“I swear to God,” said Adam slowly, “that when I parted from my lady at her wish, I left her whole and well, and I pray she is now, wherever she may be.”
“You knew, did you not, what valuables she carried with her? Was that enough to tempt you? Did you, I ask you now in due form, did you rob your mistress and do her violence when she was left alone with you, and no witness by?”
Fidelis laid Humilis gently back against his pillows, and stood up tall and straight beside him. The movement drew Adam’s gaze, and for a moment held it. He said loudly and clearly: “So far from that, I would have died for her then, and so I would, gladly, now, rather than she should suffer even one moment’s grief.”
“Very well!” said Hugh shortly. “That’s your plea. But I must and will keep you in hold until I know more. For I will know more, Adam, before I let go of this knot.” He went to the door, where his sergeants waited for their orders, and called them in. “Take this man and lodge him in the castle. Securely!”
Adam went out between them without a word of surprise or protest. He had looked for nothing else, events had hedged him in too closely not to lock the door on him now. It seemed that he was not greatly discomforted or alarmed, either, though he was a stout, practised man who would not betray his thoughts. He did cast one look back from the doorway, a look that embraced them all, but said nothing and conveyed nothing to Hugh, and little enough to Cadfael. A mere spark, too small as yet to cast any light.
Chapter Nine
BROTHER HUMILIS WATCHED THE DEPARTURE OF PRISONER AND GUARDS with a long, unwavering stare, and when they had vanished he sank back on his bed with a deep sigh, and lay gazing up into the low stone vault over him.
“We’ve tired you out,” said Hugh. “We’ll leave you now to rest.”
“No, wait!” There was a fine dew of sweat breaking on his high forehead. Fidelis leaned and wiped it away, and a preoccupied smile flashed up at him for a moment, and lingered to darken into a frown.
“Son, go out from here, take the sun and the air, you spend too much time caring for me, and you see I am in need of nothing now. It is not right that you should make me your only work here. In a little while I shall sleep.” It was not clear, from the serenity of his voice, weak though it was, whether he spoke of a mere restful slumber on a hot afternoon, or the last sleep of the body at the awakening of the soul. He laid his hand for a moment on the young man’s hand, in the most delicate touch possible, austerely short of a caress. “Yes, go, I wish it. Finish my work for me, your touch is steadier than mine, and the detail-too fine for me now.”
Fidelis looked down at him with a composed face, looked up briefly at the two who watched, and again lowered submissively those clear grey eyes that rang so striking a contrast with the curling bronze ring of his tonsure, He went as he was bidden, perhaps gladly, certainly with a free and rapid step.
“Nicholas never stopped to tell me,” said Humilis, when silence had closed over the last light footstep, “what these valuables were, that my affianced wife took with her. Were they so distinctive as to be recognisable, should they ever be traced?”
“I doubt if there were any two such,” said Hugh. “Gold and silversmiths generally make to their own designs, even when they aim at pairs I wonder if they ever match exactly. These were singular enough. Once known, known for all time.”
“May I know what they were? She had coined money, I understand-that is at the service of whoever takes it. But the rest?”
Hugh, whose memory for words was exact as a mirror, willingly described them: “A pair of candlesticks of silver, made in the form of tall sconces entwined with the vine, with snuffers attached by silver chains, also ornamented with grapeleaves. A standing cross a man’s hand-length in height, on a silver pedestal of three steps, and studded with semi-precious stones of yellow pebble, amethyst and agate, together with a similar cross of the same metal and stones, a little finger’s length, on a thin silver neck-chain for a priest’s wear. Also some pieces of jewellery, a necklet of polished stones from the hills above Pontesbury, a bracelet of silver engraved with tendrils of vetch, and a curious ring of silver set with enamels all round, in the form of yellow and blue flowers. That’s the tally. They must surely all have left this shire. They’ll be found, if ever found at all, somewhere in the south, where they and she vanished.”
Humilis lay quiet, his eyelids closed, his lips moving soundlessly on the details of these chattels. “A very small fortune,” he said in a whisper. “But not small to some poor wretched souls. Do you truly believe she may have died for these few things?”
“Men, and women too,” said Hugh starkly, “have died for very much less.”
“Yes, true! A small cross,” said Humilis, lips moving again upon the recollected phrases,”the length of a little finger, set with yellow stones, and green agate and amethyst… Fellow to an altar cross of the same, but made for wearing. Yes, a man would know that again.”
The faint dew of weakness was budding again on his forehead, a great drop ran down into the folds of a closed eyelid. Cadfael wiped the corroding drops away, and frowned Hugh before him out at the door.
“I shall sleep…” said Humilis, and faintly and fleetingly smiled.
In the large room across the stone passage, where a dozen beds lay spaced in two rows, either side an open corridor, Brother Edmund and another brother, his back turned and his strong, erect figure unidentifiable from behind, were lifting a cot and the lay brother in it, to move them a short way along the wall, and make room for a new pallet and a new patient. The helper set down his end of the bed as Cadfael and Hugh passed by the open doorway. He straightened and turned, brushing his hands together to rub out the dents left by the weight, and showed them the dark, level brows and burning eyes of Brother Urien. In unaccustomed content with himself and the walls and persons about him, he wore a slight, taut smile that curled his lips but never damped the smouldering of his eyes. He watched them pass as if a shadow had passed, and crossed their tracks as soon as they were by, to stack an armful of washed linen in the press that stood in the passage.
In the infirmary, by custom, all doors stood open, so that a call for help might safely reach attentive ears, and help come hurrying. Voices, the chant of the office, even bird song, circulated freely. Only in times of storm or heavy rain or winter cold were doors closed and shutters secured, never as now, in the heat of summer.
“The man is lying,” said Hugh, pacing beside Cadfael in the great court, and worrying at the texture of truth and deceit. “But also half the time he is telling the truth, and which half holds the lies? Tell me that!”
“If I could,” said Cadfael mildly, “I should be more than mortal.”
“He had her trust, he knew what she was worth, he rode alone with her the last few miles, and no trace of her since,” said Hugh, gnawing the evidence savagely. “And yet, on the road there, he asked me time and again if I knew whether she lived or was dead, and I would have sworn he was honest in asking. But now see him! Halfway through that business, he stands there unmoved as a rock, and never makes protest against being held, nor shows any further trouble over her fate. What’s to be made of him?”
“Or of any of this,” agreed Cadfael ruefully. “I’m of your mind, he is certainly lying. He knows what he has not declared. Yet if he has possessed himself of all she had, what has he done with it? It may not be great riches, but it would be worth more to a man than the low pay and danger and sweat of a simple soldier, yet here is he manifestly a simple soldier still, and nothing more.”