Only then did he see the solid, silent line of armed men, drawn shoulder to shoulder between him and the gate, and balked like a headed deer. He looked round wildly, unable to believe the collapse of his fortunes.
The sheriff drew a measured pace nearer, and spoke.
“Take off your gloves!”
It was an unlovely thing to see a human creature break and try to run, see him fight like a wildcat when he was hemmed in, and snarl defiance when he was overcome and pinioned. In deference to the abbot they hauled him out through the gates into the Foregate with as little violence as possible, and dealt with him there. He knotted his hands together to balk the removal of his gloves, and when his hands were naked, the pale circle on the middle finger of his right hand glared like snow on new-ploughed russet soil, the large blot of the stone clear to be seen. He struggled and cursed when they felt about his body, sank his head grimly into his chest so that they had to force his head back to withdraw the cord from round his neck, beneath his shirt, and expose the ring to view.
When they had hustled him away, four of them holding him and hard-pressed at that, to a cell in the castle, there fell a dreadful, exhausted silence over the great court. Joscelin, great-eyed, shaken and bewildered, folded his arms about Iveta, and quivered in uncomprehending relief, too shocked to question as yet the devious use that had been made of him throughout. Agnes stood rigid, staring balefully as long as her enemy remained in view, and then, released, clutched her head between her hands and wept, but hardly, in solitary and forbidding grief. Who would have thought she could have loved her unendearing husband?
The virago was gone. She let fall her hands and paced slowly, like one walking in her sleep, through the agitated onlookers who moved aside to give her passage. She looked round once upon them all, from the steps of the guest-hall, having passed by Iveta’s extended hand as though the girl did not exist, and then she went in, and vanished.
“Later,” said Abbot Radulfus, heavily but calmly, “she will speak freely. Her testimony is essential. As for her lord—he is dead already. Need we question, since he cannot be questioned?”
“Not in any tribunal of mine, at any rate,” agreed Gilbert Prestcote drily, and turned to his remaining men. “You, sergeant, before we set off to bring this dead man home, how comes it that you set so apt a watch about the brook here, while we were beating the forest? We had no intimation that ever reached my ears, that a raid might be attempted on these premises.”
“It was after you were all gone forth, my lord,” said the sergeant, “that Jehan here came to me with the notion that since the squire was set on the lady, he might take the chance when there were but few of us left here, to try to win her away.” He haled forth the clever fellow who had won commendation for an earlier idea, equally justified in the event. The man was not quite so sure of himself, now that things were turned topsy-turvy, and his patron was become the villain in the web, but he stood his ground. “It was he who said that the fellow, if he had the wit, might hide in his lord’s own gardens, you’ll remember, and when we searched, we found he had indeed been there, though he was gone when we came to it. This time it seemed just as good sense, so we kept a vigil in secret.”
“Friend,” said Prestcote, eyeing the man-at-arms somewhat ominously, “your guesses seem to be blessed by heaven, but I fancy hell had more to do with them. When did Aguilon put it into your head to search the bishop’s outhouses for our wanted man? At what hour?”
Jehan had the sense to be open about it, though none too happily. “My lord, it was after my lord Domville’s body was brought back here. When he came back to the bishop’s house, then he suggested it. He said I was welcome to the credit if we found our man, and he would as lief keep out of it.”
Joscelin shook his head despairingly between his hands, slow still to understand the whole of it. “But it was he who helped me—he came to find me, he hid me there himself in goodwill…”
“In very evil will!” said Brother Cadfael. “Son, you had given him not only the opportunity of hastening his inheritance of a great estate, but also of adding to it this lady’s person and lands. For you had provided him a perfect scapegoat, one wronged and angry and bearing a grudge. Yours would be the first and only name that came to mind, when Huon de Domville was waylaid and murdered. But with that in view he had to have you still at liberty, hidden away somewhere safe, until well after the death, and where he could point the hunt to take you when that was done. It was your leaving your sanctuary that balked his plans and saved your neck.”
“Then tonight,” pursued Joscelin, frowning over this chill treachery as if his head ached, “you mean he set this trap for me, in cold blood? I thought him my one friend, I asked his help…”
“How?” asked Cadfael sharply. “How did you get word to him?”
Joscelin told them the whole of it, though not one word yet of Lazarus or Bran, or any of those who had truly helped him. That he might tell some day, surely to Iveta, perhaps even to Brother Cadfael, but not here, not now.
“So he knew only that you were somewhere close, but not where. He could not send his trusty foil here to lay hands on you, he could only wait for you to come to the law, and you had set the scene yourself. All he had to do was pass on your message to the lady, and see that your horse was waiting for you as you had asked—or you would not have crossed into the garden here to be seized, would you?—and then say the quiet word to Jehan here. He would not wish to appear in the matter himself, certainly,” said Cadfael wryly, “since his pose of loyalty to you was his best commendation with the lady. You once safely taken and hanged,” he said, making no bones about it, for the good-natured lad was wrenching hard at belief in such devious treason in one he had trusted, “I doubt if Godfrid Picard would have balked at matching his niece with a murderer—a successful murderer. It was the peril meantime he could not stomach, in case it reached as far as his own credit, if not his own neck.”
“Speak up, Jehan,” ordered the sheriff, grimly smiling. “Did Aguilon again point you the way to commendation and promotion?”
“This morning,” admitted Jehan unwarily, “he put the notion into my head …”
“This morning! Before ever we set forth! And you said no word to me or to your officer until we were out of the way of your intended feat of arms. Promotion is hardly likely to come your way, fellow, for a while. Think yourself lucky to escape a whipping!”
Jehan was indeed thinking himself well out of a perilous corner, to be dismissed so lightly, and made himself scarce without delay.
“We had best be bringing in this dead man,” said the sheriff, turning brusquely back to the task in hand. “Will you guide us, brother? We’ll go mounted, and with a spare horse for Picard’s last ride.”
They were away, half a dozen mounted men, Cadfael in no way displeased to be astride a fine, sturdy rouncey again instead of a modest little mule. The abbot watched them out of the gates, and then turned to dismiss, with even voice and calm face, the disturbed and wondering brotherhood.
“Go, compose your minds, wash your hands, and go in to supper. The rule still orders our day. Traffic with the world is laid upon us for chastening, and for the testing of our vocation. The grace of God is not endangered by the follies or the wickedness of men.”
They went obediently. At a glance from Radulfus, Prior Robert inclined his head and followed the flock. The abbot was left confronting, with a faint, contemplative smile, the two young creatures still clinging hand in hand, eyeing him steadfastly but doubtfully. Too much had happened to them too suddenly, they were like children half-awake, not yet clear what, of their recollections and experiences, was real, and what was dream. But surely the dreams had been terrifying, and the reality must needs be better.
“I think,” said the abbot gently, “you need not be in any anxiety, my son, about that other charge your lord made against you. In all the circumstances, no just man would consider it safe to believe in such a theft, and Gilbert Prestcote is a just man. I cannot choose but wonder,” he said thoughtfully, “whether it was Aguilon also who hid the necklace in your saddle-bag with the medal of Saint James.”