Vespers at this time of year shone with filtered summer light, that showed Rhun’s flaxen beauty in crystalline pallor, and flashed across into the ranks of the brothers to burn in the sullen, smouldering darkness of Brother Urien, and the dilated brilliance of his black eyes, and cool into discreet shade where Brother Fidelis stood withdrawn into the shadows of the wall, alert at his lord’s elbow, with no eyes and no thought for what went on around him, as he had no voice to join in the chant. His shadowed eyes looked nowhere but at Humilis, his slight body stood braced to receive and support at any moment the even frailer form that stood lance-straight beside him.
Well, worship has its own priorities, and a duty once assumed is a duty to the end. God and Saint Benedict would understand and respect that.
Cadfael, whose mind should also have been on higher things, found himself thinking: he dwindles before our eyes. It will be even sooner than I had thought. There is nothing that can prevent, or even greatly delay it now.
Chapter Eight
IF ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER HAD NOT BEEN TRAPPED AND CAPTURED in the waters of the river Test, and the Empress Maud in headlong flight with the remnant of her army into Gloucester, by way of Ludgershall and Devizes, the hunt for Adam Heriet might have gone on for a much longer time. But the freezing chill of stalemate between the two armies, each with a king in check, had loosed many a serving man, bored with inaction and glad of a change, to stretch his legs and take his leisure elsewhere, while the lull lasted and the politicians argued and bargained. And among them an ageing, experienced practitioner of sword and bow, among the Earl of Worcester’s forces.
Hugh was a man of the northern part of the shire himself, but from the Welsh border; and the manors to the northeast, dwindling into the plain of Cheshire, were less familiar to him and less congenial. Over in the tamer country of the hundred of Hodnet the soil was fat and well-farmed, and the gleaned grain-fields full of plump, contented cattle at graze, at once making good use of what aftermath there was in a dry season, and leaving their droppings to feed the following year’s tilth. There were abbey tenants here and there in these parts, and abbey stock turned into the fields now the crop was reaped. Their treading and manuring of the ground was almost as valuable as their fleeces.
The manor of Harpecote lay in open plain, with a small coppiced woodland on the windward side, and a low ridge of common land to the south. The house was small and of timber, but the fields were extensive, and the barns and byres that clung within the boundary fence were well-kept, and probably well-filled. Cruce’s steward came out into the yard to greet the sheriff and his two sergeants, and direct them to the homestead of Edric Heriet.
It was one of the more substantial cottages of the hamlet, with a kitchen-garden before it and a small orchard behind, where a tousled girl with kilted skirts was hanging out washing on the hedge. Hens ran in the orchard grass, and a she-goat was tethered to graze there. A free man, this Edric was said to be, farming a yardland as a rent-paying tenant of his lord, a dwindling phenomenon in a country where a tiller of the soil was increasingly tied to it by customary services. These Heriets must be good husbandmen and hard workers to continue to hold their land and make it provide them a living. Such families could make good use of younger sons, needing all the hands they could muster. Adam was clearly the self-willed stray who had gone to serve for pay, and cultivated the skills of arms and forestry and hunting instead of the land.
A big, tow-headed, shaggy fellow in a frayed leather coat came ducking out of the low byre as Hugh and his officers halted at the gate. He stared, stiffening, and stood fronting them with a wary face, recognising authority though he did not know the man who wore it.
“You’re wanting something here, masters?” Civil but not servile, he eyed them narrowly, and straddled his own gateway like a man on guard.
Hugh gave him good-day with the special amiability he used towards uneasy poor men bitterly aware of their disadvantages. “You’ll be Edric Heriet, I’m told. We’re looking for word of where to find one Adam of that name, who should be your uncle. And you’re all his kin that we know of, and may be able to tell us where to seek him. And that’s the whole of it, friend.”
The big young man, surely no more than thirty years old, and most likely husband to the dishevelled but comely girl in the orchard, and father to the baby that was howling somewhere within the croft, shifted uncertainly from foot to foot, made up his mind, and stood squarely, his face inclined to clear.
“I’m Edric Heriet. What is it you want with uncle of mine? What has he done?”
Hugh was not displeased with that. There might be small warmth of kinship between them, but this one was not going to open his mouth until he knew what was in the wind. Blood thickened at the hint of offence and danger.
“To the best of my knowledge, nothing amiss. But we need to have out of him as witness what he knows about a matter he had a hand in some years ago, sent by his lord on an errand from Lai. I know he is-or was-in the service of the Earl of Worcester since then, which is why he may be hard to find, the times being what they are. If you’ve had word from him, or can tell us where to look for him, we’ll be thankful to you.”
He was curious now, though still uncertain. “I have but one uncle, and Adam he’s called. Yes, he was huntsman at Lai, and I did hear from my father that he went into arms for his lord’s overlord, though I never knew who that might be. But as long as I recall, he never came near us here. I never remember him but from when I was a child shooing the birds off the ploughland. They never got on well, those brothers. Sorry I am, my lord,” he said, and though it was doubtful if he felt much sorrow, it was plain he spoke truth as to his ignorance. “I have no notion where he may be now, nor where he’s been these several years.”
Hugh accepted that, perforce, and considered a moment.
“Two brothers, were they? And no more? Never a sister between them? No tie to fetch him back into the shire?”
“There’s an aunt I have, sir, only the one. It was a thin family, ours, my father was hard put to it to work the land after his brother left, until I grew up, and two younger brothers after me. We do well enough now between us. Aunt Elfrid was the youngest of the three, she married a cooper, bastard Norman he was, a little dark fellow from Brigge, called Walter.” He looked up, unaware of indiscretion, at the little dark Norman lord on the tall, raw-boned dapple-grey horse, and wondered at Hugh’s blazing smile. “They’re settled in Brigge, I think she has childer. She might know. They were nearer.”
“And no other beside?”
“No, my lord, that was all of them. I think,” he said, hesitant but softening, “he was godfather to her first. He might take that to heart.”
“So he might,” said Hugh mildly, thinking of his own masterful heir, to whom Cadfael stood godfather, “so he very well might. I’m obliged to you, friend. At least we’ll ask there.” He wheeled his horse, without haste, to the homeward way. “A good harvest to you!” he said over his shoulder, smiling, and chirruped to the grey and was off, with his sergeants at his heels.
Walter the cooper had a shop in the hilltop town of Brigge, in a narrow alley no great way from the shadow of the castle walls. His booth was a narrow-fronted cave that drove deep within, and backed on an open, well-lit yard smelling of cut timber, and stacked with his finished and half-finished barrels, butts and pails, and the tools and materials of his craft. Over the low wall the ground fell away by steep, grassy terraces to where the Severn coiled, almost as it coiled at Shrewsbury, close about the foot of the town, broad and placid now at low summer water, with sandy shoals breaking its surface, but ready to wake and rage if sudden rains should come.