Brother Cadfael 20: Brother Cadfael's Penance

drew constant and tall. He was quite still, the focus of his wide, astonished eyes lengthened into infinite distance.
    "Is it true?" he asked almost soundlessly, but not of Philip, who did not lie. "He never told me. Why did he never tell me?"
    "He found you already mounted and launched and riding high. A sudden father clutching at your arm might have thrust you off your course. He let well alone. As long as you remained in ignorance, you owed him nothing." Philip had drawn back a pace or two towards the door, the key ready in his hand, but he checked a moment to correct his last utterance. "Nothing, he says, but what is fairly earned between man and man. For until you knew, that was all you were. It will not be so easy between father and son, that I know. Debts proliferate, and the prices set come all too high."
    "Yet he comes offering all for me," said Olivier, wrestling with this paradox almost in anger. "Without sanction, exiled, leaving his vocation, his quietude, his peace of mind, offering his life. He has cheated me!" he said in a grievous cry.
    "I leave it with you," said Philip from the open doorway. "You have the night for thinking, if you find it hard to sleep."
    He went out quietly, and closed and relocked the door.
    Chapter Ten
    Yves maintained his disdainful withdrawal down the open causeway only as far as he was in full view from the gateway and the guardwalk above. Once secure in cover he found himself a place where he could look back between the trees at the stony outline of the castle. From here, so far below, it looked formidably lofty and solid, yet it was not so great a stronghold. It was well garrisoned and well held, yet with force enough it could be taken. Philip had got it cheaply, by ambushing its lord well out of his own ground, and forcing him to surrender it under threats. Siege was of little use here, it takes far too long to starve out a well-provided garrison. The best hope was a total assault with all the force available, and a quick resolution.
    Meantime, the surrounding forests circled the open site on all sides, and even the cleared ground did not remove the walls too far for Yves's excellent distant sight to record details, gradients, even weaknesses if Philip had left any. If he could bring any helpful observations with him to Gloucester, so much the better, and well worth losing a couple of hours in the inspection.
    He took a long look at this frontal approach, for hitherto he had seen only the interior of a cell under one of the towers, being hustled within there with a cloak swathed round his head, and his arms bound. The flanking towers of the gatehouse afforded clear ground for archers across the gate and both left and right to the next towers along the wall. Across all this face the brattice had not been continued, approach up this slope being the most difficult to sustain. Yves turned his horse in the thick cover of the trees, to circle the castle widdershins. That would bring him out at the end on the high ground near the village, with the way clear to make for the fastest route to Gloucester.
    Through the edges of the woodland he had a clear view of the most northerly of the towers, and the stretch of wall beyond. In the corner between them, a great coiling growth, blackened now in its winter hibernation, stripped of leaves, clambered as high as the battlements where the brattice began. A vine, very old, stout as a tree. When it had its foliage, he thought, it might partially obscure at least one arrow-slit. No great risk to leave it there. It might admit one man, with care and by night, but it could hardly let in more than one, and even the first would be risking his life. There was a guard on the wall there, pacing between towers. He caught the gleam of light on steel. Still, bear it in mind. He wondered which of four generations of Musards had planted the vine. The Romans had had vineyards in these border shires, centuries ago.
    There were four towers in all, in the circuit of the walls, besides the twin towers of the gatehouse, and a watchman on every guardwalk between. Sometimes, in that circuit, Yves had to withdraw further into the trees, but he pursued his inspection doggedly, looking for possible weak spots, but finding none. By the time he was viewing the last tower he was already on ground much higher than the castle itself, and nearing the first cottages of the village. After this last rise the ground levelled into the Cotswold plateau, wide and flat on top