Brother Cadfael 17: The Potter's Field

'Rather, from all accounts,' Cadfael suggested seriously, 'he knew his wife immovably loyal.'

'Yet rumour says she told him she had a lover, at the last, when he was set on leaving her.'

'Not only rumour says so,' the abbot reminded them firmly. 'He says so himself. On the last visit he made to her, with Brother Paul to confirm it, she told him she had a lover better worth loving, and all the tenderness she had ever had for him, her husband, he himself had destroyed.'

'She said it,' agreed Cadfael. 'But was it true? Yet I recall she also spoke to the jeweller of herself and her man.'

'Who's to know?' Hugh threw up his hands. 'She might well strike out at her husband with whatever came to hand, true or false, but she had no reason to lie to the silversmith. The one thing certain is that our dead woman is not Generys. And I can forget Ruald, and any other who might have had ado with Generys. I am looking for another woman, and another reason for murder.'

'Yet it sticks in my craw,' said Hugh, as he walked back towards the gatehouse with Cadfael at his side, 'that he did not blurt it out the second they met that the woman was alive and well. Who had a better right to know it, even if he had turned monk, than her husband? And what news could be more urgent to tell, the instant the boy clapped eyes on him?'

'He did not then know anything about a dead woman, nor that Ruald was suspected of anything,' Cadfael suggested helpfully, and was himself surprised at the tentative sound it had, even in his own ears.

'I grant it. But he did know, none better, that Ruald must have her always in his mind, wondering how she does, whether she lives or dies. The natural thing would have been to cry it out on sight: "No need to fret about Generys, she's well enough." It was all he needed to know, and his contentment would have been complete.'

'The boy was in love with her himself,' Cadfael hazarded, no less experimentally. 'Perhaps when it came to the point he grudged Ruald that satisfaction.'

'Does he seem to you a grudging person?' demanded Hugh.

'Let's say, then, his mind was still taken up with the sack of Ramsey and his escape from it. That was enough to put all lesser matters out of his mind.'

'The reminder of the ring came after Ramsey,' Hugh reminded him, 'and was weighty enough to fill his mind then.'

'True. And to tell the truth, I wonder about it myself. Who's to account for any man's reasoning under stress? What matters is the ring itself. She owned it; Ruald, who gave it to her, knew it instantly for hers. She sold it for her present needs. Whatever irregularities there may be in young Sulien's nature and actions, he did bring the proof. Generys is alive, and Ruald is free of all possible blame. What more do we need to know?'

'Where to turn next,' said Hugh ruefully.

'You have nothing more? What of the widow woman set up by Haughmond as tenant after Eudo made his gift to them?'

'I have seen her. She lives with her daughter in the town now, not far from the western bridge. She was there only a short while, for she had a fall, and her daughter's man fetched her away and left the place empty. But she left all in good order, and never saw nor heard anything amiss while she was there, or any strangers drifting that way. It's off the highways. But there have been tales of travelling folk bedding there at times, mainly during the fair. Eudo at Longner promised to ask all his people if ever they'd noticed things going on up there without leave, but I've heard nothing to the purpose from him yet.'

'Had there been any rumours come to light there,' said Cadfael reasonably, 'Sulien would have brought them back with him, along with his own story.'

'Then I must look further afield.' He had had agents doing precisely that ever since the matter began, even though his own attention had certainly been, to some extent, distracted by the sudden alarming complication in the king's affairs.

'We can at least set a limit to the time,' Cadfael said consideringly. 'While the widow was living there it seems highly unlikely others would be up to mischief about the place. They could not use it as a cheap lodging overnight, it is well off any highway, so a chance passerby is improbable, and a couple looking for a quiet place for a roll in the grass would hardly choose the one inhabited spot in a