‘You know, do you not,’ said Hugh very gravely, as they came from one more Compline together in the dusk, ‘that if you go further, I cannot go with you. I have work of my own to do. If I turn my back upon Madog ap Meredudd many more days he’ll be casting covetous eyes at Oswestry again. He’s never stopped hankering after it. God knows I’d be loth to go back without you. And you know, none better, you’ll be tearing your own life up by the roots if you fail to keep your time.’
‘And if I fail to find my son,’ said Cadfael, gently and reasonably, ‘my life is nothing worth. No, never fret for me, Hugh, one alone on this labour can do as much as a company of armed men, and perhaps more. I have failed already to find any trace here, what remains but to go where he served, where he was betrayed and made prisoner? There someone must know what became of him. In Faringdon there will be echoes, footprints, threads to follow, and I will find them.’
He made his drawings with care, on a leaf of vellum from the scriptorium, one to size, with careful precision, one enlarged to show every detail of the salamander seal. There was no motto nor legend, only the slender lizard in its fiery nest. Surely that, too, harked back in some way to the surrender of Faringdon, and had somewhat to say concerning the death of Brien de Soulis, if only its language could be interpreted.
Hugh cast about, without overmuch comfort, for something to contribute to these vexed puzzles that drove his friend into unwilling exile, but there was little of help to be found. He did venture, for want of better: ‘Have you thought, Cadfael, that of all those who may well have hated de Soulis, there’s none with better reason than the empress? How if she prompted some besotted young man to do away with him? She has a string of raw admirers at her disposal. It could be so.’
‘To the best of my supposing,’ said Cadfael soberly, ‘it was so. Do you remember she sent for Yves that first evening, after she had seen the lad show his paces against de Soulis? I fancy she had accepted the omen, and found him a work he could do for her, a trace more privately, perhaps, than at his first attempt.’
‘No!’ gasped Hugh, stricken, and halted in mid-stride. ‘Are you telling me that Yves...’
‘No, no such matter!’ Cadfael assured him chidingly. ‘Oh, he took her meaning, or I fear he did, though he surely damned himself for ever believing it was meant so. He did not do it, of course not! Even she might have had the wit to refrain, with such an innocent. But stupid he is not! He understood her!’
‘Then may she not have singled out a second choice for the work?’ suggested Hugh, brightening.
‘No, you may forget that possibility. For she is convinced that Yves took the nudge, and rid her of her enemy. No, there’s no solution there.’
‘How so?’ demanded Hugh, pricked. ‘How can you know so much?’
‘Because she rewarded him with a gold ring. No great prize, but an acknowledgement. He tried to refuse it, but he was not brave enough, small blame to the poor lad. Oh, nothing was ever openly said, and of course he would deny it, she would avoid even having to make him say as much. The child is out of his depth with such women. He’s bent on getting rid of her gift as soon as he safely may. Her gratitude is short, that he knows. But no, she never hired another murderer, she is certain she needed none.’
‘That can hardly have added to his happiness,’ said Hugh with a sour grimace. ‘And no help to us in lifting the weight from him, either.’
They had reached the door of their lodging. Overhead the sky was clear and cold, the stars legion but infinitesimal in the early dark. The last night here, for Hugh had duties at home that could not be shelved.
‘Cadfael, think well what you are doing. I know what you stake, as well as you know it. This is not simple going and returning. Where you will be meddling a man can vanish, and not return ever. Come back with me, and I will ask Robert Bossu to follow this quest to its ending.’
‘There’s no time,’ said Cadfael. ‘I have it in my mind, Hugh, that there are more souls than one, and more lives than my son’s, to be salvaged here, and the time is very short, and the danger very close. And if I turn back now there will be no one to be the pivot at the centre, on whom the wheel of all those fortunes turns, the demon or the angel. But yes, I’ll think well before you leave me. We shall see what the morning will bring.’
*
What the morning brought, just as the household emerged from Mass, was a dust-stained rider on a lathered horse, cantering wearily in from the street and sliding stiffly and untidily to a clattering stop on the cobbles of the court. The horse stood with drooping head and heaving sides, steaming into the air sharpened with frost, and dripping foam between rolled-back lips into the stones. The rider doubled cramped fists on the pommel, and half clambered, half fell out of the saddle to stiffen collapsing knees and hold himself upright by his mount.
