Brother Cadfael 02: One Corpse Too Many

- something over three miles, perhaps.'
    He shook one pair of bags into the most comfortable position over his shoulder, and Torold took the other pair on his sound side. 'I never carried goods to this value before in my life,' said Cadfael as he set off, 'and now I'm not even to see what's within.'
    'Bitter stuff to me,' said Torold at his back, 'it cost Nick his life, and I'm to have no chance to avenge him.'
    'You give thought to your own life and bear your own burdens,' said Cadfael. 'He will be avenged. Better you should look to the future, and leave Nick to me.'
    The ways by which he led his little convoy differed from those he had used in Beringar's company. Instead of crossing the brook and making directly for the grange beyond Pulley, he bore more strongly to the west, so that by the time they were as far south as the grange they were also a good mile west of it, nearer to Wales, and in somewhat thicker forest.
    'How if we should be followed?' wondered Godith.
    'We shall not be followed.' He was so positive about it that she accepted the reassurance gladly, and asked nothing more. If Brother Cadfael said it, it was so. She had insisted on carrying Torold's load for half a mile or so, but he had taken it back from her at the first sign of quickening breath or faltering step.
    A lace-work of sky showed paler between the branches ahead. They emerged cautiously into the edge of a broad forest ride that crossed their path on good turf at an oblique angle. Beyond it, their own track continued, a little more open to the night than up to this point.
    'Now pay good heed,' said Cadfael, halting them within cover, 'for you have to find your way back without me to this spot. This ride that crosses us here is a fine, straight road the old Romans made. Eastward, here to our left, it would bring us to the Severn bridge at Atcham. Westward, to our right, it will take you two straight as an arrow for Pool and Wales, or if you find any obstacle on the way, you may bear further south at the end for the ford at Montgomery. Once you're on this, you can ride fast enough, though in parts it may be steep. Now we cross it here, and have another half-mile to go to the ford of the brook. So pay attention to the way.'
    Here the path was clearly better used, horses could travel it without great difficulty. The ford, when they reached it, was wide and smooth. 'And here,' said Cadfael, 'we leave our loads. One tree among so many trees you might well lose, but one tree beside the only ford along the path, and you can't lose it.'
    'Leave them?' wondered Torold. 'Why, are we not going straight to where the horses are? You said yourself we should not be followed tonight.'
    'Not followed, no.' When you know where your quarry must come, and are sure of the night, you can be there waiting. 'No, waste no more time, trust me and do as I say.' And he let down his own half of the burden, and looked about him, in the dimness to which by now their eyes were accustomed, for the best and safest concealment. In the thicket of bushes close to the ford, on their right, there was a gnarled old tree, one side of it dead, and its lowest branch deep in the cover of the bushes. Cadfael slung his saddle-bags over it, and without another word Torold hoisted his own beside them, and drew back to assure himself that only those who had hidden here were likely ever to find. The full leafage covered all.
    'Good lad!' said Cadfael contentedly. 'Now, from here we bear round to the east somewhat, and this path we're on will join the more direct one I used before. For we must approach the grange from the right direction. It would never do for any curious person to suppose we'd been a mile nearer Wales.'
    Unburdened now, they drew together and went after him hand in hand, trusting as children. And now that they were drawing nearer to the actual possibility of flight, they had nothing at all to say, but clung to each other and believed that things would go right.
    Their path joined the direct one only some minutes' walk from the small clearing where the stockade of the grange rose. The sky paled as the trees fell back. There was a small rush-light burning somewhere within the house, a tiny, broken gleam showed through the pales. All round them the night hung silent and placid.
    Brother Anselm opened to them, so readily that surely some aggrieved traveller from Shrewsbury must have brought word even here of the day's upheaval, and alerted him to the possibility that anyone