Hugh turned to stare for an instant only, grasped the force of it, dropped his bridle and ran, beckoning his sergeants after him to the guest-hall. Cadfael was close at his heels when they broke in upon a demoralised wedding party, bereft of gaiety, appetite or spirits, draped about the untouched board in burdened converse more fitting a wake than a wedding. The bride wept desolately in the arms of a stout matron, with three or four other women clucking and cooing around her. The bridegroom was nowhere to be seen.
“He’s away!” said Cadfael. “While we were in the stable-yard, no other chance. And without her! The bishop of Lincoln got his message out of a tightly-sealed city at least a day too soon.”
There was no horse tethered outside the gatehouse, when they recalled the possibility and ran to see. Nigel had taken the first opportunity of following his fellow-conspirator towards the lands, offices and commands William of Roumare had promised them, where able young men of martial achievements and small scruples could carve out a fatter future than in two modest Shropshire manors on the edge of the Long Forest.
Chapter Thirteen
THERE WAS NEW AND SENSATIONAL MATTER for gossip now, and the watchers in the Foregate, having taken in all that stretched ears and sharp eyes could command, went to spread the word further, that there was planned rebellion in the north, a bid to set up a private kingdom for the earls of Chester and Lincoln, that the fine young men of the wedding company were in the plot from long since, and were fled because the matter had come to light before they could make an orderly withdrawal as planned. The lord bishop of Lincoln, no very close friend of King Stephen, had nevertheless found Chester and Roumare still more objectionable, and bestirred himself to smuggle out word to the king and implore rescue, for himself and his city.
The comings and goings about bridge and abbey were watched avidly. Hugh Beringar, torn two ways, had delegated the pursuit of the traitors to his sergeants, while he rode at once to the castle to send out the call to the knight-service of the shire to be ready to join the force which King Stephen would certainly be raising to besiege Lincoln, to begin commandeering mounts enough for his force, and see that all that was needed in the armoury was in good order. The bishop’s messenger was lodged at the abbey, and his message sped on its way by another rider to the castles in the south of the shire. In the guest-hall the shattered company and the deserted bride remained invisible, shut in with the ruins of their celebration.
All this, and the twenty-first day of December barely past two in the afternoon! And what more was to happen before night, who could guess, when things were rushing along at such a speed?
Abbot Radulfus had reasserted his domestic rule, and the brothers went obediently to dinner in the refectory at his express order, somewhat later than usual. The horarium of the house could not be altogether abandoned even for such devastating matters as murder, treason and man-hunt. Besides, as Brother Cadfael thoughtfully concluded, those who had survived this upheaval to gain, instead of loss, might safely be left to draw breath and think in peace, before they must encounter and come to new terms. And those who had lost must have time to lick their wounds. As for the fugitives, the first of them had a handsome start, and the second had benefited by the arrival of even more shocking news to gain a limited breathing-space, but for all that, the hounds were on their trail, well aware now what route to take, for Aspley’s northern manor lay somewhere south of Newark, and anyone making for it must set forth by the road to Stafford. Somewhere in the heathland short of that town, dusk would be closing on the travellers. They might think it safe to lodge overnight in the town. They might yet be overtaken and brought back.
On leaving the refectory Cadfael made for his normal destination during the afternoon hours of work, the hut in the herb garden where he brewed his mysteries. And they were there, the two young men in Benedictine habits, seated quickly side by side on the bench against the end wall. The very small spark of the brazier glowed faintly on their faces. Meriet leaned back against the timbers in simple exhaustion, his cowl thrust back on his shoulders, his face shadowy. He had been down into the very profound of anger, grief and bitterness, and surfaced again to find Mark still constant and patient beside him; and now he was at rest, without thought or feeling, ready to be born afresh into a changed world, but not in haste. Mark looked as he always looked, mild, almost deprecatory, as though he pleaded a fragile right to be where he was, and yet would stand to it to the death.
“I thought I might find you here,” said Brother Cadfael, and took the little bellows and blew the brazier into rosy life, for it was none too warm within there. He closed and barred the door to keep out even the draught that found its way through the chinks. “I doubt if you’ll have eaten,” he said, feeling along the shelf behind the door. “There are oat cakes here and some apples, and I think I have a morsel of cheese. You’ll be the better for a bite. And I have a wine that will do you no harm either.”
And behold, the boy was hungry! So simple it was. He was not long turned nineteen, and physically hearty, and he had eaten nothing since dawn. He began listlessly, docile to persuasion, and at the first bite he was alive again and ravenous, his eyes brightening, the glow of the blown brazier gilding and softening hollow cheeks. The wine, as Cadfael had predicted, did him no harm at all. Blood flowed through him again, with new warmth and urgency.
He said not one word of brother, father or lost love. It was still too early. He had heard himself falsely accused by one of them, falsely suspected by another, and what by the third? Left to pursue his devoted and foolish self-sacrifice, without a word to absolve him. He had a great load of bitterness still to shake from his heart. But praise God, he came to life for food and ate like a starved schoolboy. Brother Cadfael was greatly encouraged.
In the mortuary chapel, where Peter Clemence lay in his sealed coffin on his draped bier, Leoric Aspley had chosen to make his confession, and entreated Abbot Radulfus to be the priest to hear it. On his knees on the flagstones, by his own choice, he set forth the story as he had known it, the fearful discovery of his younger son labouring to drag a dead man into cover and hide him from all eyes, Meriet’s tacit acceptance of the guilt, and his own reluctance to deliver up his son to death, or let him go free.
“I promised him I would deal with his dead man, even at the peril of my soul, and he should live, but in perpetual penance out of the world. And to that he agreed and embraced his penalty, as I now know or fear that I now know, for love of his brother, whom he had better reason for believing a murderer than ever I had for crediting the same guilt to Meriet. I am afraid, father, that he accepted his fate as much for my sake as for his brother’s, having cause, to my shame, to believe—no, to know!—that I built all on Nigel and all too little upon him, and could live on after writing him out of my life, though the loss of Nigel would be my death. As now he is lost indeed, but I can and I will live. Therefore my grievous sin against my son Meriet is not only this doubt of him, this easy credence of his crime and his banishment into the cloister, but stretches back to his birth in lifelong misprizing.
“And as to my sin against you, father, and against this house, that also I confess and repent, for so to dispose of a suspect murderer and so to enforce a young man without a true vocation, was vile towards him and towards this house. Take that also into account, for I would be free of all my debts.
“And as to my sin against Peter Clemence, my guest and my kinsman, in denying him Christian burial to protect the good name of my own house, I am glad now that the hand of God made use of my own abused son to uncover and undo the evil I have done. Whatever penance you decree for me in that matter, I shall add to it an endowment to provide Masses for his soul as long as my own life continues…”