Part 3 (2/2)

He was gone more than an hour and a half, and came back alone. 'I went beyond, some way along the ride, but saw no sign of him. On my way back I asked at Cadwallon's gate, but no one had seen him pa.s.s. I feared he might have walked by the short path while I was taking the other road.'

'We'll wait for him until Vespers, and no longer,' said the prior, and by then his voice was growing grimly confident, for now he did not expect the guest to come, and the enemy would have put himself in the wrong, to Prior Robert's great gain. Until Vespers, therefore, they waited, five hours after the appointed time. The people of Gwytherin could hardly say Rhisiart had been written off too hastily.

'So it ends,' said the prior, rising and shaking out his skirts like one shaking off a doubt or an incubus. 'He has turned tail, and his opposition will carry no weight now with any man. Let us go!'

The sunlight was still bright but slanting over the green bowl where the church stood, and a number of people were gathering for the service. And out of the deeper green shadow where the forest path began, came, not Rhisiart, but his daughter, sailing gallantly out into the sunlight in a green gown, with her wild hair tamed and braided, and a linen coif over it, Sioned in her church-going person, with Peredur on her heels, his hand possessively cupping her elbow, though she paid little heed to that attention. She saw them issuing in a silent procession from Huw's gate, and her eyes went from person to person, lingering on Cadfael who came last, and again looking back with a small frown, as though one face was missing from the expected company.

'Where is my father?' she asked, her wide eyes surprised but not yet troubled. 'Is he not still here with you? Have I missed him? I rode as far as Cadwallon's house, and he was on foot, so if he has left more than an hour ago he may well be home by now. I came to bear him company to church and go back with him afterwards.'

Prior Robert looked down at her in some wonder, the first flickering uneasiness twitching his nostrils. 'What is she saying? Do you tell me that the lord Rhisiart set out to come to our meeting?'

'Of course!' said Sioned, amazed. 'He had said he would.'

'But he did not come,' said Robert. 'We've waited for him since noon, and we've seen no sign of him. Brother Sub-Prior went a part of the way to see if he could meet with him, but in vain. He has not been here.'

She caught the meaning of that without Cadfael's services. Her eyes flashed from face to face, distrustful and ready for anger. 'Are you telling me truth? Or have you hidden him away under lock and key until you can get Winifred out of her grave and away to Shrewsbury? He was all that stood in your way. And you have threatened him!'

Peredur closed his fingers anxiously on her arm, and drew her against his side. 'Hush, you must not say such things. These brothers would not lie to you.'

'At what hour,' asked Cadfael, 'did your father set out this morning?'

She looked at him, and was a little rea.s.sured. The ring of silent onlookers drew nearer, listening attentively, ready to take her part if she needed an army.

'A good hour before noon. He was going first to the fields in the clearing, so he would be coming here by the shortest way, cutting through a quarter of a mile of forest to the usual path. He had plenty of time to be here before noon. As far as the clearing Engelard would be with him, he was going beyond, to the byres over the hill. There are two cows there ready to drop their calves.'

'We are telling you truly, child,' said Father Huw, his voice as grave and anxious as her own, 'we waited for him, and he never came.'

'What can have happened to him? Where can he be?'

'He will have crossed with us and gone home,' urged Peredur, hovering unhappily at her shoulder. 'We'll ride back, we shall surely find him there before us.'

'No! Why should he turn back, and never come to the dinner? And if he did, why so late? He would have been home long before I dressed my hair and set out to meet him, if he had changed his mind. And besides, he never would.'

'I think,' said Father Huw, 'that my whole parish has some interest in this matter, and we had better put off everything else, even the services of the church, until we have found Rhisiart and a.s.sured ourselves that all's well with him. Truly this may be no more than a tangle of mistiming and misunderstanding, but let's resolve it first, and wonder about it afterwards. There are enough of us here. Let's send out in parties along all the roads he may have taken, and Sioned shall show us where she thinks his short cut from the upland fields would bring him to the path. He could not well meet with any dangerous beasts in these woods, but he may have had a fall, an injury that has halted or slowed him. Father Prior, will you join with us?'

'With all my heart,' said Prior Robert, 'and so will we all.'

