In the late afternoon Cenred sent his steward to ask the two Benedictine brothers if they felt able to join his household at supper in hall, or if Father Haluin preferred to continue his rest in retirement, and be waited on in his own chamber. Haluin, who had withdrawn into a dark, inward meditation, would certainly rather have remained apart, but felt it discourteous to absent himself any longer, and made the effort to emerge from his anxious silence, and do honor to the company at the high table. They had given him a place close to the bridal pair, by virtue of his office as the priest who was to marry them. Cadfael, seated a little apart, had them all in view. And below, in the body of the hall, the whole household assembled in its due ranks, under the glow of the torches.
It occurred to Cadfael, watching Haluin’s grave face, that this would be the first time his friend had ever been called upon to be go-between for God. It was true that the young brothers were being encouraged to aim at orders, more now than ever in the past, but many of them would be, as Haluin was, priests without pastoral cares, who in a long life would probably never christen, never marry, never bury, never ordain others to follow them in the same sheltered paths. It is a terrible responsibility, thought Cadfael, who had never aspired to ordination, to have the grace of God committed to a man’s hands, to be privileged and burdened to play a part in other people’s lives, to promise them salvation in baptism, to lock their lives together in matrimony, to hold the key to purgatory at their departing. If I have meddled, he thought devoutly, and God knows I have, when need was and there was no better man to attempt it, at least I have meddled only as a fellow sinner, tramping the same road, not as a viscount of heaven, stooping to raise up. Now Haluin faces this same terrible demand, and no wonder if he is afraid.
He looked along the array of faces which Haluin, being so close beside them, could see only as overlapping profiles, each briefly seen as the ripple of movement flowed along the high table, and lit deceptively by the falling glow of the torches. Cenred’s broad, open, blunt-featured countenance a little drawn and taut with strain, but resolutely jovial, his wife presiding over the table with determined amiability and a somewhat anxious smile, de Perronet in happy innocence, shining with evident pleasure at having Helisende seated beside him and all but his already. And the girl, pale and quiet and resolutely gracious at his side, doing her gallant best to respond to his brightness, since this grief was no fault of his, and she had acknowledged that he deserved better. Seeing them thus together, there was no question of the man’s attachment, and if he missed the like radiance in her, perhaps he accepted that as the common ground on which marriages begin, and was ready and willing to be patient until the bud came to flower.
This was the first time Haluin had seen the girl since she had startled him to his feet here in the hall, and brought him down in that crashing fall, half dazed as he already was by the stinging wind and the blinding snow. And this stiff young figure in her best, gilded by the torchlight, might have been a stranger, never before seen. He looked at her, when chance brought her profile into clear view, with doubt and bewilderment, burdened by a responsibility new to him, and heavy to bear.
It was late when the women withdrew from the high table, leaving the men to their wine, though they would not sit here in the hall much longer. Haluin looked round to catch Cadfael’s eye, agreeing in a glance that it was time for them to leave host and guest together, and Haluin was already reaching for his crutches and bracing himself for the effort of rising when Emma came in again from the solar with a flustered step and an anxious face, a young maidservant at her heels.
“Cenred, here’s something strange happened! Edgytha is gone out and has not returned, and now it’s beginning to snow again, and where should she be going, thus in the night? I sent for her to attend me to bed, as always, and she’s nowhere to be found, and now Madlyn here says that she went out hours ago, as soon as it was dusk.”
Cenred was slow to turn his mind from his hospitable duty towards his guest to an apparently small domestic problem, surely the women’s business rather than his.
“Why, Edgytha may surely go out if she so chooses,” he said good-humoredly,” and will come back when she chooses no less. She’s a free woman, knows her own mind, and can be trusted to mind her duties. If she’s once missing when she’s called for, that’s no great matter. Why should you worry over it?”
“But when does she ever do so without saying? Never! And now it’s snowing again, and she’s been gone four hours or more, if Madlyn says true. How if she’s come to harm? She would not stay away so long of her own will. And you know how I value her. I would not for the world that any harm should come to her.”
“No more would I,” said Cenred warmly, “nor to any of my people. If she’s gone astray we’ll look for her. But no need to fret before we know of any mishap. Here, girl, speak up, what is it you know of the matter? You say she went out some hours ago?”
