Brother Cadfael 10: The Pilgrim of Hate

certain. Who else would so take exception to the man standing up for his lady and doing his errand without fear? All who still held to Stephen in their hearts would approve, even if they dared not applaud him. And as for a chance attack by sneak-thieves, why choose to prey on a mere clerk, with nothing of value on him but the simple needs of his journey, when the town was full of nobles, clerics and merchants far better worth robbing? Rainald died only because he came to the clerk's aid. No, an adherent of the empress, like Rainald himself but most unlike, committed that infamy."
    "That's good sense," agreed Olivier. "But my chief concern now is to find Luc, and send him home again if I can."
    "There must be twenty or more young fellows in that age here today," said Cadfael, scrubbing thoughtfully at his blunt brown nose, "but I dare wager most of them can be pricked out of the list as well known to some of their companions by their own right names, or by reason of their calling or condition. Solitaries may come, but they're few and far between. Pilgrims are like starlings, they thrive on company. We'd best go and talk to Brother Denis. He'll have sorted out most of them by now."
    Brother Denis had a retentive memory and an appetite for news and rumours that usually kept him the best-informed person in the enclave. The fuller his halls, the more pleasure he took in knowing everything that went on there, and the name and vocation of every guest. He also kept meticulous books to record the visitations.
    They found him in the narrow cell where he kept his accounts and estimated his future needs, thoughtfully reckoning up what provisions he still had, and how rapidly the demands on them were likely to dwindle from the morrow. He took his mind from his store-book courteously in order to listen to what Brother Cadfael and the sheriff required of him, and produced answers with exemplary promptitude when asked to sieve out from his swollen household males of about twenty-five years, bred gentle or within modest reach of gentility, lettered, of dark colouring and medium tall build, answering to the very bare description of Luc Meverel. As his forefinger flew down the roster of his guests the numbers shrank remarkably. It seemed to be true that considerably more than half of those who went on pilgrimage were women, and that among the men the greater part were in their forties or fifties, and of those remaining, many would be in minor orders, either monastics or secular priests or would-be priests. And Luc Meverel was none of these.
    "Are there any here," asked Hugh, viewing the final list, which was short enough, "who came solitary?"
    Brother Denis cocked his round, rosy, tonsured head aside and ran a sharp brown eye, very remiscent of a robin's, down the list. "Not one. Young squires of that age seldom go as pilgrims, unless with an exigent lord - or an equally exigent lady. In such a summer feast as this we might have young friends coming together, to take the fill of the time before they settle down to sterner disciplines. But alone... Where would be the pastime in that?"
    "Here are two, at any rate," said Cadfael, "who came together, but surely not for pastime. They have puzzled me, I own. Both are of the proper age, and such word as we have of the man we're looking for would fit either. You know them, Denis, that youngster who's on his way to Aberdaron, and his friend who bears him company. Both lettered, both bred to the manor. And certainly they came from the south, beyond Abingdon, according to Brother Adam of Reading, who lodged there the same night."
    "Ah, the barefoot traveller," said Denis, and laid a finger on Ciaran in the shrunken toll of young men, "and his keeper and worshipper. Yes, I would not put half a year between them, and they have the build and colouring, but you needed only one."
    "We could at least look at two," said Cadfael. "If neither of them is what we're seeking, yet coming from that region they may have encountered such a single traveller somewhere on the road. If we have not the authority to question them closely about who they are and whence they come, and how and why thus linked, then Father Abbot has. And if they have no reason to court concealment, then they'll willingly declare to him what they might not as readily utter to us."
    "We may try it," said Hugh, kindling. "At least it's worth the asking, and if they have nothing to do with the man we are looking for, neither they nor we have