Brother Cadfael 11: An Excellent Mystery

gutter. A big, black-avised, affronted man, with a face grimly set. 'That's well reasoned, and we'll do it. Tomorrow I'll have him copy the items - he's a finicky little fellow who has everything at his finger-ends - and I'll ride with you to Shrewsbury and see Hugh Beringar, and have this matter in train before the day's out. If this or any villain has done murder and robbery against my house, I want justice and I want restitution.'
    Nicholas rose with his host, and went to the bed prepared for him so weary that he could not fail to sleep. So did he want justice. But what was justice in this matter? He planned and thought as one following a trail, he must pursue it with all his powers, having nothing else left to attempt, but he could not and would not believe in it. What he wanted above everything else in the world was a breath of some fresh breeze, blowing from another quarter, suggesting that she was not dead, that all this coil of suspicion and cupidity and treachery was false, a mere appearance, to be blown away when the morning came. But the morning came, and nothing was new, and nothing changed.
    Thus two who had only one quest in common, and nothing besides to make them allies, rode together back into Shrewsbury, armed with two well-scripted copies of the valuables and money Julian Cruce had carried with her as her dowry on entering the cloister.
    Hugh had come down from the town to dine with Abbot Radulfus, and acquaint him with the latest developments in the political tangle that was England. The flight of the empress back into her western stronghold, the scattering of a great part of her forces, and the capture of Earl Robert of Gloucester, without whom she was impotent, must transform the whole pattern of events, though its first effect was to freeze them from any action at all. The abbot might not have any interest in factional strife, but he was entitled to the mitre and a place in the great council of the country, and the welfare of people and church was very much his business. They had conferred a long time over the abbot's well-furnished table, and it was mid-afternoon when Hugh came looking for Cadfael in the herb-garden.
    'You'll have heard? The word that Nicholas Harnage brought me yesterday? He said he had come here first, to his lord. Robert of Gloucester is penned up in Rochester a prisoner, and everything has halted while both sides think on what comes next - we, how best to make use of him, they, how to survive without him.' Hugh sat down on the stone bench in the shade, and spread his booted feet comfortably. 'Now comes the argument. And she had better order the king loosed from his chains, or Robert may find himself tethered, too.'
    'I doubt if she'll see it so,' said Cadfael, pausing to lean on his hoe and pluck out a wisp of weed from between his neat, aromatic beds. 'More than ever, Stephen is her only weapon now. She'll try to exact the highest possible price for him, her brother will scarcely be enough to satisfy her.'
    Hugh laughed. 'Robert himself takes the same line, by young Hamage's account. He refuses to consider an exchange for the king, says he's no fair match for a monarch, and to balance it fitly we must turn loose all the rearguard that were taken with him, to make up Stephen's weight in the scale. But wait a while! If the empress argues in the same way now, within a month wiser men will have shown her she can do nothing, nothing at all, without Robert. London will never let her enter again, much less get within reach of the crown, and for all she has Stephen in a dungeon, he is still king.'
    'It's Robert they'll have trouble persuading,' Cadfael reasoned.
    'Even he will have to see the truth in the end. If she is to continue her fight, it can only be with Robert beside her. They'll convince him. Reluctant as they all may be to loose their hold on him, we shall have Stephen back before the year's end.'
    They were still there together in the garden when Nicholas and Reginald Cruce, having enquired in vain for Hugh at the castle, as they entered the town, and again at Hugh's house by Saint Mary's church, as they passed through, followed the directions given by his porter, and came purposefully hunting for him at the abbey. At the sound of their boots on the gravel, and the sight of them rounding the box hedge, Hugh rose alertly to meet them.
    'You're back in good time. What news?' And to the second man he said, eyeing him with interest: 'I have not enjoyed your acquaintance