“Within the bounds of this abbey,” said Radulfus at last, without raising his voice, “men do not brawl. I will not say we never hear an angry word. We are also men. Sir Godfrid, keep your men at heel on these premises. And you, young man, so much as touch your hilt again, and you shall lie in a penitent’s cell overnight.”
Joscelin bent head and knee, though the abbot might well have thought the gesture somewhat perfunctory. “My lord abbot, I ask your pardon! Threatened or no, I was at fault.” But owning his fault, he kept his rage. A close observer might even have wondered if he was not contemplating the possible advantages of offending again, and being cast as promised into a cell within these walls. Locks may be picked, lay brothers suborned or tricked - yes, there were possibilities! He was disadvantaged, however, by a fair-minded disposition not to offend those who had committed no offense against him. “I stand in your mercy,” he said.
“Good, we understand each other. Now, what is this dispute that troubles the peace here?”
Both Joscelin and Picard began to talk at once, but Joscelin, for once wise, drew back and left the field to his elder. He stood biting a resolute lip and regarding the abbot’s face, as Picard brushed him contemptuously aside in the terms he had expected.
“Father, this impertinent squire has been turned off by his lord for a negligent, ill-conditioned fellow, and he credits me with so advising my lord Domville, as indeed I felt it my duty to do. For I have found him presumptuous, pressing his company upon my niece, and in all ways a troubler of the peace. He came here to brawl with me, resenting his well-deserved dismissal. He has no more than his due, but he will not be schooled. And that is all the matter,” he said scornfully.
Brother Cadfael marvelled how Joscelin kept his mouth shut on the flood of his grievance, and his eyes fixed respectfully upon Radulfus, until he was invited to speak. He must surely have acquired in these few moments a healthy respect for the abbot’s fairness and shrewd sense, so to contain himself. He had confidence that he would not be judged unheard, and it was worth an effort at self-control to manage his defense aright.
“Well, young sir?” said Radulfus. It could not be asserted that he smiled, his countenance remained judicially remote and calm; but there might have been the suggestion of indulgence in his voice.
“Father Abbot,” said Joscelin, “all of us of these two houses came here to see a marriage performed. The bride you have seen.” She had been hustled away out of sight, into the guest-hall, long before this. “She is eighteen years old. My lord - he that was my lord! - is nearing sixty. She has been these last eight years orphaned and in her uncle’s care, and she has great lands, long in her uncle’s administration.” Some indication of his unexpected drift had penetrated by then, Picard was boiling and voluble. But Radulfus dipped a frowning brow, and raised a silencing hand, and they gave way perforce.
“Father Abbot, I pray your help for Iveta de Massard!” Joscelin had gained his moment, and could not hold back. “Father, the honor of which she is lady spans four counties and fifty manors, it is an earl’s portion. They have farmed it between them, uncle and bridegroom, they have parceled it out, she is bought and sold, without her will - Oh, God, she has no will left, she is tamed! - against her will! My offense is that I love her, and I would have taken her away out of this prison…”
The latter half of this, though Cadfael had drawn close enough to hear all, was certainly lost to most others under a shrill clamor of refutation, in which Agnes played the loudest part. She had a voice that rode high over opposition, Joscelin could not cry her down. And in the midst of the hubbub, suddenly there were crisp hoofbeats in the gatehouse, and horsemen pacing into the court with the authority of office, and in numbers calculated to draw ear and eye. The thread alike of Joscelin’s appeal and Picard’s refutation was broken abruptly; every eye turned to the gate.
First came Huon de Domville, the muscles of his face set like a wrestler’s biceps, his small, black, malevolent eyes alertly bright. Close at his elbow rode Gilbert Prestcote, sheriff of Shropshire under King Stephen, a lean, hard, middle-aged knight browed and nosed like a falcon, his black, forked beard veined with gray. He had a sergeant and seven or eight officers at his back, an impressive array. He halted them within the gage, and dismounted as they did.
“And there he stands!” blared Domville, eyes glittering upon Joscelin, who stood startled and gaping. “The rascal himself! Did I not say he’d be stirring up trouble everywhere possible before he took himself off? Seize him, sheriff! Lay hold on the rogue and make him fast!”
He had been so intent on his quarry that he had not immediately observed that the abbot himself was among those present. His eye lit on the austere and silent figure belatedly, and he dismounted and doffed in brusque respect. “By your leave, Father Abbot! We have dire business here, and I am all the sorrier that this young rogue should have brought it within your walls.”
“Such disturbance as he has so far caused us,” said Radulfus coolly, “does not seem of a sort to require the attendance of sheriff and sergeant. I gather that if he has offended, he has also been brought to book for it. To dismiss him your service is your right. To pursue him further seems somewhat excessive. Unless you have further complaint to make against him?” He looked to Prestcote for his answer.
“There is indeed more,” said the sheriff. “I am instructed by my lord Domville that since this squire was ordered to pack and go, a thing of great value has been missed, and looked for in vain within the household. There is ground for suspicion that this man may have stolen it in despite of his lord, and in revenge for his dismissal. He stands so charged.”
Joscelin was staring in astonished derision, not yet even angry on this count, and certainly not afraid. “I, steal?” he gasped in huge contempt. “I would not touch the meanest thing that belonged to him, I would not willingly take away on my shoes the dust of his courtyard. Go, he bade me, and so I did, out of his house, and have not even stopped to gather together everything that was mine there. All that I brought away is here on my body or in the saddle-bags there.”
The abbot raised a restraining hand. “My lord, what is this valuable thing which is lost? How does it bulk? When was it missed?”
“It is the wedding gift I intended for my bride,” said the baron, “a collar of gold and pearls. It could lie in the palm of a man’s hand, once out of its case. I meant to bring it to the girl today, after Mass, but when I went to take it, and looked within the case, I found it empty. Nigh on an hour ago, I suppose, for we wasted time hunting for it, though the leaving of the empty case should have told us it was not lost, but stolen. And but for this turbulent boy, who was turned off for good reason and took it very defiantly, no one else has left my household. I charge him with the theft, and I will have the remedy of law, to the last particle.”
“But did this young man know of this collar, and where to lay hand on it?” demanded the abbot.
“I did, Father,” Joscelin acknowledged readily. “So did all three of us who served him as squires.”
Still more horsemen had appeared in the gateway, several of Domville’s outridden retinue, and among them Simon and Guy, by the look of their faces by no means eager to be noticed or take any part in this encounter. They looked on from the background, uncertain and unhappy, as well they might.