Ellis Peters - One Corpse Too Many

They sat companionably eating, and slipping the stones through a chink in the floorboards into the river below. “I still have a task laid on me,” said Torold at length, soberly, “and now I’m alone to see it done. And heaven knows, Godric, what I should have done without you and Brother Cadfael, and sad I shall be to set off and leave you behind, with small chance of seeing you again. Never shall I forget what you’ve done for me. But go I must, as soon as I’m fit and can get clear. It will be better for you when I’m gone, you’ll be safer so.”

“Who is safe? Where?” said Godith, biting into another ripe purple plum. “There is no safe place.”

“There are degrees in danger, at any rate. And I have work to do, and I’m fit to get on with it now.”

She turned and gave him a long, roused look. Never until that moment had she looked far enough ahead to confront the idea of his departure. He was something she had only newly discovered, and here he was, unless she was mistaking his meaning, threatening to take himself off, out of her hands and out of her life. Well, she had an ally in Brother Cadfael. With the authority of her master she said sternly:

“If you’re thinking you’re going to set off anywhere until you’re fully healed, then think again, and smartly, too. You’ll stay here until you’re given leave to go, and that won’t be today, or tomorrow, you can make up your mind to that!”

Torold gaped at her in startled and delighted amusement, laid his head back against the rough timber of the wall, and laughed aloud. “You sound like my mother, the time I had a bad fall at the quintain. And dearly I love you, but so I did her, and I still went my own way. I’m fit and strong and able, Godric, and I’m under order that came before your orders. I must go. In my place, you’d have been out of here before now, as fierce as you are.”

“I would not,” she said furiously, “I have more sense. What use would you be, on the run from here, without even a weapon, without a horse — you turned your horses loose, remember, to baffle the pursuit, you told us so! How far would you get? And how grateful would FitzAlan be for your folly? Not that we need go into it,” she said loftily, “seeing you’re not fit even to walk out of here as far as the river. You’d be carried back on Brother Cadfael’s shoulders, just as you came here the first time.”

“Oh, would I so, Godric, my little cousin?” Torold’s eyes were sparkling mischief. He had forgotten for the moment all his graver cares, amused and nettled by the impudence of this urchin, vehemently threatening him with humiliation and failure. “Do I look to you so feeble?”

“As a starving cat,” she said, and plunged a plum-stone between the boards with a vicious snap. “A ten-year-old could lay you on your back!”

“You think so, do you?” Torold rolled sideways and took her about the middle in his good arm. “I’ll show you, Master Godric, whether I’m fit or no!” He was laughing for pure pleasure, feeling his muscles stretch and exult again in a sudden, sweet bout of horseplay with a trusted familiar, who needed taking down a little for everyone’s good. He reached his wounded arm to pin the boy down by the shoulders. The arrogant imp had uttered only one muffled squeak as he was tipped on his back. “One hand of mine can more than deal with you, my lovely lad!” crowed Torold, withdrawing half his weight, and flattening his left palm firmly in the breast of the over-ample cotte, to demonstrate.

He recoiled, stricken and enlightened, just as Godith got breath enough to swear at him, and strike out furiously with her right hand, catching him a salutary box on the ear. They fell apart in a huge, ominous silence, and sat up among the rumpled sacks with a yard or more between them.

The silence and stillness lasted long. It was a full minute before they so much as tilted cautious heads and looked sidewise at each other. Her profile, warily emerging from anger into guilty sympathy, was delicate and pert and utterly feminine, he must have been weak and sick indeed, or he would surely have known. The soft, gruff voice was only an ambiguous charm, a natural deceit. Torold scrubbed thoughtfully at his stinging ear, and asked at last, very carefully: “Why didn’t you tell me? I never meant to offend you, but how was I to know?”

“There was no need for you to know,” snapped Godith, still ruffled, “if you’d had the sense to do as you’re bid, or the courtesy to treat your friends gently.”

“But you goaded me! Good God,” protested Torold, “it was only the rough play I’d have used on a younger brother of my own, and you asked for it.” He demanded suddenly:

“Does Brother Cadfael know?”

“Of course he does! Brother Cadfael at least can tell a hart from a hind.”

There fell a second and longer silence, full of resentment, curiosity and caution, while they continued to study each other through lowered lashes, she furtively eyeing the sleeve that covered his wound, in case a telltale smear of blood should break through, he surveying again the delicate curves of her face, the jut of lip and lowering of brows that warned him she was still offended.

Two small, wary voices uttered together, grudgingly:

“Did I hurt you?”

They began to laugh at the same instant, suddenly aware of their own absurdity. The illusion of estrangement vanished utterly; they fell into each other’s arms helpless with laughter, and nothing was left to complicate their relationship but the slightly exaggerated gentleness with which they touched each other.

“But you shouldn’t have used that arm so,” she reproached at last, as they disentangled themselves and sat back, eased and content. “You could have started it open again, it’s a bad gash.”

“Oh, no, there’s no damage. But you — I wouldn’t for the world have vexed you.” And he asked, quite simply, and certain of his right to be told: “Who are you? And how did you ever come into such a coil as this?”

She turned her head and looked at him long and earnestly; there would never again be anything with which she would hesitate to mist him.

“They left it too late,” she said, “to send me away out of Shrewsbury before the town fell. This was a desperate throw, turning me into an abbey servant, but I was sure I could carry it off. And I did, with everyone but Brother Cadfael. You were taken in, weren’t you? I’m a fugitive of your party, Torold, we’re two of a kind. I’m Godith Adeney.”

“Truly?” He beamed at her, round-eyed with wonder and delight. “You’re Fulke Adeney’s daughter? Praise God! We were anxious for you! Nick especially, for he knew you … I never saw you till now, but I, too …” He stooped his fair head and lightly kissed the small, none too clean hand that had just picked up the last of the plums. “Mistress Godith, I am your servant to command! This is splendid! If I’d known, I’d have told you better than half a tale.”

“Tell me now,” said Godith, and generously split the plum in half, and sent the stone whirling down into the Severn. The riper half she presented to his open mouth, effectively closing it for a moment. “And then,” she said, “I’ll tell you my side of it, and we shall have a useful whole.”

Brother Cadfael did not go straight to the mill on his return, but halted to check that his workshop was in order, and to pound up his goose-grass in a mortar, and prepare a smooth green salve from it. Then he went to join his young charges, careful to circle into the shadow of the mill from the opposite direction, and to keep an eye open for any observer. Time was marching all too swiftly, within an hour he and Godith would have to go back for Vespers.

They had both known his step; when he entered they were sitting side by side with backs propped against the wall, watching the doorway with rapt, expectant smiles. They had a certain serene, aloof air about them, as though they inhabited a world immune from common contacts or, common cares, but generously accessible to him. He had only to look at them, and he knew they had no more secrets; they were so rashly and candidly man and woman together that there was no need even to ask anything. Though they were both waiting expectantly to tell him!