‘Well, well!’ said Cadfael. ‘I thought you might be looking in on us soon. And how do you find things out in the world? You’ve seen no reason to change your mind?’
‘No,’ said the boy starkly, and for the moment had nothing more to say. He looked round the high-walled garden, its neat, patterned beds now growing a little leggy and bare with the loss of leaves, the bushy stems of thyme dark as wire. ‘I liked it here, with you. But no, I wouldn’t turn back. I was wrong to run away. I shall not make the same mistake again.’
‘How is your mother faring?’ asked Cadfael, divining that she might well be the insoluble grief from which Sulien had attempted flight. For the young man to live with the inescapable contemplation of perpetual pain and the infinitely and cruelly slow approach of lingering death might well be unendurable. For Hugh had reported her present condition very clearly. If that was the heart of it, the boy had braced himself now to make reparation, and carry his part of the load in the house, thereby surely lightening hers.
‘Poorly,’ said Sulien bluntly. ‘Never anything else. But she never complains. It’s as if she had some hungry beast for ever gnawing at her body from within. Some days are a little better than others.’
‘I have herbs that might do something against the pain,’ said Cadfael. ‘Some time ago she did use them for a while.’
‘I know. We have all told her so, but she refuses them now. She says she doesn’t need them. All the same,’ he said, warming, ‘give me some, perhaps I may persuade her.’
He followed Cadfael into the workshop, under the rustling bunches of dried herbs hanging from the roof beams, and sat down on the wooden bench within while Cadfael filled a flask from his supply of the syrup he made from his eastern poppies, calmer of pain and inducer of sleep.
‘You may not have heard yet,’ said Cadfael, with his back turned,’that the sheriff has a man in prison for the murder of the woman we thought was Generys, until you showed us that was impossible. A fellow named Britric, a pedlar who works the border villages, and bedded down in Ruald’s croft last year, through Saint Peter’s Fair.’
He heard a soft stir of movement at his back, as Sulien’s shoulders shifted against the timber wall. But no word was said.
‘He had a woman there with him, it seems, one Gunnild, a tumbler and singer entertaining at the fairground. And no one has seen her since last year’s fair ended. A black-haired woman, they report her. She could very well be the poor soul we found. Hugh Beringar thinks so.’
Sulien’s voice, a little clipped and quiet, asked: ‘What does Britric say to that? He will not have admitted to it?’
‘He said what he would say, that he left the woman there the morning after the fair, safe and well, and has not seen her since.’
‘So he may have done,’ said Sulien reasonably.
‘It is possible. But no one has seen the woman since. She did not come to this year’s fair, no one knows anything of her. And as I heard it, they were known to quarrel, even to come to blows. And he is a powerful man, with a hot temper, who might easily go too far. I would not like,’ said Cadfael with intent,’to be in his shoes, for I think the charge against him will be made good. His life is hardly worth the purchase.’
He had not turned until then. The boy was sitting very still, his eyes steady upon Cadfael’s countenance. In a voice of detached pity, not greatly moved, he said: ‘Poor wretch! I daresay he never meant to kill her. What did you say her name was, this tumbler girl?’
‘Gunnild. They called her Gunnild.’
‘A hard life that must be, tramping the roads,’ said Sulien reflectively, ‘especially for a woman. Not so ill in the summer, perhaps, but what must they do in the winter?’
‘What all the jongleurs do,’ said Cadfael, practically. ‘About this time of year they begin thinking of what manor is most likely to take them in for their singing and playing, over the worst of the weather. And with the Spring they’ll be off again.’
‘Yes, I suppose a corner by the fire and a dinner at the lowest table must be more than welcome once the snow falls,’ Sulien agreed indifferently, and rose to accept the small flask Cadfael had stoppered for him. ‘I’ll be getting back now, Eudo can do with a hand about the stable. And I do thank you, Cadfael. For this and for everything.’
Chapter Eight
IT WAS THREE DAYS later that a groom came riding in at the gatehouse of the castle, with a woman pillion behind him, and set her down in the outer court to speak with the guards. Modestly but with every confidence she asked for the lord sheriff, and made it known that her business was important, and would be considered so by the personage she sought.
Hugh came up from the armoury in his shirt-sleeves and a leather jerkin, with the flush and smokiness of the smith’s furnace about him. The woman looked at him with as much curiosity as he was feeling about her, so young and so unexpected was his appearance. She had never seen the sheriff of the shore before, and had looked for someone older and more defensive of his own dignity than this neat, lightly built young fellow in his twenties still, black-haired and black-browed, who looked more like one of the apprentice armourers than the king’s officer.
‘You asked to speak with me, mistress?’ said Hugh. ‘Come within, and tell me what you need of me.’
She followed him composedly into the small anteroom in the gatehouse, but hesitated for a moment when he invited her to be seated, as though her business must first be declared and accounted for, before she could be at ease.
‘My lord, I think it is you who have need of me, if what I have heard is true.’ Her voice had the cadences of the countrywoman, and a slight roughness and rawness, as though in its time it had been abused by over-use or use under strain. And she was not as young as he had first thought her, perhaps around thirty-five years old, but handsome and erect of carriage, and moved with decorous grace. She wore a good dark gown, matronly and sober, and her hair was drawn back and hidden under a white wimple. The perfect image of a decent burgess’s wife, or a gentlewoman’s attendant. Hugh could not immediately guess where and how she fitted into his present preoccupations, but was willing to wait for enlightenment.
‘And what is it you have heard?’ he asked.
‘They are saying about the market that you have taken a man called Britric into hold, a pedlar, for killing a woman who kept company with him for some while last year. Is it true?’
‘True enough,’ said Hugh. ‘You have something to say to the matter?’
‘I have, my lord!’ Her eyes she kept half-veiled by heavy, long lashes, looking up directly into his face only rarely and briefly. ‘I bear Britric no particular goodwill, for reasons enough, but no ill will, either. He was a good companion for a while, and even if we did fall out, I don’t want him hung for a murder that was never committed. So here I am in the flesh, to prove I’m well alive. And my name is Gunnild.’
‘And, by God, so it proved!’ said Hugh, pouring out the whole unlikely story some hours later, in the leisure hour of the monastic afternoon in Cadfael’s workshop. ‘No question, Gunnild she is. You should have seen the pedlar’s face when I brought her into his cell, and he took one long look at the decent, respectable shape of her, and then at her face closely, and his mouth fell open, he found her so hard to believe. But: “Gunnild!” he screeches, as soon as he gets his breath back. Oh, she’s the same woman, not a doubt of it, but so changed it took him a while to trust his own eyes. And there was more than he ever told us to that early morning flight of his. No wonder he crept off and left her sleeping. He took every penny of her earnings with him as well as his own. I said he had something on his conscience, and something to do with the woman. So he had, he robbed her of everything she had of value, and a hard time she must have had of it through the autumn and into the winter, last year.’