A Rare Benedictine (3 page)

“I
marvel,” said Cadfael drily, “that the lady doesn’t need him at home for her
own protection, while her lord’s absent.”

The
Lady Eadwina, however, bade farewell to the whole party with the greatest
serenity, and to her husband with demonstrative affection, putting forward her
little son to be embraced and kissed. Perhaps, thought Cadfael, relenting, I do
her wrong, simply because I feel chilled by that smile of hers. For all I know
she may be the truest wife living.

They
set out early, and before Buckingham made a halt at the small and penurious
priory of Bradwell, where Roger elected to spend the night, keeping his three
men-at-arms with him, while Goscelin with the rest of the party rode on to the
hunting-lodge to make all ready for their lord’s reception the following day.
It was growing dark by the time they arrived, and the bustle of kindling fire
and torches, and unloading the bed-linen and stores from the sumpter ponies
went on into the night. The lodge was small, stockaded, well-furnished with
stabling and mews, and in thick woodland, a place comfortable enough once they
had a roaring fire on the hearth and food on the table.

“The
road the prior of Shrewsbury will be coming by,” said Alard, warming himself by
the fire after supper, “passes through Evesham. As like as not they’ll stay the
last night there.” With every mile west Cadfael had seen him straining forward
with mounting eagerness. “The road cannot be far away from us here, it passes
through this forest.”

“It
must be nearly thirty miles to Evesham,” said Cadfael. “A long day’s riding for
a clerical party. It will be night by the time they ride past into Woodstock.
If you’re set on going, stay at least to get your pay, for you’ll need it
before the thirty miles is done.”

They
went to their slumber in the warmth of the hall without a word more said. But
he would go, Alard, whether he himself knew it yet or not. Cadfael knew it. His
friend was a tired horse with the scent of the stable in his nostrils; nothing
would stop him now until he reached it.

It
was well into the middle of the day when Roger and his escort arrived, and they
approached not directly, as the advance party had done, but from the woods to
the north, as though they had been indulging in a little hunting or hawking by
the way, except that they had neither hawk nor hound with them. A fine, clear,
cool day for riding, there was no reason in the world why they should not go
roundabout for the pure pleasure of it and indeed, they seemed to come in high
content! but that Roger’s mind had been so preoccupied and so anxious
concerning his lawsuit that distractions seemed unlikely. Cadfael was given to
thinking about unlikely developments, which from old campaigns he knew to prove
significant in most cases. Goscelin, who was out at the gate to welcome them
in, was apparently oblivious to the direction from which they came. That way
lay Alard’s highway to his rest. But what meaning ought it to have for Roger
Mauduit?

The
table was lavish that night, and lord and squire drank well and ate well, and
gave no sign of any care, though they might, Cadfael thought, watching them
from his lower place, seem a little tight and knife-edged. Well, the King’s
court could account for that. Shrewsbury’s prior was drawing steadily nearer,
with whatever weapons he had for the battle. But it seemed rather an exultant
tension than an anxious one. Was Roger counting his chickens already?

The
morning of the twenty-second of November dawned, and the noon passed, and with
every moment Alard’s restlessness and abstraction grew, until with evening it
possessed him utterly, and he could no longer resist. He presented himself
before Roger after supper, when his mood might be mellow from good food and
wine.

“My
lord, with the morrow my service to you is completed. You need me no longer,
and with your goodwill I would set forth now for where I am going. I go afoot
and need provision for the road. If you have been content with my work, pay me
what is due, and let me go.”

It
seemed that Roger had been startled out of some equally absorbing preoccupation
of his own, and was in haste to return to it, for he made no demur, but paid at
once. To do him justice, he had never been a grudging paymaster. He drove as
hard a bargain as he could at the outset, but once the agreement was made, he
kept it.

“Go
when you please,” he said. “Fill your bag from the kitchen for the journey when
you leave. You did good work, I give you that.”

And
he returned to whatever it was that so engrossed his thoughts, and Alard went
to collect the proffered largesse and his own meagre possessions.

