Brother Cadfael 20: Brother Cadfael's Penance

having got Chester on his side, and Gloucester's own son into the bargain, but Maud knows her menfolk have made very sure of Normandy, and that will sway some of our barons who have lands over there to safeguard, as well as here. I can see more and more of the wiser sort paying mouth allegiance still, but making as little move in the martial kind as they can contrive. But by all means let's make the attempt. Roger de Clinton can be a powerful persuader when he's in good earnest, and he's in good earnest now, for his real quarry is the Atabeg Zenghi in Mosul, and his aim the recovery of Edessa. And Henry of Winchester will surely add his weight to the scale. Who knows? I've primed the abbot," said Hugh dubiously, "but I doubt if the bishops will call on the monastic arm, they'd rather keep the reins in their own hands."
    "And how does this, however welcome and however dubious, concern me closely?" Cadfael wondered.
    "Wait, there's more." He was carrying it carefully, for such news is brittle. He watched Cadfael's face anxiously as he asked: "You'll recall what happened in the summer at Robert of Gloucester's newly built castle of Faringdon? When Gloucester's younger son turned his coat, and his castellan gave over the castle to the king?"
    "I remember," said Cadfael. "The men-at-arms had no choice but to change sides with him, their captains having sealed the surrender. And Cricklade went over with Philip, intact to a man."
    "But many of the knights in Faringdon," said Hugh with deliberation, "refused the treason, and were overpowered and disarmed. Stephen handed them out to various of his allies, new and old, but I suspect the new did best out of it, and got the fattest prizes, to fix them gratefully in their new loyalty. Well, Leicester has been employing his agents round Oxford and Malmesbury to good effect, to ferret out the list of those made prisoner, and discover to whom they were given. Some have been bought out already, briskly enough. Some are on offer, and for prices high enough to sell very profitably. But there's one name, known to have been there, listed with no word of who holds him, and has not been seen or heard of since Faringdon fell. I doubt if the name means anything to Robert Bossu, more than the rest. But it does to me, Cadfael." He had his friend's full and wary attention; the tone of his voice, carefully moderate, was a warning rather than a reassurance. "And will to you."
    "Not offered for ransom," said Cadfael, reckoning the odds with careful moderation in return, "and held very privately. It argues a more than ordinary animosity. That will be a price that comes high. Even if he will take a price."
    "And in order to pay what may be asked," said Hugh ruefully, "Laurence d'Angers, so Leicester's agent says, has been enquiring for him everywhere without result. That name would be known to the earl, though not the names of the young men of his following. I am sorry to bring such news. Olivier de Bretagne was in Faringdon. And now Olivier de Bretagne is prisoner, and God knows where."
    After the silence, a shared pause for breath and thought, and the mutual rearrangement of the immediate concerns that troubled them both, Cadfael said simply: "He is a young man like other young men. He knows the risks. He takes them with open eyes. What is there to be said for one more than the rest?"
    "But this was a risk, I fancy, that he could not foresee. That Gloucester's own son should turn against him! And a risk Olivier was least armed to deal with, having so little conception of treachery. I don't know, Cadfael, how long he had been among the garrison, or what the feeling was among the young knights there. It seems many of them were with Olivier. The castle was barely completed, Philip filled it and wanted it defended well, and when it lay under siege Robert failed to lift a finger to save it. There's bitterness there. But Leicester will go on trying to find them all, to the last man. And if we're all to meet soon at Coventry, at least there may be agreement on a release of prisoners on both sides. We shall all be pressing for it, men of goodwill from both factions."
    "Olivier ploughs his own furrow, and cuts his own swathe," said Cadfael, staring eastward through the timber wall before him, far eastward into drought and sand and sun, and the glittering sea along the shores of the Frankish kingdom of Jerusalem, now menaced and in arms. The fabled world of Outremer, once familiar to him, where Olivier de