The Rose Rent (9 page)

There might, of course, be other reasons for removing the girl from home and family, though they would have to have something to do with the matter of the charter and the rosebush, for surely that could not be some lunatic accident, unconnected with her disappearance. There might! But with all the cudgelling of his brains Cadfael could think of none. And a rich merchant widow in a town where everyone knew everyone was inevitably besieged by suitors out to make their fortunes. Her only safe defence was the one Judith had contemplated, withdrawal into a convent. Or, of course, marriage to whichever of the contestants best pleased or least repelled her. And that, so far, she had not contemplated. It might well be true that the one who considered himself most likely to please had risked all on his chance of softening the lady’s heart in a few days of secret courtship. And keeping her hidden until after the twenty-second day of June could break the bargain with the abbey just as surely as destroying the rosebush and all its blossoms. However many roses survived now, unless Judith was found in time not one of them could be paid into her hand on the day the rent was due. So provided her captor prevailed at last, and drove her to marry him, her affairs would then be his, and he could refuse to renew and prevent her from renewing the broken agreement. And he would have won all, not the half. Yes, whichever way Cadfael viewed the affair, this notion propounded by Miles, who had everything to lose, looked ever more convincing.

He went to his cell with Judith still on his mind. Her well-being seemed to him very much the abbey’s business, something that could not be left merely to the secular arm. Tomorrow, he thought, lying awake in the dim dortoir, to the regular bass music of Brother Richard’s snores, I’ll walk that stretch of road, and see what’s there to be found. Who knows but there may be something left behind, more to the point than a single print of a worn boot-heel.

He asked no special leave, for had not the abbot already pledged Hugh whatever men or horses or gear he needed? It was but a small mental leap to establish in his own mind that if Hugh had not specifically demanded his help, he would have done so had he known how his friend’s mind was working. Such small exercises in moral agility still came easily to him, where the need seemed to justify them.

He set out after chapter, sallying forth into a Foregate swept by the long, slanting rays of the climbing sun, brilliantly lit and darkly shadowed. In the shade there was dew still on the grass, and a glisten in the leaves as a faint, steady, silent breeze ruffled them unceasingly. The Foregate on which he turned his back was bustling with life, every shop-front and house-door opened wide to the summer, and a constant traffic of housewives, urchins, dogs, carters and pedlars on the move, or gathered in gossiping groups. In this belated but lovely burst of summer, life quitted the confines of walls and roof, and moved into the sunshine. Under the west front of the church and across the gateway the knife-edged shadow of the tower fell, but along the enclave boundary it lay close and narrow, huddled under the foot of the wall.

Cadfael went slowly, exchanging greetings with such acquaintances as he met, but unwilling to be sidetracked into lingering. This first stretch of the road she could not have reached, and the steps he was retracing on her behalf were those of a pious intent which had never come to fruit. On his left, the lofty stone wall continued for the length of the great court and the infirmary and school within, then turned away at a right-angle, and alongside it went the first pathway that led past three small grace houses to the mill, on this near side of the mill-pond. Then the wide expanse of the pool, fringed with a low hedge of bushes. He would not and could not believe that Judith Perle had vanished into either this water or the waves of the river. Whoever had taken her—if someone had indeed taken her—wanted and needed her alive and unharmed and ripe for conquest. Hugh had no choice but to draw his net wide and entertain every possibility. Cadfael preferred to follow one notion at a time. Hugh would almost certainly have enlisted the help of Madog of the Dead Boat by this time, to pursue the worst possibilities of death by water, while the king’s sergeants scoured the streets and alleys and houses of Shrewsbury for a live and captive lady. Madog knew every wave of the Severn, every seasonal trick it had in its power to play, every bend or shoal where things swept away by its currents would be cast up again. If the river had taken her, Madog would find her. But Cadfael would not believe it.

And if Hugh also failed to find her within the walls of Shrewsbury? Then they would have to look beyond. It’s no simple matter to transport an unwilling lady very far, and by daylight. Could it even be done at all, short of using a cart? A horseman carrying such a swathed burden would need a horse powerful enough to carry the extra weight, and worse, would certainly be conspicuous. Someone would surely remember him, or even question him on the spot, human curiosity being what it is. No, she could not, surely, be far away.

Cadfael passed by the pool, and came to the second pathway, on this further side, which served the other three little houses. Beyond, after their narrow gardens, there was an open field, and at the end of that, turning sharply left, a narrow high road going south along the riverside. By that track an abductor might certainly retreat within a mile or so into the forest, but on the other hand there was no cover here along the riverside, any attack perpetrated there could be seen even from the town walls across the water.

