An Excellent Mystery (15 page)

They
told the whole story between them, at times in chorus, very vehemently.

“He
left with her from Andover early in the morning, and the other three, who had
orders to remain there, watched them away.”

“And
he did not return until late evening, too late to set out for home that night.
Yet Wherwell is but three or four miles from Andover.”

“And
he alone of those four” said Cruce fiercely, “was so deep in her confidence
from old familiarity that he may well have known, must have known, the dowry
she carried with her.”

“And
that was?” demanded Hugh sharply. His memory was excellent. There was nothing
he needed to be told twice.

“Three
hundred marks in coin, and certain valuables for church use. My lord, we have
had my clerk, who keeps good accounts, write a list of what she took, and here
we have two copies. The one we hold you should circulate in these parts, where
the man is native, and so was my sister, and the other Hamage here will carry
to make known round Winchester, Wherwell and Andover, where she vanished.”

“Good!”
said Hugh heartily. “The coins can never be certainly traced, but the pieces of
church ornaments may.” He took the scroll Nicholas held out to him, and read
with lowered and frowning brows: “Item, a pair of candlesticks of silver, made
in the form of tall sconces entwined with the vine, with snuffers attached by
silver chains, also ornamented with grape leaves. Item, a standing cross a
man’s hand-length in height, on a silver pedestal of three steps, and studded
with semi-precious stones of yellow pebble, amethyst and agate, together with a
similar cross of the same metal and stones, a little finger’s length, on a thin
silver neck-chain for a priest’s wear. Item, a silver pyx, small, engraved with
ferns. Also certain pieces of jewellery to her belonging, as, a necklet of
polished stones from the hills above Pontesbury, a bracelet of silver engraved
with tendrils of vetch, and a curious ring of silver set with enamels all
round, in the form of yellow and blue flowers.” He looked up. “Surely
identifiable if they can be found, almost any of these. Your clerk did well.
Yes, I’ll have this made known to all officers and tenants of mine here in the
shire, but it seems to me that in the south they’re more likely to be traced.
As for the man, if he’s native here he has kin, and may well keep in touch with
them. You say he went to do fighting service?”

“Only
a matter of weeks after he returned to my father’s household, yes. My father
was newly dead, and the Earl of Worcester, my overlord, demanded a draft of
men, and this Adam Heriet offered himself.”

“How
old?” asked Hugh.

“A
year or so past fifty. A strong man with sword or bow. He had been forester and
huntsman to my father, Waleran would think himself lucky to get him. The rest
were younger, but raw.”

“And
where did this Heriet hail from? Your father’s man must belong to one of your
own manors.”

“Born
at Harpecote, a younger son of a free man who farmed a yardland there. His
elder brother farmed it after him. A nephew has it now. They were not on good
terms, or so my father said. But for all that there may be some trace of him to
be picked up there.”

“Had
they any other kin? And the fellow never took a wife?”

“No,
he never did. I know of no others of his family, but there well may be some
around Harpecote.”

“Let
them be,” said Hugh decidedly. “It had best be left to me to probe there.
Though I doubt if a man with no ties here will have come back to the shire,
once having taken to the fighting life. More likely to be found where you’re
bound for, Nicholas. Do your best!”

“I
mean to,” said Nicholas grimly, and rose to be off about the work without
delay. The scroll of Julian’s possessions he rolled and thrust into the breast
of his coat. “I must say a word first to my lord Godfrid, and let him know I’ll
not abandon this hunt while there’s a grain of hope left. Then I’m on the
road!” And he was away at a fast stride that became a light, long-paced run
before he was out of sight. Cruce rose in his turn, eyeing Hugh somewhat
grudgingly, as if he doubted to find in him a sufficient force of vengeful fury
for the undertaking.

“Then
I may leave this with you, my lord? And you will pursue it vigorously?”

“I
will,” said Hugh drily. “And you will be at Lai? That I may know where to find
you, at need?”

