He stood for a while memorizing what he saw and heard, for Hugh would need every detail he could get. The enclosing wall was high, topped with pointed stakes set close, and by the heads he saw appear and vanish again above the serrated crest, there were watch-platforms at frequent intervals, if not a guard-walk the whole way round. Voices floated clearly from within the pale, wordless but insistent, many voices, shouting, laughing, even singing. The armourer continued his busy hammering, cattle bellowed, sheep bleated, and the hum of much busy coming and going made a confident music. They were quite unafraid, within there, they felt themselves equal to anything the hampered, divided law of the land could do against them. Whoever commanded there must have gathered to him the lawless, restless, masterless men of two or three shires, happy at seeing England torn in two, and its open wounds inviting their teeth.
Cloud was settling low overhead. Cadfael turned and made his way back to his mule, and with heightened care led him, still in the shelter of the trees, down to the opening of the ravine, and waited and listened for a while before mounting and riding. He went back the way he had come, and never encountered a living soul until he was well down towards the lowlands. There he could very well have branched left and descended to the highroad from Cleobury, but he did not do it, preferring to retrace his course all along the road the reivers used. He needed to know it well, for the night’s snow, if it came as was now customary, might grievously disguise it.
It was dark by the time he came out on to the road within a mile of Bromfield, and made his way thankfully and wearily home.
Hugh Beringar did not come back until Compline, and rode in tired, hungry, and for all the cold, sweating from his exertions. Cadfael went to join him over his late supper, as soon as he came from the church.
“You found the place, then? Reyner brought you word where last night’s devilry fell?” He was answered by the grimness of Hugh’s face.
“And told me what you were about at the other end of it. I hardly thought to find you home before me—faith, or at all, undamaged! Need you always be the one to put your hand straight into the hornet’s nest?”
“Where was it they burned and slew, last night?”
“At Whitbache. Barely two miles north of Ludlow, and they strode in and out again as freely as in their own bailey.” It fitted well. Their way home from Whitbache would run below the hut to the old road, just as Cadfael had witnessed it. “I was back in Ludlow when your man came, I fetched Dinan out to come with me. Every house pillaged, every soul hewn down. Two women escaped by running away into the woods, and carried their babes with them, all that ails them is cold and horror, but the rest—one man may live to tell it, and two young lads, but all hurt. And the rest, dead. We’ve taken them into the town, the quick and the dead. They’re Dinan’s people, he’ll see them cared for. And have blood for their blood, given half a chance.”
“Both you and he may have your chance,” said Cadfael. “Reyner Dutton found what he was seeking, and so did I.”
Hugh’s head, inclined wearily back against the wall, jerked erect again sharply, and his eyes regained their brightness. “You found the den these wolves are using? Tell!”
Cadfael told the whole story in detail. The clearer the picture they could draw now of the problem confronting them, the better the chance of dealing with it with little loss. For it was not going to be easy.
“As far as I can see, there is but that one road to them. Behind the fortress the ground still rises somewhat, to the rim of the cliff. Whether their stockade continues round the rear of the bailey I could not see. With that drop at their backs they may have felt it unnecessary. I daresay the rocks could be climbed, in a better time of year, but in this ice and snow no one would dare attempt it. And being the men they are, I fancy they have store of stones and boulders ready in case any should venture.”
“And the place is indeed so strong? I marvel how they’ve contrived so much building in secrecy.”
“A place so remote and harsh, who goes there? A few holdings clinging to the lower slopes, but what is there to draw an honest man above? Not even good grazing. And, Hugh, they have an army within there, the scourings of God knows how wide a swathe of middle England, labor in plenty. And Clee Forest at their feet, and stone all about them, the only crop that summit bears. You know and I know how fast a castle can be reared, given the timber and the need.”
“But runaway villeins turned robber, and petty thieves fleeing from the towns, and such fry, do not build on such a scale, but make themselves hovels in the woods,” said Hugh. “Someone of more weight has the rule there. I wonder who! I do wonder!”
“Tomorrow, if God please,” said Cadfael, “we may find out.”
“We?” Briefly and distractedly Hugh smiled at him. “I thought you had done with arms, brother! You think our two are within there?”
“So the tracks would seem to show. It is not certain that those who slept in the hut through the night, and ran down to meet the horsemen, were Yves and Elyas, but man and boy they were, and do you know of any other such couple gone astray in the night? Yes, I do think they have fallen into the hands of these rogues. Armed or unarmed, Hugh, I am coming with you to get them out.”
Hugh regarded him steadily, and said outright what was on his mind. “Would they bother to burden themselves with Elyas? The boy, yes, his very clothes mark him out as worthy prey. But a penniless monk, wandering in his wits? Once already they’ve battered him all but to death. You think they would hesitate the second time?”
“If they had discarded him,” said Cadfael firmly, “I should have found his body lying. I did not find it. There is no way, Hugh, of knowing what is truth, but to go out and exact it from those who know.”
“That we will do,” said Hugh. “At first light tomorrow I go to the town, to order out on the king’s business every man Josce de Dinan can muster, along with my own men. He owes allegiance, and he will pay it. He has no more use for anarchy in his own baileywick than King Stephan himself.”
“A pity,” said Cadfael, “that we cannot take them at first dawn, but that would lose us a day. And we need the daylight more than they do, they knowing their ground so much better.” His mind was away planning the assault, which was no business now of his, nor had been for many years, but the old enthusiasm still burned up at the scent of action. He caught Hugh’s smiling eye, and was ashamed. “Pardon, I forgot myself, unregenerate as I am.” He turned back to what was his concern, the matter of troubled souls. “There is more to show you, though it has no immediate link with this devils’ castle.”
He had brought the roll of black clothing with him. He unrolled it upon the trestles, drawing aside the creased white wimple and the strand of creamy mane. “These I found in the hay, in that hut, buried well from sight, if Reyner had not kicked the pile apart. See for yourself what lay in that hiding-place. And this—this from without, snagged in the rough wood at the corner of the hut, and a pile of horse-droppings left at the spot.”
He told that tale with the same exactness, needing another mind to work upon these discoveries. Hugh watched and listened with frowning attention, quickened utterly from his weariness and alert to every implication.
“Hers and his?” he said at the end of it. “Then they were there together.”
“So I read it, also.”
“Yet he was found some distance from this hut. Naked, stripped of his habit—but his cloak left behind where they sheltered. And if you are right, then Elyas sets off wildly back to this very place. By what compulsion? How drawn?”
“This,” said Cadfael, “I cannot yet read. But I doubt not it can be read, with God’s help.”
“And hidden—well hidden, you say. They might have lain unnoticed well into the spring, and been an unreadable riddle when they did reappear. Cadfael, have these wolves hidden any part of their worst deeds? I think not. What they break, they let lie where it falls.”