An Excellent Mystery (13 page)

The
porter, knowing Nicholas well by this time, told him without question where he
would find his lord. His horse he left tethered at the gatehouse, intending to
ride on at once to Lai, and came striding round the clipped bulk of the tall
hedge and along the gravel path to where Humilis was sitting on the stone bench
against the south wall. So intent was Nicholas upon Humilis that he brushed
past Fidelis with barely a glance, and the young brother, startled by his
sudden and silent arrival, turned on him for once a head uncovered and a face
open to the sun, but as quickly drew aside in his customary reticent manner,
and held aloof from their meeting, deferring to a prior loyalty. He even drew
the cowl over his head, and sank silently into its shadow.

“My
lord,” said Nicholas, bending his knee to Humilis and clasping the two hands
that reached to embrace him, “your sorry servant!”

“No,
never that!” said Humilis warmly, and freed his hands to draw the boy up beside
him and peer searchingly into his face. “Well,” he said with a sigh and a
small, rueful smile, “I see you have not the marks of success on you. No fault
of yours, I dare swear, and no man can command success. You would not be back
so soon if you had found out nothing, but I see it cannot be what you hoped
for. You did not find Julian. At least,” he said, peering a little closer, and
in a voice careful and low, “not living…”

“Neither
living nor dead,” said Nicholas quickly, warding off the worst assumption. “No,
it’s not what you think — it’s not what any of us could have dreamed.” Now that
it came to the telling, he could only blurt out the whole of it as baldly and
honestly as possible, and be done. “I searched in Wherwell, and in Winchester,
until I found the prioress of Wherwell in refuge in Romsey abbey. She has held
the office seven years, she knows every sister who has entered there in that
time, and none of them is Julian Cruce. Whatever has become of Julian, she
never reached Wherwell, never took vows there, never lived there — and cannot
have died there. A blind ending!”

“She
never came there?” Humilis echoed in an astonished whisper, staring with locked
brows across the sunny garden.

“She
never did! Always,” said Nicholas bitterly, “I come three years too late. Three
years! And where can she have been all that time, with never a word of her
here, where she left home and family, nor there, where she should have come to
rest? What can have happened to her, between here and Wherwell? That region was
not in turmoil then, the roads should have been safe enough. And there were
four men with her, well provided.”

“And
they came home,” said Humilis keenly. “Surely they came home, or Cruce would
have been wondering and asking long ago. In God’s name, what can they have
reported when they returned? No evil! None from other men, or there would have
been an instant hue and cry, none of their own, or they would not have returned
at all. This grows deeper and deeper.”

“I
am going on to Lai,” said Nicholas, rising,”to let Cruce know, and have him
hunt out and question those who rode with her. His father’s men will be his men
now, whether at Lai or on some other of his manors. They can tell us, at least,
where they parted from her, if she foolishly dismissed them and rode the last
miles alone. I’ll not rest until I find her. If she lives, I will find her!”

Humilis
held him by the sleeve, doubtfully frowning. “But your command… You cannot
leave your duties for so long, surely?”

“My
command,” said Nicholas, “can do very well without me now for a while. I’ve
left them snug enough, encamped near Andover, living off the land, and my
sergeants in charge, old soldiers well able to fill my place, the way things
are now. For I have not told you the half. I’m so full of my own affairs, I
have no time for kings. Did we not say, last time, that the empress must try to
break out from Winchester soon, or starve where she was? She has so tried.
After the disaster at Wherwell they must have known they could not hold out
longer. Three days ago they marched out westward, towards Stockbridge, and
William de Warenne and the Flemings fell on them and broke them to pieces. It
was no retreat, it was headlong flight. Everything weighty about them they
threw away. If ever they do come safe back to Gloucester it will be half naked.
I’ll make a stay in the town and let Hugh Beringar know.”

