Brother Cadfael 17: The Potter's Field

perhaps also because she was the eldest of this brood of lively chicks, and very valuable to the household. The succession was secured, with two healthy sons, and two daughters to provide for might be something of a tax on Giles Otmere's resources, so that there was no haste.

    

With her gracious looks and evident warmth of nature she might need very little by way of dowry if the right lad came along.

    

She was not tall, but softly rounded and somehow contrived to radiate a physical brightness, as if her whole body, from soft brown hair to small feet, smiled as her eyes and lips smiled. Her face was round, the eyes wide-set and wide-open in shining candour, her mouth at once generously full and passionate, and resolutely firm, though parted at this moment in a startled smile. She had her little sister's discarded wooden doll in her hand, just retrieved from the floor where it had been thrown.

    

'Here is Mistress Pernel,' said the groom cheerfully, and drew back a step towards the yard. 'Lady, the good brother would like a word with you.'

    

'With me?' she said, opening her eyes wider still. 'Come up, sir, and welcome. Is it really me you want? Not my mother?'

    

Her voice matched the brightness she radiated, pitched high and gaily, like a child's, but very melodious in its singing cadences.

    

'Well, at least,' she said, laughing, 'we can hear each other speak, now the children are away. Come into the window-bench, and rest.'

    

The alcove where they sat down together had the weather shutter partially closed, but the lee one left open. There was almost no wind that morning, and though the sky was clouded over, the light was good. Sitting opposite to this girl was like facing a glowing lamp. For the moment they had the hall to themselves, though Cadfael could hear several voices in busy, braided harmony from passage and kitchen, and from the yard without.

    

'You are come from Shrewsbury?' she said.

    

'With my abbot's leave,' said Cadfael, 'to give you thanks for so promptly sending your maid Gunnild to the lord sheriff, to deliver the man held in prison on suspicion of causing her death. Both my abbot and the sheriff are in your debt. Their intent is justice. You have helped them to avoid injustice.'

    

'Why we could do no other,' she said simply, 'once we knew of the need. No one, surely, would leave a poor man in prison a day longer than was needful, when he had done no wrong.'

    

'And how did you learn of the need?' asked Cadfael. It was the question he had come to ask, and she answered it cheerfully and frankly, with no suspicion of its real significance.

    

'I was told. Indeed, if there is credit in the matter it is not ours so much as the young man's who told me of the case, for he had been enquiring everywhere for Gunnild by name, whether she had spent the winter of last year with some household in this part of the shire. He had not expected to find her still here, and settled, but it was great relief to him. All I did was send Gunnild with a groom to Shrewsbury. He had been riding here and there asking for her, to know if she was alive and well, and beg her to come forward and prove as much, for she was thought to be dead.'

    

'It was much to his credit,' said Cadfael, 'so to concern himself with justice.'

    

'It was!' she agreed warmly. 'We were not the first he had visited, he had ridden as far afield as Cressage before he came to us.'

    

'You know him by name?'

    

'I did not, until then. He told me he was Sulien Blount, of Longner.'

    

'Did he expressly ask for you?' asked Cadfael.

    

'Oh, no!' She was surprised and amused, and he could not be sure, by this time, that she was not acutely aware of the curious insistence of his questioning, but she saw no reason to hesitate in answering. 'He asked for my father, but Father was away in the fields, and I was in the yard when he rode in. It was only by chance that he spoke to me.'

    

At least a pleasant chance, thought Cadfael, to afford some unexpected comfort to a troubled man.

    

'And when he knew he had found the woman he sought, did he ask to speak with her? Or leave the telling to you?'

    

'Yes, he spoke with her. In my presence he told her how the pedlar was in prison, and how she must come forward and prove he had never done her harm. And so she did, willingly.'

    

She was grave now rather than smiling, but still open, direct and bright. It