‘In God’s name,’ demanded Hugh, gaping, ‘how did she contrive the journey? I saw her, not so long since, every movement of a hand tired her. She had not been out of the house for months.’
‘She had not compelling reason,’ said Cadfael. ‘Now she has. She had no cause to fight against the care and anxiety they pressed upon her. Now she has. There is no weakness in her will. They have brought her these few miles in a litter, at cost to her, I know it, but it is what she would have, and I, for one, would not care to deny her.’
‘And she may well have brought on her death,’ Hugh said, ‘in such an effort.’
‘And if that proved so, would it be so ill an ending?’
Hugh gave him a long, thoughtful look, and did not deny it.
‘What has she said, then, to you, to justify such a wager?’
‘Nothing, as yet, except that the dead should carry their own sins, and not leave them a legacy to the living.’
‘It is more than we have got out of the boy,’ said Hugh. ‘Well, let him sit and think a while longer. He had his father to deliver, she has her son. And all of this while sons and household and all have been so busy and benevolent delivering her. If she’s calling the tune now, we may hear a different song. Wait, Cadfael, and make my excuses to Aline, while I go and saddle up.’
They had reached the bridge, and were riding so slowly that they seemed to be eking out time for some urgent thinking before coming to this conference, when Hugh said: ‘And she would not have Sulien brought in to hear?’
‘No. Very firmly she said: Not my son! What is between them, she said, let it rest until the right time. Eudo she knows she can manipulate, lifelong, if you say no word. And what point is there in publishing the offences of a dead man? He cannot be made to pay, and the living should not.’
‘But Sulien she cannot deceive. He witnessed the burial. He knows. What can she do but tell him the truth? The whole of it, to add to the half he knows already.’
Not until then had it entered Cadfael’s mind to wonder if indeed they knew, or Sulien knew, even the half of it. They were being very sure, because they thought they had discounted every other possibility, that what they had left was truth. Now the doubt that had waited aside presented itself suddenly as a world of unconsidered possibilities, and no amount of thought could rule out all. How much even of what Sulien knew was not knowledge at all, but assumption? How much of what he believed he had seen was not vision, but illusion?
They dismounted in the stable yard at the abbey, and presented themselves at the abbot’s door.
It was the middle of the morning when they assembled at last in the abbot’s parlour. Hugh had waited for her at the gatehouse, to ensure that she should be carried at once the length of the great court to the very door of Radulfus’s lodging. His solicitude, perhaps, reminded her of Eudo, for when he handed her out among the tattered autumnal beds of the abbot’s garden she permitted all with a small, tight but tolerant smile, bearing the too-anxious assiduities of youth and health with the hard-learned patience of age and sickness. She accepted the support of his arm through the anteroom where normally Brother Vitalis, chaplain and secretary, might have been working at this hour, and Abbot Radulfus took her hand upon the other side, and led her within, to a cushioned place prepared for her, with the support of the panelled wall at her back.
Cadfael, watching this ceremonious installation without attempting to take any part in it, thought that it had something of the enthronement of a sovereign lady about it. That might even amuse her, privately. The privileges of mortal sickness had almost been forced upon her, what she thought of them might never be told. Certainly she had an imperishable dignity, and a large and tolerant understanding of the concern and even unease she caused in others and must endure graciously. She had also, thus carefully dressed for an ordeal and a social visit, a fragile and admirable elegance. Her gown was deep blue like her eyes, and like her eyes a little faded, and the bliaut she wore over it, sleeveless and cut down to either hip, was the same blue, embroidered in rose and silver at the hems. ‘The whiteness of her linen wimple turned her drawn cheeks to a translucent grey in the light almost of noon.
Pernel had followed silently into the anteroom, but did not enter the parlour. She stood waiting in the doorway, her golden-russet eyes round and grave.
Pernel Otmere has been kind enough to bear me company all this way,’ said Donata, ‘and I am grateful to her for more than that, but she need not be put to the weariness of listening to the long conference I fear I may be forcing upon you, my lords. If I may ask, first
where is my son now?’
‘He is in the castle,’ said Hugh simply.
‘Locked up?’ she asked pointblank, but without reproach or excitement. ‘Or on his parole?’
‘He has the freedom of the wards,’ said Hugh, and added no further enlightenment.
‘Then, Hugh, if you would be kind enough to provide Pernel with some token that would let her in to him, I think they might spend the time more pleasantly together than apart, while we confer? Without prejudice,’ she said gently,’to any proceedings you may have in mind later.’
Cadfael saw Hugh’s black, betraying brows twitch, and lift into oblique appreciation, and thanked God devoutly for an understanding rare between two so different.
‘I will give her my glove,’ said Hugh, and cast one sharp, enjoying glance aside at the mute girl in the doorway. ‘No one will question it, no need for more.’ And he turned and took Pernel by the hand, and went out with her.
Their plans had been made, of course, last night or this morning, in the solar at Longner where the truth came forth so far as truth was known, or on the journey at dawn, before they ever reached the ferry over Severn, where Cadfael had met them. A conspiracy of women had been hatched in Eudo’s hall, that kept due consideration of Eudo’s rights and needs, of his wife’s contented pregnancy, even as it nurtured and advanced Pernel Otmere’s determined pursuit of a truth that would set Sulien Blount free from every haunted and chivalrous burden that weighed him down. The young one and the old oneold not in years, only in the rapidity of her advance upon deaththey had come together like lodestone and metal, to compound their own justice.
Hugh came back into the room smiling, though the smile was invisible to all but Cadfael. A burdened smile, none the less, for he, too, was in pursuit of a truth which might not be Pernel’s truth. He closed the door firmly on the world without.
‘Now, madam, in what particular can we be of service to you?’
She had composed herself into a settled stillness which could be sustained through a long conference. Without her cloak she made so slight a figure, it seemed a man could have spanned her body with his hands.
‘I must thank you, my lords,’ she said, ‘for granting me this audience. I should have asked for it earlier, but only yesterday did I hear of this matter which has been troubling you both. My family are too careful of me, and their intent was to spare me any knowledge that might be distressing. A mistake! There is nothing more distressing than to find out, very late, that those who rearrange circumstances around you to spare you pain have themselves been agonising day and night. And needlessly, to no purpose. It is an indignity, would not you think, to be protected by people you know, in your own mind, to be more in need of protection than you have ever been, or ever will be? Still, it is an error of affection. I cannot complain of it. But I need no longer suffer it. Pernel has had the good sense to tell me what no one else would. But there are still things I do not know, since she did not yet know them herself. May I ask?’
‘Ask whatever you wish,’ said the abbot. ‘In your own time, and tell us if you need to rest.’
‘True,’ said Donata,’there is no haste now. Those who are dead are safe enough”, and those still living and wound into this coil, I trust, are also safe. I have learned that my son Sulien has given you some cause to believe him guilty of this death which is come to judgement here. Is he still suspect?’