One Corpse Too Many bc-2

by Ellis Peters

  “The third house of the three on our side,” whispered Torold, glowing even in the dark. “I know it. I’ll go!” The warmth of his gratitude and pleasure filled the hut, and set the herbal fragrances stirring headily, because it would be he, and no other, who would come to fetch Godith away, more wildly and wonderfully than in any mere runaway marriage. “And you’ll be on the abbey bank, when we come down to the brook?”

  “I will so, and go nowhere without me! And now lie down for an hour, or less, and leave the latch in case you sleep too soundly, and I’ll come for you when all’s quiet.”

  Brother Cadfael’s plans worked smoothly. The day having been so rough, all men were glad to close the shutters, put out the lights, barricade themselves in from the night, and sleep. Torold was awake and waiting before Cadfael came for him. Through the gardens, through the small court between guest hall and abbot’s lodging, into the cloister, and in through the south door of the church, they went together in such a silence and stillness as belonged neither to night nor day, only to this withdrawn world between services. They never exchanged a word until they were in the church, shoulder to shoulder under the great tower and pressed against the west door. Cadfael eased the huge door ajar, and listened. Peering carefully, he could see the abbey gates, closed and dark, but the wicket gallantly open. it made only a very small lancet of twilight in the night.

  “All’s still. Go now! I’ll be at the brook.”

  The boy slid through the narrow opening, and swung lightly away from the door into the middle of the roadway, as though coming from the lanes about the horse-fair. Cadfael closed the door inch by inch in silence. Without haste he withdrew as he had come, and strolled under the solitary starlight through the garden and down the field, bearing to the right along the bank of the brook until he could go no further. Then he sat down in the grass and vetches and mothpasture of the bank to wait. The August night was warm and still, just enough breeze to rustle the bushes now and then, and make the trees sigh, and cover with slight sounds the slighter sounds made by careful and experienced men. Not that they would be followed tonight. No need! The one who might have been following was already in position at the end of the journey, and waiting for them.

  Constance opened the door of the house, and was startled and silenced by the apparition of this young, secular person, instead of the monk she had expected. But Godith was there, intent and burning with impatience at her shoulder, and flew past her with a brief, wordless soundless cry, into his arms and on to his heart. She was Godric again, though for him she would never now be anyone but Godith, whom he had never yet seen in her own proper person. She clung to him, and laughed, and wept, hugged, reviled, threatened him all in a breath, felt tenderly at his swathed shoulder, demanded explanations and cancelled all her demands, finally lifted to him an assuaged face in sudden silence, and waited to be kissed. Stunned and enlightened, Torold kissed her.

  “You must be Torold,” said Aline from the background, so serenely that she must have known rather more about their relationship, by now, than he knew himself. “Close the door, Constance, all’s well.” She looked him over, with eyes alert to a young man’s qualities by reason of certain recent experiences of her own, and thought well of him. “I knew Brother Cadfael would send. She wanted to go back as she came this morning, but I said no. He said he would come. I didn’t know he would be sending you. But Cadfael’s messenger is very welcome.”

  “She has told you about me?” enquired Torold, a little flushed at the thought.

  “Nothing but what I needed to know. She is discretion itself, and so am I,” said AIine demurely. She, too, was flushed and glittering, but with excitement and enjoyment of her own plotting, half-regretful that her share must end here. “If Brother Cadfael is waiting, we mustn’t lose time. The farther you get by daybreak, the better. Here is the bundle Godith brought. Wait here within, until I see if everything is quiet below in the garden.”

  She slipped away into the soft darkness, and stood by the edge of the pond, listening intently. She was sure they had left no guard behind, for why should they, when they had searched everywhere, and taken all they had been sent to take? Yet there might still be someone stirring in the houses opposite. But all were in darkness, she thought even the shutters were closed, in spite of the warm night, for fear some solitary Fleming should return to help himself to what he could find, under cover of the day’s official looting. Even the willow leaves hung motionless here, sheltered from the faint breeze that stirred the grasses along the river bank.

