“And these three you granted her?” said Cadfael, marveling.
“I did. She put off her finery here in the undercroft, and put on an old gown of my wife’s. Also she stripped off the rings from her hands and a gold chain from her neck, and gave them to my wife, for she said she had no more need of them, and they might pay a part of her debt here. And she mounted my nag, and the boy there went with her on foot, and before night he rode the horse back to us here. And that is all I know of her, for I asked nothing.”
“Not even where she was bound?”
“Not even that. But my son told me, when he returned.”
“And where is she gone?”
“To a place they call Godric’s Ford, west from here and a short way into the forest.”
“I know it,” said Cadfael, enlightened. For at Godric’s Ford there was a small grange of Benedictine nuns, a cell of the abbey of Polesworth. So Avice had made for the nearest female sanctuary in her need, for safe hiding under the protection of a powerful and respected abbey until Huon de Domville’s murderer was known and taken, his death avenged, his mistress forgotten. From that secure haven she might be quite willing to speak out anything she did know to the purpose, provided she herself remained inviolable in her retreat.
So he was thinking, as he thanked Ulger for his help, and mounted to ride on to Godric’s Ford. A very natural course for a discreet woman to take, if she feared she might be drawn into a great scandal and the complex web of a crime.
And yet… ! And yet she had left her jennet behind and gone afoot. And yet she had put off her finery for a homespun gown, and stripped the rings from her fingers, to pay a part of her life’s debt to the kin she had deserted long ago….
The grange at Godric’s Ford was a decent long, low house in a broad clearing, with a small wooden chapel beside it, and a high stone wall enclosing its well-kept kitchen garden and orchard of fruit trees, now graced with only half their yellowing leaves. In a butt of newly dug ground within the wall a middle-aged novice, comfortably rounded in form and face, was planting out cabbage seedlings for the next spring. Cadfael observed her as he turned in at the gate and dismounted, and with his eye for competence and industry approved the confidence of her manner and the economy of her movements. Benedictine nuns, like Benedictine monks, think well of manual labor, and are expected to expend their energies as generously in cultivation as in prayer. This woman, rosily healthy, went about her work like a good, contented housewife, pressing the soil firm round her transplants with a broad foot, and brushing the loam from her hands with placid satisfaction. She was agreeably plump, and not very tall, and her face, however rounded and well-fleshed, yet had solid, determined bones and a notable firmness of lip and chin.
When she became aware of Cadfael and his mule, she straightened her back with the right cautious gradualness and a true gardener’s grunt, and turned upon him shrewd brown eyes under brows quizzically oblique, very knowing eyes that took him in from cowl to sandals in one sweeping glance.
She left her plot, and came unhurriedly towards him.
“God greet you, brother!” she said cheerfully. “Can any here be of service to you?”
“God bless your house!” said Cadfael ceremoniously. “I am seeking speech with a lady who has recently sought sanctuary here within. Or so I reason from such knowledge as I have. She is called Avice of Thornbury. Can you bring me to her?”
“Very readily,” said the novice. In her russet apple cheek a sudden, startling dimple dipped and rose like a curtsey. Beauty, in its most mature and tranquil manifestation, flashed and faded with the change, leaving her demure and plain as before. “If you’re seeking Avice of Thornbury, you have found her. That name belongs to me.”
In the dark little parlor of the grange they sat facing each other across the small table, Benedictine monk and Benedictine nun-in-the-making, eyeing each other with mutual close interest. The superior had given them leave, and closed the door upon them, though the postulant’s manner was of such assured authority that it seemed surprising she should ask anyone’s permission to speak with her visitor, and even more surprising that she did so with such becoming humility. But Cadfael had already come to the conclusion that in dealing with this woman there would be no end to the surprises.
Where now was the expected image of the Norman baron’s whore, spoiled, indulged, kept in state for her beauty? Such a creature should have labored to keep her charms, with paints and creams and secret spells, starved to avoid growing fat, studied the arts of movement and grace. This woman had subsided placidly into middle age, had let the wrinkles form in her face and neck without disguise, and the gray invade her brown hair. Brisk and lively she still was, and would always be, sure of herself, feeling no need to be or seem other than she was. And just as she was she had held Huon de Domville for more than twenty years.
“Yes,” she said immediately, in answer to Cadfael’s question. “I was at Huon’s hunting-lodge. He would always have me close, wherever he went. I have travelled the length and breadth of his honor many times over.” Her voice was low and pleasant, as serene as her person, and she spoke of her past as the most respectable of housewives might, after her man was dead, recalling quiet, domestic affection, customary and unexciting.
“And when you heard of his death,” said Cadfael, “you thought best to withdraw from the scene? Did they tell you it was murder?”
“By the afternoon of that day it was common knowledge,” she said. “I had no part in it, I had no means of guessing who had done such a thing. I was not afraid, if that’s what you may be thinking, Brother Cadfael. I never yet did anything out of fear.”
She said it quite simply and practically, and he believed her. He would have gone further, and sworn that in her whole life she had never experienced fear. She spoke the very word with a kind of mild curiosity, as if she put her hand into a fleece to judge its weight and fineness.
“No, not fear—reluctance, rather, to play a part in any notorious or public thing. I have been discreet more than twenty years, to become a byword now is something I could not stomach. And when a thing is ended, why delay? I could not bring him back. That was ended. And I am forty-four years old, with some experience of the world. As I think,” she said, eyeing him steadily, and the dimple coming and vanishing in her cheek, “you also can claim, brother. For I think I do not surprise you as much as I had expected.”
“As at this time,” said Cadfael, “I cannot conceive of any man whom you would not surprise. But yes, I have been abroad in the world before I took this cowl of mine. Would it be foolish in me to suppose that it was your gift of astonishment that took Huon de Domville’s fancy in the first place?”
“If you’ll believe me,” said Avice, sitting back with a sigh, and folding plump, homely hands upon a rounding stomach, “I hardly remember now. I do know that I had wit enough and gall enough to take the best that offered a wench of my birth, and pay for it without grudging. I still have both the wit and the gall, I take the best of what is offered a woman of my years and history.”
She had said far more than was in the words, and knew very well that he had understood all of it. She had recognized instantly the end of one career. Too old now to make a success of another such liaison, too wise to want one, perhaps too loyal even to consider one, after so many years, she had cast about her for something to do now with her powers and energies. Too late, with her past, to contemplate an ordinary marriage. What is left for such a woman?
“You are right,” said Avice, relaxed and easy. “I made good use of my time while I waited for Huon, as often I have waited, weeks together. I am lettered and numerate, I have many skills. I need to use what I know, and make use of what I can do. My beauty is no longer with me, and never was remarkable, no one is likely to want or pay for it now. I suited Huon, he was accustomed to me. I was his feather-bed when other women had plagued and tired him.”