Seeing his opportunity, the man moved in to intercept Ralph. There was authority in his tone, but it was weakened by his over-eagerness to please.
“I am Saewold, the town reeve,” he said. “I was delayed with business or I would have been here to bid you a proper welcome to Bedwyn and to offer what help I may.”
Ralph introduced the others, then took the newcomer aside to weigh him up in private conference. Saewold had the fussiness of a man who likes to draw attention to the importance of his office and he used the name of the lord sheriff, Edward of Salisbury, with oily familiarity. Ralph did not warm to this over-helpful reeve but saw that he was a useful source of information. He therefore asked after Wulfgeat and his earlier impression of the man was confirmed.
Wulfgeat was indeed a leading burgess and one with much influence in the town. The commissioners could look for trouble and dissension from that quarter. Though he praised the man’s many fine qualities, Saewold could not conceal his patent dislike of Wulfgeat. If any new taxes were levied, it would be the job of the reeve to collect them, and he knew that Wulfgeat would offer the most vociferous resistance.
About Alric Longdon he was also informative, mixing fact with anecdote to draw a portrait that was anything but attractive. The miller was widely disliked. Hard-working and successful at his trade, he was also mean-spirited and highly unsociable. He liked to browbeat people in argument and only the quality and low price of his flour saved him from losing his customers. When Saewold was into his stride, scattering local gossip like handfuls of seed, there was no holding him.
“Yet Alric could surprise us,” he said. “When his first poor wife died, we felt that no other woman would ever dare to share his bed, and yet he wed Hilda-as gentle a creature as you could wish to meet-within the year. What goodness did she see in such an ogre?
What love could he inspire in such an angel?”
“You say he had few friends,” noted Ralph, “but did the miller have any real enemies?”
“Dozens. I tell you this,” said Saewold confidingly, “if that wolf had not killed Alric Longdon then, sooner or later someone else would have done so.”
Ralph terminated the conversation by turning to join his companions, but the reeve would not be shaken off so easily. He stood in front of all four of them and opened his arms in a gesture of welcome.
“It would please me greatly if you would consent to dine with me tomorrow. My wife and I would be delighted to offer you the hospitality of our humble abode.”
Ralph thanked him on behalf of the others and was about to frame an excuse that would liberate them from a meal at the table of this garrulous official when he became aware of another figure entering the hall. She was a woman of such luminous beauty that even Canon Hubert was taken aback. She was no longer young, a few years beyond thirty perhaps, but she had a mature loveliness that made her oval face shine. Moving with the grace of a dancer, she came to stand beside Saewold with a quiet dignity that identified her at once as his wife. Ralph was mesmerized. She wore a blue kirtle of some fine material beneath a short-sleeved gunna of a darker shade of blue. A gold-braided belt encircled a slim waist, then hung down to one side of her hips. Her long fair hair was held by a gold fillet and cascaded down from her wimple to rest on her right shoulder and brush a full breast. Her shoes were buckled at the ankles. The wife of the town reeve of Bedwyn was dressed like the lady of a Saxon earl.
Saewold presented her to the four commissioners.
“This is my wife, Ediva,” he said proudly.
She acknowledged each of them in turn with a soft and confident smile, but she held Ralph’s gaze marginally longer and all barriers of language, custom, and degree between them dissolved in an instant.
In her brilliant green eyes, he saw something which his colleagues would never dare to look for and which her husband would never recognise for what it was. When Ralph’s interest quickened, she let him see that she was pleased.
He countermanded his original decision.
“Dear lady,” he said with a gallant half-bow, “your husband has kindly invited us to dine with you tomorrow. We are delighted to accept that invitation.”
“Thank you, my lord,” she replied. “I wait upon you.”
Ralph Delchard felt that a bargain had been sealed.
Chapter Three
Brother Luke was a fresh-faced youth whose religious ardour was at last beginning to hear the vague whispers of doubt as he approached the end of his yearlong novitiate. He was tall and angular, with a gawkiness that had not yet been cured by the sombre pace of monastic life. Though he wore the cowl willingly, it still looked like a garment he had just tried on that minute rather than a home in which he had taken up permanent and unquestioning residence. He was alert and well educated but reticent in the presence of strangers. Ralph Delchard left it to Gervase Bret to set up a dialogue with their guide.
“How long have you been a novice, Brother Luke?”
“Ten months, master.”
“It was your own choice to enter the abbey?”
“Mine and that of my parents,” said Luke. “They entered me as a postulant and look to see me a brother of the order soon. I hope I will not disappoint them.”
“There is surely no chance of that?”
The youth shook his head without conviction and lapsed back into silence. All three of them were entering Savernake Forest, tracing the same path along the river that Alric Longdon had taken on that fateful evening. Abbot Serlo had given Brother Luke permission to take the two commissioners to the scene of the miller’s death, and the novice obeyed without demur. Gervase tried to reach the youth with other subjects of conversation, but his replies were laconic and the exchanges soon dried up. Ralph Delchard threw in a piece of information that jolted Luke out of his reserve.
“Gervase almost took the cowl,” he said jovially. “The monks thought they had won his heart and mind for God, but he learned that there is more to life than prayer and fasting.”
“Is this so?” asked the novice with interest.
“It is only part of the truth, Luke,” said Gervase.
“You entered a Benedictine house?”
“The Abbey of St Peter, at Eltham. It was founded by King William himself not long after Battle Abbey was raised. Both abbot and monks were from Normandy, but they soon mastered our tongue.”
Luke was surprised. “You are a Saxon?”
“Half Saxon, half Breton,” explained Ralph. “But we rescued him from misery by turning him into a Norman.”
Gervase enlarged on the jocular comment. “My father was killed at Hastings; my mother and her family had limited means. The abbey was very close and the monks were very friendly. At eight, I was being schooled by them. At ten, I was allowed to spend whole days within the enclave. At twelve, I became a kind of servant and got my learning in place of wages.”
“An abbey is an education for life,” said Luke solemnly as he quoted the master of the novices. “All that there is to know may be gleaned from within the cloister.”
Ralph’s mocking laugh disagreed, but he said nothing.
Luke was intrigued. “But how did you come to rise so high in the king’s service?”
“By listening and learning,” said Gervase. “Eltham is close to London.
Travellers of all types and all nations sought our hospitality. I helped to prepare their beds. They all had tales to tell, sometimes in languages that were so strange on the ear that I barely understood a word at first. But I was a patient student. If you know Latin, you may pick up Italian without too much confusion. If you speak Breton-and my father had instructed me in his tongue when I was a tiny child-you will be able to master Norman French and even stray close to Welsh, for there are Celtic echoes in Breton.”