“Again, true,” said the abbot. “Is there more?”
“There is. There is the matter of the girl, niece and heiress to the dead man. She is of great beauty,” said Cadfael plainly, asserting his right to recognise and celebrate even the beauty of women, though their enjoyment he had now voluntarily forsworn, “and there are three men in her uncle’s service, shut on board a river barge with her. Only one of them old enough, it may be, to value his peace more. One, I think, God’s simpleton, but not therefore blind, or delivered from the flesh. And one whole, able, every way a man, and enslaved to her. And this one it was who followed his master from the booth on the fairground, some say a quarter of an hour after him, some say a little more. God forbid I should therefore point a finger at an honest man. But we speak of possibilities. And will speak of them no more until, or unless, they become more than possibilities.”
“That is my mind, also,” said Abbot Radulfus, stirring and almost smiling. He looked at Cadfael steadily and long. “Go and bear witness, brother, as you are charged, and bring me word again. In your report I shall set my trust.”
Emma had on, perforce, the same gown and bliaut she had worn the evening before, the gown dark blue like her eyes, but the tunic embroidered in many colours upon bleached linen. The only concession she could make to mourning was to bind up her great wealth of hair, and cover it from sight within a borrowed wimple. Nevertheless, she made a noble mourning figure. In the severe white frame her rounded, youthful face gained in concentrated force and meaning what it lost in pure grace. She had a look of single-minded gravity, like a lance in rest. Brother Cadfael could not yet see clearly where the lance was aimed.
When she caught sight of him approaching, she looked at him with pleased recognition, as the man behind the lance might have looked round at the fixed, partisan faces of his friends before the bout, but never shifted the focus of her soul’s intent, which reached out where he could not follow.
“Brother Cadfael—have I your name right? It’s Welsh, is it not? You were kind, yesterday. Lady Beringar says you will show me where to find the master-carpenter. I have to order my uncle’s coffin, to take him back to Bristol.” She was quite composed, yet still as simple and direct as a child. “Have we time, before we must go to the castle?”
“It’s on the way,” said Cadfael comfortably. “You need only tell Martin Bellecote, whatever you ask of him he’ll see done properly.”
“Everyone is being very kind,” she said punctiliously, like a well brought-up little girl giving due thanks. “Where is my uncle’s body now? I should care for it myself, it is my duty.”
“That you cannot yet,” said Cadfael. “The sheriff has him at the castle, he must needs see the body for himself, and have the physician also view it. You need be put to no distress on that account, the abbot has given orders. Your uncle will be brought with all reverence to lie in the church here, and the brothers will make him decent for burial. I think he might well wish, could he tell you so now, that you should leave all to us. His care for you would reach so far, and your obedience could not well deny him.”
Cadfael had seen the dead man, and felt strongly that she should not have the same experience. Nor was it for her sake entirely that he willed so. The man she had respected and admired in his monumental dignity, living, had the right to be preserved for her no less decorously in death.
He had found the one argument that could deflect her absolute determination to take charge of all, and escape nothing. She thought about it seriously as they passed out at the gatehouse side by side, and he knew by her face the moment when she accepted it.
“But he did believe that I ought to take my full part, even in his business. He wished me to travel with him, and learn the trade as he knew it. This is the third such journey I have made with him.” That reminded her that it must also be the last. “At least,” she said hesitantly, “I may give money to have Masses said for him, here where he died? He was a very devout man, I think he would like that.”
Well, her reserves of money might now be far longer than her reserves of peace of mind were likely to be; she could afford to buy herself a little consolation, and prayers are never wasted.
“That you may surely do.”
“He died unshriven,” she said, with sudden angry grief against the murderer who had deprived him of confession and absolution.
“Through no fault of his own. So do many. So have saints, martyred without warning. God knows the record without needing word or gesture. It’s for the soul facing death that the want of shriving is pain. The soul gone beyond knows that pain for needless vanity. Penitence is in the heart, not in the words spoken.”
They were out on the highroad then, turning left towards the reflected sparkle that was the river between its green, lush banks, and the stone bridge over it, that led through the drawbridge turret to the town gate. Emma had raised her head, and was looking at Brother Cadfael along her shoulder, with faint colour tinting her creamy cheeks, and a sparkle like a shimmer of light from the river in her eyes. He had not seen her smile until this moment, and even now it was a very wan smile, but none the less beautiful.
“He was a good man, you know, Brother Cadfael,” she said earnestly. “He was not easy upon fools, or bad workmen, or people who cheated, but he was a good man, good to me! And he kept his bargains, and he was loyal to his lord . . .” She had taken fire, for all the softness of her voice and the simplicity of her plea for him; it was almost as though she had been about to say “loyal to his lord to the death!” She had that high, heroic look about her, to be taken very seriously, even on that child’s face.
“All which,” said Cadfael cheerfully, “God knows, and needs not to be told. And never forget you’ve a life to live, and he’d want you to do him justice by doing yourself justice.”
“Oh, yes!” said Emma, glowing, and for the first time laid her hand confidingly on his sleeve. “That’s what I want! That’s what I have most in mind!”
CHAPTER 2
At Martin Bellecote’s shop, off the curve of the rising street called the Wyle, which led to the centre of the town, she knew exactly what she wanted for her dead, and ordered it clearly; more, she knew how to value a matching clarity and forthrightness in the master-carpenter, and yet had time to be pleasantly distracted by the invasion of his younger children, who liked the look of her and came boldly to chatter and stare. As for the delinquent Edwy, sent home overnight after his tongue-lashing from Hugh Beringar, the youngster worked demurely with a plane in a corner of the shop, and was not too subdued to cast inquisitive glances of bright hazel eyes at the lady, and one impudent wink at Brother Cadfael when Emma was not noticing.
On the way through the town, up the steep street to the High Cross, and down the gentler slope beyond to the ramp which led up to the castle gateway, she fell into a thoughtful silence, putting in order her recollections. The shadow of the gate falling upon her serious face and cutting off the sunlight caused her eyes to dilate in awe; but the casual traffic of the watch here was no longer reminiscent of siege and battle, but easy and brisk, and the townspeople went in and out freely with their requests and complaints. The sheriff was a strong-minded, taciturn, able knight past fifty, and old in experience of both war and office, and while he could be heavy-handed in crushing disorder, he was trusted to be fair in day to day matters. If he had not given the goodmen of the town much help in making good the dilapidations due to the siege, neither had he permitted them to be misused or heavily taxed to restore the damage to the castle. In the great court one tower was still caged in timber scaffolding, one wall shored up with wooden buttresses. Emma gazed, great-eyed.
There were others going the same way with them, anxious fathers here to bail their sons, two of the abbey stewards who had been assaulted in the affray, witnesses from the bridge and the jetty, all being ushered through to the inner ward, and a chill, stony hall hung with smoky tapestries. Cadfael found Emma a seat on a bench against the wall, where she sat looking about her with anxious eyes but lively interest.