by Ellis Peters
“Very natural,” said Cadfael heartily, “that you should want to see your mother and your brother, too. Go with all our goodwill and, whatever you decide, God bless the choice.”
His expectation, however, as he watched the boy ride out at the gatehouse, was the same that Radulfus had in mind. Sulien Blount was not, on the face of it, cut out for the monastic life, however hard he had tried to believe in his misguided choice. A night at home now, in his own bed and with his kin around him, would settle the matter.
Which conclusion left a very pertinent question twitching all through Vespers in Cadfael’s mind. What could possibly have driven the boy to make for the cloister in the first place?
*
Sulien came back next day in time for Mass, very solemn of countenance and resolute of bearing, for some reason looking years nearer to a man’s full maturity than when he had arrived from horrors and hardships, endured with all a man’s force and determination. A youth, resilient but vulnerable, had spent two days in Cadfael’s company; a man, serious and purposeful, returned from Longner to approach him after Mass. He was still wearing the habit, but his absurd tonsure, the crest of dark gold curls within the overgrown ring of darker brown hair, created an incongruous appearance of mockery, just when his face was at its gravest. High time, thought Cadfael, observing him with the beginning of affection, for this one to go back where he belongs.
“I am going to see Father Abbot,” said Sulien directly.
“So I supposed,” agreed Cadfael.
“Will you come with me?”
“Is that needful? What I feel sure you have to say is between you and your superior, but I do not think,” Cadfael allowed, “that he will be surprised.”
“There is something more I have to tell him,” said Sulien, unsmiling. “You were there when first I came, and you were the messenger he sent to repeat all the news I brought to the lord sheriff. I know from my brother that you have always access to Hugh Beringar’s ear, and I know now what earlier I did not know. I know what happened when the ploughing began, I know what was found in the Potter’s Field. I know what everyone is thinking and saying, but I know it cannot be true. Come with me to Abbot Radulfus. I would like you to be by as a witness still. And I think he may need a messenger, as he did before.”
His manner was so urgent and his demand so incisive that Cadfael shrugged off immediate enquiry. “As you and he wish, then. Come!”
They were admitted to the abbot’s parlour without question. No doubt Radulfus had been expecting Sulien to seek an audience as soon as Mass was over. If it surprised him to find the boy bringing a sponsor with him, whether as advocate to defend his decision, or in mere meticulous duty as the mentor to whom he had been assigned in his probation, he did not allow it to show in face or voice.
“Well, my son? I hope you found all well at Longner? Has it helped you to find your way?”
“Yes, Father.” Sulien stood before him a little stiffly, his direct stare very bright and solemn in a pale face. “I come to ask your permission to leave the Order and go back to the world.”
“That is your considered choice?” said the abbot in the same mild voice. “This time you are in no doubt?”
“No doubt, Father. I was at fault when I asked admission. I know that now. I left duties behind, to go in search of my own peace. You said, Father, that this must be my own decision.”
“I say it still,” said the abbot. “You will hear no reproach from me. You are still young, but a good year older than when you sought refuge within the cloister, and I think wiser. It is far better to do whole-hearted service in another field than remain half-hearted and doubting within the Order. I see you did not yet put off the habit,” he said, and smiled.
“No, Father!” Sulien’s stiff young dignity was a little affronted at the suggestion. “How could I, until I have your leave? Until you release me I am not free.”
“I do release you. I would have been glad of you, if you had chosen to stay, but I believe that for you it is better as it is, and the world may yet be glad of you. Go, with my leave and blessing, and serve where your heart is.”
He had turned a little towards his desk, where more mundane matters waited for his attention, conceiving that the audience was over, though without any sign of haste or dismissal: but Sulien held his ground, and the intensity of his gaze checked the abbot’s movement, and made him look again, and more sharply, at the son he had just set free.
“There is something more you have to ask of us? Our prayers you shall certainly have.”
