Brother Cadfael 20: Brother Cadfael's Penance
partisanship must have ebbed wholly and horribly away into exhaustion in order to reach the despairing knowledge that any end to the anarchy would be better than none.
Then what could there be beyond that stage, when the new alliance proved as wasteful, incompetent and infuriating as the old? Only total disgust with both factions, and withdrawal to spend the last remaining energies on something better worth.
The road Cadfael was travelling had levelled on the uplands, and stretched before him arrow-straight into distance. Villages here were prosperous from the wool trade, but far between, and tended to lie aside from the highway. He was forced to turn off in order to find a house at which to ask guidance, and the cottar who came out to greet him eyed him with sharp attention when he asked for La Musarderie.
"You're not from these parts, brother? Likely you don't know the place has fallen into fresh hands. If your business is with the Musards, you'll not find them. Robert Musard was taken in an ambush weeks, months back now, and had to give up his castle to the Earl of Gloucester's son, he that's declared for King Stephen recently."
"So I had heard," said Cadfael. "But I have an errand there I have undertaken and must fulfill. I take it the change is not well thought of hereabouts."
The man shrugged. "Church and village he lets alone, provided neither priest nor reeve gets in his way. But Musards have been there ever since the first King William gave the manor to this one's great-grandsire, and no man now expects change to be for the better. So go softly, brother, if you must go. He'll be ware of any stranger before ever you get close to his walls."
"He'll hardly fear any feats of arms from me," said Cadfael. "And what I have to fear from him I'll be prepared for. And thanks, friend, for the warning. Now, how must I go?"
"Go back to the road," he was advised, with a shrug for his probably ill-fated persistence, "and ride on for a mile or more, and there's a track on the right will bring you to Winstone. Cross the river beyond by the ford, and up through the woodland the other side, and when you come clear of the trees you'll see the castle ahead of you, it stands high. The village stands higher still, up on the crest beyond," he said. "Go gently, and come again safely."
"By God's favour I hope for it," said Cadfael, and thanked him, and turned his horse to return to the highroad.
There are more ways than one of getting into a castle, he reasoned as he rode through the village of Winstone. The simplest of all, for a lone man without an army or any means of compulsion, is to ride up to the gate and ask to be let in. I am manifestly not in arms, the day is drawing towards an early and chilly evening, and hospitality is a sacred duty. Especially is it incumbent on the nobility to open roof and board to clerics and monastics in need. Let us see, then, how far Philip FitzRobert's nobility extends.
And following the same sequence of thought: if you want to have speech with the castellan, the most obvious means is to ask; and the most unshakable story to get you into his presence is the truth. He holds two men, surely by now that is as good as certain!, two men to whom he means no good. You want them released unharmed, and have good reasons to advance why he should reconsider his intent towards them. Nothing could be simpler. Why complicate matters by going roundabout?
Beyond Winstone the road proceeded virtually due west, and gradually dwindled into a track, though a well-made and well-used one. From open, scattered woodland and heath it plunged almost suddenly into thick forest, and began to descend steeply by winding traverses among trees into a deep valley. He heard water flowing below, no great flood but the purling sound of a little river with a stony bed; and presently he came out on a narrow slope of grass on its banks, and a narrower tongue of gravel led out into the water, marking the passage of the ford. On the further side the track rose again almost as steeply as on the side where he had descended, and old, long-established trees hid all that awaited him beyond.
He crossed, and began to climb out of the valley. Light and air showed suddenly between the trees, and he emerged from forest into cleared land, bare even of bushes; and there before and above him, at perhaps a half-mile distance, on a level promontory, stood the castle of La Musarderie.
He had been right, four generations of the same family
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