Brother Cadfael 11: An Excellent Mystery

stables, bared to the waist in the warm night. Seeing one young horseman alone, he was quite easy. They had had comparative peace here while Winchester burned and bled.
    'Seeking whom, young sir?'
    'Seeking the master, your lord, Humphrey Cruce,' said Nicholas, reining in peaceably and shaking the reins free. 'If he still keeps house here?'
    'Why, the lord Humphrey's dead, sir, three years ago. His son Reginald is lord here now. Would your errand do as well to him?'
    'If he'll admit me, yes, surely to him, then,' said Nicholas, and dismounted. 'Let him know, I was here some three years ago, to speak for Godfrid Marescot. It was his father I saw then, but the son will know of it.'
    'Come within,' said the groom placidly, accepting the credentials without question. 'I'll have your beast seen to.'
    In the smoky, wood-scented hall they were at meat, or still sitting at ease after the meal was done, but they had heard his step on the stone stairs that led to the open hall door, and Reginald Cruce rose, alert and curious, as the visitor entered. A big, black-haired man of austere features and imperious manner, but well-disposed, it seemed, towards chance travellers. His lady sat aloof and quiet, a pale-haired woman in green, with a boy of about fifteen at her side, and a younger boy and girl about nine or ten, who by their likeness might well be twins. Evidently Reginald Cruce had secured his succession with a well-filled quiver, for by the lady's swelling waist when she rose to muster the hospitality of the house, there was another sibling on the way.
    Nicholas made his reverence and offered his name, a little confounded at finding Julian Cruce's brother a man surely turned forty, with a wife and growing children, where he had assumed a young fellow in his twenties, perhaps newly-married since inheriting. But he recalled that Humphrey Cruce had been an old man to have a daughter still so young. Two marriages, surely, the first blessed with an heir, the second undertaken late, when Reginald was a grown man, ready for marriage himself, or even married already to his pale, prolific wife.
    'Ah, that!' said Reginald of his guest's former errand to this same house. 'I remember it, though I was not here then. My wife brought me a manor in Staffordshire, we were living there. But I know how it fell out, of course. A strange business altogether. But it happens! Men change their minds. And you were the messenger? Well, but leave it now and take some refreshment. Come to table! There'll be time to talk of all such business afterwards.'
    He sat down and kept his visitor company while a servant brought meat and ale, and the lady, having made her grave good night, drove her younger children away to their beds, and the heir sat solemn and silent studying his elders. At last, in the deepening evening, the two men were left alone to their talk.
    'So you are the squire who brought that word from Marescot. You'll have noticed there's a generation, as near as need be, between my sister and me - seventeen years. My mother died when I was nine years old, and it was another eight before my father married again. An old man's folly, she brought him nothing, and died when the girl was born, so he had little joy of her.'
    At least, thought Nicholas, studying his host dispassionately, there was no second son, to threaten a division of the lands. That would be a source of satisfaction to this man, he was authentically of his class and kind, and land was his lifeblood.
    'He may well have had great joy of his daughter, however,' he said firmly, 'for she is a very gracious and beautiful girl, as I well recall.'
    'You'll be better informed of that than I,' said Reginald dryly, 'if you saw her only three years ago. It must be eighteen or more since I set eyes on her. She was a stumbling infant then, two years old, or three, it might be. I married about that time, and settled on the lands Cecilia brought me. We exchanged couriers now and then, but I never came back here until my father was on his deathbed, and they sent for me to come to him.'
    'I didn't know of his death when I set out to come here on this errand of my own,' said Nicholas. 'I heard it only from your groom at the gate. But I may speak as freely with you as I should have done with him. I was so much taken with your sister's grace and dignity that I've thought of her ever since, and I've spoken with my lord Godfrid, and have his full consent to what I'm asking. As for myself,' he thrust on,