Brother Cadfael 02: One Corpse Too Many

still have a task laid on me,' said Torold at length, soberly, 'and now I'm alone to see it done. And heaven knows, Godric, what I should have done without you and Brother Cadfael, and sad I shall be to set off and leave you behind, with small chance of seeing you again. Never shall I forget what you've done for me. But go I must, as soon as I'm fit and can get clear. It will be better for you when I'm gone, you'll be safer so.'
    'Who is safe? Where?' said Godith, biting into another ripe purple plum. 'There is no safe place.'
    'There are degrees in danger, at any rate. And I have work to do, and I'm fit to get on with it now.'
    She turned and gave him a long, roused look. Never until that moment had she looked far enough ahead to confront the idea of his departure. He was something she had only newly discovered, and here he was, unless she was mistaking his meaning, threatening to take himself off, out of her hands and out of her life. Well, she had an ally in Brother Cadfael. With the authority of her master she said sternly:
    'If you're thinking you're going to set off anywhere until you're fully healed, then think again, and smartly, too. You'll stay here until you're given leave to go, and that won't be today, or tomorrow, you can make up your mind to that!'
    Torold gaped at her in startled and delighted amusement, laid his head back against the rough timber of the wall, and laughed aloud. 'You sound like my mother, the time I had a bad fall at the quintain. And dearly I love you, but so I did her, and I still went my own way. I'm fit and strong and able, Godric, and I'm under order that came before your orders. I must go. In my place, you'd have been out of here before now, as fierce as you are.'
    'I would not,' she said furiously, 'I have more sense. What use would you be, on the run from here, without even a weapon, without a horse - you turned your horses loose, remember, to baffle the pursuit, you told us so! How far would you get? And how grateful would FitzAlan be for your folly? Not that we need go into it,' she said loftily, 'seeing you're not fit even to walk out of here as far as the river. You'd be carried back on Brother Cadfael's shoulders, just as you came here the first time.'
    'Oh, would I so, Godric, my little cousin?' Torold's eyes were sparkling mischief. He had forgotten for the moment all his graver cares, amused and nettled by the impudence of this urchin, vehemently threatening him with humiliation and failure. 'Do I look to you so feeble?'
    'As a starving cat,' she said, and plunged a plum-stone between the boards with a vicious snap. 'A ten-year-old could lay you on your back!'
    'You think so, do you?' Torold rolled sideways and took her about the middle in his good arm. 'I'll show you, Master Godric, whether I'm fit or no!' He was laughing for pure pleasure, feeling his muscles stretch and exult again in a sudden, sweet bout of horseplay with a trusted familiar, who needed taking down a little for everyone's good. He reached his wounded arm to pin the boy down by the shoulders. The arrogant imp had uttered only one muffled squeak as he was tipped on his back. 'One hand of mine can more than deal with you, my lovely lad!' crowed Torold, withdrawing half his weight, and flattening his left palm firmly in the breast of the over-ample cotte, to demonstrate.
    He recoiled, stricken and enlightened, just as Godith got breath enough to swear at him, and strike out furiously with her right hand, catching him a salutary box on the ear. They fell apart in a huge, ominous silence, and sat up among the rumpled sacks with a yard or more between them.
    The silence and stillness lasted long. It was a full minute before they so much as tilted cautious heads and looked sidewise at each other. Her profile, warily emerging from anger into guilty sympathy, was delicate and pert and utterly feminine, he must have been weak and sick indeed, or he would surely have known. The soft, gruff voice was only an ambiguous charm, a natural deceit. Torold scrubbed thoughtfully at his stinging ear, and asked at last, very carefully: 'Why didn't you tell me? I never meant to offend you, but how was I to know?'
    'There was no need for you to know,' snapped Godith, still ruffled, 'if you'd had the sense to do as you're bid, or the courtesy to treat your friends gently.'
    'But you goaded me! Good God,' protested Torold, 'it was only the rough play I'd have used on a younger brother of my own, and you asked for it.' He