“I
am going,” he said, meeting Cadfael in the hall doorway. “I must go.” There was
no more doubt in voice or face. “They will take me back, though in the lowest
place. From that there’s no falling. The blessed Benedict wrote in the Rule
that even to the third time of straying a man may be received again if he
promise full amendment.”

It
was a dark night, without moon or stars but in fleeting moments when the wind
ripped apart the cloud covering to let through a brief gleam of moonlight. The
weather had grown gusty and wild in the last two days, the King’s fleet must
have had a rough crossing from Barfleur.

“You’d
do better,” urged Cadfael, “to wait for morning, and go by daylight. Here’s a
safe bed, and the King’s peace, however well enforced, hardly covers every mile
of the King’s highroads.”

But
Alard would not wait. The yearning was on him too strongly, and a penniless
vagabond who had ventured all the roads of Christendom by day or night was
hardly likely to flinch from the last thirty miles of his wanderings.

“Then
I’ll go with you as far as the road, and see you on your way,” said Cadfael.

There
was a mile or so of track through thick forest between them and the highroad
that bore away west-north-west on the upland journey to Evesham. The ribbon of
open highway, hemmed on both sides by trees, was hardly less dark than the
forest itself. King Henry had fenced in his private park at Woodstock to house
his wild beasts, but maintained also his hunting chase here, many miles in
extent. At the road they parted, and Cadfael stood to watch his friend march
steadily away towards the west, eyes fixed ahead, upon his penance and his
absolution, a tired man with a rest assured.

Cadfael
turned back towards the lodge as soon as the receding shadow had melted into
the night. He was in no haste to go in, for the night, though blustery, was not
cold, and he was in no mind to seek the company of others of the party now that
the one best known to him was gone, and gone in so mysteriously rapt a fashion.
He walked on among the trees, turning his back on his bed for a while.

The
constant thrashing of branches in the wind all but drowned the scuffling and
shouting that suddenly broke out behind him, at some distance among the trees,
until a horse’s shrill whinny brought him about with a jerk, and set him
running through the underbrush towards the spot where confused voices yelled
alarm and broken bushes thrashed. The clamour seemed some little way off, and
he was startled as he shouldered his way headlong through a thicket to collide
heavily with two entangled bodies, send them spinning apart, and himself fall a-sprawl
upon one of them in the flattened grass. The man under him uttered a scared and
angry cry, and the voice was Roger’s. The other man had made no sound at all,
but slid away very rapidly and lightly to vanish among the trees, a tall shadow
swallowed in shadows.

Cadfael
drew off in haste, reaching an arm to hoist the winded man. “My lord, are you
hurt? What, in God’s name, is to do here?” The sleeve he clutched slid warm and
wet under his hand. “You’re injured! Hold fast, let’s see what harm’s done before
you move...”

Then
there was the voice of Goscelin, for once loud and vehement in alarm, shouting
for his lord and crashing headlong through bush and brake to fall on his knees
beside Roger, lamenting and raging.

“My
lord, my lord, what happened here? What rogues were those, loose in the woods?
Dared they waylay travellers so close to the King’s highway? You’re hurt here’s
blood...”

Roger
got his breath back and sat up, feeling at his left arm below the shoulder, and
wincing. “A scratch. My arm... God curse him, whoever he may be, the fellow
struck for my heart. Man, if you had not come charging like a bull, I might
have been dead. You hurled me off the point of his dagger. Thank God, there’s
no great harm, but I bleed... Help me back home!”

“That
a man may not walk by night in his own woods,” fumed Goscelin, hoisting his
lord carefully to his feet, “without being set upon by outlaws! Help here, you,
Cadfael, take his other arm... Footpads so close to Woodstock! Tomorrow we must
turn out the watch to comb these tracks and hunt them out of cover, before they
kill...”

“Get
me withindoors,” snapped Roger, “and have this coat and shirt off me, and let’s
staunch this bleeding. I’m alive, that’s the main!”

