Brother Cadfael 10: The Pilgrim of Hate

it before, lay flat and empty now. The leather-bound breviary, well-used, worn but treasured, had been rolled into the folds of the shirt, and when Cadfael reached for it the shirt slid from the desk and fell to the floor. He let it lie as he opened the book. Within the cover was written, in a clerk's careful hand, the name of its owner: Juliana Bossard. And below, in newer ink and a less practised hand: Given to me, Luc Meverel, this Christmastide, 1140. God be with us all!
    "So I pray, too," said Cadfael, and stooped to pick up the fallen shirt. He held it up to the light, and his eye caught the thread-like outline of a stain that rimmed the left shoulder. His eye followed the line over the shoulder, and found it continued down and round the left side of the breast. The linen, otherwise, was clean enough, bleached by several launderings from its original brownish natural colouring. He spread it open, breast up, on the desk. The thin brown line, sharp on its outer edge, slightly blurred within, hemmed a great space spanning the whole left part of the chest and the upper part of the left sleeve. The space within the outline had been washed clear of any stain, even the rim was pale, but it stood clear to be seen, and the scattered shadowings of colour within it preserved a faint hint of what had been there.
    Radulfus, if he had not ventured as far afield in the world as Cadfael, had nevertheless stored up some experience of it. He viewed the extended evidence and said composedly, "This was blood."
    "So it was," said Cadfael, and rolled up the shirt.
    "And whoever owned this scrip came from where a certain Juliana Bossard was chatelaine." His deep eyes were steady and sombre on Cadfael's face. "Have we entertained a murderer in our house?"
    "I think we have," said Cadfael, restoring the scattered fragments of a life to their modest lodging. A man's life, shorn of all expectation of continuance, even the last coin gone from the purse. "But I think we may have time yet to prevent another killing, if you give me leave to go."
    "Take the best of what may be in the stable," said the abbot simply, "and I will send word to Hugh Beringar, and have him follow you, and not alone."
    Chapter Thirteen.
    Several miles north on the Oswestry road, Olivier drew rein by the roadside where a wiry, bright-eyed boy was grazing goats on the broad verge, lush in summer growth and coming into seed. The child twitched one of his long leads on his charges, to bring him along gently where the early evening light lay warm on the tall grass. He looked up at the rider without awe, half-Welsh and immune from servility. He smiled and gave an easy good evening.
    The boy was handsome, bold, unafraid; so was the man. They looked at each other and liked what they saw.
    "God be with you!" said Olivier. "How long have you been pasturing your beasts along here? And have you in all that time seen a lame man and a well man go by, the pair of them much of my age, but afoot?"
    "God be with you, master," said the boy cheerfully. "Here along this verge ever since noon, for I brought my bit of dinner with me. But I've seen none such pass. And I've had a word by the road with every soul that did go by, unless he were galloping."
    "Then I waste my hurrying," said Olivier, and idled a while, his horse stooping to the tips of the grasses. "They cannot be ahead of me, not by this road. See, now, supposing they wished to go earlier into Wales, how may I bear round to pick them up on the way? They went from Shrewsbury town ahead of me, and I have word to bring to them. Where can I turn west and fetch a circle about the town?"
    The young herdsman accepted with open arms every exchange that refreshed his day's labour. He gave his mind to the best road offering, and delivered judgement: "Turn back but a mile or more, back across the bridge at Mont-ford, and then you'll find a well-used cart-track that bears off west, to your right hand it will be. Bear a piece west again where the paths first branch, it's no direct way, but it does go on. It skirts Shrewsbury a matter of above four miles outside the town, and threads the edges of the forest, but it cuts across every path out of Shrewsbury. You may catch your men yet. And I wish you may!"
    "My thanks for that," said Olivier "and for your advice also." He stooped to the hand the boy had raised, not for alms but to caress the horse's chestnut shoulder with admiration and pleasure, and slipped a coin into the smooth palm. "God