‘My lord bishop, pardon...’ He could not release his hold to make due reverence, but clung to his prop, bending his head as deep and respectfully as he might. ‘My mistress sends me to bring you word – the empress – she is safe in Gloucester with all her company, all but one. My lord, there was foul work along the road...’
‘Take breath, even evil news can wait,’ said Roger de Clinton, and waved an order at whoever chose to obey it. ‘Bring drink – have wine mulled for him, but bring a draught now. And some of you, help him within, and see to his poor beast, before he founders.’
There was a hand at the dangling bridle in an instant. Someone ran for wine. The bishop himself lent a solid shoulder under the messenger’s right arm, and braced him erect. ‘Come, let’s have you within, and at rest.’
In the nearest carrel of the cloister the courier leaned back against the wall and drew in breath long and gratefully. Hugh, lissome and young, and mindful of some long, hard rides of his own after Lincoln, dropped to his knees and braced experienced hands to ease off the heavy riding boots.
‘My lord, we had remounts at Evesham, and made good time until fairly close to Gloucester, riding well into the dusk to be there by nightfall. Near Deerhurst, in woodland, with the length of our company past – for I was with the rearguard – an armed band rode out at our tail, and cut out one man from among us before ever we were aware, and off with him at speed into the dark.’
‘What man was that?’ demanded Cadfael, stiffening. ‘Name him!’
‘One of her squires, Yves Hugonin. He that had hard words with de Soulis, who is dead. My lord, there’s nothing surer than some of FitzRobert’s men have seized him, for suspicion of killing de Soulis. They hold him guilty, for all the empress would have him away untouched.’
‘And you did not pursue?’ asked the bishop, frowning.
‘Some little way we did, but they were fresh, and in forest they knew well. We saw no more of them. And when we sent ahead to let our lady know, she would have one of us ride back to bring you word. We were under safe conduct, this was foul work, after such a meeting.’
‘We’ll send to the king,’ said the bishop firmly. ‘He will order this man’s release as he did before when FitzRobert seized the Earl of Cornwall. He obeyed then, he will obey again, whatever his own grudge.’
But would he, Cadfael wondered? Would Stephen lift a finger in this case, for a man as to whose guilt he had said neither yea nor nay, but only allowed him to leave under safe conduct at the empress’s insistence. No valuable ally, but an untried boy of the opposing side. No, Yves would be left for the empress to retrieve. He had left here under her wing, it was for her to protect him. And how far would she go on Yves’ behalf? Not so far as to inconvenience herself by the loss of time or advantage. His supposed infamous service to her had been acknowledged and rewarded, she owed him nothing. And he had withdrawn deliberately to the tail end of her cortege, to be out of sight and out of mind.
‘I think they had a rider alongside us for some way, in cover,’ said the courier, ‘making sure of their man, before they struck. It was all over in a moment, at a bend in the path where the trees grow close.’
‘And close to Deerhurst?’ said Cadfael. ‘Is that already in FitzRobert’s own country? How close are his castles? He left here early, in time to have his ambush ready. He had this in mind from the first, if he was thwarted here.’
‘It might be twenty miles or so to Cricklade, more to Faringdon. But closer still there’s his new castle at Greenhamsted, the one he took from Robert Musard a few weeks back. Not ten miles from Gloucester.’
‘You are sure,’ said Hugh, a little hesitantly and with an anxious eye on Cadfael, ‘that they did carry him off prisoner?’
‘No question,’ said the messenger with weary bluntness, ‘they wanted him whole, it was done very briskly. No, they’re more wary what blood they spill, these days. Men on one side have kin on the other who could still take offence and make trouble. No, be easy for that, there was no killing.’
*
The courier was gone into the prior’s lodging to eat and rest, the bishop to his own palace to prepare letters to carry the news, notably to Oxford and Malmesbury, in the region where this raid had taken place. Whether Stephen would bestir himself to intervene in this case was doubtful, but someone would surely pass the news on to the boy’s uncle in Devizes, who carried some weight with the empress. At least everything must be tried.
‘Now,’ said Cadfael, left contemplating Hugh’s bleak and frustrated face through a long silence, ‘I have two hostages to buy back. If I asked for a sign, I have it. And now there is no doubt in my mind what I must do.’
‘And I cannot come with you,’ said Hugh.
‘You have a shire to keep. Enough for one of us to break faith. But may I keep your good horse, Hugh?’