They
helped him back between them, through the more open ways towards the lodge. It
dawned on Cadfael, as they went, that the clamour of furtive battle had ceased
completely, even the wind had abated, and somewhere on the road, distantly, he
caught the rhythm of galloping hooves, very fast and light, as of a riderless
horse in panic flight.

The
gash in Roger Mauduit’s left arm, just below the shoulder, was long but not
deep, and grew shallower as it descended. The stroke that marked him thus could
well have been meant for his heart. Cadfael’s hurtling impact, at the very
moment the attack was launched, had been the means of averting murder. The
shadow that had melted into the night had no form, nothing about it rendered it
human or recognisable. He had heard an outcry and run towards it, a projectile
to strike attacked and attacker apart; questioned, that was all he could say.

For
which, said Roger, bandaged and resting and warmed with mulled wine, he was
heartily thankful. And indeed, Roger was behaving with remarkable fortitude and
calm for a man who had just escaped death. By the time he had demonstrated to
his dismayed grooms and men-at-arms that he was alive and not much the worse,
appointed the hour when they should set out for Woodstock in the morning, and
been helped to his bed by Goscelin, there was even a suggestion of complacency
about him, as though a gash in the arm was a small price to pay for the
successful retention of a valuable property and the defeat of his clerical
opponents.

In
the court of the palace of Woodstock the King’s chamberlains, clerks and judges
were fluttering about in a curiously distracted manner, or so it seemed to
Cadfael, standing apart among the commoners to observe their antics. They
gathered in small groups, conversing in low voices and with anxious faces,
broke apart to regroup with others of their kind, hurried in and out among the
litigants, avoiding or brushing off all questions, exchanged documents, hurried
to the door to peer out, as if looking for some late arrival. And there was
indeed one litigant who had not kept to his time, for there was no sign of a
Benedictine prior among those assembled, nor had anyone appeared to explain or
justify his absence. And Roger Mauduit, in spite of his stiff and painful arm,
continued to relax, with ever-increasing assurance, into shining complacency.
The appointed hour was already some minutes past when four agitated fellows,
two of them Benedictine brothers, made a hasty entrance, and accosted the
presiding clerk.

Sir,”
bleated the leader, loud in nervous dismay, “we here are come from the abbey of
Shrewsbury, escort to our prior, who was on his way to plead a case at law
here. Sir, you must hold him excused, for it is not his blame nor ours that he
cannot appear. In the forest some two miles north, as we rode hither last night
in the dark, we were attacked by a band of lawless robbers, and they have
seized our prior and dragged him away...”

The
spokesman’s voice had risen shrilly in his agitation, he had the attention of
every man in the hall by this time. Certainly he had Cadfael’s. Masterless men
some two miles out of Woodstock, plying their trade last night, could only be
the same who had happened upon Roger Mauduit and all but been the death of him.
Any such gang, so close to the court, was astonishing enough, there could
hardly be two. The clerk was outraged at the very idea.

“Seized
and captured him? And you four were with him? Can this be true? How many were
they who attacked you?”

“We
could not tell for certain. Three at least but they were lying in ambush, we
had no chance to stand them off. They pulled him from his horse and were off
into the trees with him. They knew the woods, and we did not. Sir, we did go
after them, but they beat us off.”

It
was evident they had done their best, for two of them showed bruised and
scratched, and all were soiled and torn as to their clothing.

“We
have hunted through the night, but found no trace, only we caught his horse a
mile down the highway as we came hither. So we plead here that our prior’s
absence be not seen as a default, for indeed he would have been here in the
town last night if all had gone as it should.”

“Hush,
wait!’ said the clerk peremptorily.

All
heads had turned towards the door of the hall, where a great flurry of
officials had suddenly surged into view, cleaving through the press with fixed
and ominous haste, to take the centre of the floor below the King’s empty dais.
A chamberlain, elderly and authoritative, struck the floor loudly with his
staff and commanded silence. And at sight of his face silence fell like a
stone.