  “Come!” she whispered, opening the door narrowly. “All’s quiet. Follow where I step, the slope is rough.” She had even thought to change her pale gown for a dark one since afternoon, to be shadowy among the shadows. Torold hoisted FitzAlan’s treasury in its sacking shroud by the rope that secured it, and put off Godith firmly when she would have reached to share the weight with him. Surprisingly, she yielded meekly, and went before him very quickly and quietly to where the boat rode on its short mooring, half-concealed by the stooping willow branches. Aline lay down at the edge of the bank, and leaned to draw the boat in and hold it steady, for there was a two-foot hollow of undercut soil between them and the water. Very quickly and happily this hitherto cloistered and dutiful daughter was learning to be mistress of her own decisions and exploiter of her own powers.

  Godith slid down into the boat, and lent both arms to steady the sacking bundle down between the thwarts. The boat was meant for only two people at most, and settled low in the water when Torold also was aboard, but it was buoyant and sturdy, and would get them as far as they needed to go, as it had done once before.

  Godith leaned and embraced Aline, who was still on her knees at the edge of the grass. It was too late for spoken thanks then, but Torold kissed the small, well-tended hand held out to him, and then she loosed the end of the mooring-rope, and tossed it aboard, and the boat slipped out softly from under the bank and drifted across in the circling eddies of the outflow, back towards the brook from which the pool had been drawn. The spill from the head-race of the mill caught them and brisked their pace like a gentle push, and Torold sat with paddle idle, and let the silent flow take them out from the pond. When Godith looked back, all she could see was the shape of the willow, and the unlighted house beyond.

  Brother Cadfael rose from among the long grasses as Torold paddled the boat across to the abbey shore. “Well done!” he said in a whisper. “And no trouble? No one stirring?”

  “No trouble. Now you’re the guide.”

  Cadfael rocked the boat thoughtfully with one hand. “Put Godith and the load ashore opposite, and then fetch me. I may as well go dryshod.” And when they were all safely across to the other side of the brook, he hauled the boat out of the water into the grass, and Godith hurried to help him carry it into hiding in the nearest copse. Once in cover, they had leisure to draw breath and confer. The night was still and calm around them, and five minutes well spent here, as Cadfael said, might save them much labour thereafter.

  “We may speak, but softly. And since no other eyes, I hope, are to see this burden of ours until you’re well away to the west, I think we might with advantage open it and split the load again. The saddlebags will be far easier to sling on our shoulders than this single lump.”

  “I can carry one pair,” said Godith, eager at his elbow.

  “So you can, for a short spell, perhaps,” he said indulgently. He was busy disentangling the two pairs of linked bags from the sacks that had swathed them. They had straps comfortably broad for the shoulder, and the weights in them had been balanced in the first place for the horses. “I had thought we might save ourselves half a mile or so by making use of the river for the first part of the way,” he said, “but with three of us and only this hazel-shell we should founder. And it’s not so far we have to go, loaded — something over three miles, perhaps.”

  He shook one pair of bags into the most comfortable position over his shoulder, and Torold took the other p
air on his sound side. “I never carried goods to this value before in my life,” said Cadfael as he set off, “and now I’m not even to see what’s within.”

  “Bitter stuff to me,” said Torold at his back, “it cost Nick his life, and I’m to have no chance to avenge him.”

  “You give thought to your own life and bear your own burdens,” said Cadfael. “He will be avenged. Better you should look to the future, and leave Nick to me.”

  The ways by which he led his little convoy differed from those he had used in Beringar’s company. Instead of crossing the brook and making directly for the grange beyond Pulley, he bore more strongly to the west, so that by the time they were as far south as the grange they were also a good mile west of it, nearer to Wales, and in somewhat thicker forest.

  “How if we should be followed?” wondered Godith.

  “We shall not be followed.” He was so positive about it that she accepted the reassurance gladly, and asked nothing more. If Brother Cadfael said it, it was so. She had insisted on carrying Torold’s load for half a mile or so, but he had taken it back from her at the first sign of quickening breath or faltering step.