The less active among them were sent along the open ride, with orders to scatter on either side and comb the surroundings as they went, while the more athletic took the narrow footpath beyond Cadwallon's stockade. The woods here were not yet close-set, mere was thick, springy gra.s.s under the trees, and no dense undergrowth. They spread out into a half-circle, moving along within a few paces of one another, Sioned pressing purposefully forward up the path with set lips and fixed eyes, Peredur with every evidence of desperate affection following close and murmuring agitated urgings into her unheeding ears. Whether he believed in his own rea.s.surances or not, out of all question he was a young man fathoms deep in love, and ready to do anything to serve and protect Sioned, while she saw in him nothing but the boy from the next holding, and tiresome at that.

They were perhaps half a mile beyond Cadwallon's enclosure when Father Huw suddenly plucked at Brother Cadfael's sleeve.

'We have forgotten Brother Jerome and Brother Columba.n.u.s! The hill of the chapel is off to the right here, no great way. Ask Prior Robert, should we not send and call them to join us?'

'I had indeed forgotten,' admitted the prior. 'Yes, by all means send someone. Best one of your paris.h.i.+oners, they'll all know the way.'

One of the young men swerved aside obediently between the trees, and ran. The slow-moving scythe swept on into deeper forest.

'About here,' said Sioned, halting, 'he would have come down from the clearing. If we go obliquely to the right here, and spread out as before, we shall be covering his likely way.'

The ground rose, the trees grew closer, the undergrowth thicker. They began to thread the encroaching bushes, having to part company by a few yards, losing sight momentarily of their neighbours. They had gone thus only a short way when Bened the smith, cras.h.i.+ng through bushes at Brother Cadfael's left hand, uttered a great shout of discovery and dismay, and everyone in the wavering line halted and shook to the sound.

Cadfael turned towards the cry, thrusting through thorn-branches, and came out in a narrow oval of gra.s.s surrounded every way with thick bushes, through which a used track no wider than a man's shoulders clove, the long way of the oval. Just where he must have brushed through into the clear s.p.a.ce, Rhisiart lay on his back, his right hip hollowing the gra.s.s under him, shoulders flattened to the ground and arms spread wide. His legs were drawn up under him with bent knees, the left leg crossed over the right. His short, defiant beard pointed at the sky. So, and at the very same slanting angle, did the feathered flight of the arrow that jutted out from under the cage of his ribs.

Chapter Five.

FROM BOTH SIDES THEY GATHERED, DRAWN TO THE SMITH'S CALL, breaking through bushes like the running of a startled herd of deer, and halting appalled round the oval where the body lay. Cadfael went on his knees, and looked for any sign of breath within the drawnback lips, any pulse in the stretched throat or rise and fall of the pierced breast, but there was none. And for that first moment he was the only one who moved within the open s.p.a.ce of gra.s.s, and what he did was done in strange, too-intense silence, as though everyone round him held his breath.

Then everything broke out at once in noise and motion. Sioned clawed through the screening circle and saw her father's body, and uttered a great shriek that was more of fury even than of grief, and flung herself forward. Peredur caught her by the wrist and pulled her round into his arms, one hand cupped behind her head to press her face into his shoulder, but she shrieked again, and struck out at him with all her strength, and breaking loose, hurled herself to her knees facing Cadfael, and reached out to embrace her father's body. Cadfael leaned across to ward her off, his hand braced into the gra.s.s under Rhisiart's right armpit.

'No! Touch nothing! Not yet! Let him alone, he has things to tell us!'

By some intuitive quickness of mind that had not deserted her even at this moment, she obeyed the tone first, and awakened to the words immediately after. Her eyes questioned him, widening, and slowly she sat back in the gra.s.s, and drew her hands together in her lap. Her lips shaped the words after him silently: '-things to tell us!' She looked from his face into the face of the dead man. She knew he was dead. She also knew that the dead speak, often in thunder. And she came of proud Welsh stock to which the blood-feud is sacred, a duty transcending even grief.

When those following gathered closer, and one reached to touch, it was she who spread her arm protectively over the body, and said with authority: 'No! Let him be!'

