Brother Cadfael 17: The Potter's Field

Cadfael found him in the vaulted undercroft of the refectory, where Brother Matthew the cellarer had his most commodious stores. To him Ruald had been allotted, as a practical man whose skills were manual rather than scholarly or artistic. Summoned to the abbot's parlour, he dusted his hands, abandoned his inventory, reported his errand and destination to Brother Matthew in his little office at the end of the south range, and followed Cadfael in simple, unquestioning obedience. It was not for him to ask or to wonder, though in his present circumstances, Cadfael reflected, he might well feel his heart sink a little at the sight of the secular authority closeted side by side with the monastic, and both with austerely grave faces, and their eyes fixed upon him. If the vision of this double tribunal waiting for his entry did shake his serenity on the threshold of the parlour, there was no sign of it in his bearing or countenance. He made his reverence placidly, and waited to be addressed. Behind him, Cadfael closed the door.

'I sent for you, Brother,' said the abbot, 'because something has come to light, something you may recognise.'

Hugh held out the ring in his palm. 'Do you know this, Ruald? Take it up, examine it.'

It was hardly necessary, he had already opened his lips to answer at the mere sight of it in Hugh's hand. But obediently he took it, and at once turned it to bring the light sidewise upon the entwined initials cut crudely within. He had not needed it as identification, he wanted and accepted it gratefully as a sign both of remembered accord and of hope for future reconciliation and forgiveness. Cadfael saw the faint quiver of warmth and promise momentarily dissolve the patient lines of the lean face.

'I know it well, my lord. It is my wife's. I gave it to her before we married, in Wales, where the stone was found. How did it come here?'

'First let me be clear - you are certain this was hers? There cannot be another such?'

'Impossible. There could be other pairs having these initials, yes, but these I myself cut, and I am no engraver. I know every line, every irregularity, every fault in the work, I have seen the bright cuts dull and tarnish over the years. This I last saw on the hand of Generys. There is nothing more certain under the sun. Where is she? Has she come back? May I speak with her?'

'She is not here,' said Hugh. 'The ring was found in the shop of a jeweller in the city of Peterborough, and the jeweller testified that he had bought it from a woman only some ten days previously. The seller was in need of money to help her to leave that town for a safer place to live, seeing the anarchy that has broken out there in the Fens. He described her. It would seem that she was indeed the same who was formerly your wife.'

The radiance of hope had made but a slow and guarded sunrise on Ruald's plain middle-aged face, but by this time every shred of cloud was dispersed. He turned on Abbot Radulfus with such shining eagerness that the light from the window, breaking now into somewhat pale sunrays, seemed only the reflection of his joy.

'So she is not dead! She is alive and well! Father, may I question further? For this is wonderful!'

'Certainly you may,' said the abbot. 'And wonderful it is.'

'My lord sheriff, how came the ring here, if it was bought and sold in Peterborough?'

'It was brought by one who recently came to this house from those parts. You see him here, Sulien Blount. You know him. He was sheltered overnight in his journey by the jeweller, and saw and knew the ring there in his shop. For old kindness,' said Hugh with deliberation, 'he wished to bring it with him, and so he has, and there you hold it in your hand.'

Ruald had turned to look steadily and long at the young man standing mute and still, a little apart, as though he wished to withdraw himself from sight, and being unable to vanish in so small a room, at least hoped to escape too close observance by being motionless, and closing the shutters over his too transparent face and candid eyes. A strange and searching look it was that passed between them, and no one moved or spoke to break its intensity. Cadfael heard within his own mind