  A lace-work of sky showed paler between the branches ahead. They emerged cautiously into the edge of a broad forest ride that crossed their path on good turf at an oblique angle. Beyond it, their own track continued, a little more open to the night than up to this point.

  “Now pay good heed,” said Cadfael, halting them within cover, “for you have to find your way back without me to this spot. This ride that crosses us here is a fine, straight road the old Romans made. Eastward, here to our left, it would bring us to the Severn bridge at Atcham. Westward, to our right, it will take you two straight as an arrow for Pool and Wales, or if you find any obstacle on the way, you may bear further south at the end for the ford at Montgomery. Once you’re on this, you can ride fast enough, though in parts it may be steep. Now we cross it here, and have another half-mile to go to the ford of the brook. So pay attention to the way.”

  Here the path was clearly better used, horses could travel it without great difficulty. The ford, when they reached it, was wide and smooth. “And here,” said Cadfael, “we leave our loads. One tree among so many trees you might well lose, but one tree beside the only ford along the path, and you can’t lose it.”

  “Leave them?” wondered Torold. “Why, are we not going straight to where the horses are? You said yourself we should not be followed tonight.”

  “Not followed, no.” When you know where your quarry must come, and are sure of the night, you can be there waiting. “No, waste no more time, trust me and do as I say.” And he let down his own half of the burden, and looked about him, in the dimness to which by now their eyes were accustomed, for the best and safest concealment. In the thicket of bushes close to the ford, on their right, there was a gnarled old tree, one side of it dead, and its lowest branch deep in the cover of the bushes. Cadfael slung his saddlebags over it, and without another word Torold hoisted his own beside them, and drew back to assure himself that only those who had hidden here were likely ever to find. The full leafage covered all.

  “Good lad!” said Cadfael contentedly. “Now, from here we bear round to the east somewhat, and this path we’re on will join the more direct one I used before. For we must approach the grange from the right direction. It would never do for any curious person to suppose we’d been a mile nearer Wales.”

  Unburdened now, they drew together and went after him hand in hand, trusting as children. And now that they were drawing nearer to the actual possibility of flight, they had nothing at all to say, but clung to each other and believed that things would go right.

  Their path joined the direct one only some minutes’ walk from the small clearing where the stockade of the grange rose. The sky paled as the trees fell back. There was a small rush-light burning somewhere within the house, a tiny, broken gleam showed through the pales. All round them the night hung silent and placid.

  Brother Anselm opened to them, so readily that surely some aggrieved traveller from Shrewsbury must have brought word even here of the day’s upheaval, and alerted him to the possibility that anyone running from worse penalties might well take warning, and get out at once. He drew them within thankfully and in haste, and peered curiously at the two young fellows at Cadfael’s back, as he closed the gate.

  “I thought it! My thumbs pricked. I felt it must be tonight. Things grow very rough your way, so we’ve heard.”

  “Rough enough,” admitted Cadfael, sighing. “I’d wish any friend well out of it. And most of all these two. Children, these good brothers have cared for your trust, and have it here safe for you. Anselm, this is Adeney’s daughter, and this FitzAlan’s squire. Where is Louis?”

  “Saddling up,” said Brother Anselm, “the moment he saw who came. We had it in mind the whole day that you’d have to hurry things. I’ve put food together, in case you came. Here’s the scrip. It’s ill to ride too far empty. And a flask of wine here within.”

  “Good! And these few things I brought,” said Cadfael, emptying his own pouch. “They’re medicines. Godith knows how to use them.”

  Godith and Torold listened and marvelled. The boy said, almost tongue-tied with wondering gratitude: “I’ll go and help with the saddling.” He drew his hand from Godith’s and made for the stables, across the small untended court. This forest assart, unmanageable in such troubled times, would soon be forest again, these timber buildings, always modest enough, would moulder into the lush growth of successive summers. The Long Forest would swallow it without trace in three years, or four.

