‘Give me, if you can, the lad’s answers in his very words,’ requested Cadfael. ‘Where there’s nothing of interest to be found in the content, it’s worth taking a close look at the manner.’
Hugh had an excellent memory, and reproduced Meriet’s replies even to the intonation. ‘But there’s nothing there, barring a very good description of the horse. Every question he answered and still told us nothing, since he knows nothing.’
‘Ah, but he did not answer every question,’ said Cadfael. ‘And I think he may have told us a few notable things, though whether they have any bearing on Master Clemence’s vanishing seems dubious. Canon Eluard asked him: “And you saw no more of him?” And the lad said: “I did not go with them.” But he did not say he had seen no more of the departed guest. And again, when he spoke of the servants and this Foriet girl, all gathered to speed the departure with him, he did not say “and my brother.” Nor did he say that his brother had ridden with the escort.’
‘All true,’ agreed Hugh, not greatly impressed. ‘But none of these need mean anything at all. Very few of us watch every word, to leave no possible detail in doubt.’
‘That I grant. Yet it does no harm to note such small things, and wonder. A man not accustomed to lying, but brought up against the need, will evade if he can. Well, if you find your horse in some stable thirty miles or more from here, there’ll be no need for you or me to probe behind every word young Meriet speaks, for the hunt will have outrun him and all his family. And they can forget Peter Clemence—barring the occasional Mass, perhaps, for a kinsman’s soul.’
Canon Eluard departed for London, secretary, groom, baggage and all, bent on urging King Stephen to pay a diplomatic visit to the north before Christmas, and secure his interest with the two powerful brothers who ruled there almost from coast to coast. Ranulf of Chester and William of Roumare had elected to spend the feast at Lincoln with their ladies, and a little judicious flattery and the dispensing of a modest gift or two might bring in a handsome harvest. The canon had paved the way already, and meant to make the return journey in the king’s party.
‘And on the way back,’ he said, taking leave of Hugh in the great court of the abbey, ‘I shall turn aside from his Grace’s company and return here, in the hope that by then you will have some news for me. The bishop will be in great anxiety.’
He departed, and Hugh was left to pursue the search for Peter Clemence, which had now become, for all practical purposes, the search for his bay horse. And pursue it he did, with vigour, deploying as many men as he could muster along the most frequented ways north, visiting lords of manors, invading stables, questioning travellers. When the more obvious halting places yielded nothing, they spread out into wilder country. In the north of the shire the land was flatter, with less forest but wide expanses of heath, moorland and scrub, and several large tracts of peat-moss, desolate and impossible to cultivate, though the locals who knew the safe dykes cut and stacked fuel there for their winter use.
The manor of Alkington lay on the edge of this wilderness of dark-brown pools and quaking mosses and tangled bush, under a pale, featureless sky. It was sadly run down from its former value, its ploughlands shrunken, no place to expect to find, grazing in the tenant’s paddock, a tall bay thoroughbred fit for a prince to ride. But it was there that Hugh found him, white-blazed face, white forefeet and all, grown somewhat shaggy and ill-groomed, but otherwise in very good condition.
There was as little concealment about the tenant’s behaviour as about his open display of his prize. He was a free man, and held as subtenant under the lord of Wem, and he was willing and ready to account for the unexpected guest in his stable.
‘And you see him, my lord, in better fettle than he was when he came here, for he’d run wild some time, by all accounts, and devil a man of us knew whose he was or where he came from. There’s a man of mine has an assart west of here, an island on the moss, and cuts turf there for himself and others. That’s what he was about when he caught sight of yon creature wandering loose, saddle and bridle and all, and never a rider to be seen, and he tried to catch him, but the beast would have none of it. Time after time he tried, and began to put out feed for him, and the creature was wise enough to come for his dinner, but too clever to be caught. He’d mired himself to the shoulder, and somewhere he tore loose the most of his bridle, and had the saddle ripped round half under his belly before ever we got near him. In the end I had my mare fit, and we staked her out there and she fetched him. Quiet enough, once we had him, and glad to shed what was left of his harness, and feel a currier on his sides again. But we’d no notion whose he was. I sent word to my lord at Wem, and here we keep him till we know what’s right.’
There was no need to doubt a word, it was all above board here. And this was but a mile or two out of the way to Whitchurch, and the same distance from the town.
‘You’ve kept the harness? Such as he still had?’
‘In the stable, to hand when you will.’
‘But no man. Did you look for a man afterwards?’ The mosses were no place for a stranger to go by night, and none too safe for a rash traveller even by day. The peat-pools, far down, held bones enough.
‘We did, my lord. There are fellows hereabouts who know every dyke and every path and every island that can be trodden. We reckoned he’d been thrown, or foundered with his beast, and only the beast won free. It has been known. But never a trace. And that creature there, though soiled as he was, I doubt if he’d been in above the hocks, and if he’d gone that deep, with a man in the saddle, it would have been the man who had the better chance.’
‘You think,’ said Hugh, eyeing him shrewdly, ‘he came into the mosses riderless?’
‘I do think so. A few miles south there’s woodland. If there were footpads there, and got hold of the man, they’d have trouble keeping their hold of this one. I reckon he made his own way here.’
‘You’ll show my sergeant the way to your man on the mosses? He’ll be able to tell us more, and show the places where the horse was straying. There’s a clerk of the bishop of Winchester’s household lost,’ said Hugh, electing to trust a plainly honest man, ‘and maybe dead. This was his mount. If you learn of anything more send to me, Hugh Beringar, at Shrewsbury castle, and you shan’t be the loser.’
‘Then you’ll be taking him away. God knows what his name was, I called him Russet.’ The free lord of this poor manor leaned over his wattle fence and snapped his fingers, and the bay came to him confidently and sank his muzzle into the extended palm. ‘I’ll miss him. His coat has not its proper gloss yet, but it will come. At least we got the burrs and the rubble of heather out of it.’
‘We’ll pay you his price,’ said Hugh warmly. ‘It’s well earned. And now I’d best look at what’s left of his accoutrements, but I doubt they’ll tell us anything more.’
It was pure chance that the novices were passing across the great court to the cloister for the afternoon’s instruction when Hugh Beringar rode in at the gatehouse of the abbey, leading the horse, called for convenience Russet, to the stable-yard for safe-keeping. Better here than at the castle, since the horse was the property of the bishop of Winchester, and at some future time had better be delivered to him.
Cadfael was just emerging from the cloister on his way to the herb garden, and was thus brought face to face with the novices entering. Late in the line came Brother Meriet, in good time to see the lofty young bay that trotted into the courtyard on a leading-rein, and arched his copper neck and brandished his long, narrow white blaze at strange surroundings, shifting white-sandalled forefeet delicately on the cobbles.
Cadfael saw the encounter clearly. The horse tossed its farrow, beautiful head, stretched neck and nostril, and whinnied softly. The.young man blanched white as the blazoned forehead, and jerked strongly back in his careful stride, and brief sunlight found the green in his eyes. Then he remembered himself and passed hurriedly on, following his fellows into the cloister.