Cadfael had drawn back his arm, and for a moment wondered what troubled him about the palm he had lifted from the gra.s.s beside Rhisiart's breast. Then he knew. Where he knelt the gra.s.s was perceptibly damp from the morning's sharp shower, he could feel the cling of the habit when he s.h.i.+fted his knee. Yet under the outflung right arm the gra.s.s was dry, his hand rose from it with no hint of moisture, no scent of rain. He touched again, ran his fingers up and down alongside Rhisiart's right flank. He was down to the knee before he felt the dampness and stirred the green fragrance. He felt outwards, the width of the body, to find the same signs. Strange! Very strange! His mind recorded and forbore to wonder then, because there were other things to be observed, and all manner of dangers were falling in upon all manner of people.

The tall shape looming at his back, motionless and chill, could be none other than Prior Robert, and Prior Robert in a curious state of exalted shock, nearer to Brother Columba.n.u.s' ecstatic fit than he had ever been before or would ever be again. The high, strained voice asked, over the shuddering quietness of Sioned's tearless sobs: 'He is dead?'

'Dead,' said Cadfael flatly, and looked into Sioned's wide, dry eyes and held them, promising something as yet undefined. Whatever it was, she understood it and was appeased, for he was Welsh, too, he knew about the blood-feud. And she was the only heir, the only close kin, of a murdered man. She had a task far above sorrow.

The prior's voice soared suddenly, awed and exalted. 'Behold the saint's vengeance! Did I not say her wrath would be wreaked upon all those who stood in the way of her desire? Tell them what I am saying! Tell them to look well at the fulfilment of my prophecy, and let all other obdurate hearts take warning. Saint Winifred has shown her power and her displeasure.'

There was hardly any need for translation, they had the sense of it already. A dozen of those standing close shrank warily away, a dozen voices muttered hurried submission. Not for worlds would they stand in the saint's way.

'The impious man reaps what he sows,' declaimed Robert. 'Rhisiart had his warning, and did not heed it.'

The most timorous were on their knees by then, cowed and horrified. It was not as if Saint Winifred had meant very much to them, until someone else wanted her, and Rhisiart stated a prior claim on behalf of the parish. And Rhisiart was dead by violence, struck down improbably in his own forests.

Sioned's eyes held Cadfael's, above her father's pierced heart. She was a gallant girl, she said never a word, though she had words building up in her ripe for saying, spitting, rather, into Prior Robert's pallid, aristocratic, alabaster face. It was not she who suddenly spoke out. It was Peredur.

'I don't believe it!' He had a fine, clear, vehement voice that rang under the branches. 'What, a gentle virgin saint, to take such vengeance on a good man? Yes, a good man, however mistaken! If she had been so pitiless as to want to slay-and I do not believe it of her!-what need would she have of arrows and bows? Fire from heaven would have done her will just as well, and shown her power better. You are looking at a murdered man, Father Prior. A man's hand fitted that arrow, a man's hand drew the bow, and for a man's reason. There must have been others who had a grudge against Rhisiart, others whose plans he was obstructing, besides Saint Winifred. Why blame this killing on her?'

This forthright Welsh sense Cadfael translated into English for Robert's benefit, who had caught the dissenting tone of it, but not the content. 'And the young man's right. This arrow never was shot from heaven. Look at the angle of it, up from under his ribs into the heart. Out of the earth, rather! A man with a short bow, on his knee among the bushes? True, the ground slopes, he may even have been lower than Rhisiart, but even so'

'Avenging saints may make use of earthly instruments,' said Robert overbearingly.

'The instrument would still be a murderer,' said Cadfael. 'There is law in Wales, too. We shall need to send word to the prince's bailiff.'

Bened had stood all this time darkly gazing, at the body, at the very slight ooze of blood round the wound, at the jutting shaft with its trimmed feathers. Slowly he said: 'I know this arrow. I know its owner, or at least the man whose mark it bears. Where young men are living close together in a household, they mark their own with a distinctive sign, so that there can be no argument. See the tip of the feathering on one side, dyed blue.' It was as he said, and at the mention of it several there drew breath hard, knowing the mark as well as he knew it.

'It's Engelard's,' said Bened outright, and three or four hushed voices bore him out.

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