  “Brother Anselm,” said Godith, running an awed glance from head to foot of the giant, “I do thank you with all my heart, for both of us, for what you have done for us two — though I think it was really for Brother Cadfael here. He has been my master eight days now, and I understand. This and more I would do for him, if ever I might. I promise you Torold and I will never forget, and never debase what you’ve done for us.”

  “God love you, child,” said Brother Anselm, charmed and amused, “you talk like a holy book. What should a decent man do, when a young woman’s threatened, but see her safe out of her trouble? And her young man with her!”

  Brother Louis came from the stables leading the roan Beringar had ridden when first these two horses of his were brought here by night. Torold followed with the black. They shone active and ready in the faint light, excellently groomed and fed, and well rested.

  “And the baggage,” said Brother Anselm significantly. “That we have safe. For my own part I would have parted it into two, to balance it better on a beast, but I thought I had no right to open it, so it stays as you left it, in one. I should hoist it to the crupper with the lighter weight as rider, but as you think fit.”

  They were away, the pair of them, to haul out the sackbound bundle Cadfael had carried here some nights ago. It seemed there were some things they had not been told, just as there were things Torold and Godith had accepted without understanding. Anselm brought the burden from the house on his huge shoulders, and dumped it beside the saddled horses. “I brought thongs to buckle it to the saddle.” They had indeed given some thought to this, they had fitted loops of cord to the rope bindings, and were threading their thongs into these when a blade sliced down through the plaited cords that held the latch of the gate behind them, and a clear, assured voice ordered sharply:

  “Halt as you stand! Let no man move! Turn hither, all, and slowly, and keep your hands visible. For the lady’s sake!”

  Like men in a dream they turned as the voice commanded, staring with huge, wary eyes. The gate in the stockade stood wide open, lifted aside to the pales. In the open gateway stood Hugh Beringar, sword in hand; and over either shoulder leaned a bended long-bow, with a braced and competent eye and hand behind it; and both of them were aimed at Godith. The light was faint but steady. Those used to it here were well able to use it to shoot home.

  “Admirable!” said
Beringar approvingly. “You have understood me very well. Now stay as you are, and let no man move, while my third man closes the gates behind us.”

  Chapter Ten

  They had all reacted according to their natures. Brother Anselm looked round cautiously for his cudgel, but it was out of reach, Brother Louis kept both hands in sight, as ordered, but the right one very near the slit seam of his gown, beneath which he kept his dagger. Godith, first stunned into incredulous dismay, very quickly revived into furious anger, though only the set whiteness of her face and the glitter of her eyes betrayed it. Brother Cadfael, with what appeared to be shocked resignation, sat down upon the sacking bundle, so that his skirts hid it from sight if it had not already been noted and judged of importance. Torold, resisting the instinct to grip the hilt of Cadfael’s poniard at his belt, displayed empty hands, stared Beringar in the eye defiantly, and took two long, deliberate paces to place himself squarely between Godith and the two archers. Brother Cadfael admired, and smiled inwardly. Probably it had not occurred to the boy, in his devoted state, that there had been ample time for both arrows to find their target before his body intervened, had that been the intention.

  “A very touching gesture,” admitted Beringar generously, “but hardly effective. I doubt if the lady is any happier with the situation that way round. And since we’re all sensible beings here, there’s no need for pointless heroics. For that matter, Matthew here could put an arrow clean through the pair of you at this distance, which would benefit nobody, not even me. You may well accept that for the moment I am giving the orders and calling the tune.”

  And so he was. However his men had held their hands when they might have taken his order against any movement all too literally, it remained true that none of them had the slightest chance of making an effective attack upon him and changing the reckoning. There were yards of ground between, and no dagger is ever going to outreach an arrow. Torold stretched an arm behind him to draw Godith close, but she would not endure it. She pulled back sharply to free herself, and eluding the hand that would have detained her, strode forward defiantly to confront Hugh Beringar.