Brother Cadfael 13: The Rose Rent

some talk with you. I've brought with me the altar frontal Mother Mariana has been working on since she took to her bed. Her hands still have all their skill, I think you will be pleased with it. But it's packed carefully away in my saddle-roll, I would rather not delay to undo it now. If I might borrow Brother Cadfael, to walk up into the town with us, I think perhaps Hugh Beringar would be glad to have him in council when we meet, and he could bring down the altar-cloth to you afterwards."
    By this time Abbot Radulfus knew her well enough to know that there was always a reason for any request she might make. He looked round for Cadfael, who was already making his way out from the ranks of the brothers.
    "Yes, go with our sister. You have leave for as long as you may be needed."
    "With your countenance, Father," said Cadfael readily, "and if Sister Magdalen agrees, I could go straight on to the castle and take the message to Hugh Beringar, after we have brought Mistress Perle home. He'll have men still out round the countryside, the sooner he can call them off, the better."
    "Yes, agreed! Go, then!" He led the way back to where the mules stood waiting, with John Miller solid and passive beside them. The file of brothers, released from the porch, went its dutiful way, not without several glances over shoulders to watch the two women mount and depart. While they were about it, Radulfus drew Cadfael aside and said quietly: "If the news came so laggardly to Godric's Ford, there may still be some things that have happened here that she does not know, and not all will be pleasant hearing. This man of hers who is dead, worse, guilty..."
    "I had thought of it," said Cadfael as softly. "She shall know, before she ever reaches home."
    As soon as they were on the open stretch of the bridge, going at the dogged mule-pace that would not be hurried, Cadfael moved to Judith's bridle, and said mildly: "Three days you've been absent. Have I to give account, before you face others, of all that has happened during those three days?"
    "No need," she said simply. "I have had some account already."
    "Perhaps not of all, for not all is generally known. There has been another death. Yesterday, in the afternoon, we found a body washed up on our side the river, beyond where the Gaye ends. A drowned man - one of your weavers, the young man Bertred. I tell you now," he said gently, hearing the sharp and painful intake of her breath, "because at home you will find him being coffined and readied for burial. I could not let you walk into the house and come face to face with that, and all unwarned."
    "Bertred drowned?" she said in a shocked whisper. "But how could such a thing happen? He swims like an eel. How could he drown?"
    "He had had a blow on the head, though it would not have done more than make his wits spin for a while. And somehow he came by another such knock before he went into the water. Whatever happened to him happened in the night. The watchman at Fuller's had a tale to tell," said Cadfael with careful deliberation, and went on to repeat it as nearly word for word as he could recall. She sat on her mule in chill silence throughout the story, almost he felt her freeze as she connected the hour of the night, the place, and surely also the narrow, dusty, half-forgotten room behind the bales of wool. Her silence and her word would be hard to keep. Here was lost a second young man, withered by the touch of some fatal flaw in her, and yet a third she might scarcely be able to save, now they had drawn so near to the truth.
    They had reached the gate, and entered under the archway. On the steep climb up the Wyle the mules slowed even more, and no one sought to hurry them.
    "There is more," said Cadfael. "You will remember the morning we found Brother Eluric, and the mould I made of the boot-print in the soil. The boots we took from Bertred's body, when we carried him to the abbey dead - the left boot... fits that print."
    "No!" she said in sharp distress and disbelief. "That is impossible! There is here some terrible mistake."
    "There is no mistake. No possibility of a mistake. The match is absolute."
    "But why? Why? What reason could Bertred have had to try to cut down my rose-bush? What possible reason to strike at the young brother?" And in a lost and distant voice, almost to herself, she said: "None of this did he tell me!"
    Cadfael said nothing, but she knew he had heard. After a silence she said: "You shall hear. You shall know. We