Ellis Peters - One Corpse Too Many

Godith slid down into the boat, and lent both arms to steady the sacking bundle down between the thwarts. The boat was meant for only two people at most, and settled low in the water when Torold also was aboard, but it was buoyant and sturdy, and would get them as far as they needed to go, as it had done once before.

Godith leaned and embraced Aline, who was still on her knees at the edge of the grass. It was too late for spoken thanks then, but Torold kissed the small, well-tended hand held out to him, and then she loosed the end of the mooring-rope, and tossed it aboard, and the boat slipped out softly from under the bank and drifted across in the circling eddies of the outflow, back towards the brook from which the pool had been drawn. The spill from the head-race of the mill caught them and brisked their pace like a gentle push, and Torold sat with paddle idle, and let the silent flow take them out from the pond. When Godith looked back, all she could see was the shape of the willow, and the unlighted house beyond.

Brother Cadfael rose from among the long grasses as Torold paddled the boat across to the abbey shore. “Well done!” he said in a whisper. “And no trouble? No one stirring?”

“No trouble. Now you’re the guide.”

Cadfael rocked the boat thoughtfully with one hand. “Put Godith and the load ashore opposite, and then fetch me. I may as well go dryshod.” And when they were all safely across to the other side of the brook, he hauled the boat out of the water into the grass, and Godith hurried to help him carry it into hiding in the nearest copse. Once in cover, they had leisure to draw breath and confer. The night was still and calm around them, and five minutes well spent here, as Cadfael said, might save them much labour thereafter.

“We may speak, but softly. And since no other eyes, I hope, are to see this burden of ours until you’re well away to the west, I think we might with advantage open it and split the load again. The saddlebags will be far easier to sling on our shoulders than this single lump.”

“I can carry one pair,” said Godith, eager at his elbow.

“So you can, for a short spell, perhaps,” he said indulgently. He was busy disentangling the two pairs of linked bags from the sacks that had swathed them. They had straps comfortably broad for the shoulder, and the weights in them had been balanced in the first place for the horses. “I had thought we might save ourselves half a mile or so by making use of the river for the first part of the way,” he said, “but with three of us and only this hazel-shell we should founder. And it’s not so far we have to go, loaded — something over three miles, perhaps.”

He shook one pair of bags into the most comfortable position over his shoulder, and Torold took the other pair on his sound side. “I never carried goods to this value before in my life,” said Cadfael as he set off, “and now I’m not even to see what’s within.”

“Bitter stuff to me,” said Torold at his back, “it cost Nick his life, and I’m to have no chance to avenge him.”

“You give thought to your own life and bear your own burdens,” said Cadfael. “He will be avenged. Better you should look to the future, and leave Nick to me.”

The ways by which he led his little convoy differed from those he had used in Beringar’s company. Instead of crossing the brook and making directly for the grange beyond Pulley, he bore more strongly to the west, so that by the time they were as far south as the grange they were also a good mile west of it, nearer to Wales, and in somewhat thicker forest.

“How if we should be followed?” wondered Godith.

“We shall not be followed.” He was so positive about it that she accepted the reassurance gladly, and asked nothing more. If Brother Cadfael said it, it was so. She had insisted on carrying Torold’s load for half a mile or so, but he had taken it back from her at the first sign of quickening breath or faltering step.

A lace-work of sky showed paler between the branches ahead. They emerged cautiously into the edge of a broad forest ride that crossed their path on good turf at an oblique angle. Beyond it, their own track continued, a little more open to the night than up to this point.

“Now pay good heed,” said Cadfael, halting them within cover, “for you have to find your way back without me to this spot. This ride that crosses us here is a fine, straight road the old Romans made. Eastward, here to our left, it would bring us to the Severn bridge at Atcham. Westward, to our right, it will take you two straight as an arrow for Pool and Wales, or if you find any obstacle on the way, you may bear further south at the end for the ford at Montgomery. Once you’re on this, you can ride fast enough, though in parts it may be steep. Now we cross it here, and have another half-mile to go to the ford of the brook. So pay attention to the way.”

Here the path was clearly better used, horses could travel it without great difficulty. The ford, when they reached it, was wide and smooth. “And here,” said Cadfael, “we leave our loads. One tree among so many trees you might well lose, but one tree beside the only ford along the path, and you can’t lose it.”

“Leave them?” wondered Torold. “Why, are we not going straight to where the horses are? You said yourself we should not be followed tonight.”

“Not followed, no.” When you know where your quarry must come, and are sure of the night, you can be there waiting. “No, waste no more time, trust me and do as I say.” And he let down his own half of the burden, and looked about him, in the dimness to which by now their eyes were accustomed, for the best and safest concealment. In the thicket of bushes close to the ford, on their right, there was a gnarled old tree, one side of it dead, and its lowest branch deep in the cover of the bushes. Cadfael slung his saddlebags over it, and without another word Torold hoisted his own beside them, and drew back to assure himself that only those who had hidden here were likely ever to find. The full leafage covered all.

“Good lad!” said Cadfael contentedly. “Now, from here we bear round to the east somewhat, and this path we’re on will join the more direct one I used before. For we must approach the grange from the right direction. It would never do for any curious person to suppose we’d been a mile nearer Wales.”

Unburdened now, they drew together and went after him hand in hand, trusting as children. And now that they were drawing nearer to the actual possibility of flight, they had nothing at all to say, but clung to each other and believed that things would go right.

Their path joined the direct one only some minutes’ walk from the small clearing where the stockade of the grange rose. The sky paled as the trees fell back. There was a small rush-light burning somewhere within the house, a tiny, broken gleam showed through the pales. All round them the night hung silent and placid.

Brother Anselm opened to them, so readily that surely some aggrieved traveller from Shrewsbury must have brought word even here of the day’s upheaval, and alerted him to the possibility that anyone running from worse penalties might well take warning, and get out at once. He drew them within thankfully and in haste, and peered curiously at the two young fellows at Cadfael’s back, as he closed the gate.

“I thought it! My thumbs pricked. I felt it must be tonight. Things grow very rough your way, so we’ve heard.”

“Rough enough,” admitted Cadfael, sighing. “I’d wish any friend well out of it. And most of all these two. Children, these good brothers have cared for your trust, and have it here safe for you. Anselm, this is Adeney’s daughter, and this FitzAlan’s squire. Where is Louis?”