“Father,” said Sulien, the old address coming naturally to his lips, “now that my own trouble is over, I find I have blundered into a great web of other men’s troubles. At Longner my brother has told me what was spared me here, whether by chance or design. I have learned that when ploughing began on the field my father granted to Haughmond last year, and Haughmond exchanged for more convenient land with this house two months ago now, the coulter turned up a woman’s body, buried there some while since. But not so long since that the manner, the time, the cause of her death can go unquestioned. They are saying everywhere that this was Brother Ruald’s wife, whom he left to enter the Order.”
“It may be said everywhere,” the abbot agreed, fronting the young man with a grave face and drawn brows, “but it is not known anywhere. There is no man can say who she was, no way of knowing, as yet, how she came by her death.”
“But that is not what is being said and believed outside these walls,” Sulien maintained sturdily. “And once so terrible a find was made known, how could any man’s mind escape the immediate thought? A woman found where formerly a woman vanished, leaving no word behind! What else was any man to think but that this was one and the same? True, they may all be in error. Indeed, they surely are! But as I heard it, that is the thought even in Hugh Beringar’s mind, and who is to blame him? Father, that means that the finger points at Ruald. Already, so they have told me, the common talk has him guilty of murder, even in danger of his own life.”
“Gossip does not necessarily speak with any authority,” said the abbot patiently. “Certainly it cannot speak for the lord sheriff. If he examines the movements and actions of Brother Ruald, he is but doing his duty, and will do as much by others, as the need arises. I take it that Brother Ruald himself has said no word of this to you, or you would not have had to hear it for the first time at home in Longner. If he is untroubled, need you trouble for him?”
“But, Father, that is what I have to tell!” Sulien flushed into ardour and eagerness. “No one need be troubled for him. Truly, as you said, there is no man can say who this woman is, but here is one who can say with absolute certainty who she is not. For I have proof that Ruald’s wife Generys is alive and well—or was so, at least, some three weeks ago.”
“You have seen her?” demanded Radulfus, reflecting back half-incredulously the burning glow of the boy’s vehemence.
“No, not that! But I can do better than that.” Sulien plunged a hand deep inside the throat of his habit, and drew out something small that he had been wearing hidden on a string about his neck. He drew it over his head, and held it out to be examined in the palm of his open hand, still warm from his flesh, a plain silver ring set with a small yellow stone such as were sometimes found in the mountains of Wales and the border. Of small value in itself, marvellous for what he claimed for it. “Father, I know I have kept this unlawfully, but I promise you I never had it in Ramsey. Take it up, look within it!”
Radulfus gave him a long, searching stare before he extended a hand and took up the ring, turning it to catch the light on its inner surface. His straight black brows drew together. He had found what Sulien wanted him to find.
“G and R twined together. Crude, but clear—and old work. The edges are blunted and dulled, but whoever engraved it cut deep.” He looked up into Sulien’s ardent face. “Where did you get this?”
“From a jeweller in Peterborough, after we fled from Ramsey, and Abbot Walt
er charged me to come here to you. It was mere chance. There were some tradesmen in the town who feared to stay, when they heard how near de Mandeville was, and what force he had about him. They were selling and moving out. But others were stouthearted, and meant to stay. It was night when I reached the town, and I was commended to this silversmith in Priestgate who would shelter me overnight. He was a stout man, who would not budge for outlaws or robbers, and he had been a good patron to Ramsey. His valuables he had hidden away, but among the lesser things in his shop I saw this ring.”
“And knew it?” said the abbot.
“From old times, long ago when I was a child. I could not mistake it, even before I looked for this sign. I asked him where and when it came into his hands, and he said a woman had brought it in only some ten days earlier, to sell, because, she said, she and her man thought well to move further away from the danger of de Mandeville’s marauders, and were turning what they could into money to resettle them in safety elsewhere. So were many people doing, those who had no great stake in the town. I asked him what manner of woman she was, and he described her to me, beyond mistaking. Father, barely three weeks ago Generys was alive and well in Peterborough.”
