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.
“What manner of tune,” she demanded, “for me? If I’m what you want, very well, here I am, what’s your will with me? I suppose I still have lands of my own, worth securing? Do you mean to stand on your rights, and marry me for them? Even if my father is dispossessed, the king might let my lands and me go to one of his new captains! Am I worth that much to you? Or is it just a matter of buying Stephen’s favour, by giving me to him as bait to lure better men back into his power?”
“Neither,” said Beringar placidly. He was eyeing her braced shoulders and roused, contemptuous face with decided appreciation. “I admit, my dear, that I never felt so tempted to marry you before — you’re greatly improved from the fat little girl I remember. But to judge by your face, you’d as soon marry the devil himself, and I have other plans, and so, I fancy, have you. No, provided everyone here acts like a sensible creature, we need not quarrel. And if it needs saying for your own comfort, Godith, I have no intention of setting the hounds on your champion’s trail, either. Why should I bear malice against an honest opponent? Especially now I’m sure he finds favour in your eyes.”
He was laughing at her, and she knew it, and took warning. It was not even malicious laughter, though she found it an offence. It was triumphant, but it was also light,
teasing, almost affectionate. She drew back a step; she even cast one appealing glance at Brother Cadfael, but he was sitting slumped and apparently apathetic, his eyes on the ground. She looked up again, and more attentively, at Hugh Beringar, whose black eyes dwelt upon her with dispassionate admiration.
“I do believe,” she said slowly, wondering, “that you mean it.”
“Try me! You came here to find horses for your journey. There they are! You may mount and ride as soon as you please, you and the young squire here. No one will follow you. No one else knows you’re here, only I and my men. But you’ll ride the faster and safer if you lighten your loads of all but the necessaries of life,” said Beringar sweetly. “That bundle Brother Cadfael is so negligently sitting on, as if he thought he’d found a convenient stone — that I’ll keep, by way of a memento of you, my sweet Godith, when you’re gone.”
Godith had just enough self-control not to look again at Brother Cadfael when she heard this. She had enough to do keeping command of her own face, not to betray the lightning-stroke of understanding, and triumph, and laughter, and so, she knew, had Torold, a few paces behind her, and equally dazzled and enlightened. So that was why they had slung the saddlebags on the tree by the ford, a mile to the west, a mile on their way into Wales. This prize here they could surrender with joyful hearts, but never a glimmer of joy must show through to threaten the success. And now it lay with her to perfect the coup, and Brother Cadfael was leaving it to her. It was the greatest test she had ever faced, and it was vital to her self-esteem for ever. For this man fronting her was more than she had thought him, and suddenly it seemed that giving him up was almost as generous a gesture as this gesture of his, turning her loose to her happiness with another man and another cause, only distraining the small matter of gold for his pains. For two fine horses, and a free run into Wales! And a kind of blessing, too, secular but valued.
“You mean that,” she said, not questioning, stating. “We may go!”
“And quickly, if I dare advise. The night is not old yet, but it matures fast. And you have some way to go.”
“I have mistaken you,” she said magnanimously. “I never knew you. You had a right to try for this prize. I hope you understand that we had also a right to fight for it. In a fair win and a fair defeat there should be no heartburning. Agreed?”
“Agreed!” he said delightedly. “You are an opponent after my own heart, and I think your young squire had better take you hence, before I change my mind. As long as you leave the baggage…”
“No help for it, it’s yours,” said Brother Cadfael, rising reluctantly from his seat on guard. “You won it fairly, what else can I say?”
Beringar surveyed without disquiet the mound of sacking presented to view. He knew very well the shape of the hump Cadfael had carried here from Severn, he had no misgivings.
“Go, then, and good speed! You have some hours of darkness yet.” And for the first time he looked at Torold, and took his time about studying him, for Torold had held his peace and let her have her head in circumstances he could not be expected to understand, and with admirable self-restraint. “I ask your pardon, I don’t know your name.”
“My name is Torold Blund, a squire of FitzAlan’s.”
“I’m sorry that we never knew each other. But not sorry that we never had ado in arms, I fear I should have met my overmatch.” But he was very sunny about it, having got his way, and he was not really much in awe of Torold’s longer reach, and greater height. “You take good care of your treasure, Torold, I’ll take care of mine.”
Sobered and still, watching him with great eyes that still questioned, Godith said: “Kiss me and wish me well! As I do you!”
“With all my heart!” said Beringar, and turned her face up between his hands, and kissed her soundly. The kiss lasted long, perhaps to provoke Torold, but Torold watched and was not dismayed. These could have been brother and sister saying a fond but untroubled farewell. “Now mount, and good speed!”
She went first to Brother Cadfael, and asked his kiss also, with a frantic quiver in her voice and her face that no one else saw or heard, and that might have been of threatened tears, or of almost uncontrollable laughter, or of both together. The thanks she said to him and to the lay brothers were necessarily brief, being hampered by the same wild mixture of emotions. She had to escape quickly, before she betrayed herself. Torold went to hold her stirrup, but Brother Anselm hoisted her between his hands and set her lightly in the saddle. The stirrups were a little long for her, he bent to shorten them to her comfort, and then she saw him look up furtively and flash her a grin, and she knew that he, too, had fathomed what was going on, and shared her secret laughter. If he and his comrade had been let into the whole plot from the beginning, they might not have played their parts so convincingly; but they were very quick to pick up all the undercurrents.
Torold mounted Beringar’s roan, and looked down from the saddle at the whole group within the stockade. The archers had unstrung their bows, and stood by looking on with idle interest and some amusement, while the third man opened the gate wide to let the travellers pass.
“Brother Cadfael, everything I owe to you. I shall not forget.”
“If there’s anything owing,” said Cadfael comfortably, “you can repay it to Godith. And see you mind your ways with her until you bring her safe to her father,” he added sternly. “She’s in your care as a sacred charge, beware of taking any advantage.”
Torold’s smile flashed out brilliantly for an instant, and was gone; and the next moment so was Torold himself, and Godith after him, trotting out briskly through the open gate into the luminosity of the clearing, and thence into the shadowy spaces between the trees. They had but a little way to go to the wider path, and the ford of the brook, where the saddlebags waited. Cadfael stood listening to the soft thudding of hooves in the turf, and the occasional rustling of leafy branches, until all sounds melted into the night’s silence. When he stirred out of his attentive stillness, it was to find that every other soul there had been listening just as intently. They looked at one another, and for a moment had nothing to say.