noted, but the steady blue gaze was as wide and clear as always, even challenging question or reproof. 'You have returned me to the world, I can and will speak as one already outside these walls. Ruald and his wife were the close friends of my childhood, and when I was no longer a child that fondness grew and came to ripeness with my flesh. They will have told you, Generys was beautiful. What I felt for her touched her not at all, she never knew of it. But it was after she was gone that I thought and hoped, I admit vainly, that the cloister and the cowl might restore me my peace. I meant to pay the price faithfully, but you have remitted the debt. But when I saw and handled the ring I knew for hers, I wanted it. So simple it is.'

    

'But you had no money to buy it,' Radulfus said, in the same placid tone, withholding censure.

    

'He gave it to me. I told him what I have now told you. Perhaps more,' said Sulien, with a sudden glittering smile that lasted only an instant in eyes otherwise passionately solemn. 'We were but one night companions. I should never see him again, nor he me. Such a pair encountering confide more than ever they did to their own mothers. And he gave me the ring.'

    

'And why,' enquired the abbot as directly, 'did you not restore it, or at least show it, to Ruald and tell him that news, as soon as you met with him here?'

    

'It was not for Ruald I begged it of the silversmith,' said Sulien bluntly, 'but for my own consolation. And as for showing it, and telling him how I got it, and where, I did not know until now that any shadow hung over him, nor that there was a dead woman, newly buried here now, who was held to be Generys. I have spoken with him only once since I came, and that was for no more than a few minutes on the way to Mass. He seemed to me wholly happy and content, why should I hurry to stir old memories? His coming here was pain as well as joy, I thought well to let his present joy alone. But now indeed he must know. It may be I was guided to bring back the ring, Father. I deliver it to you willingly. What I needed it has already done for me.'

    

There was a brief pause, while the abbot brooded over all the implications for those present and those as yet uninvolved. Then he turned to Cadfael. 'Brother, will you carry my compliments to Hugh Beringar, and ask him to ride back with you and join us here? Leave word if you cannot find him at once. Until he has heard for himself, I think nothing should be said to any other, not even Brother Ruald. Sulien, you are no longer a brother of this house, but I hope you will remain as its guest until you have told your story over again, and in my presence.'

    

Chapter Six

    

Hugh was at the castle, where Cadfael found him in the armoury, telling over the stores of steel, with the likelihood of a foray against the anarchy in Essex very much in mind. He had taken the omen seriously, and was bent on being ready at a day's notice if the king should call. But Hugh's provision for action was seldom wanting, and on the whole he was content with his preparations. He could have a respectable body of picked men on the road within hours when the summons came. There was no certainty that it would, to the sheriff of a shire so far removed from the devastated Fen country, but the possibility remained. Hugh's sense of order and sanity was affronted by the very existence of Geoffrey de Mandeville and his like.

    

He greeted Cadfael with somewhat abstracted attention, and went on critically watching his armourer beating a sword into shape. He was giving only the fringes of his mind to the abbot's pressing invitation, until Cadfael nudged him into sharp alertness by adding: 'It has to do with the body we found in the Potter's Field. You'll find the case is changed.'

    

That brought Hugh's head round sharply enough. 'How changed?'

    

'Come and hear it from the lad who changed it. It seems young Sulien Blount brought more than bad news back from the Fens with him. The abbot wants to hear him tell it again to you. If there's a thread of significance in it he's missed, he's certain you'll find it, and you can put your heads together afterwards, for it looks as if one road is closed to you. Get to horse and let's be off.'

    

But on the way back through the town and over the bridge into the Foregate he did impart one preliminary piece of news, by way of introduction to what was to follow. 'Brother Sulien, it seems,