“And how did you acquire the ring?” asked Radulfus mildly, but with a sharp and daunting eye upon the boy’s face. “And why? You had then no possible reason to know that it might be of the highest significance here.”
“No, none.” The faintest flush of colour had crept upward in Sulien’s cheeks, Cadfael noted, but the steady blue gaze was as wide and clear as always, even challenging question or reproof. “You have returned me to the world, I can and will speak as one already outside these walls. Ruald and his wife were the close friends of my childhood, and when I was no longer a child that fondness grew and came to ripeness with my flesh. They will have told you, Generys was beautiful. What I felt for her touched her not at all, she never knew of it. But it was after she was gone that I thought and hoped, I admit vainly, that the cloister and the cowl might restore me my peace. I meant to pay the price faithfully, but you have remitted the debt. But when I saw and handled the ring I knew for hers, I wanted it. So simple it is.”
“But you had no money to buy it,” Radulfus said, in the same placid tone, withholding censure.
“He gave it to me. I told him what I have now told you. Perhaps more,” said Sulien, with a sudden glittering smile that lasted only an instant in eyes otherwise passionately solemn. “We were but one night companions. I should never see him again, nor he me. Such a pair encountering confide more than ever they did to their own mothers. And he gave me the ring.”
“And why,” enquired the abbot as directly, “did you not restore it, or at least show it, to Ruald and tell him that news, as soon as you met with him here?”
“It was not for Ruald I begged it of the silversmith,” said Sulien bluntly, “but for my own consolation. And as for showing it, and telling him how I got it, and where, I did not know until now that any shadow hung over him, nor that there was a dead woman, newly buried here now, who was held to be Generys. I have spoken with him only once since I came, and that was for no more than a few minutes on the way to Mass. He seemed to me wholly happy and content, why should I hurry to stir old memories? His coming here was pain as well as joy, I thought well to let his present joy alone. But now indeed he must know. It may be I was guided to bring back the ring, Father. I deliver it to you willingly. What I needed it has already done for me.”
There was a brief pause, while the abbot brooded over all the implications for those present and those as yet uninvolved. Then he turned to Cadfael. “Brother will you carry my compliments to Hugh Beringar, and ask him to ride back with you and join us here? Leave word if you cannot find him at once. Until he has heard for himself, I think nothing should be said to any other, not even Brother Ruald. Sulien, you are no longer a brother of this house, but I hope you will remain as its guest until you have told your story over again, and in my presence.”
Chapter 6
HUGH WAS AT THE CASTLE, where Cadfael found him in the armoury, telling over the stores of steel, with the likelihood of a foray against the anarchy in Essex very much in mind. He had taken the omen seriously, and was bent on being ready at a day’s notice if the king should call. But Hugh’s provision for action was seldom wanting, and on the whole he was content with his preparations. He could have a respectable body of picked men on the road within hours when the summons came. There was no certainty that it would, to the sheriff of a shire so far removed from the devastated Fen country, but the possibility remained. Hugh’s sense of order and sanity was affronted by the very existence of Geoffrey de Mandeville and his like.
He greeted Cadfael with somewhat abstracted attention, and went on critically watching his armourer beating a sword into shape. He was giving only the fringes of his mind to the abbot’s pressing invitation, until Cadfael nudged him into sharp alertness by adding: “It has to do with the body we found in the Potter’s Field. You’ll find the case is changed.”
That brought Hugh’s head round sharply enough. “How changed?”
“Come and hear it from the lad who changed it. It seems young Sulien Blount brought more than bad news back from the Fens with him. The abbot wants to hear him tell it again to you. If there’s a thread of significance in it he’s missed, he’s certain you’ll find it, and you can put your heads together afterwards, for it looks as if one road is closed to you. Get to horse and let’s be off.”