But on the right of the Foregate, once the houses ended, the thick grove of trees began, and after that the steep path dived down sidelong to the bank of the Severn, through bushes and trees, giving access to the long, lush level of the Gaye. Beyond that, she would still have been on the open bridge, and surely inviolable. Here, if anywhere in this short walk, there was room for a predator to strike and withdraw with his prey. She had to be prevented from reaching the abbey and doing what she intended to do. There would be no second chance. And the house of the rose was indeed a property well worth reclaiming.

With every moment the thing began to look more and more credible. Improbable, perhaps, in an ordinary tradesman, as law-abiding as his neighbours and respected by all; but a man who has tried one relatively harmless expedient, and inadvertently killed a man in consequence, is no longer ordinary.

Cadfael crossed the Foregate and went into the grove of trees, stepping warily to avoid adding any tracks to those already all too plentiful. The imps of the Foregate played here, attended by their noisy camp-following of dogs, and tearfully trailed by those lesser imps as yet too small to be taken seriously and admitted to their games, and too short in the legs to keep up with them. In the more secluded clearings lovers met in the dark, their nests neatly coiled in the flattened grasses. Small hope of finding anything of use here.

He turned back to the road, and walked on the few paces to the path that descended to the Gaye. Before him the stone bridge extended, and beyond it the high town wall and the tower of the gate. Sunlight bathed the roadway and the walls, blanching the stone to a creamy pallor. The Severn, running a little higher than its usual summer level, shimmered and stirred with a deceptive appearance of placidity and languor, but Cadfael knew how fast those smooth currents were running, and what vehement undertows coursed beneath the blue, sky-mirroring surface. Most male children here learned to swim almost as soon as they learned to walk, and there were places where the Severn could be as gentle and safe as its smiling mask, but here where it coiled about the town, leaving only one approach by land, the narrow neck straddled by the castle, it was a perilous water. Could Judith Perle swim? It was no easy matter for girl-children to strip and caper along the grassy shores and flash in and out of the stream as the boys did, and for them it must be a more rare accomplishment.

At the town end of the bridge Judith had passed, unhindered and alone; the watchman had seen her begin to cross. Hard to believe that any man had dared to molest her here on the open crossing, where she had only to utter a single cry, and the watchman would have heard her, and looked out in instant alarm. So she had arrived at this spot where Cadfael was standing. And then? As far as present reports went, no one had seen her since.

Cadfael began the descent to the Gaye. This path was trodden regularly, and bare of grass, and the landward bushes that fringed it drew gradually back from its edge, leaving the level, cultivated ground open. On the river side they grew thickly, all down the slope to the water, and under the first arch of the bridge, where once a boat-mill had been moored to make use of the force of the current. Close to the waterside a footpath led off downstream, and beside it the abbey’s gardens lay neatly arrayed all along the rich plain, and three or four brothers were pricking out plants of cabbage and colewort. Further along came the orchards, apple and pear and plum, the sweet cherry, and two big walnut trees, and the low bushes of little sour gooseberries that were only just beginning to flush into colour. There was another disused mill at the end of the level, and the final abbey ground was a field of corn. Then ridges of woodland came down and overhung the water, and the curling eddies ate away the bank beneath their roots.

Across the broad river the hill of Shrewsbury rose in a great sweep of green, that wore the town wall like a coronet. Two or three small wickets gave access through the wall to gardens and grass below. They could easily be barred and blocked in case of attack, and the clear outlook such a raised fortress commanded gave ample notice of any approach. The vulnerable neck unprotected by water was filled by the castle, completing the circle of the wall. A strong place, as well as a very fair one, yet King Stephen had taken it by storm, four years ago, and held it through his sheriffs ever since.

But all this stretch of our land, Cadfael thought, brooding over its prolific green, is overlooked by hundreds of houses and households there within the wall. How many moments can there be in the day when someone is not peering out from a window, this weather, or below by the riverside, fishing, or hanging out washing, or the children playing and bathing? Not, perhaps, so many of them, so early in the morning, but surely someone. And never a word said of struggle or flight, or of something heavy and human-shaped being carried. No, not this way. Our lands here are open and innocent. The only hidden reach is here, here beside the bridge or under it, where trees and bushes give cover.

He waded the bushes towards the arch, and the last of the dew darkened his sandals and the skirt of his habit, but sparsely now, surviving only here, in the deep green shade. Below the stone arch the water had sunk only a foot or so from its earlier fullness, leaving a bleaching fringe of grass and water-plants. A man could walk through dry-shod but for dew. Even the winter level or the flush of the spring thaw never came nearer than six feet of the crown of the arch. The green growth was fat and lavish and tangled, suckled on rich, moist earth.

