Radulfus accepted the rebuke with penitent grace. “You are quite right, I should have despatched him at once. Any further testimony he may have to give can very well wait until his teeth stop chattering. There, brother, get yourself dry garments, go to the kitchen, and have Brother Petrus make you a hot posset. Quick, run.”
“If I may ask but one question first,” said Cadfael hastily, “before he goes. Did I hear, brother, that you have been following yonder lad as he came here? Have you had him under your eye all this while?”
“All the day from morning,” said Brother Mark, “he has not been more than a few minutes out of my sight. He left the hospice only an hour or so ago, and I followed him here. Is it of importance?” He meant to Brother Cadfael and whatever cause he had in mind, and Cadfael’s satisfied nod comforted and warmed him.
“There, run! You did well.”
Brother Mark made his reverence to the abbot, and dripped and shivered away to the kitchen thankfully enough. If he had done well for Brother Cadfael, he was content.
“And now,” said Radulfus, “you may explain what you meant by saying you had means of knowing when my lord Domville was last seen alive and in good health.”
“I have found and talked with a witness,” said Cadfael, “who will testify, whenever the sheriff requires, that Huon de Domville spent the night before his death in his own hunting-lodge, and did not leave it until about a third of the hour after six, next morning. Also that at that time he was in excellent health, and mounted to ride back to his quarters in the Foregate. The path on which we found him is the path he would have to take from that place. And the witness, I dare pledge, is reliable.”
“If what you say is confirmed,” said Prestcote, after a moment’s silence, “this is of the first importance. Who is this witness? Name the man!”
“No man,” said Cadfael simply, “but a woman. Huon de Domville spent his last night with his mistress of many years, and her name is Avice of Thornbury.”
The shock passed along the ranks of the innocent brethren as a sudden wind-devil whirls through standing wheat in summer, in a great, gusty sigh and a convulsion of rustling garments like shaken stems. On his wedding-eve, to repair to another woman! And after supping with the abbot, at that! To those of lifelong celibacy even the contemplation of a bride, chaste and young, was disturbing. But a kept woman, and visited on the eve of the marriage sacrament, in despite of both the celibate and the marital morality … !
The sheriff belonged to a more illusionless world. Not the outrage, only the understandable fact, concerned him. Nor was Abbot Radulfus greatly disconcerted, once the words were spoken. He might have evaded the experiences of the flesh, he had not gone in ignorance of them thus far through a highly intelligent life. The mention of Avice did not shake him.
“You recall. Father,” Cadfael pursued, while he had every man’s attention, “that I showed you the blue flowers of the gromwell he wore in his cap when he was found. The plant grows at this hunting-lodge, I found it there, and it bears out the woman’s story. She herself set it in his cap when he left her. It is nearly two miles from the lodge to the spot where he was ambushed and killed. Your own officers, Sir Gilbert, bear witness that they flushed young Lucy here out of cover in the Foregate more than half an hour before Prime. Therefore he could not possibly have been the man who set the springe for Huon de Domville, and killed him. The baron can have been no more than half a mile from his hunting-lodge, when Joscelin Lucy was being hunted along the Foregate to the hospital.”
Iveta took the last step that brought her to Joscelin’s side, and slipped her hand into his, and he gripped it convulsively, unaware that he was hurting her, and drew breath into him so deep and hard that she felt he had drawn in the breath of new life for both of them.
Agnes craned and peered towards the gatehouse, but still did not find what she sought. Her face was sharp and icy with malice, but she said never a word. Iveta had expected a blaze of disbelief, casting doubt upon both Brother Cadfael and his witness, even upon the evidence of the sheriff’s men. People can be vague and imprecise about time, it is not so hard to argue about the difference a mere half-hour can make. But Agnes kept silence, containing her aching rage and uneasiness.
Abbot Radulfus exchanged a long and thoughtful look with the sheriff, and turned again to Joscelin. “You promised me truth. I will ask you now what I have not so far asked. Did you play any part in the death of Huon de Domville?”
“I did not,” said Joscelin firmly.
“There remains the charge he himself brought against you. Did you steal from him?”
“No!” He could not keep the scorn out of his voice.
Radulfus turned back to the sheriff with a faint, wry smile. “For the murder charge, Brother Cadfael will bring you to speak with this woman, and you will judge for yourself what trust to place in her. As for your own officers, there is no need to question their truthfulness. It seems to me that on this count this man must be held guiltless.”
“If this is confirmed,” agreed Prestcote readily, “he cannot be the murderer. I myself will take this woman’s testimony.” He turned to Cadfael with a question: “She is still at the hunting-lodge?”
“No,” said Cadfael, not without some relish at the stir his answer would make, “she is now at the cell of the Benedictine sisters at Godric’s Ford, where she has entered the order as a novice, and intends to take full vows.”
It was an achievement to have made even Abbot Radulfus blink; shaking the brotherhood was a routine success by comparison. “And you esteem her an honest witness?” asked -the abbot mildly, recovering his control in an instant, while Prior Robert’s patrician nose still looked pinched and blue with shock, and the ranks behind his shoulder still quivered.
“As the day, Father. The sheriff will judge for himself. I am convinced that, whatever else she may be, she has no disguises, and does not lie.”
They would get from her, without conceal, the whole story of her life, of which she was not ashamed, and she could not but impress them. He had no fears on that head. Prestcote was a practical man, he would recognize her quality. “My lord,” said Cadfael, “and you, Father, may we not understand that you accept—subject to questioning Mistress Avice and finding her testimony true—that Joscelin Lucy is altogether innocent of Huon de Domville’s murder?”
Prestcote had no hesitation. “That seems certain. The charge cannot stand.”
“Then—bear with me!—you cannot but accept, also, that this day he has been under constant watch by Brother Mark, as Mark himself has told us, and has done nothing to occasion suspicion or blame.”
The abbot was regarding him with searching attention. “That must also be granted. I think, brother, you have some particular reason for calling attention to it in this way. Something has happened?”
“Yes, Father. Something I should have told you at once, if I had not blundered into these equally grave matters as soon as I rode in. Well for any man who can say that today, all day long, he had a good man watching him and seeing no evil. For there has been violence done once again, in the woods beyond Saint Giles. Not an hour ago, as I was coming home, I happened upon a riderless horse, but could not catch him, and following him, I came upon a clearing where another man lies dead, and as I think, strangled like the first. I can lead you to the place.”
In the horrified hush that fell, he turned slowly to confront Agnes, who stood wild-eyed but still as stone.
“Madam, I grieve to bring you such news, but it is certain, even in the dim light, by the horse he rode …”
11
There was a moment of utter silence, while she stood blanched and stiff like a woman turned to ice. Then, as abruptly, she came to life with a piercing scream of rage and grief, and whirling in a storm of flying skirts, turned her back upon sheriff, abbot, niece and all, and clove like a fury through the startled brothers who gave way hastily before her onslaught. Not one glance at Joscelin Lucy now, she bore down on one man, and one man only, raging.
“You … you! Where are you, coward, murderer, come forth and face me! You, you, Simon Aguilon, you killed my lord!”