‘If you’ll pledge me to bring him safely back, and yourself in the saddle,’ said Hugh.
*
They said their farewells just within the priory gate, Hugh to return north-west along the same roads by which they had come, with his three men-at-arms at his back, Cadfael bearing south. They embraced briefly before mounting, but when they issued from the gate into the street, and separated, they went briskly, and did not look back. With every yard the fine thread that held them together stretched and thinned, attenuated to breaking point, became a fibre, a hair, a cobweb filament, but did not break.
For the first stages of that journey Cadfael rode steadily, hardly aware of his surroundings, fully absorbed in the effort to come to terms with the breaking of another cord, which had parted as soon as he turned south instead of towards home. It was like the breaking of a tight constriction which had bound his life safely within him, though at the cost of pain; and the abrupt removal of the restriction was mingled relief and terror, both intense. The ease of being loose in the world came first, and only gradually did the horror of the release enter and overwhelm him. For he was recreant, he had exiled himself, knowing well what he was doing. And now his only justification must be the redemption of both Yves and Olivier. If he failed in that he had squandered even his apostasy. Your own man, Radulfus had said, no longer any man of mine. Vows abandoned, brothers forsaken, heaven discarded.
The first need was to recognize that it had happened, the second to accept it. After that he could ride on composedly, and be his own man, as for the former half of his life he had been, and only rarely felt a need beyond, until he found community and completion in surrendering himself. Life could and must be lived on those same terms for this while, perhaps for all the while remaining.
So by that time he could look about him again, pay attention to the way, and turn his mind to the task that lay before him.
Close to Deerhurst they had closed in and cut out Yves from his fellows. And strictly speaking, there was no proof as to who had so abducted him; but Philip FitzRobert, who alone was known to bear a great grudge against the boy, and who was patently a man bent on revenge, had three castles and a strong following in those parts, and could venture such a raid with impunity, secure of his power. Then they would not risk being abroad with their captive, even by night, longer than they must, but have him away into hold in one of the castles, out of sight and out of mind, as quickly and privately as possible. Greenhamsted, said the empress’s courier, was the nearest. Cadfael did not know the region well, but he had questioned the messenger concerning the lie of the land. Deerhurst, a few miles north of Gloucester, Greenhamsted about as far to the southeast. La Musarderie, the courier had called the castle, after the family that had held it since Domesday. At Deerhurst there was an alien priory belonging to St Denis in Paris, and if he lodged there overnight he might be able to elicit some local information. Country people keep a sharp eye on the devious doings of their local lords, especially in time of civil war. For their own preservation they must.
By all accounts there had been a castle there at La Musarderie ever since King William gave the village to Hascoit Musard some time before the Domesday survey was taken. That argued enough time to have built in stone, after the first hurried timber erection to secure a foothold. Faringdon had been thrown up in a few weeks of the summer, and laid under siege almost before it was finished. Earthwork and wood, no other possibility in the time, though evidently care had been taken to make it as strong as possible. And Cricklade, whatever its defensive state might be, was not as close as Greenhamsted to the spot where Yves had been abducted. Well, he could see if anyone at Deerhurst could enlighten him on any of these matters.
He rode steadily, intending to ride late and be well on his way before night. He took no food, and said the office at tierce and sext in the saddle. Once he fell in with a mounted merchant and his packman on the way, and they rode together some miles, to a flow of talk that went in at Cadfael’s left ear and out at the right, punctuated by his amicable but random murmurs of acknowledgement, while all the while his mind was on those as yet unknown fields of enterprise that awaited him in the valley of the Thames, where the lines of battle were drawn. At the approach to Stratford the merchant and his man turned off to make for the town, and Cadfael rode on alone once again, exchanging preoccupied greetings here and there with other travellers on a well-used and relatively safe highway.
In the dusk he came to Evesham, and it fell upon him suddenly with chilling shock that he had been taking for granted his welcome as a brother of the Order, he who now had no right to any privilege here, he who had with deliberation broken his vow of obedience, knowing well what he did. Recreant and self-exiled, he had no right even to the habit he wore, except of charity to cover his nakedness.
He bespoke for himself a pallet in the common hall, on the plea that his journey was penitential, and he was not deserving of entering among the choir monks until it was fully accomplished, which was as near to the truth as he cared to come. The hospitaller, gravely courteous, would not press him beyond what he cared to confide, but let him have his way, offered a confessor should he be in need, and left him to lead his horse to the stables and tend him before taking his own rest. At Vespers and at Compline Cadfael chose for himself an obscure corner of the nave, but one from which he could see the high altar. He was not excommunicate, except by his own judgement. Not yet.