“Sir, so she did!” Madlyn came forward willingly, wide-eyed with half-pleasurable excitement. “It was after we’d made all ready. I was coming in from the dairy, and I saw her come forth from the kitchen with her cloak about her, and I said to her that this was like to be a busy night, and she’d be missed, and she said she would be back before she was called for. It was just beginning to get dark then. I never thought she’d be gone so long.”
“And did you not ask her where she was going?” demanded Cenred.
“I did,” said the girl, “though it was little enough she was ever likely to tell about her own business, and I should have known she’d make a sour answer if she made any at all. But there’s no sense to be made of it. She said she was going to find a cat,” said Madlyn in baffled innocence, “to put among the pigeons.”
If it meant nothing to her, it had meaning for Cenred and for his wife, who plainly heard it now for the first time. Emma’s startled gaze flew to her husband’s face as he came abruptly to his feet. The look they exchanged Cadfael could read as if he had the words ringing in his ears. He had been given clues enough to make the reading easy. Edgytha was nurse to them both, indulged them, loved them like her own, resents even their separation, whatever the church and the ties of blood may say, and much more this marriage that makes the separation final. She is gone to enlist help to prevent what she deplores, even at this last moment. She is gone to tell Roscelin what is being done behind his back. She is gone to Elford.
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 recognised 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.
“Where did you find her?”
That her husband did answer, scrubbing wearily at his furrowed forehead. “Past the halfway to Elford by the short road, lying beside the path. And she’d been there no long time, for there was snow under her. It was on her way back here that someone struck her down.”
“You think,” said Emma in a low voice, “she had been to Elford?”
“Where else by that path? I’ve sent Edred on there, to find out if she came, and who has spoken with her. In an hour or so they should be back, but whether with any news, God alone knows.”
They were both of them moving delicately about and about the heart of the matter, avoiding the mention of Roscelin’s name, or any word of the reason why Edgytha should go rushing out alone in a wintry night. True, word had gone round even in the kennels and mews by then, and the entire household of Vivers was gathering uneasily, the indoor servants hovering in an anxious group in the corners of the hall, those from without prowling and peering over their shoulders, unable to withdraw to their own proper business or their normal rest until something should happen within here to scatter them. Few of all these, if any, could be in their lord’s confidence in the matter of Roscelin’s outlawed love, but many of them might have guessed at the undercurrents sweeping Helisende into this hasty marriage. Some reserve in speech would have to be observed in front of all this clan.
And here, to complicate matters further, came Jean de Perronet from the chamber above, where he had retired out of courtesy, but not to sleep, for he was still in his supper-table finery. And here, too, was Brother Haluin from his bed, anxious and silent. All those under the roof of Vivers that night had been drawn gradually and almost stealthily into the hall.
No, not quite all. Cadfael looked round the assembly, and missed one face. Where all others forgathered, Helisende absented herself.
By the look on his face de Perronet had been doing some serious thinking since he bowed to his host’s wish, and let the search party go out into the night without him. He came into the hall with a face composed and grave, revealing nothing of what went on in his mind, took his time about looking all round the mute and dour circle of them, and looked last and longest at Cenred, who stood with his boots steaming in the ashes of the hearth, and his head bent to stare blankly into the embers of the fire.
“I think,” said de Penonet with deliberation, “this has not ended well. You have found your maidservant?”
“We have found her,” said Cenred.
“Misused? Dead? Do you tell me you have found her dead?”
“And not of cold! Stabbed to death,” said Cenred bluntly, “and left by the wayside. And no sign of another soul have we seen or heard along the road, though this befell no long time ago, after the snow began to fall.”
“Eighteen years she has been with us,” said Emma, wringing her hands together wretchedly under her breast. “Poor soul, poor soul, to end like this—struck down by some outlaw vagabond to die in the cold. I would not for the world have had this happen!”
“I am sorry,” said de Perronet, “that such a thing should be, and at such a time as this. Can there be some link between the occasion that brought me here and this woman’s death?”
“No!” cried husband and wife together, rather resisting the thought already in their minds than lying to deceive the guest.
“No,” said Cenred more softly, “I pray there is not, I trust there is not. It is of all chances the most unhappy, yet surely no more than chance.”
“There are such unblessed chances,” admitted de Perronet, but with evident reserve. “And they do not spare to mar festivals, even marriages. You do not wish to put off this one beyond tomorrow?”
“No, why so? It is our grief, not yours. But it is murder, and I must send to the sheriff, and loose a hunt for the murderer. She has no living kin that I know of, it is for us to bury her. What’s needful we shall do. It need not cast a shadow upon you.”
