Brother Cadfael 12: The Raven in the Foregate

fetching your sergeants down on him to throw him into prison. She was Ninian's nurse, she would dare almost anything for his sake. She clung about Ailnoth's skirts and begged him to let be, and because he could not shake her off, he clubbed this staff of his and struck her on the head, and would have struck again if she had not loosed him and scrambled away half-stunned, and run for her life back to the house."
    He told the whole of it as he had had it from Diota herself, and Hugh listened with a grave face but the hint of the smile lingering thoughtfully in his eyes. "You believe this," he said at the end of it; not a question, but a fact, and relevant to his own thinking.
    "I do believe it. Entirely."
    "And she can add nothing more, to point us to any other person. Or would she, even if she could?" wondered Hugh. "She may very well feel with the Foregate, and prefer to keep her own counsel."
    "So she might, I won't deny, but for all that, I think she knows no more. She ran from him dazed and in terror. I think there's no more to be got from her."
    "Nor from your boy Benet?" said Hugh slyly, and laughed at seeing Cadfael turn a sharp glance on him and bridle for a moment. "Oh, come now, I do accept that it was not you who warned the boy to make himself scarce when Giffard brought the law down on him. But only because someone else had already spared you the trouble. You were very well aware that he was gone, when you so helpfully led us all round the garden here hunting for him. I'll even believe that you had seen him here not half an hour before. You have a way of telling simple truths which is anything but simple. And when did you ever have a young fellow in trouble under your eye, and not wind your way into his confidence? Of course he'll have opened his mind to you. I daresay you know where he is this very moment. Though I'm not asking!" he added hastily.
    "No," said Cadfael, well satisfied with the way that was phrased, "no, that I don't know, so you may ask, for I can't tell you."
    "Having gone to some trouble not to find out or be told," agreed Hugh, grinning. "Well, I did tell you to keep him out of sight if you should happen on him. I might even turn a blind eye myself, once this other matter is cleared up."
    "As to that," said Cadfael candidly, "he's of the same mind as you, for until he knows that all's made plain, and Dame Hammet safe and respected, he won't budge. Much as he wants to get to honest service in Gloucester, here he stays while she's in trouble. Which is only fair, seeing the risks she has taken for him. But once this is over, he'll be away, out of your territory. And not alone!" said Cadfael, meeting Hugh's quizzical glance with a complacent countenance. "Is it possible I still know something you do not know?"
    Hugh furrowed his brow and considered this riddle at leisure. "Not Giffard, that's certain! He could not get himself out of the trap fast enough. Two women in the affair, you said, one of them young ... Do you tell me this young venturer has found himself a wife in these parts? Already? These imps of Anjou work briskly, I grant them that! Let's see, then ..." He pondered, drumming his fingers thoughtfully on the rim of the clay saucer. "He had got himself into a monastery, where women do not abound, and I think you will have got your due of work out of him, he had small opportunity to go wooing among the townswomen. And as far as I know, he made no approach to any other of the local lordlings. I'm left with Giffard's household, where the boy's embassage may have been a none too well-kept secret, and where there's a very pleasing young woman, of the Empress's faction by blood, and bold and determined enough to choose differently from her step-father. Why, pure curiosity would have brought her to have a close look at such a paladin of romance, come in peril of his liberty and life from over the sea. Sanan Berni�s? Is he truly wanting to take her with him?"
    "Sanan it is. But I think it was she who made the decision. They have horses hidden away ready for departure, and she has her own small estate in jewels from her mother, easily carried. No doubt she's provided him sword and dagger, too. She'll not let him come before the Empress or Robert of Gloucester shabby, or without arms and horse."
    "They mean this earnestly?" wondered Hugh, frowning over a private doubt as to what his own course ought to be in such a case.
    "They mean it. Both of them. I doubt if Giffard will mind much,