‘We have all an interest in truth and justice, I trust,’ said the abbot. ‘Nor can I discard all responsibility for a son because he has gone forth into the world. As Sulien knows. Proceed as you choose, Hugh.’
He had made room for Hugh beside him behind his desk, cleared now of its parchments and the business of the day. Hugh accepted the place and sat down with a great sigh. He was still cramped from the saddle and had stiffening grazes newly healed, but he had brought back his company intact from the Fens, and that was achievement enough. What else he had brought back with him he was about to sift, and these three in company with him here were about to learn.
‘Sulien, I need not remind you, or these who were witnesses, of the testimony you gave concerning Ruald’s wife’s ring, and how you came by it at the shop of John Hinde, in Priestgate, in Peterborough. Name and place I asked, and you told me. From Cambridge, when we were discharged from service, I went to Peterborough. Priestgate I found. The shop I found. John Hinde I found. I have talked to him, Sulien, and I report his testimony as I heard it from him. Yes,’ said Hugh with deliberation, his eyes on Sulien’s blanched but composed face, ‘Hinde remembers you well. You did come to him with the name of Abbot Walter to commend you, and he took you in for a single night, and set you on your way home next day. That is truth. That he confirms.’
Recalling how readily Sulien had supplied the jeweller’s name and the place where his shop was to be found, Cadfael had had little doubt of the truth of that part of the story. It had not seemed likely, then, that the rest of it would ever be tested. But Sulien’s face continued as marble-blank as resolution could make it, and his eyes never left Hugh’s face.
‘But when I asked him of the ring, he asked, what ring was that? And when I pictured it to him, he was absolute that he had never seen such a ring, never bought that or anything else from such a woman as I described. So recent a transaction he could not possibly forget, even if he did not keep good records, as he does. He never gave you the ring, for he never had the ring. What you told us was a fabric of lies.’
The new silence fell like a stone, and seemed to be arrested in Sulien’s braced stillness. He neither spoke nor lowered his eyes. Only the small, spasmodic movement of Radulfus’s muscular hand upon the desk broke the tension within the room. What Cadfael had foreseen from the moment he had conveyed the abbot’s summons, and observed the set of Sulien’s face as he received it, came as a shock to Radulfus. There was not much of human behaviour he had not encountered in his life. Liars he had known and dealt with, without surprise, but this one he had not expected.
‘Yet you produced the ring,’ Hugh continued steadily, ‘and Ruald recognised and verified the ring. Since you did not get it from the silversmith, how did you come by it? One story you told is shown to be false. Now you have your chance to tell another and a truer. Not all liars have that grace. Now say what you have to say.’
Sulien opened his lips with a creaking effort, like one turning a key in a lock unwilling to respond.
‘I already had the ring,’ he said. ‘Generys gave it to me. I have told the lord abbot, I tell you now, all my life long I held her in affection, deeper than I knew. Even as I grew a man, I never understood how that affection was changing, until Ruald deserted her. Her rage and grief made me to know. What moved her I hardly know. It may be she was avenging herself upon all men, even me. She did receive and make use of me. And she gave me the ring. It did not last long,’ he said, without bitterness. ‘I could not satisfy, green as I was. I was not Ruald, nor of sufficient weight to pierce Ruald to the heart.’
There was something strange, Cadfael thought, in his choice of words, as though at times the blood of passion did run in them, and at others they came with detached care, measured and contrived. Perhaps Radulfus had felt the same unease, for this time he did speak, impatient for plainer telling.
‘Are you saying, my son, that you were this woman’s lover?’
‘No,’ said Sulien. ‘I am saying that I loved her, and she admitted me some small way into her grief, when she was in mortal need. If my torment was any ease to hers, that time was not wasted. If you mean, did she admit me even into her bed, no, that she never did, nor I never asked nor hoped for it. My significance, my usefulness, never came so high.’
‘And when she vanished,’ Hugh pursued with relentless patience, ‘what did you know of that?’
‘Nothing, no more than any other man.’
‘What did you suppose had become of her?’
‘My time,’ said Sulien, ‘was over by then, she had done with me. I believed what the world believed, that she had taken up her roots and fled the place that had become abhorrent to her.’
‘With another lover?’ Hugh asked evenly. ‘The world believed so.’
‘With a lover or alone. How could I know?’
‘Truly! You knew no more than any other man. Yet when you came back here, and heard that we had found a woman’s body buried in the Potter’s Field, you knew that it must be she.’
‘I knew,’ said Sulien with aching care,’that it was the common belief that it must be. I did not know that it was.’
‘True, again! You had no secret knowledge, so equally you could not know that it was not Generys. Yet you felt it necessary at once to make up your lying story, and produce the ring she had given you, as you now say, in order to prove that she was well alive and far enough away to make confirmation hard, and to lift the shadow of suspicion from Ruald. Without respect to his guilt or innocence, for according to the account you give of yourself now, you did not know whether she was alive or dead, nor whether he had or had not killed her.’
‘No!’ said Sulien, with a sudden flush of energy and indignation that jerked his braced body forward from the panelled wall, ‘That I did know, because I know him. It is inconceivable that he could ever have harmed her. It is not in the man to do murder.’
‘Happy the man whose friends can be so sure of him!’ said Hugh drily. ‘Very well, pass on to what followed. We had no cause to doubt your word then; you had proved, had you not, that Generys was alive? Therefore we looked about us for other possibilities, and found another woman who had frequented there, and not been seen of late. And behold, your hand is seen again moulding matters. From the moment you heard of the pedlar’s arrest you began a hunt for some manor where the woman might have found a shelter through the winter, where someone might be able to testify to her being alive well after she parted from Britric. I doubt if you expected to find her still settled there, but I am sure you were glad of it. It meant you need not appear, she could come forward of her own accord, having heard there was a man charged with her murder. Twice, Sulien? Twice are we to accept your hand for the hand of God, with no more pressing motive than pure love of justice? Since you had so infallibly proved the dead woman could not be Generys, why should you be so sure she was not Gunnild? Two such rescues were one too many to be believed in. Gunnild’s survival was proven, she came, she spoke, she was flesh and blood beyond doubt. But for the life of Generys we have only your word. And your word is shown to be false. I think we need look no further for a name for the woman we found. By denying her a name, you have named her.’
Sulien had shut his lips and clenched his teeth, as though he would never speak another word. It was too late to deploy any more lies.
‘l think,’ said Hugh,’that when you heard what the abbey plough had turned up out of the soil, you were never in a moment’s doubt as to her name. I think you knew very well that she was there. And you were quite certain that Ruald was not her murderer. Oh, that I believe! A certainty, Sulien, to which only God can be entitled, who knows all things with certainty. Only God, and you, who knew all too well who the murderer was.’