But on the way back through the town and over the bridge into the Foregate he did impart one preliminary piece of news, by way of introduction to what was to follow. “Brother Sulien, it seems, has made up his mind to return to the world. You were right in your judgement, he was never suited to be a monk. He has come to the same conclusion, without wasting too much of his youth.”
“And Radulfus agrees with him?” wondered Hugh.
“I think he was ahead of him. A good boy, and he did try his best, but he says himself he came into the Order for the wrong reasons. He’ll go back to the life he was meant for, now. You may have him in your garrison before all’s done, for if he’s quitting one vocation he’ll need another. He’s not the lad to lie idle on his brother’s lands.”
“All the more,” said Hugh, “as Eudo is not long married, so in a year or two there may be sons. No place there for a younger brother, with the line secured. I might do worse. He looks a likely youngster. Well made, and a good long reach, and he always shaped well on a horse.”
“His mother will be glad to have him back, surely,” Cadfael reflected. “She has small joy in her life, from what you told me; a son come home may do much for her.”
The likely youngster was still closeted with the abbot when Hugh entered the parlour with Cadfael at his heels. The two seemed to be very easy together, but for a slight sense of tension in the way Sulien sat, very erect and braced, his shoulders flattened against the panelling of the wall. His part here was still only half done; he waited, alert and wide-eyed, to complete it.
“Sulien here,” said the abbot, “has something of importance to tell you, I thought best you should hear it directly from him, for you may have questions which have not occurred to me.”
“That I doubt,” said Hugh, seating himself where he could have the young man clear in the light from the window. It was a little past noon, and the brightest hour of an overcast day. “It was good of you to send for me so quickly. For I gather this has to do with the matter of the dead woman. Cadfael has said nothing beyond that. I am listening, Sulien. What is it you have to tell?”
Sulien told his story over again, more briefly than before, but in much the same words where the facts were concerned. There were no discrepancies, but neither was it phrased so exactly to pattern as to seem studied. He had a warm, brisk way with him, and words came readily. When it was done he sat back again with a sharp sigh, and ended: “So there can be no suspicion now against Brother Ruald. When did he ever have ado with any other
woman but Generys? And Generys is alive and well. Whoever it is you have found, it cannot be she.”
Hugh had the ring in his palm, the scored initials clear in the light. He sat looking down at it with a thoughtful frown. “It was your abbot commended you to take shelter with this silversmith?”
“It was. He was known for a good friend to the Benedictines of Ramsey.”
“And his name? And where does his shop lie in the town?”
“His name is John Hinde, and the shop is in Priestgate, not far from the minster.” The answers came readily, even eagerly.
“Well, Sulien, it seems you have delivered Ruald from all concern with this mystery and death, and robbed me of one suspect, if ever the man really became suspect in earnest. He was never a very likely malefactor, to tell the truth, but men are men—even monks are men—and there are very few of us who could not kill, given the occasion, the need, the anger and the solitude. It was possible! I am not sorry to see it demolished. It seems we must look elsewhere for a woman lost. And has Ruald yet been told of this?” he asked, looking up at the abbot.
“Not yet.”
“Send for him now,” said Hugh.
“Brother,” said the abbot, turning to Cadfael, “will you find Ruald and ask him to come?”
Cadfael went on his errand with a thoughtful mind. For Hugh this deliverance meant a setback to the beginning, and a distraction from the king’s affairs at a time when he would much have preferred to be able to concentrate upon them. No doubt he had been pursuing a search for any other possible identities for the dead woman, but there was no denying that the vanished Generys was the most obvious possibility. But now with this unexpected check, at least the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul could rest the more tranquilly. As for Ruald himself, he would be glad and grateful for the woman’s sake rather than his own. The wholeness of his entranced peace, so far in excess of what most fallible human brothers could achieve, was a perpetual marvel. For him whatever God decreed and did, for him or to him, even to his grief and humiliation, even to his life, was done well. Martyrdom would not have changed his mind.