The Confession of Brother Haluin (16 page)

None
of which could be said aloud, here in front of Jean de Perronet, who stood now
at Cenred’s side, looking from face to face round the circle, puzzled and
sympathetic in a domestic trouble which was none of his business. An old
servant gone missing in the evening, with night coming on and snow falling,
called for at least a token search. He made the suggestion ingenuously, filling
a silence which at any moment might have caused him to look more narrowly at
what was happening here.

“Should
we not look for her, if she’s been gone so long? The ways are not always safe
at night, and for a woman venturing alone…”

The
diversion came as a blessing, and Cenred seized on it gratefully. “So we will.
I’ll send out a party by the most likely way. It may be she’s only been delayed
by the snow, if she intended a visit in the village. But this need not give you
any concern, Jean. I would not wish your stay to be marred. Leave this matter
to my men, we have enough in the household. And rest assured she cannot be far,
we shall soon find her and see her safe home.”

“I
will gladly come out with you,” de Perronet offered.

“No,
no, I will not have it. Let all things here go as we have planned them, and
nothing spoil the occasion. Use my house as your own, and take your night’s
rest with a quiet mind, for tomorrow this small flurry will be over and done.”

It
was not difficult to persuade the helpful guest to abandon his generous
intention. Perhaps it had been made only as a courteous gesture. A man’s
household affairs are his, and best left to him. It is civil to offer help, but
wise to give way gracefully. Cenred knew very well now where Edgytha had set
out to go, there would be no question of which road to take in hunting for her.
Moreover, there was some genuine call for concern, for in four hours she could
have been there and back even in snow. Cenred quit his supper table
purposefully, driving the men of his following before him to muster within the
hall door. He bade de Perronet an emphatic good-night, which was accepted
plainly as dismissal even from this domestic conference, and issued brisk
orders to those of his servants whom he chose to go with the search party, six
of the young and vigorous and his steward with them.

“What
must we do?” Brother Haluin wondered half aloud, standing with Cadfael a little
apart.

“You,”
said Cadfael, “must go to your bed, like a sensible man, and sleep if you can.
And a prayer or two will not come amiss. I am going with them.”

“Along
the nearest road to Elford,” said Haluin heavily.

“To
find a cat to put among the pigeons. Yes, where else? But you stay here. There
is nothing you could do or say, if there has to be speech, that I cannot.”

The
hall door was opened, the party tramped down the steps into the courtyard, two
of them carrying torches. Cadfael, following last, looked out upon a
glittering, frosty night. The ground was covered but meagerly, small,
needle-sharp flakes out of an almost clear sky, brittle with stars and too cold
for a heavy fall. He looked back from the doorway, and saw the women of the
house, gentlefolk and servants alike, drawn together in mutual uneasiness in
the far corner of the hall, all eyes following their departing menfolk, the
maids huddling close, Emma with her smooth, gentle face wrung in distress, and
pulling nervously at her plump fingers.

And
Helisende standing a pace apart, the only one not clinging to her kind for
comfort. She was far enough back from one of the sconces for the torchlight to
show her face fully, without exaggerated shadows. All that Emma had reported to
her husband, all that Madlyn had told, Helisende surely knew now. She knew
where Edgytha was gone, she knew for what purpose. She was staring wide-eyed
into a future she could no longer foretell, where the results of this night’s
work hid themselves in bewilderment and dismay and possible catastrophe. She
had prepared herself for a willing sacrifice, but she found herself utterly
unprepared for whatever threatened now. Her face seemed as still and composed
as ever, yet it had lost all its calm and certainty, her resolution had become
helplessness, and her resignation changed to desperation. She had arrived at an
embattled ground she believed she could hold, at whatever cost to herself, and
now that ground shook and parted under her feet, and she was no longer in
control of her own fate. The image of her shattered gallantry, disarmed and
vulnerable, was the last glimpse Cadfael carried out with him into the darkness
and the frost.

Cenred
drew his cloak close about his face against the wind, and set out from the gate
of the manor on a path that was strange to Cadfael. With Haluin he had turned
in from the distant highway, straight towards the gleam of light from the manor
torches, but this way slanted back to strike the road much nearer to Elford,
and would probably cut off at least half a mile of the distance. The night had
its own lambent light, partly from the stars, partly from the thin covering of
snow, so that they were able to go quickly, spread out in a line centered upon
the path. The country here was open, at first bare of trees, then threading a
belt of woods and scrubland. They heard nothing but their own footsteps and
breath, and the soft whining of the wind among the bushes. Twice Cenred halted
them to have silence, and called aloud to the night, but got no answer.

For
one who knew this path well, Cadfael calculated, the distance to Elford would
be roughly two miles. Edgytha could have been back in Vivers long ago, and by
what she had said to the maid Madlyn she had intended to return in ample time
to be at her mistress’s disposal after supper. Nor could she have strayed from
a known way on so bright a night, and in barely more than a sprinkling of snow.
It began to seem clear to him that something had happened to prevent either her
errand or her safe return from it. Not the rigors of nature nor the caprice of
chance, but the hand of man. And on such a night those outcast creatures who
preyed upon travelers, even if any such existed here in this open country, were
unlikely to be out and about their dark business, since their prey would hardly
be eager to venture out in such a frost. No, if any man had intervened to
prevent Edgytha from reaching her goal, it was with deliberate intent. There
was, perhaps, one better possibility, that if she had reached Roscelin with her
news, he had persuaded her not to return, but to remain at Elford in safety and
leave the rest to him. But Cadfael was not sure that he believed in that. If it
had happened so, Roscelin would already have been striding indignantly into the
hall at Vivers before ever Edgytha had been missed from her place.

