They were both within, wheeling the light cart by its shafts back into a corner, the warmth of the horse they had just unharnessed still hanging in the air about them. Square-built, muscular men both, and weatherbeaten from outdoor living in all seasons, with a good twenty years between them, so that they might have been father and son. Most men of these local villages, tied to the soil by villeinage but also by inclination, and likely to marry within a very few miles’ radius, tended to have a close clan resemblance and a strong clan loyalty. The Welsh strain kept them short, wiry and durable, and of independent mind.
They greeted him civilly, without surprise; in the past year or two he had been an occasional visitor, and grown into a welcome one. But when he had unfolded what was required from them, they shook their heads doubtfully, and sat down without haste on the shafts of the cart to consider.
“We brought the cart down before it darkened,” said the elder then, narrowing his eyes to look back through the week of labour and leisure between, “but it was a black bitch of a day even at noon. We’d started shifting the load over to the abbey wagon, when the sub-prior comes out between the graves to the gate, and says, lads, lend us a hand to put the valuables inside high and dry, for it’s rising fast.”
“Sub-Prior Richard?” said Cadfael. “You’re sure it was he?”
“Sure as can be, him I do know, and it was not so dark then. Lambert here will tell you the same. So in we went, and set to, bundling up the hangings and lifting out the chests as he told us, and putting them where we were directed, up in the loft over the barn there, and some over the porch in Cynric’s place. It was dim inside there, and the brothers all darting about carrying coffers and candlesticks and crosses, and half the lamps ran out of oil, or got blown out with the doors open. As soon as the nave seemed to be clear we got out, and went back to loading the wood.”
“Aldhelm went back in,” said the young man Lambert, who had done no more than nod his head in endorsement until now.
“Aldhelm?” questioned Cadfael.
“He came down to help us out,” explained Gregory. “He has a half yardland by Preston, and works with the sheep at the manor of Upton.”
So there was one more yet before the job could be considered finished. And not today, thought Cadfael, calculating the hours left to him.
“This Aldhelm was in and out of the church like you? And went back in at the last moment?”
“One of the brothers caught him by the sleeve and haled him back to help move some last thing,” said Gregory indifferently. “We were off to the cart and shifting logs by then, all I know is someone called him, and he turned back. It was not much more than a moment or two. When we got the next load between us to the abbey wagon and slung it aboard, he was there by the wheel to help us hoist it in and settle it. And the monk was off to the church again. He called back goodnight to us.”
“But he had come out to the road with your man?” persisted Cadfael.
“We were all breathing easier then, everything that mattered was high enough to lie snug and dry till the river went down. A civil soul, he came out to say thanks and leave us a blessing... why not?”
Why not, indeed, when honest men turned to for no reward besides? “You did not,” asked Cadfael delicately, “see whether between them they brought out anything to load into the wagon? Before he left you with his blessing?”
They looked at each other sombrely, and shook their heads. “We were shifting logs to the back, to be easy to lift down. We heard them come. We had our arms full, hefting wood. When we got it to the wagon Aldhelm was reaching out to help us hoist it on, and the brother was away into the graveyard again. No, they never brought out anything that I saw.”
“Nor I,” said Lambert.
“And could you, either of you, put a name to this monk who called him back?”
“No,” said they both with one voice; and Gregory added kindly: “Brother, by then it was well dark. And I know names for only a few, the ones every man knows.”
True, monks are brothers by name only to those within; willing to be brothers to all men, outside the pale they are nameless. In some ways, surely, a pity.
“So dark,” said Cadfael, reaching his last question, “that you would not be able to recognize him, if you saw him again? Not by his face, or shape, or gait, or bearing? Nothing to mark him?”
“Brother,” said Gregory patiently, “he was close-cowled against the rain, and black disappearing into darkness. And his face we never saw at all.”
Cadfael sighed and thanked them, and was gathering himself up to trudge back by the sodden fields when Lambert said, breaking his habitual and impervious silence: “But Aldhelm may have seen it.”
The day was too far gone, if he was to get back for Vespers. The tiny hamlet of Preston was barely a mile out of his way, but if this Aldhelm worked with the sheep at Upton, at this hour he might be there, and not in his own cot on his own half-yardland of earth. Probing his memory would have to wait. Cadfael threaded the Longner woodlands and traversed the long slope of meadows above the subsiding river, making for home. The ford would be passable again by now, but abominably muddy and foul, the ferry was pleasanter and also quicker. The ferryman, a taciturn soul, put him ashore on the home bank with a little time in hand, so that he slackened his pace a little, to draw breath. There was a belt of close woodland on this side, too, before he could approach the first alleys and cots of the Foregate; open, heathy woodland over the ridge, then the trees drew in darkly, and the path narrowed. There would have to be some lopping done here, to clear it for horsemen. Even at this hour, not yet dusk but under heavy cloud, a man had all his work cut out to see his way clear and evade overgrown branches. A good place for ambush and secret violence, and all manner of skulduggery. It was the heavy cloud cover and the cheerless stillness of the day that gave him such thoughts, and even while they lingered with him he did not believe in them. Yet there was mischief abroad, for Saint Winifred was gone, or the token she had left with him and blessed for him was gone, and there was no longer any equilibrium in his world. Strange, since he knew where she was, and should have been able to send messages to her there, surely with greater assurance than to the coffin that did not contain her. But it was from that same coffin that he had always received his answers, and now the wind that should have brought him her voice from Gwytherin was mute.
Cadfael emerged into the Foregate at the Horse Fair somewhat angry with himself for allowing himself to be decoyed into imaginative glooms against his nature, and trudged doggedly along to the gatehouse in irritated haste to get back to a real world where he had solid work to do. Certainly he must hunt out Aldhelm of Preston, but between him and that task, and just as important, loomed a few sick old men, a number of confused and troubled young ones, and his plain duty of keeping the Rule he had chosen.
There were not many people abroad in the Foregate. The weather was still cold and the gloom of the day had sent people hurrying home, wasting no time once the day’s work was done. Some yards ahead of him two figures walked together, one of them limping heavily. Cadfael had a vague notion that he had seen those broad shoulders and that shaggy head before, and not so long ago, but the lame gait did not fit. The other was built more lightly, and younger. They went with heads thrust forward and shoulders down, like men tired after a long trudge and in dogged haste to reach their destination and be done with it. It was no great surprise when they turned in purposefully at the abbey gatehouse, tramping through thankfully into the great court with a recovered spring to their steps. Two more for the common guesthall, thought Cadfael, himself approaching the gate, and a place near the fire and a meal and a drink will come very welcome to them.