Cruce
went away silenced, for the time being, but none too content, and looked back
from the turn of the hedge dubiously, as if he felt that the lord sheriff
should already have been on horseback, or at least shaping for it, in the cause
of Cruce vengeance. Hugh stared him out coolly, and watched him round the thick
screen of box and disappear.

“Though
I had best move speedily,” he said then, wryly smiling, “for if that one found
the fellow first I would not give much for his chances of escaping a few broken
bones, if not a stretched neck. And even if it may come to that in the end, it
shall not be at Reginald Cruce’s hands, nor without a fair trial.” He clapped
Cadfael heartily on the back, and turned to go. “Well, if it’s close season for
kings and empresses, at least it gives us time to hunt the smaller creatures.”

Cadfael
went to Vespers with an unquiet mind, troubled by imaginings of a girl on
horseback, with silver and rough gems and coin in her saddle-bags, parting from
her last known companions only a few miles from her goal, and then vanishing
like morning mist in the summer sun, as if she had never been. A wisp of vapour
over the meadow, and then gone. If those who agonised after her, the old and
the young, had known her dead and with God, they, too, could have been at
peace. Now there was no peace for any man drawn into this elaborate web of
uncertainty.

Among
the novices and schoolboys and the child oblates, last of their kind, for Abbot
Radulfus would accept no more infants into a cloistered life decreed for them
by others, Rhun stood rapt and radiant, smiling as he sang. A virgin by nature
and aptitude, as well as by years, untroubled by the bodily agonies that tore
most men, but miraculously aware of them and tender towards them, as few are to
pains that leave their own flesh unwrung.

Vespers
at this time of year shone with filtered summer light, that showed Rhun’s
flaxen beauty in crystalline pallor, and flashed across into the ranks of the
brothers to burn in the sullen, smouldering darkness of Brother Urien, and the
dilated brilliance of his black eyes, and cool into discreet shade where
Brother Fidelis stood withdrawn into the shadows of the wall, alert at his
lord’s elbow, with no eyes and no thought for what went on around him, as he
had no voice to join in the chant. His shadowed eyes looked nowhere but at
Humilis, his slight body stood braced to receive and support at any moment the
even frailer form that stood lance-straight beside him.

Well,
worship has its own priorities, and a duty once assumed is a duty to the end.
God and Saint Benedict would understand and respect that.

Cadfael,
whose mind should also have been on higher things, found himself thinking: he
dwindles before our eyes. It will be even sooner than I had thought. There is
nothing that can prevent, or even greatly delay it now.

Chapter Eight.

IF
ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER HAD NOT BEEN TRAPPED AND CAPTURED in the waters of the
river Test, and the Empress Maud in headlong flight with the remnant of her
army into Gloucester, by way of Ludgershall and Devizes, the hunt for Adam
Heriet might have gone on for a much longer time. But the freezing chill of
stalemate between the two armies, each with a king in check, had loosed many a
serving man, bored with inaction and glad of a change, to stretch his legs and
take his leisure elsewhere, while the lull lasted and the politicians argued
and bargained. And among them an ageing, experienced practitioner of sword and
bow, among the Earl of Worcester’s forces.

Hugh
was a man of the northern part of the shire himself, but from the Welsh border;
and the manors to the north-east, dwindling into the plain of Cheshire, were
less familiar to him and less congenial. Over in the tamer country of the
hundred of Hodnet the soil was fat and well-farmed, and the gleaned
grain-fields full of plump, contented cattle at graze, at once making good use
of what aftermath there was in a dry season, and leaving their droppings to
feed the following year’s tilth. There were abbey tenants here and there in
these parts, and abbey stock turned into the fields now the crop was reaped.
Their treading and manuring of the ground was almost as valuable as their
fleeces.