Someone had been before him here, the grasses were parted and bent aside by the passage of at least one person, probably more. That was nothing very unusual, boys roam everywhere in their play, and in their mischief, too. What was less usual here was the deep groove driven into the moist soil uncovered by the recent lowering of the level, and prolonged into the grass above. A boat had been drawn aground there, and no long time ago, either. At the town end of the bridge there were always boats beached or moored, handy for their owners’ use. But seldom here.

Cadfael squatted close to view the ground. The grass had absorbed any marks left by feet, except for the lowest lip of the land, and there certainly at least one man had trampled the moist ground, but the mud had slithered under him and obliterated any shape he had left behind. One man or two, for the spread of slippery mud showed both sides of the groove the skiff had made.

If he had not been sitting on his heels he would never have caught the single alien thing, for there under the arch there was no glint of sunlight to betray it. But there it was, trodden into the disturbed mud, a metallic thread like a wisp of reddish-gold straw, no longer than the top joint of his thumb. He prised it out and it lay in his palm, a tiny arrow-head without a shaft, bent a little out of shape by the foot that had trodden it in. He stooped to rinse it in the edge of the river, and carried it out into the sunshine.

And now he saw it for what it was, the bronze tag which had sealed the end of a leather girdle, a delicate piece of work, incised with punch and hammer after being attached to the belt, and surely not torn from its anchorage now without considerable violence and struggle.

Cadfael turned in his tracks, strode up the steep path to the road, and set off back along the Foregate at his fastest pace.

Chapter Seven

THIS IS HERS,” said Niall, looking up from the scrap of bronze with a fixed and formidable face. “I know it, though I did not make it. It belongs to that girdle she took back with her, the morning Brother Eluric lay here dead. I made the new buckle to match this design, this and the rosettes round the tongue-holes. I should know it anywhere. It is hers. Where did you find it?”

“Under the first arch of the bridge, where a boat had been hauled up in hiding.”

“To carry her away! And this—trodden into the mud, you say. See, when this was set in place it was hammered home into the leather with the pattern, it would not come loose easily, even after years, and with the leather softening and thinning from use, and perhaps a little greasy with handling. Someone was rough with the girdle, to tear this away.”

“And with the lady also,” Cadfael agreed grimly. “I could not be sure, myself, I hardly saw the girdle when she took it in her hands that day. But you could not be mistaken. Now I know. One step at least on the way. And a boat—a boat would be the simplest means of all of carrying her off. No neighbour passing close, to query such large freight, no one ashore to wonder at any passing skiff, they’re common enough along the Severn. The girdle from which this came may well have been snatched to help to bind her.”

“And she to be used so foully!” Niall wiped his large, capable hands on the rag of woollen cloth on his bench, and began purposefully unfastening and laying by his leathern apron. “What is to be done now? Tell me how best I can help—where first to look for her. I’ll close my shop—”

“No,” said Cadfael, “make no move, only keep watch still on the rosebush, for I have this strange fancy the life of the one is bound up fast with the life of the other. What is there you could do elsewhere that Hugh Beringar cannot? He has men enough, and trust me, they’re all hard at it, he’ll see to that. Stay here and be patient, and whatever I discover you shall know. Your business is bronze, not boats, you’ve done your part.”

“And you, what will you do now?” Niall hesitated, frowning, unwilling to be left with the passive part.

“I’m off to find Hugh Beringar as fast as I can, and after him Madog, who knows all there is to know about boats, from his own coracles to the freight barges that fetch the wool clips away. Madog may be able to tell what manner of boat it was from the very dent it left behind in the mud. You bide here and be as easy as you can. With God’s help we’ll find her.”

He looked back once from the doorway, impressed by the charged silence at his back. The man of few words remained quite still, staring into some invisible place where Judith Perle stood embattled and alone, captive to greed and brutality. Even her good works conspired against her, even her generosity turned venomous, to poison her life. The controlled and uncommunicative face was eloquent enough at that moment. And if those big, adroit hands, so precise on his tiny crucibles and moulds, could once get a hold on the throat of whoever has rapt away Judith Perle, thought Cadfael as he hurried back towards the town, I doubt if the king’s justice would have any need of a hangman, or the trial cost the shire much money.

