feed them, they may make their way back at leisure tomorrow. To sweeten their welcome, there’s two flasks of wine in my saddle-bags, and a pasty. I feared we might have a longer wait, though I was sure you’d come.”
“I had a feeling,” said Brother Louis, rubbing his hands with satisfaction, “for all the sudden alarm, that there was no real mischief in the wind tonight. And for two flasks of wine and a pasty we’ll offer you beds with pleasure, and a game of tables if you’ve a mind for it. We get very little company here.”
One of the archers led in from the night Beringar’s two remaining horses, the tail, rangy dapple-grey and the sturdy brown cob, and placidly lay brothers and men-at-arms together unloaded the food and drink, and at Beringar’s orders made the unwieldy, sacking-wrapped bundle secure on the dapple’s croup, well balanced and fastened with Brother Anselm’s leather straps, provided with quite another end in view. “Not that I wouldn’t trust it with you on the cob,” Beringar assured Cadfael, “but this great brute will never even notice the weight. And his rider needs a hard hand, for he has a hard mouth and a contrary will, and I’m used to him. To tell truth, I love him. I parted with two better worth keeping, but this hellion is my match, and I wouldn’t change him.”
He could not better have expressed what Cadfael was thinking about him. This hellion is my match, and I wouldn’t change him! He did his own spying, he gave away generously two valuable horses to discharge his debt to a bride he never really wanted, and he went to all manner of patient, devious shifts to get the girl safe and well out of his path, and lay hand upon the treasury, which was fair game, as she was not. Well, well, we live and learn in the book of our fellowmen!
They rode together, they two alone, by the same road as once before, and even more companionably than then. They went without haste, unwinding the longer way back, the way fitter for horses, the way they had first approached the grange. The night was warm, still and gentle, defying the stormy and ungentle times with its calm assertion of permanent stability.
“I am afraid,” said Hugh Beringar with compunction, “you have missed Matins and Lauds, and the fault is mine. IfI had not delayed everything, you might have been back for midnight. You and I should share whatever penance is due.”
“You and I,” said Cadfael cryptically, “share a penance already. Well, I could not wish for more stimulating company. We many compound my offence by riding at ease. It is not often a man gets such a night ride, and safely, and at peace.”
Then they were silent for some way, and thought their own thoughts, but somewhere the threads tangled, for after a while Beringar said with assurance: “You will miss her.” It was said with brisk but genuine sympathy. He had, after all, been observing and learning for some days.
“Like a fibre gone from my heart,” owned Brother Cadfael without dismay, “but there’ll be others will fill the place. She was a good girl, and a good lad, too, if you’ll grant me the fancy. Quick to study, and a hard worker. I hope she’ll make as good a wife. The young man’s a fair match for her. You saw he favoured one shoulder? One of the king’s archers did his best to slice the round of it off him, but with Godith’s care now he’ll do well enough. They’ll reach France.” And after a moment’s thought he asked, with candid curiosity: “What would you have done if any one of us had challenged your orders and made a fight of it?”
Hugh Beringar laughed aloud. “I fancy I should have looked the world’s fool, for of course my men knew better than to shoot. But the bow is a mighty powerful persuader, and after all, an unchancy fellow like me mightbe in earnest. Why, you never thought I’d harm the girl?”
Cadfael debated the wisdom of answering that truthfully as yet, and temporised: “if I ever thought of it, I soon realised I was wrong. They could have killed before ever Torold stepped between. No, I soon gave up that error.”
“And it does not surprise you that I knew what you had brought to the grange, and what you came to fetch tonight?”
“No revelation of your cunning can surprise me any longer,” said Cadfael. “I conclude that you followed me from the river the night I brought it. Also that you had procured me to help you place the horses there for a dual purpose, to encourage me to transfer the treasure from wherever it was hidden, and to make it possible for those youngsters to escape, while the gold stayed here. The right hand duelling against the left, that fits you well. Why were you so sure it would be tonight?”