The
manor of Harpecote lay in open plain, with a small coppiced woodland on the
windward side, and a low ridge of common land to the south. The house was small
and of timber, but the fields were extensive, and the barns and byres that
clung within the boundary fence were well-kept, and probably well-filled.
Cruce’s steward came out into the yard to greet the sheriff and his two
sergeants, and direct them to the homestead of Edric Heriet.

It
was one of the more substantial cottages of the hamlet, with a kitchen-garden
before it and a small orchard behind, where a tousled girl with kilted skirts
was hanging out washing on the hedge. Hens ran in the orchard grass, and a
she-goat was tethered to graze there. A free man, this Edric was said to be,
farming a yardland as a rent-paying tenant of his lord, a dwindling phenomenon
in a country where a tiller of the soil was increasingly tied to it by
customary services. These Heriets must be good husbandmen and hard workers to
continue to hold their land and make it provide them a living. Such families
could make good use of younger sons, needing all the hands they could muster.
Adam was clearly the self-willed stray who had gone to serve for pay, and
cultivated the skills of arms and forestry and hunting instead of the land.

A
big, tow-headed, shaggy fellow in a frayed leather coat came ducking out of the
low byre as Hugh and his officers halted at the gate. He stared, stiffening,
and stood fronting them with a wary face, recognising authority though he did
not know the man who wore it.

“You’re
wanting something here, masters?” Civil but not servile, he eyed them narrowly,
and straddled his own gateway like a man on guard.

Hugh
gave him good-day with the special amiability he used towards uneasy poor men
bitterly aware of their disadvantages. “You’ll be Edric Heriet, I’m told. We’re
looking for word of where to find one Adam of that name, who should be your
uncle. And you’re all his kin that we know of, and may be able to tell us where
to seek him. And that’s the whole of it, friend.”

The
big young man, surely no more than thirty years old, and most likely husband to
the dishevelled but comely girl in the orchard, and father to the baby that was
howling somewhere within the croft, shifted uncertainly from foot to foot, made
up his mind, and stood squarely, his face inclined to clear.

“I’m
Edric Heriet. What is it you want with uncle of mine? What has he done?”

Hugh
was not displeased with that. There might be small warmth of kinship between
them, but this one was not going to open his mouth until he knew what was in
the wind. Blood thickened at the hint of offence and danger.

“To
the best of my knowledge, nothing amiss. But we need to have out of him as
witness what he knows about a matter he had a hand in some years ago, sent by
his lord on an errand from Lai. I know he is — or was — in the service of the
Earl of Worcester since then, which is why he may be hard to find, the times
being what they are. If you’ve had word from him, or can tell us where to look
for him, we’ll be thankful to you.”

He
was curious now, though still uncertain. “I have but one uncle, and Adam he’s
called. Yes, he was huntsman at Lai, and I did hear from my father that he went
into arms for his lord’s overlord, though I never knew who that might be. But
as long as I recall, he never came near us here. I never remember him but from
when I was a child shooing the birds off the ploughland. They never got on
well, those brothers. Sorry I am, my lord,” he said, and though it was doubtful
if he felt much sorrow, it was plain he spoke truth as to his ignorance. “I
have no notion where he may be now, nor where he’s been these several years.”

Hugh
accepted that, perforce, and considered a moment.

“Two
brothers, were they? And no more? Never a sister between them? No tie to fetch
him back into the shire?”

“There’s
an aunt I have, sir, only the one. It was a thin family, ours, my father was
hard put to it to work the land after his brother left, until I grew up, and
two younger brothers after me. We do well enough now between us. Aunt Elfrid
was the youngest of the three, she married a cooper, bastard Norman he was, a
little dark fellow from Brigge, called Walter.” He looked up, unaware of
indiscretion, at the little dark Norman lord on the tall, raw-boned dapple-grey
horse, and wondered at Hugh’s blazing smile. “They’re settled in Brigge, I
think she has childer. She might know. They were nearer.”

“And
no other beside?”

“No,
my lord, that was all of them. I think,” he said, hesitant but softening, “he
was godfather to her first. He might take that to heart.”