Brother Cadfael 11: An Excellent Mystery

saddle. They knew nothing yet of any need for haste. There was a whole sunlit day before the rider.
    Fidelis wore the cowl always outdoors, as though to cover a personal shyness that stemmed, surely, from his mute tongue. He who could not open his mind to others shrank from claiming any privileged advance from them. Only Humilis had some manner of silent and eloquent speech with him that needed no voice. Having secured the saddle-roll the young man stepped back modestly to a little distance, and waited.
    Cadfael arrived more circumspectly than he had set out from the garden. Hugh had not followed him so closely, but halted in shadow by the wall of the guest-hall.
    There's news,' said Cadfael bluntly. 'You should hear it before you leave us. The empress has made an attack on the town of Wherwell, a disastrous attack. Her force is wiped out by the queen's army. But in the fighting the abbey of Wherwell was fired, the church burned to the ground. I know no more detail, but so much is certain. The sheriff here got the word last night.'
    'By a reliable man,' said Hugh, drawing close. 'It's certain.'
    Nicholas stood staring, eyes and mouth wide, his golden sunburn dulling to an earthen grey as the blood drained from beneath it. He got out in a creaking whisper: 'Wherwell? They've dared…?'
    'No daring,' said Hugh ruefully, 'but plain terror. They were men penned in, the raiding party, they sought any place of hiding they could find, surely, and slammed to the door. But the end was the same, whoever tossed in the firebrands. The abbey's laid waste. Sorry I am to say it.'
    'And the women…? Oh, God…Julian's there…Is there any word of the women?'
    'They'd taken to the church for sanctuary,' said Hugh. In such civil warfare there were no sanctuaries, not even for women and children. 'The remnant of the raiders surrendered - most may have come out alive. All, I doubt.'
    Nicholas turned blindly to grope for his bridle, plucking his sleeve out of the quivering hand Humilis had laid on his arm. 'Let me away! I must go…I must go there and find her.' He swung back to catch again briefly at the older man's hand and wring it hard. 'I will find her! If she lives I'll find her, and see her safe.' He found his stirrup and heaved himself into the saddle.
    'If God's with you, send me word,' said Humilis. 'Let me know that she lives and is safe.'
    'I will, my lord, surely I will.'
    'Don't trouble her, don't speak to her of me. No questions! All I need, all you must ask, is to know that God has preserved her, and that she has the life she wanted. There'll be a place elsewhere for her, with other sisters. If only she still lives!'
    Nicholas nodded mutely, shook himself out of his daze with a great heave, wheeled his horse, and was gone, out through the gatehouse without another word or a look behind. They were left gazing after him, as the light dust of his passing shimmered and settled under the arch of the gate, where the cobbles ended, and the beaten earth of the Foregate began.
    All that day Humilis seemed to Cadfael to press his own powers to the limit, as though the stress that drove Nicholas headlong south took its toll here in enforced stillness and inaction, where the heart would rather have been riding with the boy, at whatever cost. And all that day Fidelis, turning his back even on Rhun, shadowed Humilis with a special and grievous solicitude, tenderness and anxiety, as though he had just realised that death stood no great distance away, and advanced one gentle step with every hour that passed.
    Humilis went to his bed immediately after Compline, and Cadfael, looking in on him ten minutes later, found him already asleep, and left him undisturbed accordingly. It was not a festering wound and a maimed body that troubled Humilis now, but an obscure feeling of guilt towards the girl who might, had he married her, have been safe in some manor far remote from Winchester and Wherwell and the clash of arms, instead of driven by fire and slaughter even out of her chosen cloister. Sleep could do more for his grieving mind than the changing of a dressing could do now for his body. Sleeping, he had the hieratic calm of a figure already carved on a tomb. He was at peace. Cadfael went quietly away and left him, as Fidelis must have left him, to rest the better alone.
    In the sweet-scented twilight Cadfael went to pay his usual nightly visit to his workshop, to make sure all was well there, and stir a brew he had standing to cool