Brother Cadfael 02: One Corpse Too Many

upon Cadfael. There seemed to be a smile pending, but there was also a certain aura of offended pride. Cadfael turned to the door, and showed the heavy bar that guarded it within, and the impossibility of opening it from without, once that was dropped into its socket. 'You may shut out the world and me until you're ready to come out to us.'
    The boy Godric, who was not a boy at all, was staring now in direct accusation, half-offended, half-radiant, wholly relieved.
    'How did you know?' she demanded, jutting a belligerent chin.
    'How were you going to manage in the dortoir?' responded Brother Cadfael mildly.
    'I would have managed. Boys are not so clever, I could have cozened them. Under a wall like this,' she said, hoisting handfuls of her ample tunic, 'all bodies look the same, and men are blind and stupid.' She laughed then, viewing Cadfael's placid competence, and suddenly she was all woman, and startlingly pretty in her gaiety and relief. 'Oh, not you! How did you know? I tried so hard, I thought I could pass all trials. Where did I go wrong?'
    'You did very well,' said Cadfael soothingly. 'But, child, I was forty years about the world, and from end to end of it, before I took the cowl and came to my green, sweet ending here. Where did you go wrong? Don't take it amiss, take it as sound advice from an ally, if I answer you. When you came to argument, and meant it with all your heart, you let your voice soar. And never a crack in it, mind you, to cover the change. That can be learned, I'll show you when we have leisure. And then, when I bade you strip and be easy - ah, never blush, child, I was all but certain then! - of course you put me off. And last, when I got you to toss a stone across the brook, you did it like a girl, under-arm, with a round swing. When did you ever see a boy throw like that? Don't let anyone else trick you into such another throw, not until you master the art. It betrays you at once.'
    He stood patiently silent then, for she had dropped on to the bed, and sat with her head in her hands, and first she began to laugh, and then to cry, and then both together; and all the while he let her alone, for she was no more out of control than a man tossed between gain and loss, and manfully balancing his books. Now he could believe she was seventeen, a budding woman, and a fine one, too.
    When she was ready, she wiped her eyes on the back of her hand, and looked up alertly, smiling like sunlight through a rainbow. 'And did you mean it?' she said. 'That you're responsible for me? I said I trusted you to extremes!'
    'Daughter dear,' said Cadfael patiently, 'what should I do with you now but serve you as best I can, and see you safe out of here to wherever you would be?'
    'And you don't even know who I am,' she said, marvelling. 'Who is trusting too far now?'
    'What difference should it make to me, child, what your name may be? A lass left forlorn here to weather out this storm and be restored to her own people - is not that enough? What you want to tell, you'll tell, and I need no more.'
    'I think I want to tell you everything,' said the girl simply, looking up at him with eyes wide and candid as the sky. 'My father is either in Shrewsbury castle this minute with his death hanging over him, or out of it and running for his life with William FitzAlan for the empress's lands in Normandy, with a hue and cry ready to be loosed after him any moment. I'm a burden to anyone who befriends me now, and likely to be a hunted hostage as soon as I'm missed from where I should be. Even to you, Brother Cadfael, I could be dangerous. I'm daughter to FitzAlan's chief ally and friend. My name is Godith Adeney.'
    Lame Osbern, who had been born with both legs withered, and scuttled around at unbelievable speed on hands provided with wooden pattens, dragging his shrivelled knees behind him on a little wheeled trolley, was the humblest of the king's camp-followers. Normally he had his pitch by the castle gates in the town, but he had forsaken in time a spot now so dangerous, and transferred his hopeful allegiance to the edge of the siege camp, as near as he was allowed to get to the main guard, where the great went in and out. The king was notoriously open-handed, except towards his enemies-at-arms, and the pickings were good. The chief military officers, perhaps, were too preoccupied to waste thought or alms on a beggar, but some of those who came belatedly seeking favour, having decided which way fortune was tending, were