“You loved him?” asked Cadfael, for her manner with him was such that it was no intrusion to put such a question. And she considered it seriously.
“No, it could not be said that I loved him, that was not what he required. After all these years, certainly there was a fondness, a habit that sat well with us both, and did not abrade. Sometimes we did not even couple,” confided the postulant nun thoughtfully. “We just sat and drank wine together, played chess, which he taught me, listened to minstrels. Nodded over my embroidery and his wine, one either side the fire. Sometimes we did not even kiss or touch, though we slept snugly in the same bed.”
Like an old, married lord and his plain, pleasant old wife. But that was over, and she was one who acknowledged the realities. She had sincerely regretted her dead companion, even while she was thinking hard, and rubbing her hands in anticipation of getting to work upon a new and different enterprise. So much intelligent life must go somewhere, find some channel it can use. The ways of youth had closed, but there were other ways.
“Yet he came to you,” said Cadfael, “on his wedding eve.” And the bride, he thought but did not say, is eighteen years old, beautiful, submissive, and has great possessions.
She leaned forward to the table, her face mild and inward-looking, as though she examined honestly the workings of the human spirit, so obdurate and yet so given to conformity.
“Yes, he came. It was the first time since we came to Shrewsbury, and it turned out the last time of all. His wedding eve … Yes, marriage is a matter of business, is it not? Like concubinage! Love—ah, well, that’s another matter, apart from either of them. Yes, I was expecting him. My position would not have been any way changed, you understand.”
Brother Cadfael understood. The mistress of twenty years standing would not have been dislodged by the equally purchased heiress twenty-six years her junior. They were two separate worlds, and the inhabitant of the alternative world had her own legitimacy.
“He came alone?”
“Yes, alone.”
“And left you at what hour?” Now he was at the heart of the matter. For this honorable whore had certainly never conspired at her lord’s end, nor even cuckolded him with his steward, that jealous, faithful, suspicious soul who clove to her out of long-standing loyalty, surely well-deserved. This woman would have both feet firmly on the ground in dealing with those accidentally her servants, and respect them as they would learn to respect her.
She thought carefully about that. “It was past six in the morning. I cannot be sure how far past, but there was the promise of light. I went out with him to the gate. I remember, there were already colors, it must have been nearing the half-hour. For I went to the patch of gromwell—it went on flowering so late this year—and plucked some flowers and put them in his cap.”
“Past six, and nearer the half than the quarter of the hour,” mused Cadfael. “Then he could not have reached the spot where he was ambushed and killed before a quarter to the hour of Prime, and probably later.”
“There you must hold me excused, brother, for I do not know the place. For his leaving, as near as I dare state, he rode away about twenty minutes after six.”
A quarter of an hour, even at a speed too brisk for the light, to bring him to the place where the trap was laid. How long to account for the final killing? At the very least, ten minutes. No, the murderer could not have quit the spot before at least a quarter to seven, and most probably considerably later.
There was only one vital question left to ask. Many others, which had been puzzling him before he encountered her, and began to find his way past one misconception after another to the truth, had already become unnecessary. As, for instance, why she had discarded all her possessions, even her rings, left her jennet behind in the stable, denuded herself of all the profits of one career. Haste and fear, he had thought first, a bolt into hiding, putting off without coherent thought everything that could connect her with Huon de Domville. Then, when he found her already in a novice’s habit, he had even considered that she might have been stricken into penitence, and felt it needful to give up all before venturing into the cloister to spend the latter half of her life atoning for the former. Now he could appreciate the irony of that. Avice of Thornbury repented nothing. As she had never been afraid, so he felt certain she had never in her life been ashamed. She had made a bargain and kept it, as long as her lord lived. Now she was her own property again, to dispose of as she saw fit.
She had put off all her finery as an old soldier retiring might put off arms, as no longer of use or interest to him, and turn his considerable remaining energies to farming. Which was just what she proposed to do now. Her farm would be the Benedictine conventual economy, and she would take to it thoroughly and make a success of it. He even felt a rueful sympathy for the handful of sisters into whose dovecote this harmless-looking falcon had flown. Give her three or four years, and she would be abbess of Polesworth, and moreover, would further reinforce that house’s stability and good repute, as well as its sound finances. After her death she might well end up as a saint.
Meanwhile, though by this time he was assured of her forthrightness and reliability, she had a right to know that by doing her duty as a citizen she might find her privacy somewhat eroded.
“You must understand,” said Cadfael scrupulously, “that the sheriff may require you to testify when a man stands trial for his life, and that innocent lives may hang on the acceptance of your word. Will you bear witness to all this in a court of law, as you have here to me?”
“In all my life,” said Avice of Thornbury, “I have avoided one sin, at least. No, rather I was never tempted to it. I do not lie, and I do not feign. I will tell truth for you whenever you require it.”
“Then there is one matter more, which you may be able to solve. Huon de Domville, as you may not have heard, dismissed all attendance when he rode to you, and no one in his household admits to knowing where he might have gone. Yet whoever waylaid and killed him on that path had either followed him far enough to judge that he must return the same way—or else, and far more likely, knew very well where he was bound. Whoever knew that, knew that you were there at the hunting-lodge. You have said that you always used great discretion, yet someone must have known.”
“Plainly I was not left to travel unescorted,” she pointed out practically. “I daresay some among his old servants had a shrewd idea I should never be far away, but as for knowing where … Who better than the one who brought me there at Huon’s orders? Two days before Huon and his party came to Shrewsbury. I was always entrusted to one confidant, and only one. Why let in more? For the last three years it has been this same man.”
“Give him a name,” said Brother Cadfael.
9
The sheriff had confined his morning drive to the nearer woods on the southern side of the Meole brook, his line spread like beaters for a hunt, each man just within sight of his neighbors on either hand, and all moving slowly and methodically forward together. And they had netted nothing for all that time and trouble. Nobody broke cover to run from them, nobody they sighted bore any resemblance to Joscelin Lucy. When they drew off to reform and break their fast they had made contact all along their line with the patrols watching the town’s borders. The lepers at Saint Giles had come out curiously to watch their activities at the prescribed distance. Gilbert Prestcote was not pleased, and grew markedly short to question or address. Some others were better satisfied.
“The lad’s surely away home out of this long ago,” said Guy hopefully to Simon, as they dismounted at the bishop’s house to eat a hasty dinner. “I wish for my life, though, we could be certain of it. I could enjoy the hunt for him if I could be quite sure there’s no fear of finding! It would be no hardship to see Picard’s face grow blacker and blacker, and a delight if his horse put a foot in a badger’s sett and threw him. The sheriff has his work to do, and no avoidance, but Picard has no such duty. Office is one thing, but venom’s another.”