But all through the office he felt within himself an impossible paradox, a void that weighed heavier than stone.
*
He came through the woodlands flanking the vale of Gloucester during the next afternoon. All these midland shires of England seemed to him richly treed and full of game, one great, lavish hunting chase. And in these particular glades Philip FitzRobert had hunted a man. One more desperate loss to that gallant girl now solitary in Gloucester, and with child.
He had left Tewkesbury aside on his right hand, following the most direct road for Gloucester, as the empress and her train would have done. The forest stretches were on good, broad rides that narrowed only in a few short stretches, making use of level ground. At a bend in the path where the trees grew close, the messenger had said. Nearing her journey’s end, the empress would have quickened her pace to be in before dark, and they had taken fresh horses at Evesham. The rearguard had straggled somewhat; easy enough to close in from both sides and cut out a single man. Somewhere here, and two nights past now, and even the traces left by several riders in haste would be fading.
The thicker woodland opened out on the southern side of the track, letting light through the trees to enrich the grasses and wild ground plants below, and someone had chosen this favourable spot to cut out an assart for himself. The hut lay some yards aside, among the trees, with a low wooden fence round it, and a byre beyond. Cadfael heard a cow lowing, very contentedly, and marked how a small space to one side had been cleared of what larger timber it had carried, to allow of modest coppicing. The man of the house was digging within his enclosure, and straightened his back to stare alertly when he heard the soft thudding of hooves along the ride. Beholding a Benedictine brother, he perceptibly relaxed his braced shoulders, slackened his grip on the spade, and called a greeting across the dozen yards or so between.
‘Good day to you, brother!’
‘God bless the work!’ said Cadfael, and checked his horse, turning in between the trees to draw nearer. The man put down his spade and dusted his hands, willing to interrupt his labours for a gossip with a harmless passerby. A square, compact fellow with a creased brown face like a walnut, and sharp blue eyes, well established in his woodland holding, and apparently solitary, for there was no sound or sign of any other creature about the garden or within the hut. ‘A right hermitage you have here,’ said Cadfael. ‘Do you not want for company sometimes?’
‘Oh, I’ve a mind for quietness. And if I tire of it, I have a son married and settled in Hardwicke, barely a mile off, that way, and the children come round on holy days. I get my times for company, but I like the forest life. Whither bound, brother? You’ll be in the dusk soon.’
‘I’ll bide the night over at Deerhurst,’ said Cadfael placidly. ‘So you never have troubles yourself, friend, with wild men also liking the forest life, but for no good reasons like yours?’
‘I’m a man of my hands,’ said the cottar confidently. ‘And it’s not modest prey like me the outlaws are after. Richer pickings ride along here often enough. Not that we see much trouble of that kind. Cover here is good, but narrow. There are better hunting-grounds.’
‘That depends on the quarry,’ said Cadfael, and studied him consideringly. ‘Two nights back, I think you had a great company through here, on their way to Gloucester. About this time of day, perhaps an hour further into the dark. Did you hear them pass?’
The man had stiffened, and stood regarding Cadfael with narrowed thoughtful eyes, already wary but not, Cadfael thought, of either this enquiry or the enquirer.
‘I saw them pass,’ he said evenly. ‘Such a stir a wise man does not miss. I did not know then who came. I know now. The empress, she that was all but queen, she came with her men from the bishops’ court at Coventry, back into Gloucester. Nothing good ever comes to men like me from her skirts brushing by, nor from the edge of King Stephen’s mantle, either. We watch them go by, and thank God when they’re gone.’
‘And did they go by in peace?’ asked Cadfael. ‘Or were there others abroad, lying in ambush for them? Was there fighting? Or any manner of alarm that night?’
‘Brother,’ said the man slowly, ‘what’s your interest in these matters? I stay within doors when armed men pass by, and let alone all who let me alone. Yes, there was some sort of outcry – not here, a piece back along the way, heard, not seen. Shouting, and sudden crashing about among the trees, but all was over in minutes. And then one man came riding at a gallop after the company, crying news, and later another set off back along the route in haste. Brother, if you know more of all this than I do who heard it, why question me?’