The porter at the town gate sent a boy hotfoot up to the castle in search of Hugh as soon as Cadfael came to report, somewhat breathlessly, that there was need of the sheriff down at the waterside. It took a little time to find him, however, and Cadfael made use of the interval by going in search of Madog of the Dead Boat. He knew well enough where to find him, provided he was not already out on the water somewhere, about some curious part of his varied business. He had a hut tucked under the lee of the western bridge that opened the road into his native Wales, and there he made coracles, or timber boats if required, fished in season, ferried fares on request, carried goods for a fee, anything to do with transport by water. The time being then past noon, Madog happened to be taking a brief rest and a solitary meal when Cadfael reached the bridge. A squat, muscular, hairy elderly Welshman, without kith or kin and in no need of either, for he was sufficient to himself and had been since childhood, he yet had an open welcome for his friends. He needed no one, but if others needed him he was at their disposal. Once summoned, he rose and came.

Hugh was at the gate before them. They crossed the bridge together, and came down to the waterside and under the dim, cool shadow of the arch.

“Here in the mud,” said Cadfael, “I found this, torn off surely in a struggle. It comes from a girdle belonging to Mistess Perle, for Niall Bronzesmith made a new buckle to match the belt fittings only a few days ago, and this was the pattern he had to copy. That puts it past doubt, he knows his work. And here someone had a boat laid up ready.”

“As like as not stolen,” said Madog judicially, eyeing the deep mark in the soil. “For such a cantrip, why use your own? Then if it’s noted, and any man smells something amiss about where it’s seen and what’s within it, nothing leads towards you. And this was early in the morning, yesterday? Now I wonder if any fisherman or waterman from the town has mislaid his boat from its moorings? I know a dozen could have left this scar. And all you need do, when you’d done with the skiff, would be turn it adrift to fetch up where it would.”

“That could only be downstream,” said Hugh, looking up from the little arrow-head of bronze in his palm.

“So it could! Only downstream from wherever he had done with it. And even that would surely be downstream from here, if here he set out with such a cargo. Far easier and safer than heading upstream. Early in the morning it may have been, and few people yet abroad, but by the time one rower, or even a pair, had taken a boat all round the walls of the town against the stream, as they’d have to do to get clear, there’d be folks enough about the shore and the water. Even after turning away from the town they’d have Frankwell to face—a good hour’s rowing before they’d be free of notice and curiosity. Downstream, once past this stretch of the wall and out from under the castle, they could breathe easily, they’d be between fields and woodland, clear of the town.”

“That’s good sense,” said Hugh. “I don’t say upstream is impossible, but we’ll follow the best chance first. God knows we’ve dragged every alley within the walls, and ransacked most of the houses, and are still hard at it in there finishing the work. Not a soul owns to having seen or heard anything of her since last she spoke with the watchman at the gate, and started across the bridge here. And if ever she went, or was taken, back into the town, it was not by the gate. The porter passed in no cart or load that could have been hiding her, so he swears. Still, there are wickets through here and there, though most of them into burgage gardens, and it would be no easy matter to get through to the streets without the household knowing of it. I begin to believe that she cannot be within the walls, but I’ve set men at every wicket that gives access to a street, and made entry to every house an order under the king’s justice. What’s the same for all cannot well be resisted or complained of.”

“And has not?” wondered Cadfael. “Never once?”

“They grumble, but even that under their breath. No, not one has put up any objection, nor shuffled and contrived to keep anything closed. And all yesterday until dusk I had her cousin treading on my heels, probing here and there like a worried hound on an uncertain scent. He’s set two or three of his weavers to help in the hunt for her. The foreman—Bertred they call him, a strapping young fellow all brawn and brag—he’s been out and about with us again all day, nose-down. He’s gone with a party of my men now, out along the Castle Foregate, searching the yards and gardens in the suburb, and round to the river again. All her household is biting its nails, frantic to find her. And no wonder, for it’s she who provides a living for the lot of them—a matter of twenty families or more depend on her. And never a hair of her to be found, and never a shadow of suspicion against any other creature, so far.”

“How did you do with Godfrey Fuller?” asked Cadfael, recalling what rumour said of Judith’s wooers.

Hugh laughed briefly. “I remember, too! And truth is truth, he seems as concerned about her almost as her cousin. What does he do but hand me all his keys, and bid me make free. And I did.”

“His keys for the dye-works and the fulling sheds, too?”

“All, though I needed none, for all his men were at work, and every corner open to view, and as innocent as the day. I think he would even have lent me some men to join the hunt, but that he’s too fond of money to let the work slacken.”

“And William Hynde?”

