Brother Cadfael 13: The Rose Rent

good fish in the sea if she slipped off the hook. Mistress Judith is his keep and future and all. Besides, the two get on well enough, for all I could ever see. He's got every call to worry."
    And worry he did, in a nail-biting, brow-furrowing frenzy of concern and anxiety that continued unbroken through the day, and at night, when search was perforce abandoned, subsided into a mute, resigned dejection, waiting for morning to renew the hunt. But by this second twilight it seemed every corner of the town had been ransacked, and every house and garden and pasture in the suburbs at least visited, and where were they to look next?
    "She can't be far," Dame Agatha insisted strenuously. "They'll surely find her."
    "Far or near," said Miles wretchedly, "she's too well hidden. And some villain holding her, for certain. And how if she's forced to give way and take him? Then what's to become of you and me, if she lets a master into the house?"
    "She never would, and she so set against marrying. No, that she won't do. Why, if a man uses her so ill, more like by far, once she's free of him - as she will be! - to do what she's thought of doing so long, and go into a nunnery. And only two days now to the day of the rent!" Agatha pointed out. "Then what's to be done, if that passes and she still lost?"
    "Then the bargain's broken, and there's time to think again and think better, but only she can do it. Until she's found there's nothing to be done, and no comfort. Tomorrow I'll go out again myself," Miles vowed, shaking an exasperated head over the failure of the king's sheriff and all his men.
    "But where? Where is there left they haven't searched already?"
    A hard question indeed, and one without an answer. And into this waiting and frustrated household Bertred came sidling in the dusk, discreetly quiet and solemn about the continuing failure to find any trace of his mistress, and yet looking so sleek and bright-eyed that Miles was brutally short with him, not at all his usual good-tempered self, and followed him with a long, glowering stare when Bertred wisely made off into the kitchen. On warm summer evenings it was pleasanter to be outdoors than there in the dim, smoky room with the heat of the fire, even when it was turfed down for the night or raked out until morning, and the rest of the household had gone out on their own ploys. Only Bertred's mother Alison, who cooked for the family and its workers, was waiting there none too patiently for her truant son, with a pot still warming over the naked fire.
    "Where have you been till this time?" she wanted to know, turning on him with the ladle in her hand as he tramped briskly in at the door and went to his place at the long trestle table. He gave her a casual kiss in passing, brushing her round red cheek lightly. She was a plump, comfortable figure of a woman with some worn traces still of the good looks she had handed on to her son. "All very well," she said, setting the wooden bowl before him with a crash, "after keeping me waiting here so late. And much good you must have done all day, or you'd be telling me now you've brought her home, and preening yourself like a peacock over it. There were some of the men came home two hours ago and more. Where have you been loitering since then?"
    In the dim kitchen his small, self-satisfied smile could barely be seen, but the tone of his voice conveyed the same carefully contained elation. He took her by the arm and drew her down to the bench beside him.
    "Never mind where, and leave it to me why! There was a thing I had to wait for, and it was worth the waiting. Mother..." he leaned close, and sank his voice to a confidential whisper "... how would you like to be more than a servant in this house? A gentlewoman, an honoured dowager! Wait a little while, and I mean to make my fortune and yours, too. What do you say to that?"
    "Great notions you always had," she said, none too impressed, but too fond to mock him. "And how do you mean to do that?"
    "I'm telling nothing yet, not till I can say it's done. There's not one of those busy hounds out hunting all this day knows what I know. That's all I'm saying, and not a word to any but you. And... Mother, I must go out again tonight, when it's well dark. Never you worry, I know what I'm about, only wait, and you'll be glad of it. But tonight you mustn't say a word, not to anyone."
    She held him off doubtfully to get a better look at his smiling, teasing face. "What are you up to? I can keep as