‘And next morning, by daylight,’ said Cadfael, ‘did you go to view that place where the attack was made? And what signs did you find there? How many men, would you judge? And which way did they go, afterwards?’
‘They had been waiting in hiding,’ said the man, ‘very patiently, most on the southern side of the track, but a few to the north. Their horses had trampled the sward among the trees. I would say at least a dozen in all. And when it was done, whatever was done, they massed and rode at speed, southward. There is a path there. Bushes broken and torn as they crashed through.’
‘Due south?’ said Cadfael.
‘And in a hurry. Men who knew their way well enough to hurry, even in the dark. And now that I’ve told you what I heard and saw – and but for your cloth I would have kept my mouth shut – do you tell me what business you have with such night surprises.’
‘To the best of my understanding,’ said Cadfael, consenting to a curiosity as practical and urgent as his own, ‘those who struck at the empress’s rearguard and rode away in haste southward have seized and taken with them into captivity a young man of my close acquaintance, who has done nothing wrong but for incurring the hatred of Philip FitzRobert. And my business is to find where they have taken him, and win him free.’
‘Gloucester’s son, is it? In these parts it’s he calls the tune, true enough, and has boltholes everywhere. But, brother,’ urged the cottar, appalled, ‘you’d as well beard the devil himself as walk into La Musarderie and confront Philip FitzRobert.’
‘La Musarderie? Is that where he is?’ echoed Cadfael.
‘So they’re saying. And has a hostage or two in there already, and if there’s one more since that tussle here, you have as much chance of winning him free as of being taken up to heaven living. Think twice and again before you venture.’
‘Friend, I will. And do you live safe here from all armed men, and say a prayer now and then for all prisoners and captives, and you’ll be doing your share.’
Here among the trees the light was perceptibly fading. He had best be moving on to Deerhurst. At least he had gleaned a crumb of evidence to help him on his way. A hostage or two in there already. And Philip himself installed there. And where he was, surely he would bring with him his perverse treasure of bitterness and hatred, and hoard up his revenges.
Cadfael was about to turn his horse to the track once more, when he thought of one more thing he most needed to know, and brought out the rolled leaf of vellum from the breast of his habit, and spread it open on his thigh to show the drawings of the salamander seal.
‘Have you ever seen this badge, on pennant, or harness, or seal? I am trying to find its owner.’
The man viewed it attentively, but shook his head. ‘I know nothing of these badges and devices of the gentles, barring the few close hereabouts. No, I never saw it. But if you’re bound for Deerhurst, there’s a brother of the house studies such things, and prides himself on knowing the devices of every earl and baron in the land. He can surely give this one a name.’
*
He emerged from the dusk of the woodland into the full daylight of the wide water-meadows flanking that same Severn he had left behind at Shrewsbury, but here twice the width and flowing with a heavy dark power. And there gleaming through trees no great way inland from the water was the creamy silver stone of the church tower, solid Saxon work, squat and strong as a castle keep. As he approached, the long line of the nave roof came into view, and an apse at the east end, with a semicircular base and a faceted upper part. An old, old house, centuries old, and refounded and endowed by the Confessor, and bestowed by him upon Saint Denis. The Confessor was always more Norman in his sympathies than English.
Once again Cadfael found himself approaching almost with reluctance the Benedictine ambience that had been home to him for so many years, and feeling that he came unworthily and without rights. But here his conscience must endure its own deception if he was to enquire freely after the knowledge he needed. When all was done, if he survived the doing, he would make amends.
The porter who admitted him into the court was a round and amiable soul in his healthy middle years, proud of his house, and happy to show off the beauties of his church. There was work going on south of the choir, a masons’ lodge shelved out against the wall of the apse, and ashlar stacked for building. Two masons and their labourers were just covering the banker and laying by their tools as the light faded. The porter indicated fondly the foundations of walls outlining the additions to be made to the fabric.
‘Here we are building another south-east chapel, and the like to balance it on the northern side. Our master mason is a local man, and the works of the Church are his pride. A good man! He gives work to some unfortunates other masters might find unprofitable. You see the labourer who goes lame of one leg there, from an injury. A man-at-arms until recently, but useless to his lord now, and Master Bernard took him on, and has had no cause to regret it, for the man works hard and well.’
The labourer, who went heavily on the left leg, surely after some very ill-knit fracture, was otherwise a fine, sturdy fellow, and very agile for all his disability. Probably about thirty years old, with large, able hands, and a long reach. He stood back civilly to give them passage, and then completed the covering of the stacked timber under the wall, and followed the master-mason towards the outer gate.