Brother
Cadfael, who had gone on with a little desultory weeding between his herb-beds,
at a little distance, nevertheless heard all this with stretched ears and
kindling blood, and straightened his back now to stare.

“And
she — the empress? They have not taken her?” An empress for a king would be
fair exchange, and almost inevitable, even if it meant not an ending, but
stalemate, and a new beginning over the same exhausted and exhausting ground.
Had Stephen been the one to capture the implacable lady, with his mad,
endearing chivalry he would probably have given her a fresh horse and an
escort, and sent her safely to Gloucester, to her own stronghold, but the queen
was no such magnanimous idiot, and would make better use of a captive enemy.

“No,
not Maud, she’s safely away. Her brother sped her off ahead with Brian
FitzCount to watch over her, and stayed to rally the rearguard and hold off the
pursuit. No, it’s better than Maud! He could have gone on fighting without her,
but she’ll be hard put to it without him. The Flemings caught them at
Stockbridge, trying to ford the river, and rounded up all those who survived.
It’s the king’s match we’ve taken, the man himself, Robert of Gloucester!”

Chapter Seven

REGINALD
CRUCE, WHETHER HE HAD, OR INDEED COULD WELL BE EXPECTED to have any deep
affection for a half-sister so many years distant from him and so seldom seen,
was not the man to be tolerant of any affront or injury towards any of his
house. Whatever touched a Cruce reflected upon him, and roused his hackles like
those of a pointing hound. He heard the story out in stoic silence but
ever-growing resentment and rage, the more formidable for being under steely
control.

“And
all this is certain?” he said at length. “Yes, the woman would know her
business, surely. The girl never came there. I was not in this matter at all, I
was not here and did not witness either the going or the return, but now we
will see! At least I know the names of those who rode with her, for my father
spoke of the journey on his deathbed. He sent his closest, men he trusted — who
would not, with his daughter? And he doted on her. Wait!”

He
bellowed from the hall door for his steward, and in from the fading daylight,
cooling now towards dusk, came a grey elder dried and tanned like old leather,
but very agile and sinewy. He might have been older than the lord he had lost,
and was in no awe of either father or son here, but plainly master of his own
duties, and aware of his worth. He spoke as an equal, and easy in the
relationship.

“Arnulf,
you’ll remember,” said Reginald, waving him to a seat at the table with them,
as free in acknowledgement of the association as his man, “when my sister went
off to her convent, the lads my father sent off with her — the Saxon brothers,
Wulfric and Renfred, and John Bonde, and the other, who was he? He went off
with the draft, I know, soon after I came here…”

“Adam
Heriet,” said the steward readily, and drew across the board the horn his lord
filled for him. “Yes, what of them?”

“I
want them, Arnulf, all of them — here.”

“Now,
my lord?” If he was surprised, he took surprises in his stride.

“Now,
or as soon as may be. But first, all these were of my father’s close household,
you knew them better than ever I did. Would you count them trustworthy?”

“Out
of question,” said the steward without hesitation, in a voice as dry and tough
as his hide. “Bonde is a simpleton, or little better, but a hard worker and
open as the day. The Saxon pair are clever and subtle, but clever enough to
know when they have a good lord, and loyal enough to be grateful for him. Why?”

“And
the other, Heriet? Him I hardly knew. That was when Earl Waleran demanded my
service of men in arms, and I sent him whatever offered, and this Heriet put
himself forward. They told me he was restless because my sister was gone from
the manor. He was a favourite of hers, so I heard, and fretted for her.”

“That
could be true,” said Arnulf the steward. “Certainly he was never the same after
he came back from that journey. Such girl children can worm their way into a
man and get at his heart. So she may have done with him. If you’ve known them
from the cradle, they work deep into your marrow.”

Reginald
nodded dourly. “Well, he went. Twenty men my overlord asked of me, and twenty
men he got. It was about the time he had that contention of his against the
bishops, and needed reinforcements. Well, wherever he may be now, Heriet is out
of our reach. But the rest are all here?”