Cadfael
had drawn close alongside Cenred, pressing forward in haste in the center of
his line of hunters, and one dark, sidelong glance saluted and recognized him,
without great surprise. “There was no need, Brother,” said Cenred shortly. “We
are enough for the work.”

“One
more will do no harm,” said Cadfael.

No
harm, but possibly none too welcome. As well if this matter could be kept
strictly private to the Vivers household. Yet it seemed that Cenred was not
greatly troubled by the presence of a chance Benedictine monk among his search
party. He was intent on finding Edgytha, and preferably before she reached
Elford, or failing that, in time to negate whatever mischief she had set afoot.
Perhaps he expected to meet his son somewhere along the way, coming in haste to
prevent that marriage that would destroy his last vain hopes. But they had gone
somewhat more than a mile, and the night remained empty about them.

They
were moving through thin, open woodland, over tufted, uneven grass, where the
frozen snow lay too lightly to flatten the blades to earth, and they might have
passed by the slight hummock beside the path on the right hand but for the dark
ground that showed through the covering of white lace, darker than the bleached
brown of the wintry turf. Cenred had passed it by, but checked sharply when
Cadfael halted, and stared down as he was staring.

“Quickly,
bring the torch here close!”

The
yellow light outlined clearly the shape of a human body lying sprawled, head
away from the path, whitened over with a crust of snow. Cadfael stooped and
brushed away the crystalline veil from an upturned face, open-eyed and
contorted in astonished fright, and head of grey hair from which the hood had
fallen back as she fell. She lay on her back but inclined towards her right
side, her arms flung up and wide as if to ward off a blow. Her black cloak
showed darkly through the filigree of white. Over her breast a small patch
marred the veil, where her blood, in a meager flow, had thawed the flakes as
they fell. There was no telling immediately, from the way she lay, whether she
had been on her way outward or homeward when she was struck down, but it seemed
to Cadfael that at the last moment she had heard someone stealing close behind
her, and whirled about with hands flung up to protect her head. The dagger her
attacker had meant to slip between her ribs from behind had missed its stroke,
and been plunged into her breast instead. She was dead and cold, the frost
confounding all conjecture as to when she must have died.

“God’s
pity!” said Cenred on a whispering breath. “This I never thought to see!
Whatever she intended, why this?”

“Wolves
hunt even in frost,” said his steward heavily, “Though what rich traffic there
can be for them here heaven knows! And see, there’s nothing taken, not even her
cloak. Masterless men would have stripped her.”

Cenred
shook his head. “There are none such in these parts, I swear. No, this is a
different matter. I wonder, I wonder which way she was bound when she was
struck dead!”

“When
we move her,” said Cadfael, “we may find out. What now? There’s nothing now can
be done for her. Whoever used the knife knew his grim business, it needed no
second stroke. And whatever footprints he left behind, the ground’s too hard to
show, even where the snow has not covered them.”

“We
must carry her home,” said Cenred somberly. “And a sorry matter that will be
for my wife and sister. They set great store by the old woman. She was always
loyal and trustworthy, all these years since my young stepmother brought her
into the household. This must not pass without requital! We’ll send ahead to
see if she ever came to Elford, and what’s known of her there, and whether they
have any word of chance marauders haunting these ways, perhaps on the run from
other regions. Though that’s hard to believe. Audemar keeps a firm hand on his
lands.”

“Shall
we send back and fetch a litter, my lord?” asked the steward. “She’s but a
light weight, we could make shift to carry her back in her cloak.”

“No,
no need to make another journey. But you, Edred, you take Jehan here with you,
and go on to Elford, and find out what’s known of her there, if anyone has met
and spoken with her. No, take two men with you. I would not have you in any
danger on the road, if there are masterless men abroad.”

The
steward accepted his orders, and took one of the torches to light him the rest
of the way. The small, resiny spark dwindled along the pathway towards Elford,
and vanished gradually into the night. Those remaining turned to the body, and
lifted it aside to unfasten and spread out on the path the cloak she wore. As
soon as she was raised one thing at least was made plain.

“There’s
snow under her,” said Cadfael. The shrunken shape of her was dark and moist
where contact had been close enough for her body’s lingering warmth to melt the
flakes, but all round the rim where the folds of her clothing had lain only
lightly, a worn border of lace remained, “It was after the snow began that she
fell. She was on her way home.”

She
was light and limp in their hands. The chill of her body was from frost, not
rigor. They wound her closely in her cloak, and bound her safely with two or
three belts and Cadfael’s rope girdle, to give handholds for the servants who
carried her, and so they bore her back the mile or so they had come, to Vivers.

The
household was still awake and aware, unable to rest until they knew what was
happening. One of the maids saw the lamentable little procession entering at
the gate, and ran wailing to tell Emma. By the time they brought Edgytha’s body
up into the hall the whole fluttered dovecote of maids was again assembled,
huddled together for comfort. Emma took charge with more resolution than might
have been expected from her soft and gentle person, and swept the girls into
service with a briskness that kept them from tears, preparing a trestle table
in one of the small chambers for a bier, composing the disordered limbs,
heating water, bringing scented linen from the chests in the hall to drape and
cover the dead. The funereal ceremonies do as much for the living as for the
dead, in occupying their hands and minds, and consoling them for things left
undone or badly done during life. Very shortly the murmur of subdued voices
from the death chamber had softened from distress and dismay into a gentle,
almost soothing elegiac crooning.

Emma
came out into the hall, where her husband and his men were warming their
chilled feet at the fire, and rubbing the sense back into their numbed hands.

“Cenred,
how is this possible? Who could have done such a thing?”

No
one attempted to answer that, nor had she looked for an answer.