Brother Cadfael 19: The Holy Thief

sent him rearing and plunging with an indignant scream, and burst out of the hampering ring. The company scattered, evading the clashing hooves, and B�zet clutched at the bridle of the waiting horse, and without benefit of stirrups leaped and scrambled into the saddle.
    No one was near enough to grasp at rein or stirrup leather. He was up and away before anyone else could mount, turning his back upon the tangle of stamping horses and shouting men. He drove, not directly at the gate, but aside in a flying curve, where Daalny had started backwards out of one danger to lay herself in the path of another. He had his short dagger out of its sheath and bared in his hand.
    She saw his intent only at the last instant as he was on her. He made no sound at all, but Cadfael, running frantically to pluck her from under the flying hooves, saw the rider's face clearly, and so did she, the once impassive countenance convulsed into a mask of hatred and rage, with drawn-back lips like a wolf at bay. He could not spare the time to ride her down, it would have slowed him too much. He leaned sidewise from the saddle in full flight, and the dagger slashed down her sleeve from the shoulder and drew a long graze down her arm. She sprang backwards and fell heavily on the cobbles, and B�zet was gone, out at the gate already in a driven gallop, and turning towards the town.
    Hugh Beringar, his deputy and three of his sergeants were just riding down from the crest of the bridge. B�zet saw them, checked violently, and swung his mount aside into the narrow road that turned left between the mill-pond and the river, southwestward into the fringes of the Long Forest, into deep cover on the quickest way into Wales.
    The riders from the town were slow to understand the inferences, but a horseman hurtling out of the abbey court towards the bridge, baulking at sight of them and wheeling into a side-road at the same headlong speed, was a phenomenon to be pondered, if not pursued, and Hugh had bellowed: "Follow him!" even before the youngest squire had come running out from the gates into the Foregate, crying: "Stop him! He's suspect as a thief!"
    "Bring him back!" ordered Hugh, and his officers swung willingly into the byroad, and spurred into a gallop after the fugitive.
    Daalny had picked herself up before Cadfael could reach her, and turned and ran blindly from the turmoil in the court, from the sick terror that had leaned to her murderously from the saddle, and from the shattering reaction after crisis, which had set her shivering now the worst was over. For this was certainty. Why else should he run for his life before ever his saddlebag was opened? Still she did not even know what he had hidden there, but she knew it must be deadly. She fled into the church like a homing bird. Let them do the rest, her part was over. She did not doubt now that it would be enough. She sat down on the steps of Saint Winifred's alter, where everything began and everything ended, and leaned her head back to rest against the stone.
    Cadfael had followed her in, but halted at sight of her sitting there open-eyed and still, her head reared erect as though she was listening to a voice, or a memory. After chaos, this calm and quietness was awesome. She had felt it on entering, Cadfael felt it on beholding her thus entranced.
    He approached her softly, and spoke as softly, and for a moment was not sure she would hear him, for she was tuned to something more distant.
    "He grazed you. Better let me see."
    "A scratch," she said indifferently; but she let him draw back her loose sleeve almost to the shoulder, where it was slit for a hand's-length. The skin was barely broken, there was only a white hair-line, beaded in two or three places with a tiny jewel of blood. "Nothing! It will not fester."
    "You took a heavy fall. I never thought he would drive at you so. You spoke too soon, I meant to spare you the need."
    "I thought he could neither love nor hate," said Daalny with detached interest. "I never saw him moved till now. Did he get clean away?"
    That he could not answer, he had not stopped to see.
    "I am very well," she said firmly, "and all is well with me. You go back and see what is still to do. Ask them... Ask them to leave me here a while alone. I need this place. I need this certainty."
    "You shall have it," said Cadfael, and left her, for she was in command of herself and all her thoughts, words and acts as perhaps she had never been before. He turned back at