What I most regret,' he said at last, with deliberation, 'is that I ever approached Pernel. I had no right. Hugh Beringar would have found Gunnild in the end, she would have come forward when she heard of the need, without any meddling. And now see what mischief I have done!'

'I think,' said Cadfael, with respectful care, 'that the lady played as full a part as you. And I doubt if she regrets it.'

Sulien splashed ahead of his companion into the ford. His voice came back to Cadfael's ears clear and resolute. 'Something may be done to undo what we have done. And as to my mother, yes, I have considered the ending. Even for that I have made provision.'

Chapter Twelve

In the abbot's parlour the four of them were gathered after Vespers, with the window shuttered and the door fast closed against the world. They had had to wait for Hugh. He had a garrison to review, levies newly dismissed from feudal service to pay and discharge home to their families, a few wounded to see properly tended, before he could even dismount stiffly in his own courtyard, embrace wife and son, shed his soiled travelling clothes and draw breath at his own table. The further examination of a doubtful witness, however low his credit stood now, could wait another hour or two without disadvantage.

But after Vespers he came, eased and refreshed but weary. He shed his cloak at the door, and made his reverence to the abbot. Radulfus closed the door, and there was a silence, brief but deep. Sulien sat still and mute on the bench built against the panelled wall. Cadfael had drawn aside into the corner by the shuttered window.

'I must thank you, Father,' said Hugh, 'for providing us this meeting place. I should have been sorry to impose upon the family at Longner, and by all counts you have also an interest in this matter, as valid as mine.'

'We have all an interest in truth and justice, I trust,' said the abbot. 'Nor can I discard all responsibility for a son because he has gone forth into the world. As Sulien knows. Proceed as you choose, Hugh.'

He had made room for Hugh beside him behind his desk, cleared now of its parchments and the business of the day. Hugh accepted the place and sat down with a great sigh. He was still cramped from the saddle and had stiffening grazes newly healed, but he had brought back his company intact from the Fens, and that was achievement enough. What else he had brought back with him he was about to sift, and these three in company with him here were about to learn.

'Sulien, I need not remind you, or these who were witnesses, of the testimony you gave concerning Ruald's wife's ring, and how you came by it at the shop of John Hinde, in Priestgate, in Peterborough. Name and place I asked, and you told me. From Cambridge, when we were discharged from service, I went to Peterborough. Priestgate I found. The shop I found. John Hinde I found. I have talked to him, Sulien, and I report his testimony as I heard it from him. Yes,' said Hugh with deliberation, his eyes on Sulien's blanched but composed face, 'Hinde remembers you well. You did come to him with the name of Abbot Walter to commend you, and he took you in for a single night, and set you on your way home next day. That is truth. That he confirms.'

Recalling how readily Sulien had supplied the jeweller's name and the place where his shop was to be found, Cadfael had had little doubt of the truth of that part of the story. It had not seemed likely, then, that the rest of it would ever be tested. But Sulien's face continued as marble-blank as resolution could make it, and his eyes never left Hugh's face.

'But when I asked him of the ring, he asked, what ring was that? And when I pictured it to him, he was absolute that he had never seen such a ring, never bought that or anything else from such a woman as I described. So recent a transaction he could not possibly forget, even if he did not keep good records, as he does. He never gave you the ring, for he never had the ring. What you told us was a fabric of lies.'

The new silence fell like a stone, and seemed to be arrested in Sulien's braced stillness. He neither spoke nor lowered his eyes. Only the small, spasmodic movement of Radulfus's muscular hand upon the desk broke the tension within the room. What Cadfael had foreseen from the moment he had conveyed the abbot's summons, and