The manor of Alkington lay on the edge of this wilderness of dark-brown pools and quaking mosses and tangled bush, under a pale, featureless sky. It was sadly run down from its former value, its ploughlands shrunken, no place to expect to find, grazing in the tenant’s paddock, a tall bay thoroughbred fit for a prince to ride. But it was there that Hugh found him, white-blazed face, white forefeet and all, grown somewhat shaggy and ill-groomed, but otherwise in very good condition.
There was as little concealment about the tenant’s behaviour as about his open display of his prize. He was a free man, and held as subtenant under the lord of Wem, and he was willing and ready to account for the unexpected guest in his stable.
“And you see him, my lord, in better fettle than he was when he came here, for he’d run wild some time, by all accounts, and devil a man of us knew whose he was or where he came from. There’s a man of mine has an assart west of here, an island on the moss, and cuts turf there for himself and others. That’s what he was about when he caught sight of yon creature wandering loose, saddle and bridle and all, and never a rider to be seen, and he tried to catch him, but the beast would have none of it. Time after time he tried, and began to put out feed for him, and the creature was wise enough to come for his dinner, but too clever to be caught. He’d mired himself to the shoulder, and somewhere he tore loose the most of his bridle, and had the saddle ripped round half under his belly before ever we got near him. In the end I had my mare fit, and we staked her out there and she fetched him. Quiet enough, once we had him, and glad to shed what was left of his harness, and feel a currier on his sides again. But we’d no notion whose he was. I sent word to my lord at Wem, and here we keep him till we know what’s right.”
There was no need to doubt a word, it was all above board here. And this was but a mile or two out of the way to Whitchurch, and the same distance from the town.
“You’ve kept the harness? Such as he still had?”
“In the stable, to hand when you will.”
“But no man. Did you look for a man afterwards?” The mosses were no place for a stranger to go by night, and none too safe for a rash traveller even by day. The peat-pools, far down, held bones enough.
“We did, my lord. There are fellows hereabouts who know every dyke and every path and every island that can be trodden. We reckoned he’d been thrown, or foundered with his beast, and only the beast won free. It has been known. But never a trace. And that creature there, though soiled as he was, I doubt if he’d been in above the hocks, and if he’d gone that deep, with a man in the saddle, it would have been the man who had the better chance.”
“You think,” said Hugh, eyeing him shrewdly, “he came into the mosses riderless?”
“I do think so. A few miles south there’s woodland. If there were footpads there, and got hold of the man, they’d have trouble keeping their hold of this one. I reckon he made his own way here.”
“You’ll show my sergeant the way to your man on the mosses? He’ll be able to tell us more, and show the places where the horse was straying. There’s a clerk of the bishop of Winchester’s household lost,” said Hugh, electing to trust a plainly honest man, “and maybe dead. This was his mount. If you learn of anything more send to me, Hugh Beringar, at Shrewsbury castle, and you shan’t be the loser.”
“Then you’ll be taking him away. God knows what his name was, I called him Russet.” The free lord of this poor manor leaned over his wattle fence and snapped his fingers, and the bay came to him confidently and sank his muzzle into the extended palm. “I’ll miss him. His coat has not its proper gloss yet, but it will come. At least we got the burrs and the rubble of heather out of it.”
“We’ll pay you his price,” said Hugh warmly. “It’s well earned. And now I’d best look at what’s left of his accoutrements, but I doubt they’ll tell us anything more.”
It was pure chance that the novices were passing across the great court to the cloister for the afternoon’s instruction when Hugh Beringar rode in at the gatehouse of the abbey, leading the horse, called for convenience Russet, to the stable-yard for safe-keeping. Better here than at the castle, since the horse was the property of the bishop of Winchester, and at some future time had better be delivered to him.
Cadfael was just emerging from the cloister on his way to the herb garden, and was thus brought face to face with the novices entering. Late in the line came Brother Meriet, in good time to see the lofty young bay that trotted into the courtyard on a leading-rein, and arched his copper neck and brandished his long, narrow white blaze at strange surroundings, shifting white-sandalled forefeet delicately on the cobbles.
Cadfael saw the encounter clearly. The horse tossed its farrow, beautiful head, stretched neck and nostril, and whinnied softly. The.young man blanched white as the blazoned forehead, and jerked strongly back in his careful stride, and brief sunlight found the green in his eyes. Then he remembered himself and passed hurriedly on, following his fellows into the cloister.
In the night, an hour before Matins, the dortoir was shaken by a great, wild cry of: “Barbary… Barbary…” and then a single long, piercing whistle, before Brother Cadfael reached Meriet’s cell, smoothed an urgent hand over brow and cheek and pursed lips, and eased him back, still sleeping, to his pillow. The edge of the dream, if it was a dream, was abruptly blunted, the sounds melted into silence. Cadfael was ready to frown and hush away the startled brothers when they came, and even Prior Robert hesitated to break so perilous a sleep, especially at the cost of inconveniencing everyone else’s including his own. Cadfael sat by the bed long after all was silence and darkness again. He did not know quite what he had been expecting, but he was glad he had been ready for it. As for the morrow, it would come, for better or worse.
Chapter Four
MERIET AROSE FOR PRIME HEAVY-EYED and sombre, but seemingly quite innocent of what had happened during the night, and was saved from the immediate impact of the brothers seething dread, disquiet and displeasure by being summoned forth, immediately when the office was over, to speak with the deputy-sheriff in the stables. Hugh had the torn and weathered harness spread on a bench in the yard, and a groom was walking the horse called Russet appreciatively about the cobbles to be viewed clearly in the mellow morning light.
“I hardly need to ask,” said Hugh pleasantly, smiling at the way the white-fired brow lifted and the wide nostrils dilated at sight of the approaching figure, even in such unfamiliar garb. “No question but he knows you again, I must needs conclude that you know him just as well.” And as Meriet volunteered nothing, but continued to wait to be asked: “Is this the horse Peter Clemence was riding when he left your father’s house?”
“Yes my lord, the same.” He moistened his lips and kept his eyes lowered, but for one spark of a glance for the horse; he did not ask anything.
“Was that the only occasion when you had to do with him? He comes to you readily. Fondle him if you will, he’s asking for your recognition.”
“It was I stabled and groomed and tended him, that night,” said Meriet, low-voiced and hesitant. “And I saddled him in the morning. I never had his like to care for until then. I… I am good with horses.”
“So I see. Then you have also handled his gear.” It had been rich and fine, the saddle inlaid with coloured leathers, the bridle ornamented with silver-work now dinted and soiled. “All this you recognise?”