“It is possible,” agreed Cadfael gravely; for all things are possible, and men do turn their coats.
“And to be cut off by some forest thief for what he carried — it happens! I wish I could say our roads are safe, out in this new anarchy, God knows, I dare not claim it. Well, you may pursue such enquiries as can be made into this matter, if that’s your wish, and call upon my sheriff to do justice if the murderer can be found. He knows my will. I do not like being made use of to shield so mean a crime.”
And that was truth, and the heart of the matter for him, and perhaps it would not have changed his attitude, thought Cadfael, even if he had known that Faintree was FitzAlan’s squire and courier, even if it were proved, as so far it certainly was not, that he was on FitzAlan’s rebellious business when he died. By all the signs, there would be plenty of killing in Stephen’s realm in the near future, and he would not lose his sleep over most of it, but to have a killer-by-stealth creeping for cover into his shadow, that he would take as a deadly insult to himself, and avenge accordingly. Energy and lethargy, generosity and spite, shrewd action and incomprehensible inaction, would always alternate and startle in King Stephen. But somewhere within that tall, comely, simple-minded person there was a gram of nobility hidden.
“I accept and value your Grace’s support,” said Brother Cadfael truthfully, “and I will do my best to see justice done. A man cannot lay down and abandon the duty God has placed in his hands. Of this young man I know only his name, and the appearance of his person, which is open and innocent, and that he was accused of no crime, and no man has complained of wrong by him, and he is dead unjustly. I think this as unpleasing to your Grace as ever it can be to me. If I can right it, so I will.”
At the sign of the boar’s head in the butcher’s row he was received with the common wary civility any citizen would show to a monk of the abbey. Petronilla, rounded and comfortable and grey, bade him in and would have offered all the small attentions that provide a wall between suspicious people, if he had not at once given her the worn and much-used leaf of vellum on which Godith had, somewhat cautiously and laboriously, inscribed her trust in the messenger, and her name. Petronilla peered and flushed with pleasure, and looked up at this elderly, solid, homely brown monk through blissful tears.
“The lamb, she’s managing well, then, my girl? And you taking good care of her! Here she says it, I know that scrawl, I learned to write with her. I had her almost from birth, the darling, and she the only one, more’s the pity, she should have had brothers and sisters. It was why I wanted to do everything with her, even the letters, to be by her whatever she needed. Sit down, brother, sit down and tell me of her, if she’s well, if she needs anything I can send her by you. Oh, and, brother, how are we to get her safely away? Can she stay with you, if it runs to weeks?”
When Cadfael could wedge a word or two into the flow he told her how her nurseling was faring, and how he would see to it that she continued to fare. It had not occurred to him until then what a way the girl had of taking hold of hearts, without at all designing it. By the time Edric Flesher came in from a cautious skirmish through the town, to see how the land lay, Cadfael was firmly established in Petronilla’s favour, and vouched for as a friend to be trusted.
Edric settled his solid bulk into a broad chair, and said with a gusty breath of cautious relief: “Tomorrow I’ll open the shop. We’re fortunate! Ask me, he rues the vengeance he took for those he failed to capture. He’s called off all pillage here, and for once he’s enforcing it. If only his claims were just, and he had more spine in his body, I think I’d be for him. And to look like a hero, and be none, that’s hard on a man.” He gathered his great legs under him, and looked at his wife, and then, longer, at Cadfael. “She says you have the girl’s good word, and that’s enough. Name your need, and if we have it, it’s yours.”
“For the girl,” said Cadfael briskly, “I will keep her safe as long as need be, and when the right chance offers, I’ll get her away to where she should be. For my need, yes, there you may help me. We have in the abbey church, and we shall bury there tomorrow, a young man you may know, murdered on the night after the castle fell, the night the prisoners were hanged and thrown into the ditch. But he was killed elsewhere, and thrown among the rest to have him away into the ground unquestioned. I can tell you how he died, and when. I cannot tell you where, or why, or who did this thing. But Godith tells me that his name is Nicholas Faintree, and he was a squire of FitzAlan.”
All this he let fall between them in so many words, and heard and felt their silence. Certainly there were things they knew, and equally certainly this death they had not known, and it struck at them like a mortal blow.
“One more thing I may tell you,” he said. “I intend to have the truth out into the open concerning this thing, and see him avenged. And more, I have the king’s word to pursue the murderer. He likes the deed no more than I like it.”
After a long moment Edric asked: “There was only one, dead after this fashion? No second?”
“Should there have been? Is not one enough?”
“There were two,” said Edric harshly. “Two who set out together upon the same errand. How did this death come to light? It seems you are the only man who knows.”
Brother Cadfael sat back and told them all, without haste. If he had missed Vespers, so be it. He valued and respected his duties, but if they clashed, he knew which way he must go. Godith would not stir from her safe solitude without him, not until her evening schooling.
“Now,” he said, “you had better tell me. I have Godith to protect, and Faintree to avenge, and I mean to do both as best I can.”
The two of them exchanged glances, and understood each other. It was the man who took up the tale.
“A week before the castle and the town fell, with FitzAlan’s family already away, and our plans made to place the girl with your abbey in hiding, FitzAlan also took thought for the end, if he died. He never ran until they broke in at the gates, you know that? By the skin of his teeth he got away, swam the river with Adeney at his shoulder, and got clear. God be thanked! But the day before the end he made provision for whether he lived or died. His whole treasury had been left with us here, he wanted it to reach the empress if he were slain. That day we moved it out into Frankwell, to a garden I hold there, so that there need be no bridge to pass if we had to convey it away at short notice. And we fixed a signal. If any of his party came with a certain token — a trifle it was, a drawing, but private to us who knew — they should be shown where the treasury was, provided with horses, all they might need, and put over there to pick up the valuables and make their break by night.”
“And so it was done?” said Cadfael.
“On the morning of the fall. It came so early, and in such force, we’d left it all but too late. Two of them came. We sent them over the bridge to wait for night. What could they have done by daylight?”
“Tell me more. What time did these two come to you that morning, what had they to say, how did they get their orders? How many may have known what was toward? How many would have known the way they would take? When did you last see them both alive?”
“They came just at dawn. We could hear the din by then, the assault had begun. They had the parchment leaf that was the signal, the head of a saint drawn in ink. They said there had been a council the night before, and FitzAlan had said then he would have them go the following day, whatever happened and whether he lived or no, get the treasury away safe to the empress, for her use in defending her right.”
“Then all who were at that council would know those two would be on the road the following night, as soon as it was dark enough. Would they also know the road? Did they know where the treasury was hidden?”