“The
Saxon pair in the stable loft this minute. Bonde should be coming in about this
time from the fields.”

“Bring
them,” said Reginald. And to Nicholas he said, when the steward had drained his
horn and departed down the stone stair into the court as nimbly and rapidly as
a youth of twenty: “Wherever I look among these four, I can see no treachery.
Why should they return, if they had somehow betrayed her? And why should they
do so, any man of them? Arnulf says right, they knew they had the softest of
beds here, my father was of the old, paternal, household kind, easier far than
I, and I am not hated.” He was well aware, to judge by the sharp smile and curl
of the lip, yellow-outlined in the low lamplight, of all the tensions that
still bound and burned between Saxon and Norman, and was too intelligent to
strain them too far. In the countryside memories were very long, and loyalties
with them, hard to displace, slow to replace.

“Your
steward is Saxon,” said Nicholas drily.

“So
he is! And content! Or if not content,” said Reginald, at once dour and bright
in the intimate light, “at least aware of worse, worse by far. I have benefited
by my father’s example, I know when to bend. But where my sister is concerned,
I tell you, I feel my spine stiffen.”

So
did Nicholas, as stiff as if the marrow there had petrified into stone. And he
viewed the three hinds, when they came marshalled sleepily up the steps into
the hall, with the same blank, opaque eyes as did their master. Two long, fair
fellows surely no more than thirty years old, with all the lean grace of their
northern kin and eyes that caught the light in flashes of pale, blinding blue,
and a softer, squat, round-faced man, perhaps a little older, bearded and
brown.

It
might be true enough, thought Nicholas, watching them, that they had no hate
for their lord, but rather reckoned themselves lucky by comparison with many of
their kind, now for the third generation subject to Norman masters. But for all
that, they went in awe of Reginald, and any such summons as this, outside the
common order of their labouring day, brought them to questioning alert and
wary, their faces closed, like a lid shut down over a box of thoughts that
might not all be acceptable to authority. But it was different when they
understood the subject of their lord’s enquiry. The shut faces opened and
eased. It was clear to Nicholas that none of these three felt he had any reason
for uneasiness concerning that journey, rather they recalled it with pleasure,
as well they might, the one carefree pilgrimage, the one holiday of their
lives, when they rode instead of going afoot, and went well-provided and in the
pride of arms.

Yes,
of course they remembered it. No, they had had no trouble by the way. A lady
accompanied by two good bowmen and two swordsmen had had nothing to fear. The
taller of the Saxon pair, it seemed, used the new long-bow, drawn to the
shoulder, while John Bonde carried the short Welsh bow, drawn to the breast, of
less range and penetration than the long-bow, but wonderfully fast and agile in
use at shorter range. The other brother was a swordsman, and so had the fourth
member been, the missing Adam Heriet. A good enough company to travel briskly
and safely, at whatever speed the lady could maintain without fatigue.

“Three
days on the way, my lord,” said the Saxon bowman, spokesman for all three, and
encouraged with vehement nods, “and then we came into Andover, and because it
was already evening, we lay there overnight, meaning to finish the journey the
next morning. Adam found a lodging for the lady with a merchant’s household
there, and we lay in the stables. It was but three or four miles more to go, so
they told us.”

“And
my sister was then in health and spirits? Nothing had gone amiss?”

“No,
my lord, we had a good journey. She was glad then to be so close to what she
wished. She said so, and thanked us.”

“And
in the morning? You brought her on those few miles?”

“Not
we, my lord, for she chose to go the rest of the way with only Adam Heriet, and
we were to wait in Andover for his return, and so we did as we were ordered.
And when he came, then we set out for home.”

To
this the other two nodded firm assent, satisfied that their errand had been
completed in obedience to the lady’s wishes. So it was only one, only her
servant and familiar, according to repute, who had gone the rest of the way
with Julian Cruce.