“I fear it already has,” said de Perronet, “upon Helisende. The woman, I believe, was her nurse, and dear to her.”
“The more reason you should take her away from here, to a new home and a new life.” He looked round for her then for the first time, startled not to find her there among the women, but relieved that she was not there to complicate a matter already vexed enough. If she had indeed been able to fall asleep, so much the better, let her sleep on, and know nothing worse until morning. The maidservants were drifting back from the room where they had been busy making Edgytha’s body seemly. There was nothing more they could now do here, and their uneasy presence, mute and fearful in hovering groups, became oppressive. Cenred stirred himself with an effort to be rid of them.
“Emma, send the women to their beds. There’s no more to be done here, and they need not wait. And you, fellows, be off and get your sleep. All’s done that can be done till Edred gets back from Elford, no need for the whole household to wait up for him.” And to de Perronet he said, “I sent him on with two others of my men to inform my overlord of this death. Murder in these parts is within his writ, this will be his business no less than mine. Come, Jean, with your leave we’ll withdraw to the solar, and leave the hall to the sleepers.”
Doubtless, thought Cadfael, watching the harassed lines of Cenred’s face, he would be happier if de Perronet chose to draw off once again from all involvement, and stand apart, but there’s no chance of that now. And however he hedges round the truth of why his steward has pushed on to Elford, the very name of that place has now assumed a significance there’s no evading. And this is not a man who likes deception, or practices it with pleasure or skill.
The women had accepted their orders at once, and dispersed, still whispering and fearful, to their quarters. The menservants quenched the torches, leaving only two by the great door to light the way in, and fed and damped down the fire to burn slowly through the night. De Perronet followed his host to the door of the solar, and there Cenred, turning, waved Cadfael to join them within.
“Brother, you were a witness, you can testify to how we found her. It was you showed how the snow had begun to fall before she was struck down. Will you wait with us, and see what word my steward brings back with him?”
There was no word said as to whether Brother Haluin should consider this invitation as applying equally to him, but he caught Cadfael’s eye, deprecating rather than recommending such a move, and chose rather to ignore it. Enough had already happened to exercise his mind, if he was to join two people whose imminent marriage was at least suspect of bringing about a death. He needed to know what lay behind these nocturnal wanderings, and followed the company into the solar, his crutches heavy and slow in the rushes, and starting a dull echo as he stepped onto the floorboards within. He took his seat on a bench in the dimmest corner, an unobtrusive listener, as Cenred sat down wearily at the table, and spread his elbows on the board, propping his head between muscular hands.
“Your men are on foot?” asked de Perronet.
“Yes.”
“Then we may have a long wait yet before they can be here again. Had you other parties out on other roads?”
Cenred said starkly, “No,” and offered no further words by way of explanation or excuse. Not a quarter of an hour ago, thought Cadfael, watching, he would have evaded that, or left it unanswered. Now he is gone beyond caring for discretion. Murder brings out into the open many matters no less painful, while itself still lurking in the dark.
De Perronet shut his lips and clenched his teeth on any further questioning, and set himself to wait in uncommitted patience. The night had closed in on the manor of Vivers in hushed stillness, ominous and oppressive. Doubtful if anyone in the hall slept, but if any of them moved it was furtively, and if any spoke it was in whispers.
Nevertheless, the wait was not to be as long as de Perronet had prophesied. The silence was abruptly shivered by the thudding of galloping hooves on the hard-frozen earth of the courtyard, a furious young voice yelling peremptorily for service, the frantic running of grooms without, and the hasty stirring of all the wakeful retainers within. Feet ran blindly in the dark, stumbling and rustling in the rushes, flint and steel spat sparks too brief and hasty to catch the tinder, the first torch was plunged into the turfed-down fire, and carried in haste to kindle others. Before the listeners in the solar could burst out into the hall a fist was thumping at the outer door, and an angry voice demanding entry.
Two or three ran to unbar, knowing the voice, and were sent reeling as the heavy door was flung back to the wall, and into the brightening flurry of torchlight burst the figure of Roscelin, head uncovered, flaxen hair on end from the speed of his ride, blue eyes blazing. The cold of the night blew in with him, and all the torches guttered and smoked, as Cenred, erupting out of the solar, was halted as abruptly on the threshold of the hall by his son’s fiery glare.
“What is this Edred tells me of you?” demanded Roscelin. “What have you done behind my back?”