“What are you saying?” He had called up a little courage, a little confidence. If she raved, he would have become soothing, solicitous, sure of himself, and even in her cold assurance he could find a foothold for his own. “Certainly I rode out to look for you, how could I leave you to die in the frost? I had a fall, weak from my wound as I was, and broke it open again and bled—yes, that is truth. But the rest? I hunted you all that night, as long as I could endure, and never did I halt in my search for you. If I came back empty-handed and bleeding, do you accuse me of that? I know nothing of this woman you speak of . . .”
“Nothing?” said Cadfael at his shoulder. “Nothing of a shepherd’s hut close to the track you would be riding, back from the Ludlow road towards Ledwyche? I know, for I’ve ridden in the opposite way. Nothing of a young nun asleep in the hay there, wrapped in a good man’s cloak? Nothing of a freezing brook handy on your way home, afterwards? It was not a fall that ripped your wound open again, it was the doughty fight she made for her honor in the cold night, where you had out your fury and lust upon her for want of another prey, more profitable to your ambitions. Nothing of the cloaks and habit hidden under the straw, to cast the crime on those guilty of everything else that cried to heaven here? Everything but this!”
The cold, pale light cast all shapes into marble, the shadows withdrew and left them stark. It was not long past noon of a sunlit day without. It was moon-chill and white here within. Ermina stood like a carving in stone, staring now in silence upon the three men before her. She had done what she had to do.
“This is folly,” said Evrard Boterel arduously, as against great odds. “I rode out swathed, after the wounds I got in the storming of Callowleas, I rode back home bleeding through my bindings, what of that? A freezing night of blizzard and snow, and I had taken a fall. But this woman, this nun—the shepherd’s hut—these mean nothing to me, I never was there, I do not even know where it is . . .”
“I have been there,” said Brother Cadfael, “and found in the snow the droppings of a horse. A tall horse, that left a fistful of his mane roven in the rough boards under the eaves. Here it is!” He had the wavy cream-colored strands in his hand. “Shall I match them with your gelding, there without? Shall we stretch you over the habit you see before you, and match your wound with the blood that soils it? Sister Hilaria did not bleed. Your wound I have seen, and know.”
Evrard hung for one long moment motionless, drawn up tall like a strung doll between the woman before him and the men behind. Then he shrank and sank, with a long, despairing moan, and collapsed on his knees on the tiles of the nave, fists clutched hard to his heart, and fair hair fallen forward over his face, the palest point in the bar of light where he kneeled.
“Oh, God forgive, God forgive . . . I only meant to hush her, not to kill . . . not to kill . . .”
“And it may even be true,” said Ermina sitting hunched and stiff by the fire in the hall, the storm of her tears past, and nothing left but a great weariness. “He may not have meant to kill. What he says may be sooth.”
What he had said, bestirring himself out of despair to make the best case he could for his life, was that he had turned for home again from his search by reason of the blizzard, and been driven to take shelter through the worst of it when he came to the hut, never thinking to find anyone there before him. But presented with a sleeping woman at his mercy, he had taken her out of spite and rage against all women for Ermina’s sake. And when she awoke and fought him, he owned he had not been gentle. But he never meant to kill! Only to silence her, with the skirts of her habit pressed over her face. And then she lay limp and lifeless, and he could not revive her, and he stripped the gown from her, and hid all the garments under the straw, and took her with him as far as the brook, to make of her merely one more victim of the outlaws who had sacked Callowleas.
“Where he first came by that eloquent wound,” said Brother Cadfael, watching her pale face, and marking the convulsion of a bitter smile, that came and went like a grimace of pain on her mouth.
“I know—so he told you! And I let it stand! In gallant defense of his manor and his men! I tell you, he never drew sword, he left his people to be slaughtered, and ran like a rat. And forced me with him! No man of my blood ever before turned his back and abandoned his own people to die! This he did to me, and I cannot forgive it. And I had thought I loved him! I will tell you,” she said, “how he got that wound of his that betrayed him in the end. All that first day at Ledwyche he drove his men at cutting fence-pales and building barricades, and he with never a scratch on him. And all that day I brooded and was shamed, and in the evening, when he came, I told him I would not marry him, that I would not match with a coward. He had not touched me until then, he had been all duty and service, but when he saw he would lose both me and my lands, then it was another story.”
Cadfael understood. Marriage by rape, once the thing was done, and privately, would be accepted by most families as preferable to causing an ugly scandal and starting a feud. No uncommon practice to take first and marry after.
“I had a dagger,” she said grimly. “I have it still. It was I who wounded him, and I struck for his heart, but it went astray and ripped down from shoulder to arm. Well, you have seen . . .” She looked down at the folded habit that lay beside her on the bench. “And while he was raving and cursing and dripping blood, and they were running to staunch his wound and bandage him, 1 slipped out into the night and ran. He would follow me, that I knew. He could not afford to let me escape him, after that, marry or bury were the only ways. He would expect me to run towards the road and the town. Where else? So I did, but only until the woods covered my traces, and then I circled back and hid. I told you, I saw him ride out, weakened as he was, in a great rage, the way I knew he would go.”
“Alone?”
“Of course alone. He would not want witnesses for either rape or murder. Those within had their orders. And I saw him ride back, freshly bloodied through his bandages, though I thought nothing of it then but that he had exerted himself too rashly.” She shuddered at the thought of that exertion. “When he was cheated of me, he took out his venom on the first woman who fell in his way, and so avenged himself. For myself I would not have accused him. I had the better of him, and I had brought it on myself. But what had she done?”
It was the eternal question, and the one to which there exists no answer. Why do the innocent suffer?
“And yet,” she said doubtfully, “it may be true what he says. He was not used to being thwarted, it made him mad . . . He had a devil’s temper. God forgive me, I used almost to admire him for it once . . .”
Yes, it might be true that he had killed without meaning to, and in panic sought to cover up his deed. Or it might be that he had reasoned coldly that a dead woman could never accuse him, and made sure of her eternal silence. Let those judge who were appointed to do the judging, here in this world.
“Don’t tell Yves!” said Ermina. “I will do that, when the time comes. But not here. Not now!”
No, there was no need to say any word to the boy of the battle that was over. Evrard Boterel was gone to Ludlow under armed escort, and there was no sign in the great court that ever a crime had been uncovered. Peace came back to Bromfield very softly, almost stealthily. In less than half an hour it would be time for Vespers.