Brother Cadfael 13: The Rose Rent

The key creaked as it turned. "There's been no use made of this for a while now," said Gunnar cheerfully. "We'll do no harm by letting in the air for once."
    The door opened inward. He thrust it wide and made straight across to the shuttered hatch, and with a lusty banging of latches and beams released the shutters and pushed them wide to let in the slanting sunlight. "Mind the dust, my lord," he warned helpfully, and stood back to let them examine the whole narrow room. A rising breeze blew in, fluttering trailers of cobweb from the rough wood of the hatch.
    A small, barren space, an old bench against the wall, a heap of discarded fragments of vellum and cloth and wool and wood, and indistinguishable rubbish drifted into one corner, a large ewer with a broken lip, the ancient desk leaning askew, and over all the grime and dust of abandonment, of a place two years disused, and a year sealed and forgotten.
    "There was a thief got in this way once," said Gunnar airily. "They'd have much ado to manage it a second time. But I must make all secure again before I leave it, my master'd have my head if I forgot to shoot every bolt and turn every key."
    "There was a thief tried to get in this way only last night," said Hugh casually. "Have they not told you?"
    Gunnar had turned on him a face fallen open in sheer astonishment." A thief? Last night? Not one word of this have I heard, or the mistress, either. Who says it's so?"
    "Ask the watchman below, he'll tell you. One Bertred, a weaver who works for Mistress Perle. Take a look at the sill outside the hatch, Gunnar, you'll see how it came down with his weight. The hound hunted him into the river," said Hugh, offhand, gazing musingly all round the neglected room, but well aware of the look on Gunnar's face. "He drowned."
    The silence that followed was brief but profound. Gunnar stood mute, staring, and all his light assurance had frozen into a steely gravity.
    "You'd heard nothing?" marvelled Hugh, his eyes on the dusty floor, on which Gunnar's vigorous passage had printed the only pattern of footmarks perceptible between door and hatch.
    "No, my lord - nothing." The loud, confident voice had become taut, intent and quiet. "I know the man. Why should he want to steal fleeces? He is very well settled as he is - he was... Dead?"
    "Drowned, Gunnar. Yes."
    "Sweet Christ have his soul!" said Gunnar, slowly and quietly, to himself rather than to them. "I knew him. I've diced with him. God knows neither I nor any that I know of bore Bertred any ill will, or ever wished him harm."
    There was another silence. It was as if Gunnar had left them, and was withdrawn into another place. The ice-blue eyes looked opaque, as if he had drawn a shutter down over them, or turned their gaze within rather than without. In a few moments he stirred, and asked levelly: "Have you done here, my lord? May I close these again?"
    "You may," said Hugh as shortly. "I have done."
    On the way back into the town through the castle gate they were both silent and thoughtful, until Hugh said suddenly: "If ever she was there in that dusty hole, someone has done excellent work wiping out every trace."
    "Bertred thought she was," said Cadfael. "Though Bertred may have been wrong. Surely he was there to try and set her free, but he may have been guessing, and guessing wrongly. He knew of the room, and knew it was not common knowledge and therefore, with care, might be used for such a purpose. And he knew that young Hynde made a very possible abductor, being vain, persistent and in urgent need of money to maintain his easy life. But was it more than a guess? Did he really discover something that made it a certainty?"
    "The very dust!" said Hugh. "No mark of any foot but Gunnar's, or none that I could see. And the young fellow, the son, this Vivian - he did ride off this morning, out of the town, that I knew already, Will reported it to me. So there's no one there but the mother now. And would she be lying? Hardly likely he'd tell her if he had a woman hidden away. If he's taken the girl elsewhere after the night alarm, it would hardly be to his mother. But I'll pay the house another visit, all the same. I fancy Bertred must have been trying his luck - but that the poor wretch had no luck! No luck with the roses, no luck with the rescue. No luck in any of his schemes."
    Another long silence, while they climbed the gradual slope within the gate, and approached the ramp to the castle entrance. "And he did not know!" said