Master Thomas’s strongbox was gone.
Brother Cadfael had taken advantage of the early hours to put in an hour or two of work with Brother Mark in the herb-gardens, while he had no reason to anticipate any threat to Emma, for she was surely still asleep in the guest-hall with Constance, and out of reach of harm. The morning was clear and sunny, the mist just lifting from the river, shot through with oblique gold, and Mark sang cheerfully about his weeding, and listened attentively and serenely as Cadfael instructed him in all particulars of the day’s work.
“For I may have to leave all things in your hands. And so I can, safely enough, I know, if I should chance to be called away.”
“I’m well taught,” said Brother Mark, with his grave smile, behind which the small spark of mischief was visible only to Cadfael, who had first discovered and nurtured it. “I know what to stir and what to let well alone in the workshop.”
“I wish I could be as sure of my part outside it,” said Cadfael ruefully. “There are brews among us that need just as sure a touch, boy, and where to stir and where to let be is puzzling me more than a little. I’m walking a knife-edge, with disastrous falls on either side. I know my herbs. They have fixed properties, and follow sacred rules. Human creatures do not so. And I cannot even wish they did. I would not have one scruple of their complexity done away, it would be lamentable loss.”
It was time to go to Prime. Brother Mark stooped to rinse his hands in the butt of water they kept warming through the day, to be tempered for the herbs at the evening watering. “It was being with you made me know that I want to be a priest,” he said, speaking his mind as openly as always in Cadfael’s company.
“I had never the urge for it,” said Cadfael absently, his mind on other matters.
“I know. That was the one thing wanting. Shall we go?”
They were coming out from Prime, and the lay servants already mustering for their early Mass, when Roger Dod came trudging in at the gatehouse, out of breath, and with trouble plain to be read in his face.
“What, again something new?” sighed Cadfael, and set off to intercept him before he reached the guest-hall. Suddenly aware of this square, sturdy figure bearing down on him with obvious purpose, Roger checked, and turned an anxious face. His frown cleared a little when he recognised the same monk who had accompanied the deputy sheriff in the vain search for Master Thomas, on the eve of Saint Peter.
“Oh, it’s you, brother, that’s well! Is Hugh Beringar within? I must speak to him. We’re beset! Yesterday the barge, and now the booth, and God knows what’s yet to come, and what will become of us before ever we get away from this deadly place. My master’s books gone - money and box and all! What will Mistress Emma think? I’d rather have had my own head broke, if need be, than fail her so!”
“What’s this talk of broken heads?” asked Cadfael, alarmed. “Whose? Are you telling me there’ve been thieves ransacking your booth now?”
“In the night! And the strongbox gone, and Warin tied up hand and foot with a throatful of sacking, and nobody heard sound while they did it. We found him not half an hour ago …”
“Come!” said Cadfael, grasping him by the sleeve and setting off for the guest-hall at a furious pace. “We’ll find Hugh Beringar. Tell your tale once, and save breath!”
In Aline’s apartments the women were only just out of bed, and Hugh was sitting over an early meal in shirt and hose, shoeless, when Cadfael rapped at the door, and cautiously put his head in.
“Your pardon, Hugh, but there’s news. May we come in?”
Hugh took one look at him, recognised the end of his ease, and bade them in resignedly.
“Here’s one has a tale to tell,” said Cadfael. “He’s new come from the horse-fair.”
At sight of Roger, Emma came to her feet in astonishment and alarm, the soft, bemused bloom of sleep gone from her eyes, and the morning flush from her cheeks. Her black hair, not yet braided, swung in a glossy curtain about her shoulders, and her loose undergown was ungirdled, her feet bare. “Roger, what is it? What has happened now?”
“More theft and roguery, mistress, and God knows I can see no reason why all the rascals in the shire should pick on us for prey.” Roger heaved in deep breath, and launched headlong into his complaint. “This morning I go to the stall as usual, and find it all closed, and not a sound or a word from within for all my shouting and knocking, and then come some of the neighbours, wondering, and one sees that the inside bar has been hoisted with a knife - and a marvellous thin knife it must have been. And we go in and find Warin rolled up like baggage in his own cloak, and fast tied, and his mouth stuffed with sacking - a bag over his head, fit to choke him …”
“Oh, no!” breathed Emma in a horrified whisper, and pressed a fist hard against trembling lips. “Oh, poor Warin! He’s not … oh, not dead … ?”
Roger gave vent to a snort of contempt. “Not he! alive and fit as a flea, barring being stiff from the cords. How he could sleep so sound as not to hear the fumbling with the latch, nor even notice when the door was opened, there’s no guessing. But if he did hear, he took good care not to give the robbers any trouble. You know Warin’s no hero. He says he was only shook awake when the sack went over his head, and never saw face nor form, though he thinks there were two of them, for there was some whispering. But as like as not he heard them come, but chose not to, for fear they’d slip the knife in his ribs.”
Emma’s colour had warmed into rose again. She drew a deep breath of thankfulness. “But he’s safe? He’s taken no harm at all?” She caught Aline’s sympathetic eye, and laughed shakily with relief. “I know he is not brave. I’m glad he is not! Nor very clever nor very industrious, either, but I’ve known him since I was a little girl, he used to make toys for me, and willow whistles.
Thank God he is not harmed!”
“Not a graze! I wish,” said Roger, his eyes burning jealously upon her childish morning beauty, not yet adorned and needing no adornment, “I wish to God I’d stayed there to be watchman myself, they’d not have broken in there unscathed, and found everything handed over on a platter.”
“But then you might have been killed, Roger. I’m glad you were not there, you’d surely have put up a fight and come to harm. What, against two, and you unarmed?
Oh, no, I want no man hurt to protect my possessions.”
“What followed?” asked Hugh shortly, stamping his feet into his shoes and reaching for his coat. “You’ve left him there to mind the stall? Is he fit?”
“As you or me, my lord. I’ll send him to you to tell his own tale when I get back.”
“No need, I’m coming with you to view the place and the damage. Finish your tale. They’ll scarcely have left empty-handed. What’s gone with them?”
Roger turned devoted, humble, apologetic eyes upon Emma. “Sorrow the day, mistress, my master’s strongbox is gone with them!”
Brother Cadfael was watching Emma’s face just as intently as was her hopeless admirer, and it seemed to him that in the pleasure of knowing that her old servant had survived unharmed, she was proof against all other blows. The loss of the strongbox she received with unshaken serenity. In these surroundings, safe from any too pressing manifestation of his passion, she was even moved to comfort Roger. A kind-hearted girl, who did not like to see any of her own people out of sorts with his competence and his self-respect.
“You must not feel it so sharply,” she said warmly. “How could you have prevented? There is no fault attaches to you.”
“I took most of the money back to the barge with me last night,” pleaded Roger earnestly. “It’s safe locked away, there’s been no more tampering there. But Master Thomas’s account books, and some parchments of value, and charters …”