“This is no such matter,” protested Cenred hotly. “She is not being forced, she has consented willingly.”
“Then why was I to be kept in ignorance? Until the thing was done? How can I believe what your own proceedings deny?” He swung round upon de Perronet, his blanched face arduously controlled. “Sir, against you I have no malice. I did not even know who was to be her husband. But you must see how hard it is to believe that all has been done fairly, when it has not been done openly.
“It is in the open now,” said de Perronet shortly. “What hinders but you should hear it from the lady’s own lips? Will that content you?”
Roscelin’s white face tightened yet more painfully, and for a moment he struggled visibly against his fear of inevitable rejection and loss. But he had no choice but to agree.
“If she tells me this is her choice, then I am silenced.” He did not say that he would therefore be content.
Cenred turned to his wife, who all this while had clung loyally to her husband’s side, while her troubled eyes never left her son’s tormented face.
“Go and call Helisende. She shall speak for herself.”
In the heavy and uneasy silence after Emma had departed it was not clear to Cadfael whether any or all of this disturbed household had found it as strange as he did that Helisende should not long ago have come down, to discover for herself the meaning of all these nocturnal comings and goings. He could not get out of his mind the last glimpse he had had of her, standing solitary among so many, suddenly lost and confounded on a road she had believed she could walk to the end with resolute dignity. In a situation so grimly changed she had lost her bearings. A wonder, though, that she had not, in defense of her own integrity, come down with the rest to discover the best or the worst when the searchers returned. Did she even know yet that Edgytha was dead?
Cenred had advanced into the half-lit hall, abandoning even the seclusion of the solar, since there was no longer any privacy to be found behind a closed door. A woman of the household had been killed. A lady of the family found her marriage the occasion of conflict and death. There was no possibility here of any separation between master and man, or mistress and maid. They waited with equal disquiet. All but Helisende, who absented herself still.
Brother Haluin had drawn back into the shadows, and sat mute and still on a bench against the wall, hunched stiffly between the crutches he hugged to his sides. His hollow dark eyes passed intently from face to face, reading and wondering. If he felt weariness, he gave no sign. Cadfael would have liked to send him away to his bed, but there hung on everyone here a compulsion so strong that there could be no departure. Only one had resisted the pull. Only one had escaped.
“What keeps the women?” fretted Cenred as the moments dragged by. “Does it take so long to pull on a gown?”
But it was long minutes more before Emma reappeared in the doorway, her round, gentle face full of consternation and dismay, her linked hands plying agitatedly at her girdle. Behind her the maid Madlyn peered warily, round-eyed. But of Helisende there was no sign.
“She is gone,” said Emma, too shaken and bewildered to make many words of it. “She is not in her bed, not in her chamber, nowhere to be found in all this house. Her cloak is gone. Jehan has been out to the stables. Her saddle horse and harness are gone with her. While you were absent she has saddled up for herself and ridden away secretly, alone.”
For once they were all alike silenced, brother, bridegroom, frustrated lover, and all. While they schemed and agonized and wrangled over her fate she had taken action and fled them all. Yes, even Roscelin, for he stood stricken and amazed, utterly at a loss like all the rest. Cenred might stiffen and frown at his son, de Perronet swing round upon him, in black suspicion, but plainly Roscelin had had no part in this panic flight. Even before Edgytha’s death, thought Cadfael, her secret errand and failure to return had shattered all Helisende’s arduously assembled certainty. Yes, de Perronet was a decent man and an honorable match, and she had pledged herself to him to remove herself from Roscelin’s path, and deliver herself and him from an unbearable situation. But if that sacrifice was to bring only anger, danger, and conflict, even short of death, then all was changed. Helisende had drawn back from the brink, and cut herself free.
“She has run!” said Cenred on a gusty breath, not questioning, accepting. “How could she do it, all unseen? And when can she have set out? Where were her maids? Was there never a groom about the stable to question her going, or at least give us warning?” He passed a helpless hand over his face, and looked round darkly at his son, “And where would she run but to you?”
It was out now, and there was no taking it back.
“Have you hidden her away somewhere in secret, and ridden here with your false indignation to cover up the sin?”
“You cannot believe that!” said Roscelin, outraged. “I have not seen her, nor had any word from her, nor sent her any, and you know it. I’m newly ridden from Elford by that same way your men came there, and if she had been on that path we should have met. Do you think I would then have let her go anywhere alone in the night, whether on to Elford or back here? If we had met we should have been together now - wherever that might be.”
“There is a safer way by the highroad,” said de Perronet. “Longer, but as fast on horseback, and safer going. If she did indeed set out for Elford, she may have ridden that way. She would hardly risk the same path your men had taken.”
His voice was dry and cold, and his face set in forbidding lines, but he was a practical man, and intended wasting no energy or passion on a green boy’s mistaken affections. They did not threaten his position. The match he desired was arranged and accepted, and need not and would not be abandoned. What mattered now was to recover the girl unharmed.
“So she may,” agreed Cenred, encouraged. “So most likely she would. If she reaches Elford she’ll be safe enough there. But we’ll send after her by the highroad, and leave nothing to chance.”
“I’ll ride back by that way,” offered Roscelin eagerly, and was off towards the door of the hall with a bound, if de Perronet had not plucked him back sharply by the sleeve.
“No, not you! What we might see of either of you again, if once you met, I much mistrust. Let Cenred seek his sister, and I’m content she’ll come back to speak her own mind when all this coil is over. And when she does, boy, you had best abide it, and keep your tongue within your teeth.”
Roscelin did not like being handled, nor much savor being called “boy” by a man whose height and reach he could match, if not his years and assurance. He wrenched his arm free strongly, and stood off further affront with a blackly lowering brow.
“So Helisende be found safe and well, and let alone in very truth to speak her own mind, and not yours, sir, nor my father’s, nor any other man’s, overlord or priest or king or whatever he may be, I am content. And first,” he said, turning on his father between defiance and pleading, “find her, let me see her whole and well and used with gentleness. What else matters now?”
“I am going myself,” said Cenred with reviving authority, and strode back into the solar to reclaim the cloak he had discarded.
But there was to be no more riding out from Vivers that night. Cenred had scarcely pulled on his boots again, and his grooms were no more than hoisting down saddle and harness in the stables, when there arose the purposeful stir of half a dozen horsemen riding into the courtyard, the ring of challenge and answer at the gate, the jingle of harness and dull tramping of hooves on the frozen earth.