“The old woolman? He’s been away sleeping the night over with his shepherds and flocks, so his household said, and came home only this morning. He knew nothing about the girl going astray until then. Alan was there yesterday, and Hynde’s wife made no demur, but let him look where he would, but I went back there this morning and spoke with the man himself. He’s off back to the hills before night. It seems he has some hoggets up there with a rot of the feet, he and his man came back only to get a supply of the wash to treat them. And more concerned about them than about Mistress Perle, though he did say he was sorry to hear such news of her. By this time I’m certain she’s not within the town. So,” said Hugh briskly, “we may well look elsewhere. Downstream, we’re agreed. Madog, come back with us to the town gate and get us a boat, and we’ll take a look at what offers, downstream.”

In midstream, running with the current, and with only a twitch of Madog’s oars now and then to keep them on course, they had the whole expanse of Shrewsbury’s eastern side unrolling past them, a steep bank of green under the wall, here and there a cluster of low bushes at the water’s edge, here and there a trailing willow tree, but chiefly one long sweep of seeding summer grass, and then the lofty grey stone of the wall. Barely a single ridge of roof showed over the crest, only the top of Saint Mary’s spire and tower, and a more distant glimpse of the tip of Saint Alkmund’s. There were three wickets in the wall before they reached the mouth of Saint Mary’s water-lane, which gave access to the river from town and castle at need, and in places the householders within had extended their gardens to the outer side, or made use of the ground, where it was level enough, for their stores of wood or other materials for their crafts. But the slope here made cultivation difficult except in favoured spots, and the best gardens outside the wall were on the south-west, within the great serpent-coil of the river.

They passed the narrow walled chute of the water-lane, and beyond was another steep slope of grass, more cloaked in bushes here, before the town wall drew closer to the river, flanking the level, cleared strip of green where the young men were accustomed to set up the butts and practise their archery on holidays and fair-days. At the end of this ground there was one last wicket, close under the first tower of the castle, and past that the ground levelled, a sweep of open field between the water and the high road that emerged under the castle gates. Here, as on the Welsh side, the town had spilled beyond the wall for a short way, and little houses, close-set, bordered the road, huddling under the shadow of the great hulk of stone towers and curtain wall that straddled the only dry-shod approach to Shrewsbury.

The open meadows stretched away, widening, into an undulating expanse of field and woodland, peaceful and serene. The only remaining reminders of the town were here close beside the river, Godfrey Fuller’s sheds and fulling-troughs and tenterground, and a short way beyond, the substantial warehouse where William Hynde’s best fleeces lay corded and ready, waiting for the middleman’s barge to come and collect them, and the narrow, stout jetty where it would draw alongside to load.

There were men going busily in and out here about the fulling workshop, and two lengths of bright russet cloth stretched and drying on the frames. This was the season for the reds, browns and yellows. Cadfael looked back along the castle wall to the last wicket giving access to the town, and recalled that Fuller’s house lay not far from the castle precinct. So, for that matter, though a little more distant, close to the high cross, did William Hynde’s. This gate was convenient for both. Fuller kept a watchman here at night, living on the workshop premises.

“Small chance of ever hiding a captive lady here,” said

Hugh resignedly. “By day it would be impossible, with so many busy about the place, and by night the fellow who sleeps here is paid to keep a close eye on Hynde’s property, too, and keeps a mastiff into the bargain. I don’t recall that there’s anything but meadow and woodland beyond, but we’ll go a little further.”

The green banks drifted by on either side, encroaching trees overhanging both shores, but there was no thick woodland, and no building, not even a hut for half a mile or more. They were about to give up the hunt and turn back, and Cadfael was preparing to tuck up his sleeves and take an oar to help Madog back upstream, when Madog checked and pointed.

“What did I say? No need to go beyond this, here’s what marks the end of the chase.”

Close under the left bank, where a curving current had hollowed the ground and exposed the roots of a small hawthorn, causing it to lean at an angle over the water, its branches had snared a fish of their own. The empty boat lay unevenly, its bow held between two thorn-boughs, its oars shipped, rocking gently in the shallows.

“This one I know,” said Madog, drawing alongside and laying a hand to the thwart to hold them together. “It belongs to Arnald the fishmonger, under the Wyle, he moors it there at the town end of the bridge. Your man had nothing to do but row it across and hide it. Arnald will be raging round Shrewsbury clouting every lad on suspicion. I’d best do him a good turn and get it back to him, before he twists off an ear or two. He’s had this borrowed once before, but at least they brought it back that time. Well, my lord, here it ends. Are you satisfied?”

“Bitterly unsatisfied,” said Hugh ruefully, “but I take your meaning. Downstream, we agreed! Well, somewhere downstream from the bridge and upstream from here, it seems, Mistress Perle was put ashore and laid in safe-keeping. Too safe by far! For still I have no notion where.”