As yet there had been nothing harder than mild ground frosts, or building would have ceased already for the winter, and the growing walls been bedded down in turf and heather and straw to sleep until spring.
‘There’ll be work within for them when the winter closes in,’ said the porter. ‘Come and see.’
Within Deerhurst’s priory church there was as yet no mark of the Norman style, all was Saxon, and the first walls of the nave centuries old. Not until the porter had shown forth all the curiosities and beauties of his church to the visitor did he hand Cadfael over to the hospitaller, to be furnished with a bed, and welcomed into the community at supper in the frater.
Before Compline he asked after the learned brother who was knowledgeable about the devices and liveries of the noble houses of England, and showed the drawings he had made in Coventry. Brother Eadwin studied them and shook his head. ‘No, this I have not seen. There are among the baronage some families who use several personal variations among their many members and branches. This is certainly none of the most prominent. I have never seen it before.’
Neither, it seemed, had the prior, or any of the brethren. They studied the drawings, but could not give the badge a family name or a location.
‘If it belongs in these parts,’ said Brother Eadwin, willing to be helpful, ‘you may find an answer in the village rather than within here. There are some good but minor families holding manors in this shire, besides those of high rank. How did it come into your hands, brother?’
‘It was in the baggage of a dead man,’ said Cadfael, ‘but not his. And the original is in the hands of the bishop of Coventry now, until we can discover its owner and restore it.’ He rolled up the leaf of vellum, and retied the cord that bound it. ‘No matter. The lord bishop will pursue it.’
He went to Compline with the brothers, preoccupied rather with the pain and guilt of his own self-exile from this monastic world than with the responsibility he had voluntarily taken upon himself in the secular world. The office comforted him, and the silence afterwards came gratefully. He put away all thought until the morrow, and rested in the quietness until he fell asleep.
*
Nevertheless, after Mass next morning, when the builders had again uncovered their stores to make use of one more working day, he remembered the porter’s description of Master Bernard as a local man, and thought it worth the trial to unroll his drawings upon the stacked ashlar and call the mason to study them and give judgement. Masons may be called upon to work upon manors and barns and farmsteads as well as churches, and use brands and signs in their own mysteries, and so may well respect and take note of them elsewhere.
The mason came, gazed briefly, and said at once: ‘No, I do not know it.’ He studied it with detached interest, but shook his head decidedly. ‘No, this I’ve never seen.’
Two of his workmen, bearing a laden hand-barrow, had checked for a moment in passing to peer in natural curiosity at the leaf which was engaging their master’s interest. The lame man, braced on his good right leg, looked up from the vellum to Cadfael’s face for a long moment, before they moved on, and smiled and shrugged when Cadfael returned the glance directly.
‘No local house, then,’ said Cadfael resignedly.
‘None that’s known to me, and I’ve done work for most manors round here.’ The mason shook his head again, as Cadfael re-rolled the leaf and put it back securely within his habit. ‘Is it of importance?’
‘It may be. Somewhere it will be known.’
It seemed he had done all that could be done here. What his next move should be he had not considered yet, let alone decided. By all the signs Philip must be in La Musarderie, where most probably his men had taken Yves into captivity, and where, according to the woodsman, he already had another hostage, or more than one, in hold. Even more convincing it seemed to Cadfael, was the argument that a man of such powerful passions would be where his hatreds anchored him. Beyond doubt Philip believed Yves guilty. Therefore if he could be convinced he was wronging the boy, his intent could and would be changed. He was an intelligent man, not beyond reason.
Cadfael took his problem with him into the church at the hour of tierce, and said the office privately in a quiet corner. He was just opening his eyes and turning to withdraw when a hand was laid softly on his sleeve from behind.
‘Brother...’
The lame man, for all his ungainliness, could move silently in his scuffed felt shoes on the floor tiles. His weathered face, under a thatch of thick brown hair, was intent and sombre. ‘Brother, you are seeking the man who uses a certain seal to his dealings. I saw your picture.’ He had a low, constrained voice, well suited to confidences.
‘I was so seeking,’ agreed Cadfael ruefully, ‘but it seems no one here can help me. Your master does not recognize it as belonging to any man he knows.’
‘No,’ said the lame man simply. ‘But I do.’