Only when she stirred slightly, and he moved his position to accommodate her more comfortably, did she realise that she was lying in his arms. Feeling and awareness came back gradually, even pain took its time. Her head was cradled in the hollow of his shoulder, her cheek rested against the breast of his cotte. A craftsman’s working clothes, homespun. Of course, he was a shoemaker. A shopkeeper’s boy, of no account! There was much to be said for it. The stink of smoke and burning still hung about them both, in spite of Cadfael’s attentions with a pannikin of water from the well. The shopkeeper’s boy of no account had come into the manor after her, and brought her out alive. She had mattered as much as that to him. A little shopkeeper’s girl . . .
“Her eyes are open,” said Philip in an eager whisper. “She’s smiling.”
Cadfael stooped to her. “How is it with you now, daughter?”
“I am alive,” she said, almost inaudibly, but with great joy.
“So you are, God be thanked, and Philip here next after God. But lie still, we’ll find you a cloak to wrap you in, for you’ll be feeling the cold that comes after danger. There’ll be pain, too, my poor child.” She already knew about the pain. “You’ve a badly burned hand, and I’ve no salves here, I can do no more than cover it from the air, until we get back to town. Leave your hand lie quiet, if you can, the stiller the better. How did it come that you escaped clean, but for the one hand so badly burned?”
“I put it into the brazier,” said Emma, remembering. She saw with what startled eyes Philip received this, and realised what she had said; and suddenly the most important thing of all seemed to her that Philip should not know everything, that his candid clarity should not be made to explore the use of lies, deceptions and subterfuges, no matter how right the cause they served. Some day she might tell someone, but it would not be Philip. “I was afraid of him,” she said, carefully amending, “and I tipped over the brazier. I never meant to start such a fire . . .”
Somewhere curiously distant from the corner of peace where she lay, Hugh Beringar and the sergeant and officers who had followed him from Shrewsbury were mustering the distracted servants in salvage, and damping down all the outhouses that were still in danger from flying sparks and debris, so that the beasts could be housed, and a roof, at least, provided for the men and maids. The fire had burned so fiercely that it was already dying down, but not for some days would the heat have subsided enough for them to sift through the embers for Ivo Corbière’s body.
“Lift me,” entreated Emma. “Let me see!”
Philip raised her to sit beside him in the clean, green grass. They were in a corner of the court, their backs against the stockade. Round the perimeter the barns and byres steamed in the early evening sun from the buckets of water which had been thrown over them. Close to the solar end, men were still at work carrying buckets in a chain from the well. There would be roofs enough left to shelter horses, cattle and people, until better could be done for them. They had the equipment of the kitchen, the stores in the undercroft might be damaged, but would not all be spoiled. In this summer weather they would do well enough, and someone must make shift to have the manor restored before the winter. All that terror, in the end, had taken but one life.
“He is dead,” she said, staring at the ruin from which she, though not he, had emerged alive.
“No other possibility,” said Cadfael simply.
He surmised, but she knew. “And the other one?”
“Turstan Fowler? He’s prisoner. The sergeant has him in charge. It was he, I believe,” said Cadfael gently, “who killed your uncle.”
She had expected that at the approach of Beringar and the law he would have helped himself to a horse and taken to his heels, but after all, he had known of no reason why he should. No one had been accusing him when he left Shrewsbury. Everyone at the abbey ought to have taken it for granted that Emma had been duly conducted home to Bristol. Why should they question it? Why had they questioned it? She had much to learn, as well as much to tell. There would be time, later. Now there was no time for anything but living, and exulting in living, and being glad and grateful, and perhaps, gradually and with unpractised pleasure, loving.
“What will become of him?” she asked.
“He’ll surely tell all he knows, and lay the worst blame where it belongs, on his lord.” Cadfael doubted, all the same, whether Turstan could hope to evade the gallows, and doubted whether he should, but he did not say so to her. She was deeply preoccupied at this moment with life and death, and willed mercy even to the lowest and worst in the largeness of the mercy shown to her. And that was good, God forbid he should say any word to deface it.
“Are you cold?” asked Philip tenderly, feeling her shiver in his arm.
“No,” she said at once, and turned her head a little in the hollow of his shoulder, resting her forehead against his grimy cheek. He felt the soft curving of her lips in the hollow of his throat as she smiled, and was filled with so secure a sense of possession that no one would ever be able to take her away from him.
Hugh Beringar came to them across the trampled grass of the court, even his neatness smoked and odorous.
“What can be done’s done,” he said, wiping his face. “We had better get her back to Shrewsbury, there’s no provision here. I’m leaving my sergeant and most of the men here for the time being, but the place for you,” he said, smiling somewhat wearily at Emma, “is in a comfortable bed, with your hurt properly dressed, and no need for you to think or stir until you’re restored. Bristol will have to wait for you. We’ll take you to Aline at the abbey, you’ll be easy there.”
“No,” said Philip, with large assurance. “I am taking Emma to my mother in Shrewsbury.”
“Very well, so you shall,” agreed Hugh, “it’s hardly a step further. But give Cadfael time at the abbey to hunt out the salves and potions he wants from his workshop, and let Aline see for herself that we’ve not let Emma come to any great harm. And don’t forget, friend, you owe Aline something for entertaining the fellow you robbed of his horse, and guarding your back for you until you can restore him.”
Beneath his coating of soot Philip could still blush. “True enough, I’m likely to end in gaol again for theft, but not until I’ve seen Emma safe lodged in my mother’s care.”
Hugh laughed, and clapped him amiably on the shoulder. “Nor then nor ever, while I’m in office—not unless you choose to kick the law in the teeth on some other occasion. We’ll satisfy the merchant, Aline will have sweetened him into complacency, you’ll find. And his horse has been rubbed down and watered and rested, while you’ve been otherwise occupied, and we’ll take him back with us unloaded, none the worse for his adventures. There are horses enough here, I’ll find you the pick of them, a steady ride fit to bear two.” He had had one eye on Emma while he had been mustering water-carriers and husbanding household effects, he knew better than to try to wrest her out of Philip’s arms, or send for a horse-litter to carry her back. There were two here so joined together that only a fool would attempt to part them even for a few hours; and Hugh was no fool.
They wrapped her gently in a brychan borrowed from the salvaged bedding, rather for comfortable padding than for warmth, for the evening was still serene and mild, though she might yet suffer the cold that comes after effort is all over. She accepted everything with serenity, like one in a dream, though the pain of her hand must, they reasoned, be acute. She seemed to feel nothing but a supreme inner peace that made everything else of no account. They mounted Philip on a great, broad-backed, steady-paced gelding, and then lifted Emma up to him in her swathing blanket, and she settled into the cradle of his lap and arms and braced shoulder as though God had made her to fit there.
“And perhaps so he did,” said Brother Cadfael, riding behind with Hugh Beringar close beside him.
“So he did what?” wondered Hugh, starting out of very different considerations, for two officers brought a bound Turstan Fowler behind them.